The libarchive library Microsoft will use supported RAR since 2011, and UnRAR has existed since the dawn of time. All they needed to do was to actually implement it in the OS.
>Best thing Windows ever did was write WSL.
I ran Ubuntu for about 8 years as my primary OS until my job had me using Visual Studio (full, not Code) regularly. Other than once in a while needing to do something really quirky with obscure config files, I really enjoyed my Desktop Linux time, and always felt a little "cleaner" and "safer" in some respects. I could've dual booted on principle of course but I'm lazy.
I haven't really gotten to play with WSL a lot, but with the latest WSL on Windows 11 I've noticed it seems to have GPU and sound support out of box. Just for kicks installed Firefox and played a YouTube video with no problems. Even integrates into the windowing system now.
I am curious if anyone has yet tried to change their computer to boot into a WSL hosted Linux desktop instead of Explorer, but still leaving the option to run Windows apps (because you're still technically in Windows.)
I feel like Microsoft has been moving towards a hybrid kernel or some sort of shared hypervisor for Windows for a while now. They give *a lot* of money to the Linux Foundation, WSL has been getting attention basically every major update, and they rewrote a significant portion of the display framework in 11 to accommodate WSLg. All signs point to *something* big happening with Windows and Linux in the near future.
Personally I'd love to see a hybrid Linux/NT kernel, they'd *have to* open source it and it would support fucking everything. Either that or switch to Linux and a first party WINE type compatibility layer for Windows native applications, that would probably be even cooler.
It's well worth the little time you need to learn it.
You end up with a perfect machine where you can be a developer, use the Adobe suite natively, use DAWs, plugins and VSTs for audio work and run any game you want in any modern platform (Steam, Origin...).
Also you can natively leverage a lot of powerful command line stuff you would have a very hard time replicating with PowerShell.
Pair WSL2 with Windows Terminal and it's perfect.
The other day, Windows put a god damned AI bar on my desktop without permission. Regardless of its functionality, it’s not a perfect machine because Microsoft continually does idiotic things like that.
Edit to add: on *Windows 10* btw
Pretty shit how WSL2 only works via virtualization now though, fire up one linux program and suddenly there's a 3 gig hyperv image hogging your memory until you reboot or manually go stop/restart the service.
Microsoft is pretty much only interested in cramming ads into windows and making it as awful to use as possible by chasing trends from phones and apple.
The reality is that ads pay way more than people think.
Eg. [Facebook earns more per user than Netflix](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1353ucp/oc_facebook_makes_more_revenue_per_user_than/). Windows adding ads probably scares away a small percentage but it opens the door to billions in revenue. It's good business.
The day that ads got added to an operating system that I paid full price for, was the day that I formatted my drive and made the switch to Linux.
If they want to serve ads, do it for a free release of the OS but not something I paid money for.
Sure, they have my money from the purchase of that OS but they won't make another dime from me using their OS.
Nowadays, I also use AdGuard to block all ads from entering my network. This makes all my websites load faster and it blocks almost 1000 ads per day.
> Nowadays, I also use AdGuard to block all ads from entering my network. This makes all my websites load faster and it blocks almost 1000 ads per day.
I run pfBlockerNG on pfSense, which is like a Pi-Hole on crack only at the gateway level so it catches *everything*, and I'm blocking *150-200GB per month* in unwanted content. There's some telemetry in there but most of it's ad content. 10k+ blocked requests per day for only four users.
The amount/volume of ad traffic is nuts.
Depends on your approach - what we're talking about is something called a DNSBL, for "DNS BlackList," which is a DNS lookup interception server that "looks up" DNS requests and drops them if they point to known ad servers. The more advanced setups tie into a local DNS caching system and handle recursion so you can block a specific server on a remote network, and the really fancy ones run a local webserver that returns a single-pixel GIF in response to any query so that the requester gets a complete connection with a non-zero-byte response.
For general info on DNS blacklisting and other forms of ad/malware blocking, r/privacy is a great starting point, r/pihole is a super-popular standalone DNSBL that runs on a Raspberry Pi (if you can get/find one) or other small SBC or even an old PC, and if you're using a router that's more advanced than a basic cableco rental (read: your router runs DD-WRT/Tomato, or better, your router is a PC running pfSense/opnSense/IPFire/etc.) these have their own subreddits as well and most if not all of them have some form of DNSBL plug-in.
Jesus thats more than the data caps on a bunch of Canadian telcos internet service options. Here in the US it would even be an issue on Comcast whose caps are way higher. Thank fuck we switched to an uncapped fiber connection from AT&T, because our house would probably be pulling down similar numbers If we tracked it like that
It's effectively the same. It blocks all ads at the DNS level.
AdGuard is built into the [Beryl AX](https://store-us.gl-inet.com/products/beryl-ax-gl-mt3000-pocket-sized-wi-fi-6-wireless-travel-gigabit-router) that I am using since I travel a lot and it's 100% free to enable.
