so i do torrent stuff when i want to keep it, but the vast majoriy of my media i just stream from whatever shady site i happen to find it on first. it’s too quick and easy.
protip if you ever have trouble finding anything, just use yandex. russia doesn’t give a SHIT about copyright violations or DMCA complaints.
Yandex is extremely useful for finding obscure stuff that doesn’t show up on the usual torrent sites.
I’m gen z born in the early 200xs and I torrent (legal Linux ISOs ofc)
How else are you going to get your hands on the latest build of Hannah Montana Linux?
Wait what sites are down? Just checked the ones I normally use and they’re fine?
Also, just to say, I think there’s this big learning curve with torrents cause people aren’t straight forward with others ask for advice (told what not to do rather than what to do) and there’s also just too much fear mongering about viruses.
That’s why they made streaming media. Worked good, didn’t it?
Some people just stick to the ez pz apps and don’t care about their privacy or to understand what they’re working with. With modern phones and pc’s that treat people like toddlers, a lot of people don’t develop skills further than that
As part of Gen Z I do not approve this message. When I was young I would stream movies from stream sites (to be fair I had no money to have VPN to torrent etc) but I have not visited one of those for like 5 years now since I learned more. Now not all gen Z is tech smart I see it in my friends and family members close to me age who are… Dumb and worse they don’t care to get better and think it’s fine and that is what the problem is imo.
i don’t get this ‘generation gap’ thing. There are also Milennials who are just as clueless.
You can always dive into the whole private tracker, sonarr/radarr + media server setup if you want superior quality or just to host your own files. But if you are happy with what streaming sites/apps provide that is fine too.
I for one am glad that piracy is easily accessible by anyone who has access to the internet.
I am a bit OOTL - which ones went down? Things like Internet Archive & related to AnimeFLV? I presume new ones will come back though?
If you had real shitty internet back in the day (read 56k modem) and you liked to play russian roulette you would dump satellite traffic with a skystar2 DVB-S card. You never knew what you’d get realistically, found some true gems underneath mountains of coal in the day of (still) unfiltered internet.
That’s wild. Did you need a special program to parse stuff out of the data stream? I guess it would mostly come in as http reaponses, so it wouldn’t be too hard, but still an interesting problem.
Yep, used Skygrabber, you could filter out files depending on extensions, filenames etc and could narrow out what you wanted. Still had no real way of knowing what you’d end up with as you were effectively just passively listening on the satellite traffic. It was wild as you could fill out a 40 gig drive overnight without issues in the era where people were downloading a MP3 album for hours.
Not exactly, first of all, this is pretty divisive which I dislike, a lot of late Gen z can and has torrented and used ddl sites. It’s early Gen z and Gen alpha that is hopeless.
lol, you point out how this is divisive and then proceed to divide Gen Z into late and early cohorts.
Oh wait
I don’t know, but in France people got scared by “HADOPI” which was a government organization to find people sharing files, and like they were sending you e-mails if caught! And if caught a second time, BAM a paper letter! Scary! Then I think there was something like cutting your internet, not sure it ever happened.
We know how to torrent mate we aren’t dumb
I remember having a torrent client set up was a great way to become popular back in 2010
does the rest of gen z not know how to torrent? i thought everyone did
The switch from using shit like Napster/LimeWire/eDonkey/etc to BitTorrent was fairly easy. It was the lack of the torrent app itself not having a file search in it that made things feel like they went backwards.
Before Napster and the rest, you’d do a web search for “warez” and sift through shady sites to find a working download link. After Napster, you’d just search for what you want in the app. I know there are torrent apps that do this now, but I don’t know how wide of a reach they actually have. I still just go to a tracker’s website and find things to magnet link.
eDonkey was an easy way to share something with a group of friends via P2P!
Gen X here. I still use my eMule client! Because you just share whole directory structures, it’s great for finding and sharing older obscure stuff.
It’s like cars. Almost everyone has one and can drive it but don’t know how it works. Computers have become that. There are some who know or have an idea of how it works and others who can use it but have no idea.
Yeah I think that’s a decent comparison. There are of course still hobbyists and enthusiasts today who know a lot about cars despite not being professionals working in a related field, but it does feel like the general understanding among the public has fallen because the cultural phenomenon of a father teaching his son about cars has dissipated. Piracy has always been a niche activity but the core skills and knowledges it requires were taught more to millennials than they were to zoomers. If people have grown up with less education about motor engines or desktop computers then it’s not surprising they struggle to expand on that later in life.
