Software Endorsements

iIf you're shit is boring enough then Facebook and Google will ignore it.

edit: I'm sorry this is the time when I get Tiger Balm into my eyes.

 

While people have brought up video grabbers for YouTube are a dime a dozen, no one's brought up a general video grabber so I'd like to recommend Video Downloadhelper.
https://www.downloadhelper.net/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-downloadhelper/lmjnegcaeklhafolokijcfjliaokphfk

It's kind of shit at YouTube, but it's great for getting shit behind an HTML5 player or hidden from downloading by other means.

Videos and music download quickly as long as the site itself doesn't throttle connections, IIRC it downloads files simultaneously in multiple chunks to speed up downloads. (Says it supports "media" in flv/ram/mpg/mpeg/avi/rm/wmv/mov/asf/mp3/rar/movie/divx/rbs/mp4/mpeg4 formats but I'm pretty sure it can pull sfw and ogg/ogv as well.) Also displays the size of available media so you know what you're looking for. All in the convenience of an extension

Can't remember if it was for both Chrome and Firefox, but ever since Mozilla took away some feature when they pushed Quantum, it requires a companion app to get files that are too big for the browser to handle, but the app runs completely in the background and doesn't have any noticeable performance impact when it's doing it's thing.

Only real downsides I've noticed are it can't get content that's live streamed (like Soundcloud or an active Twitch stream, archived streams are fine), it has a length limit at 3 hours or so (it saves the middle of the video for some reason), and the fact it's slow as shit at pulling videos off YouTube, then plexes the video with a QR code to say "hey, buy our software." Apparently you can use a converter feature if you pay for it, but just use Any Video Converter like a normal fucking human being.

The price is fucking ridiculous ($28.50 or 18.50 euro, though granted it is a one time payment), but they exclusively process payments through Stripe, so even someone like Dear Leader could pay for it.

 

Video downloadhelper works on both Firefox and Chrome, Firefox is required to download Youtube videos but maybe that has changed. Google have/had a restriction on the play store that made it so it was a breach of their ToS if an extension allowed users to rip Youtube videos.

 

Hey a little late, but here is a good method for long term storage.

You’re going to want to buy “blue ray m-disc” you can get DVDs too, but density is my concern. I like to go overboard and structure the disc in this fashion

Say I have 100gig disc
Those disc are only going to hold 50GB of data

I’ll create a bunch of split rar files and put those in folder 1
Then I’ll just duplicate that and put them in folder 2

So, on this single disc I have two copies of each rar file so if there is an issue with that sector I should be able to get the other one from my same on disc duplicate.

Burn 2-3 copies of that disc (do a check at the end to make sure everything is written well).

Depending on how many you’re going to have jewel cases inside a fireproof box (stores high to avoid worse case water damage) for your onsite copy. 2nd copies with a friend and 3rd in a safety deposit box.

Doing something like that ensures long term storage on a very high quality medium. It is a good idea to also keep SD cards with the same data in the same containers as your backups backup.

Moving on from that -
Cloud storage
It is cheap (check around you can get some insane deals by using certain google services not as intended for 5+TB of storage)

Sure there is the worry that they will crack down via file matching, but recall the rar splitting? It will make your file set unique and not suffer from those issues. If you want to be extra paranoid (why not) encrypt the sets so there is no chance of them ever matching.

I personally only do this for very important data, but everyone has a different definition of very important. You should be able to do some searches and find others talking about what I’m basically talking about. I hope this helps you and if you have any questions feel free to send me a message.

 

Holy shit man, thanks. That's really helpful and will be by secondary backup system after I finish with the highly non degradable discs I ordered the other day. Set's still not complete, but i'm not going to lock any of the discs yet.

 

So I signed up for two years of PIA VPN today and I've been having a blast with it so far. Plus it runs on my tablet so that's a bonus.

 

Musicbrainz Picard

A poorly named piece of software that can fix the tags on music files, along with pulling in album art and even arranging the folders, ie "artist name - album - year". This is really good if you have a collection with fucked up tags. It even did a pretty good job of picking up on vinyl rips and fan made album/restorations. It doesnt pick up some obscure stuff and its not very good with classical.

Downside is you cant do an entire collection at once. I split things into 2000 song chunks but didnt try anything higher after my entire collection hard locked it. Most of the album art it pulls isnt the highest resolution, most around 500x500 compared to 1000+ for itunes and some of it is shitty scans. Oh and they may be sending your info to the RIAA or some shit, use a vpn or proxy/tor if you are paranoid (and you should be).

 

If the NSA is after you for your cybercrimes you need to keep a vial of suicide pills on top of your computer. If anybody - ANYBODY - knocks on your front door, take the pills before opening it. That way they won't be able to do the brain suck on you.



25% off Suicide pills all February at Schuchardt Industries!

If requested by law enforcement, instructed by a National Security letter or other court order or because we think you deserve the brain suck you we may substitute placebo pills for some buyers

 

Hard Drives, they are the cheapest solution compared to Blurays (wich does not hold too much data for the cost) and LTO Tapes wich cost a fortune, just access them once in a while to make sure they are still alive, also RAID is not backup

 

It depends, the PS2 fullset is about 6TB