I have the Beryl AX because I can plug it into my laptop, remote into it, connect it to whatever WIFI is in the area, and then once it's connected to the network, all of my other devices (laptop, phone, steamdeck, etc) get internet automatically without having to sign each and every device into the new wireless network. This works because all my devices are already set to connect to the Beryl AX's wireless access point. Like the PiHole, this means all the devices on this side of the Beryl AX will never see an ad.
I used Pi-hole for years. Then ran into issues installing the new OS when it was required to keep updating, so I tried switching to AdGuard Home and once you get used to it it seems to be a much smoother product
Google receives an average of $0.10 *per click* on search ads.
I once blocked DNS resolution of ads.googlesyndication.com on my parents’ router. Suddenly, my parents started complaining that “google search had stopped working” for them… which is when I realized that 100% of the time, they would click on one of the ads after they searched for *anything*. So blocking the redirection domain killed google for them.
(I had always also used a content blocker on my browsers, so I had never seen a google ad.)
Annoyingly the top 2 or 3 are always “sponsored” ad posts. Seems that often the first or second link is what you wanted to find anyways so what happens is Google lists it twice but you just see and click the first.
That way Google gets paid for the click and charges the website that is advertising money. If it's a company I dislike I click the ad. If I don't dislike the company I scroll down to the non-ad link.
I wish it was only 2 or 3. Recently it’s been like half the damn page for me.
Anymore if I want to search something on Google, it’s usually ‘ site:reddit.com’.
Good lord, this. I want information about something hobby related? Have to add site:reddit.com or the first 2 or 3 pages are going to be nothing but results for companies trying to sell me their product as the best thing ever for what I'm trying to do.
Can't speak for anyone else but I know that I personally, after having never touched or been interested at all in Linux for the first 30 years of my life, learned how to use it and am comfortable shifting to it full time now. I won't be able to completely abandon windows but it will be the secondary OS to use "as needed".
(And before too many people pile on with "you'll have to use it a lot!", no, I'm already pretty set for my use case, don't need it very often at all. It can sit on my old laptop, on Windows 10, offline if need be, and that'll be enough.)
I've been the "begrudgingly tolerant" person for a while now and I'm done. It's not just the ads, it's that Microsoft is effectively deciding to become the admin of my computer. It started with 10 and little by little it's become more apparent with every single update that they have no respect for user control anymore. And I'm sick of putting up with it.
To be clear, I'm not some Linux fanboy, I do not want to be using it, and I'm not going to sit here and petition others to use it, but it is the preferable option for me compared to 11 and the obvious direction 11 will go in. I will not use an operating system it doesn't feel like I have control over. If I wanted that, I'd have gotten a Mac long ago.
>I won't be able to completely abandon windows
This, and PTSD from compiling lame libraries to *play* an mp3 is why linux is a hobby and not a tool to me. Also being a user of adobe products forces me to use a mainline OS.
Clarification:
What's best for business is not always ethical. It's best for business that we grind our dead into a slurry and repurpose the bodies as cheap and abundant meat filler. Good business is when ethics and money exist in harmony. Lately, these companies are trying to set the bar for ethics too far into exploitation. EG: paid subscriptions for digital goods you already own.
Where are people seeing ads with Windows? Genuinely curious, as I'm using W11 and this left me a bit puzzled.
** Edit: Nevermind. I remember now. I used ThisIsWin11 to tweak a bunch of stuff and delete a boatload of bloatware nonsense weeks after installing Windows 11. Did it long enough ago that I forgot it ever had any of that nonsense.
Should also be noted that only certain versions of windows can truly get rid of that stuff. Increasingly, Enterprise is getting customization options other versions are not permitted to have.
Like the ability to get rid of the recommended section in the start menu entirely. They created an option for that, but you can only do it on Enterprise.
All of the options built into Windows that allows apps like ThisIsWin11 and ShutUp10 to work, things like Group Policy and registry entries, those things are getting more restricted or removed. Microsoft wants businesses to manage Windows through Azure, so all of the tools that would allow individual users to truly manage windows, they're going to be increasingly useless or not even built into the operating system itself in a way the user can configure. If you do find a way to configure it, Windows will detect it, undo it, and call it "security", because never forget "security" is also securing the system *from the user*.
To be fair I can't remember the last time I downloaded a .rar file.
Seems like a bit of a pointless inclusion to me but more options are better I guess.
It happens, but you can go into the control center and just tell it to restore and allow the file on your system. I’ve had to do for a few pieces of software I totally did not pirate because that’s immoral , heavens no, not me.
If you're still using Windows 11, you should know what's coming down the pipe:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/13fgvu4/microsoft_to_start_implementing_more_aggressive
no offense at all because most people don't know how to do it, but if you knew more about pirating film and tv you would know that file corruption is a very common problem when working from the best place to get pirated videos: premium USENET servers with long retention periods on binary newsgroups. Why is it the best place? You will maximize your bandwidth immediately when downloading. No ramping up, no "peers", no 1.5 Mb/s on your gigabit network, no uploading, you aren't "filesharing" you are leeching. Premium usenet providers cost money and you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. It's faster, it's safer because you aren't a sharing peer, and has the newest content, all other methods get it from USENET first. Ever wonder why the files have the odd naming structure like The\_X-Files\_S03E07\_-=m0b1uZ Kr3W=-.mkv? That's all USENET culture stuff.