The expense of tools, equipment and supplies can be a huge barrier to car maintenance but there is so much legitimately free software for computers (even ignoring the pirated stuff) that people never had so much opportunity.
If is like learning another language or a musical instrument, people have to be committed and practice to get good and few people can make the effort. Businesses have trained people to seek instant gratification from fast food, social media, tik tok, gambling, loot boxes, and consumerism in general because short lived and unfulfilling experiences produce an endless monetization opportunity. The rare people with the discipline and support to focus their efforts have massive advantages with access to information and tools which were very difficult in the past. There are some prodigies out there in a sea of mediocrity.
Yeah but cars have become increasingly more complex over the last 20 years. You basically need an EEPROM arduino kit these days just to get the fucking diagnostics out of the car, because someone decided that analog circuits were just too much bulk
I think their metaphor is referring to ease of use and the knowledge required for use. I have a few personal anecdotes as examples.
I’m an eighties kid. My first PC was a Commodore 64 and my first car was a 1966 VW Bug. Neither was reliable nor easy to use. I had to learn to utilize interfaces that were more finicky and complex than modern equivalents, and I spent a great deal of time learning how to make them work when they glitched out or were broken. The alternative was not having them at all. It was hard to get BBS advice when your PC took a dump and no one else you knew had one you could use, and then where would you get car advice? Certainly not from my dad!
A kid growing up with an Apple anything and driving a 20 year old car doesn’t face the same kinds of difficulties. Many things just work more reliably and aren’t as difficult to use. One can easily buy gaming systems now where we often had to build our own to get what we wanted. My buddy’s 23 year old daughter had never even heard of CLI. That’s all I had!
It doesn’t make one generation better than the other - younger people today are skilled in ways I could have only dreamed of. We just have different opportunities for excellence.
younger people today are skilled in ways could have only dreamed of.
Any examples?
Hell yeah. My experience may be skewed due to my field, but I’ve noticed my Gen Z peers are SO much better at critical thinking. If someone asks most of my millennial coworkers to do something, they generally just do it. Ask one of my Gen Z coworkers and they’ll usually ask you why, often followed by probing questions to better understand what they’re doing. They’re full of healthy skepticism.
As a cohort, they’re also better at enforcing work/life balance. I’ve been fighting for employee rights for years but for so long felt like I was alone. Now I’m at home with the newer coworkers who (politely) tell their bosses to fuck off when asked to do extra unpaid work (we’re all salaried) or to work outside of their job description.
While many aren’t technically advanced - many couldn’t build or troubleshoot a broken PC - they are as a group fairly technically capable, having uniformly been raised using technology. Teaching my computer illiterate boss to use Excel is so frustrating that it feels like repeatedly punching myself in the side of the head. Teaching my equally Excel-unskilled, twenty-something coworker the same is a breeze. He has no fucking idea what he’s doing, but he picks it right up. He knows how to use a PC, just not how to use Excel in particular. My boss knows neither.
I absolutely love working with them, Gen Z is the best.
Thanks. Gives me hope. Would you also say the males are less constrained by the macho culture of older generations? More capable of talking about emotions?
And women less constrained by their own old stereotypes?
I find it hard to be sure because both stereotypes are still alive and popular. The gender benders have been around for decades but perhaps not as flamboyant now so they merely seems more mainstream now.
I think more men are aware of the existence of toxic masculinity than before and many of them are trying to get out from under it. A lot of young men still are unsure of how to fit into the world, though, which is how the alt-right snaps them up with easy “answers” to complex problems.
I definitely see a lot more women fighting against traditional gender roles than men. They’re killing it, it’s really great to see.
Much of my exposure to younger adults is through my work. It definitely attracts more progressive candidates, although nothing like fields such as social work, psychology, etc., so take all of this with a grain of salt. I do work fairly frequently with more traditionally “macho” workers like the trades, and they’re starting to reject toxic masculinity simply because it’s bad for business.
I’m the computer guy for my car guy and small engine guy. When I introduced them I became our group’s guy guy. I don’t really know anyone I just help people with their computers in conversations when I’m trying to fill my knowledge gaps.