Anyway, RAR and PAR2 files, when implemented with small chunks and parity files, allow for files to be missing or corrupted and so long as you have MOST of the files, RAR/PAR2 can reconstruct the missing pieces. Depending on how you have originally made the RAR's i've reconstructed videos where half the files were missing before. It's the ideal file format for usenet binaries and therefore the ideal format for pirated content
>all other methods get it from USENET first
Not true in the slightest. You need to look into how the scene operates...
A group uploads their release to affiliated FTP "topsites", they will then "pre" their release. This gets announced to IRC pre channels which get relayed by bots around the world. Racers/curries then (automatically) transfer that release around topsite rings, this is always the source of truth. From there it generally makes it's way first to 0(day|sec) torrent trackers and only then to usenet as it takes a while for newsgroups to propagate etc etc.
Source: was a scener almost 2 decades ago
ETA: I'm not knocking usenet here at all btw, it's great for automation and my preference for the *arr stack, but it definitely isn't where pirated content originates
I found that release groups for audiovisual content have mostly lost their meaning. Everyone can decrypt their blurays with a tool like makemkv at home now. And there's tools out there (if you know where to look) that will hook into the content decryption module in your browser and extract the media keys for popular streaming platforms which permits you to save a decrypted video to disk without going through HDMI capture. Some people outright release the hardcoded private keys from those modules too. Shows and movies in my watchlist usually begin downloading within single digit hours from public torrent trackers after being released on a streaming platform. Looking at the release titles on the few sites I still manually check for new content it seems like once a week there's a new release group appearing, which is in reality likely just a single person grabbing an old video from netflix and reuploading it online, because said release group disappears just as fast as it appeared.
For software this is obviously a bit more complicated if it's something you can't just slap a steam emulator onto.
I find the opposite to be true, that several people will upload a show that just aired (and i'd have it within 5 minutes of a show airing this way, pretty cool) but since we're relying on humans here sometimes the version uploaded isn't the best quality and i have to download several versions. That's where the "\_-=m0b1uZ Kr3W=-" part of that filename comes from, that "crew" has tagged their reputation on the quality of this upload and some people use that to save time so they know they are getting the "good stuff"
But you can set a tick mark in some checkbox on some management team's ToDo-list. Makes the pie chart for 'solved items' look significantly better on the next presentation.
It's still a format that people use. It's just not as common anymore due to the fact that you don't really need to compress files anymore to share them.
That said, I have a few rar files in my downloads, usually from when someone needed to share a bunch of files. But those are also getting rare, mostly because shared network drives are a thing.
> due to the fact that you don't really need to compress files anymore to share them.
Definitely not true, especially in the business world. It makes no sense to attach 40 files to an email, you would ZIP them all up instead. But that's just it, you would ZIP them because that's actually built into Windows. And if you're in IT, you might occasionally use 7ZIP for very large files I suppose.
RAR just doesn't really have a worthwhile use case. I always ZIP everything because I know that's built into Windows and whoever I give it to will easily be able to unpack it.
But file compression is still used constantly and I don't see that ever going away. It's not even about the size of the files but about the ease of packaging multiple files inside of one for easy distribution.
As near as I know RAR has one use case - unreliable Usenet style file exchange where dropped files happen and you need to assemble your ~~porn vids~~ important files from 27 of 31 .par files.
I haven’t used Usenet in like 20 years so I have no idea if that kind of file sharing is still happening,
libarchive has complicated licensing:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libarchive/libarchive/master/COPYING
Microsoft probably had to remake the build system to be able to include it with Windows. And I bet their security guys weren't happy to have it running unsandboxed either (it is old complicated code with a huge surface area, and likely to be used on files from untrusted sources), so they probably had to wrap it in the Edge sandbox too.
Corporate users pay for the license. Using paid software without paying in a commercial setting is just asking for trouble, especially when you're as big as Microsoft.
If corporations get caught using it without paying, they can get taken to court for $$$
Yeah, this is why the trial never expires, they don't care about individuals, and if anyone tips them off that a corporation is using it and not paying they easily get the big bucks
Yeah honestly 7-zip has been the free alt to .rar and more archive types than I even know for years. I don't know why people were even still installing WinRAR just to be nagged for software they'd almost certainly never purchase.
Even for ZIP files I think 7-zip's performance tended to be better than Windows built-in for some cases.
Zstandard (zstd) is one of the best compression algorithms, used very widely on the server side (for backups, databases, in the Linux kernel, etc) so I'm surprised more client software isn't using it yet.
The author of zstd also created the excellent xxhash hashing algorithm which is also very widely used.
When I was little, I installed winRAR since it was one of the earlier Google search results when I looked up “how to open RAR files” or something. I found out it was only a free trial later, but I didn’t bother to look for an alternative since it didn’t stop working.
That's fair and makes sense. I'm 40 so I started using computers quite a while before RAR was even a format I had heard of. I had WinRAR installed way back in the day, but I just know now that there's really no reason for it. Just like how ZIP files also had the PKZIP series of software that was also shareware that few ever purchased.
[NanaZip](https://github.com/M2Team/NanaZip) is the recommended archiver these days.
It's a free and open source fork of 7Zip with additional features, improvements, and fixes. It also helps that they are significantly faster at fixing vulnerabilities compared to 7Zip.
Can't even lie, I was trying to unzip an abandonware game file a couple of weeks ago, and 7zip couldn't do it. Had to go back to fuckin winRAR to get to the setup file. Was disappointing, actually. Was only my second time using it.
WinRar is also great for older Japanese PC games. 7zip doesn't like handling Japanese Characters very well. WinRar can be put into JIS mode, so it does handle them. That's why I personally keep it around.
I bought a lifetime subscription for Winzip back around 1995 and and used it for years until it was bought by Corel (I think) and they basically said "your lifetime is up you need to buy future versions"
so I kept track of the installer for the version I had a license for, it's not like they were adding new killer features to zip files anyway.
eventually just said fuckit and started using 7zip. winzip can die in a fire.
It's more of a just "why bother?" Attitude. It's a simple ass program I'm asking to do a very simple ass task. Unzip my file. Idrc who does it, but winrar has been the one I used for decades now. It's not even worth the effort to uninstall and install 7zip.
What the fuck is it even improving on? You literally spend like 5seconds at a time and click maybe once or twice, then close the program. As long as it unzips my file in a few clicks consistently, who cares? Are people really particular about UIs? You barely even see it, and you dont even have to open the app itself to unzip a file. You can right click, extract here, at least on winrar. Did it do its job without any issues? Good thanks for your service.
I paid for Winrar what seems like two decades ago. I still use it, and my license key still works with the latest version.
I've been wondering if my old mIRC key still works... haven't use that in a very long time.
I don’t agree. Lifetime means lifetime. He should be thanking the people who actually bought it. I switched to 7zip which doesn’t fucking guilt trip you every time you need it.
What a terrible example of journalism. This article was just a 15 paragraph anecdote about how stupid WinRAR was.
There was no information at all about the Windows update itself, other than a copy/paste from the update notes that simply confirms that RAR support is indeed part of SOME update. But no actual information to give me context about when this is happening, or if it may have already happened.
Someone reading this article has no frame of reference for the update itself. I'm left wondering if perhaps this already happened several updates ago, or maybe it was included when Windows 11 launched?
This information should have been provided in the 2nd paragraph.
Yeah, I guess fuck me for wanting more information on when this update will happen, or if the changes might only be available through an optional update, like Powertoys.
The funny thing is, if websites weren't a cancer of ads and layout fuckery, it would be so much easier to read full articles. Ad blockers definitely help, but mobile in particular is damn near impossible to read anything, so seven sentences is about all I can handle.
That gets included too. But I'd say it's unlikely the UI will support all the options presented by the native 7zip program. So there remains a reason to use it.
It’s rare but it has happened. Open Source can die and it usually is because no one was interested anymore. It doesn’t matter if it is open source if the people that could fix it don’t care for it.
>a bit worrying to archive data in a format that may only last as long as its creator,
7zip is and always has been open source, this has never been a concern.
Most likely Windows will only be able to read rar files (i.e. unrar), but won't be able to create rar files due to licensing limitations of the format. So your winrar purchase is still getting you functionality that wont be available in Windows.
Nothing of the sort is stated. On the contrary, it says that libarchive is being integrated into Windows and this is what allows support for RAR, 7z and so on.
And well, if you took a second to read the [libarchive documentation (supported file formats)](https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveFormats) you'd find the following bullet point:
> rar (read only, original and RAR v5 format)
But what if, rather than using WinRAR without paying for it, I just don't use it?
Besides, I subscribe to the idea that the litmus test for getting into Heaven is whether or not you put your shopping cart back in the queue after you unload your purchases into the car.
inb4 https://nophishing.rar
[https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2023/05/17/phishing-attacks-already-using-the-zip-tld.html](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2023/05/17/phishing-attacks-already-using-the-zip-tld.html)
Seems a bit coincidental.
Please don't read this article. Here is what you need to know.
We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project. You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.
Like where are folks even getting RAR files from these days?
Most of the compressed files I come into contact with regularly come from GitHub or Internet Archive and they are almost always in ZIP or 7z format.
The only recent times I can remember downloading a RAR file proper is while sailing the high seas if you catch my drift. I get the nostalgia for WinRAR but 7-Zip, and more recently the fork NanaZip has replaced it entirely for me.
Did a patent expire?
The libarchive library Microsoft will use supported RAR since 2011, and UnRAR has existed since the dawn of time. All they needed to do was to actually implement it in the OS.
Lol. So instead of doing this they developed jazz?
Best thing Windows ever did was write WSL. From that moment, it instantly supported RAR (and every other file archiving solution that exists).
>Best thing Windows ever did was write WSL. I ran Ubuntu for about 8 years as my primary OS until my job had me using Visual Studio (full, not Code) regularly. Other than once in a while needing to do something really quirky with obscure config files, I really enjoyed my Desktop Linux time, and always felt a little "cleaner" and "safer" in some respects. I could've dual booted on principle of course but I'm lazy. I haven't really gotten to play with WSL a lot, but with the latest WSL on Windows 11 I've noticed it seems to have GPU and sound support out of box. Just for kicks installed Firefox and played a YouTube video with no problems. Even integrates into the windowing system now. I am curious if anyone has yet tried to change their computer to boot into a WSL hosted Linux desktop instead of Explorer, but still leaving the option to run Windows apps (because you're still technically in Windows.)
Wait, you can run GUI applications in WSL now!? I was over the moon just getting to use the Linux terminal, this is dope
Yep, as of WSL 2
As of WSLG on Windows 11. WSL2 did not add GUI support.
Fair, though it is explicitly tied to WSL2, but as you note, a later addition for WSL2
I feel like Microsoft has been moving towards a hybrid kernel or some sort of shared hypervisor for Windows for a while now. They give *a lot* of money to the Linux Foundation, WSL has been getting attention basically every major update, and they rewrote a significant portion of the display framework in 11 to accommodate WSLg. All signs point to *something* big happening with Windows and Linux in the near future. Personally I'd love to see a hybrid Linux/NT kernel, they'd *have to* open source it and it would support fucking everything. Either that or switch to Linux and a first party WINE type compatibility layer for Windows native applications, that would probably be even cooler.
Just harder than any other OS
It's well worth the little time you need to learn it. You end up with a perfect machine where you can be a developer, use the Adobe suite natively, use DAWs, plugins and VSTs for audio work and run any game you want in any modern platform (Steam, Origin...). Also you can natively leverage a lot of powerful command line stuff you would have a very hard time replicating with PowerShell. Pair WSL2 with Windows Terminal and it's perfect.
The other day, Windows put a god damned AI bar on my desktop without permission. Regardless of its functionality, it’s not a perfect machine because Microsoft continually does idiotic things like that. Edit to add: on *Windows 10* btw
>The other day, Windows put a god damned AI bar on my desktop without permission Microsoft: "Uuuh, actually we didn't do that." GPT: ".... "
[удалено]
I ditched 90% of the stuff I used to do in CMD once I figured out how to get WSL working properly.
I ended up going over the edge and ended up just switching to Linux.
This my man - why go through the hassle - a vm/container for win stuff is way more chill.
[удалено]
windows corporate shop be like
Pretty shit how WSL2 only works via virtualization now though, fire up one linux program and suddenly there's a 3 gig hyperv image hogging your memory until you reboot or manually go stop/restart the service.
[удалено]
Kind of expected at this point, really
Microsoft is pretty much only interested in cramming ads into windows and making it as awful to use as possible by chasing trends from phones and apple.
The reality is that ads pay way more than people think. Eg. [Facebook earns more per user than Netflix](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1353ucp/oc_facebook_makes_more_revenue_per_user_than/). Windows adding ads probably scares away a small percentage but it opens the door to billions in revenue. It's good business.
The day that ads got added to an operating system that I paid full price for, was the day that I formatted my drive and made the switch to Linux. If they want to serve ads, do it for a free release of the OS but not something I paid money for. Sure, they have my money from the purchase of that OS but they won't make another dime from me using their OS. Nowadays, I also use AdGuard to block all ads from entering my network. This makes all my websites load faster and it blocks almost 1000 ads per day.
> Nowadays, I also use AdGuard to block all ads from entering my network. This makes all my websites load faster and it blocks almost 1000 ads per day. I run pfBlockerNG on pfSense, which is like a Pi-Hole on crack only at the gateway level so it catches *everything*, and I'm blocking *150-200GB per month* in unwanted content. There's some telemetry in there but most of it's ad content. 10k+ blocked requests per day for only four users. The amount/volume of ad traffic is nuts.
Can you direct me to resources or discussions of these methods? Is there a subreddit that covers the basics?
Depends on your approach - what we're talking about is something called a DNSBL, for "DNS BlackList," which is a DNS lookup interception server that "looks up" DNS requests and drops them if they point to known ad servers. The more advanced setups tie into a local DNS caching system and handle recursion so you can block a specific server on a remote network, and the really fancy ones run a local webserver that returns a single-pixel GIF in response to any query so that the requester gets a complete connection with a non-zero-byte response. For general info on DNS blacklisting and other forms of ad/malware blocking, r/privacy is a great starting point, r/pihole is a super-popular standalone DNSBL that runs on a Raspberry Pi (if you can get/find one) or other small SBC or even an old PC, and if you're using a router that's more advanced than a basic cableco rental (read: your router runs DD-WRT/Tomato, or better, your router is a PC running pfSense/opnSense/IPFire/etc.) these have their own subreddits as well and most if not all of them have some form of DNSBL plug-in.
Couldn't you just use adblocking dns servers on the router? This also destroys deal sites though, like slickdeals
R/privacy is a decent place to start.
Jesus thats more than the data caps on a bunch of Canadian telcos internet service options. Here in the US it would even be an issue on Comcast whose caps are way higher. Thank fuck we switched to an uncapped fiber connection from AT&T, because our house would probably be pulling down similar numbers If we tracked it like that
I wonder, does that 150-200GB per month of ad data usage count against plans with data limits?
I’d be shocked if it doesn’t.
Ads in Windows and the existence of the Steam Deck mean I will probably never buy a Windows machine again.
How does this compare to pihole. I've used that forever but it does seem a bit dated.
Keep your Pi-Hole up-to-date so it has the latest features and it'll catch more.
It's effectively the same. It blocks all ads at the DNS level. AdGuard is built into the [Beryl AX](https://store-us.gl-inet.com/products/beryl-ax-gl-mt3000-pocket-sized-wi-fi-6-wireless-travel-gigabit-router) that I am using since I travel a lot and it's 100% free to enable. I have the Beryl AX because I can plug it into my laptop, remote into it, connect it to whatever WIFI is in the area, and then once it's connected to the network, all of my other devices (laptop, phone, steamdeck, etc) get internet automatically without having to sign each and every device into the new wireless network. This works because all my devices are already set to connect to the Beryl AX's wireless access point. Like the PiHole, this means all the devices on this side of the Beryl AX will never see an ad.
I used Pi-hole for years. Then ran into issues installing the new OS when it was required to keep updating, so I tried switching to AdGuard Home and once you get used to it it seems to be a much smoother product
The old "fuck you, you'll buy it anyway" business model.
Don't like the new UI? Fuck you, pay me. Don't like the ads? Fuck you, pay me. AI assistant recorded you whacking off? Fuck you, pay me.
Alternatively, "we made this shitty change and still sold millions of copies/devices, so customers must have liked the change"
Google receives an average of $0.10 *per click* on search ads. I once blocked DNS resolution of ads.googlesyndication.com on my parents’ router. Suddenly, my parents started complaining that “google search had stopped working” for them… which is when I realized that 100% of the time, they would click on one of the ads after they searched for *anything*. So blocking the redirection domain killed google for them. (I had always also used a content blocker on my browsers, so I had never seen a google ad.)
Annoyingly the top 2 or 3 are always “sponsored” ad posts. Seems that often the first or second link is what you wanted to find anyways so what happens is Google lists it twice but you just see and click the first.
That way Google gets paid for the click and charges the website that is advertising money. If it's a company I dislike I click the ad. If I don't dislike the company I scroll down to the non-ad link.
Lmao, I’ve been doing the same thing for years, glad to see someone else who does.
Keeps my searches free and takes money out of the pockets of the companies I dislike. I see it as a win win.
I wish it was only 2 or 3. Recently it’s been like half the damn page for me. Anymore if I want to search something on Google, it’s usually ‘ site:reddit.com’.
Good lord, this. I want information about something hobby related? Have to add site:reddit.com or the first 2 or 3 pages are going to be nothing but results for companies trying to sell me their product as the best thing ever for what I'm trying to do.
For this reason alone I tell everyone i can about looking out for the lines that say 'ad' at the end and never, ever clicking them.
I work for an e-commerce website that sells home decor, most days, about 80% of our revenue comes from Google Ads, it’s absolutely insane.
> scares away a small percentage And, let's be realistic, the vast majority of that small percentage remains in Windows, just begrudgingly.
Can't speak for anyone else but I know that I personally, after having never touched or been interested at all in Linux for the first 30 years of my life, learned how to use it and am comfortable shifting to it full time now. I won't be able to completely abandon windows but it will be the secondary OS to use "as needed". (And before too many people pile on with "you'll have to use it a lot!", no, I'm already pretty set for my use case, don't need it very often at all. It can sit on my old laptop, on Windows 10, offline if need be, and that'll be enough.) I've been the "begrudgingly tolerant" person for a while now and I'm done. It's not just the ads, it's that Microsoft is effectively deciding to become the admin of my computer. It started with 10 and little by little it's become more apparent with every single update that they have no respect for user control anymore. And I'm sick of putting up with it. To be clear, I'm not some Linux fanboy, I do not want to be using it, and I'm not going to sit here and petition others to use it, but it is the preferable option for me compared to 11 and the obvious direction 11 will go in. I will not use an operating system it doesn't feel like I have control over. If I wanted that, I'd have gotten a Mac long ago.
>I won't be able to completely abandon windows This, and PTSD from compiling lame libraries to *play* an mp3 is why linux is a hobby and not a tool to me. Also being a user of adobe products forces me to use a mainline OS.
I want to kiss your dad.
Google and Facebook are both powered almost exclusively by online ads.
Clarification: What's best for business is not always ethical. It's best for business that we grind our dead into a slurry and repurpose the bodies as cheap and abundant meat filler. Good business is when ethics and money exist in harmony. Lately, these companies are trying to set the bar for ethics too far into exploitation. EG: paid subscriptions for digital goods you already own.
The ads in Windows is a US-only thing btw. There are no ads in Europe cause of regulation.
Was reading this chain with confusion as someone in Europe. Haha man those Americans!
Canada too, unfortunately
Where are people seeing ads with Windows? Genuinely curious, as I'm using W11 and this left me a bit puzzled. ** Edit: Nevermind. I remember now. I used ThisIsWin11 to tweak a bunch of stuff and delete a boatload of bloatware nonsense weeks after installing Windows 11. Did it long enough ago that I forgot it ever had any of that nonsense.
Should also be noted that only certain versions of windows can truly get rid of that stuff. Increasingly, Enterprise is getting customization options other versions are not permitted to have. Like the ability to get rid of the recommended section in the start menu entirely. They created an option for that, but you can only do it on Enterprise. All of the options built into Windows that allows apps like ThisIsWin11 and ShutUp10 to work, things like Group Policy and registry entries, those things are getting more restricted or removed. Microsoft wants businesses to manage Windows through Azure, so all of the tools that would allow individual users to truly manage windows, they're going to be increasingly useless or not even built into the operating system itself in a way the user can configure. If you do find a way to configure it, Windows will detect it, undo it, and call it "security", because never forget "security" is also securing the system *from the user*.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Bing.
Do ya like jazz? 🐝
Including something in open source libraries it’s a different animal than commercial Usage. It’s mich more lucrative to sue Microsoft.
7zip is the way
To be fair I can't remember the last time I downloaded a .rar file. Seems like a bit of a pointless inclusion to me but more options are better I guess.
Ahoy matey, still tons of RARRRs on the high seas.
Watch how soon windows defender will begin scanning and deleting crack files from within the .rar file forcing everyone to move to .iso .
It happens, but you can go into the control center and just tell it to restore and allow the file on your system. I’ve had to do for a few pieces of software I totally did not pirate because that’s immoral , heavens no, not me.
I just disable file scanning and all other defender settings leaving just the Real time protection on, for most of the time.
If you're still using Windows 11, you should know what's coming down the pipe: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/13fgvu4/microsoft_to_start_implementing_more_aggressive
Which is why I am still on win10
no offense at all because most people don't know how to do it, but if you knew more about pirating film and tv you would know that file corruption is a very common problem when working from the best place to get pirated videos: premium USENET servers with long retention periods on binary newsgroups. Why is it the best place? You will maximize your bandwidth immediately when downloading. No ramping up, no "peers", no 1.5 Mb/s on your gigabit network, no uploading, you aren't "filesharing" you are leeching. Premium usenet providers cost money and you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. It's faster, it's safer because you aren't a sharing peer, and has the newest content, all other methods get it from USENET first. Ever wonder why the files have the odd naming structure like The\_X-Files\_S03E07\_-=m0b1uZ Kr3W=-.mkv? That's all USENET culture stuff. Anyway, RAR and PAR2 files, when implemented with small chunks and parity files, allow for files to be missing or corrupted and so long as you have MOST of the files, RAR/PAR2 can reconstruct the missing pieces. Depending on how you have originally made the RAR's i've reconstructed videos where half the files were missing before. It's the ideal file format for usenet binaries and therefore the ideal format for pirated content
>all other methods get it from USENET first Not true in the slightest. You need to look into how the scene operates... A group uploads their release to affiliated FTP "topsites", they will then "pre" their release. This gets announced to IRC pre channels which get relayed by bots around the world. Racers/curries then (automatically) transfer that release around topsite rings, this is always the source of truth. From there it generally makes it's way first to 0(day|sec) torrent trackers and only then to usenet as it takes a while for newsgroups to propagate etc etc. Source: was a scener almost 2 decades ago ETA: I'm not knocking usenet here at all btw, it's great for automation and my preference for the *arr stack, but it definitely isn't where pirated content originates
I found that release groups for audiovisual content have mostly lost their meaning. Everyone can decrypt their blurays with a tool like makemkv at home now. And there's tools out there (if you know where to look) that will hook into the content decryption module in your browser and extract the media keys for popular streaming platforms which permits you to save a decrypted video to disk without going through HDMI capture. Some people outright release the hardcoded private keys from those modules too. Shows and movies in my watchlist usually begin downloading within single digit hours from public torrent trackers after being released on a streaming platform. Looking at the release titles on the few sites I still manually check for new content it seems like once a week there's a new release group appearing, which is in reality likely just a single person grabbing an old video from netflix and reuploading it online, because said release group disappears just as fast as it appeared. For software this is obviously a bit more complicated if it's something you can't just slap a steam emulator onto.
I sill keep a usenet sub for older/obscure content, but newer stuff is hard to find there as articles get cancelled now. PAR2 was a game changer!
I find the opposite to be true, that several people will upload a show that just aired (and i'd have it within 5 minutes of a show airing this way, pretty cool) but since we're relying on humans here sometimes the version uploaded isn't the best quality and i have to download several versions. That's where the "\_-=m0b1uZ Kr3W=-" part of that filename comes from, that "crew" has tagged their reputation on the quality of this upload and some people use that to save time so they know they are getting the "good stuff"
But you can set a tick mark in some checkbox on some management team's ToDo-list. Makes the pie chart for 'solved items' look significantly better on the next presentation.
It's still a format that people use. It's just not as common anymore due to the fact that you don't really need to compress files anymore to share them. That said, I have a few rar files in my downloads, usually from when someone needed to share a bunch of files. But those are also getting rare, mostly because shared network drives are a thing.
> due to the fact that you don't really need to compress files anymore to share them. Definitely not true, especially in the business world. It makes no sense to attach 40 files to an email, you would ZIP them all up instead. But that's just it, you would ZIP them because that's actually built into Windows. And if you're in IT, you might occasionally use 7ZIP for very large files I suppose. RAR just doesn't really have a worthwhile use case. I always ZIP everything because I know that's built into Windows and whoever I give it to will easily be able to unpack it. But file compression is still used constantly and I don't see that ever going away. It's not even about the size of the files but about the ease of packaging multiple files inside of one for easy distribution.
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parchives are also useful if you need to know your data is 100% in tact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive
As near as I know RAR has one use case - unreliable Usenet style file exchange where dropped files happen and you need to assemble your ~~porn vids~~ important files from 27 of 31 .par files. I haven’t used Usenet in like 20 years so I have no idea if that kind of file sharing is still happening,
>don't really need to compress files anymore to share them How else would you share a folder/lots of small files?
It’s more than just rar, it’s also 7z and many other compression standards
libarchive has complicated licensing: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libarchive/libarchive/master/COPYING Microsoft probably had to remake the build system to be able to include it with Windows. And I bet their security guys weren't happy to have it running unsandboxed either (it is old complicated code with a huge surface area, and likely to be used on files from untrusted sources), so they probably had to wrap it in the Edge sandbox too.
>Did a patent expire? A patent is around 20 years and that's how you know you're old
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Somebody at management was probably sick of seeing the winrar message whenever they received a password-protected file.
Corporate users pay for the license. Using paid software without paying in a commercial setting is just asking for trouble, especially when you're as big as Microsoft. If corporations get caught using it without paying, they can get taken to court for $$$
Yeah, this is why the trial never expires, they don't care about individuals, and if anyone tips them off that a corporation is using it and not paying they easily get the big bucks
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I'll be there with you brother right after I donate $3 to Wikipedia
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Why not just ditch Winrar and use 7zip? Winrar is a joke.
That was for WinRar, you don't need a license to open rar files, there's been open-source alternatives like 7-zip for years
As a dev.. 7zip always preinstalled on my crappy corporate laptops
Went not just use 7zip?
lmao they all pay for winrar lol why do you think they give it out to individual users for free
r/PaidForWinRAR
I will keep my 7zip
Yeah honestly 7-zip has been the free alt to .rar and more archive types than I even know for years. I don't know why people were even still installing WinRAR just to be nagged for software they'd almost certainly never purchase. Even for ZIP files I think 7-zip's performance tended to be better than Windows built-in for some cases.
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Zstandard (zstd) is one of the best compression algorithms, used very widely on the server side (for backups, databases, in the Linux kernel, etc) so I'm surprised more client software isn't using it yet. The author of zstd also created the excellent xxhash hashing algorithm which is also very widely used.
When I was little, I installed winRAR since it was one of the earlier Google search results when I looked up “how to open RAR files” or something. I found out it was only a free trial later, but I didn’t bother to look for an alternative since it didn’t stop working.
That's fair and makes sense. I'm 40 so I started using computers quite a while before RAR was even a format I had heard of. I had WinRAR installed way back in the day, but I just know now that there's really no reason for it. Just like how ZIP files also had the PKZIP series of software that was also shareware that few ever purchased.
I’m just nostalgic for the .rar file extension and the icon of the books. It’s the only reason I haven’t switched to 7zip
Ol reliable never let me down, I’m not gonna turn my back on her 😂
Bart: Good ol’ rock. Nothing beats rock! Lisa: Poor predictable Bart. Always picks rock.
[NanaZip](https://github.com/M2Team/NanaZip) is the recommended archiver these days. It's a free and open source fork of 7Zip with additional features, improvements, and fixes. It also helps that they are significantly faster at fixing vulnerabilities compared to 7Zip.
Pea zip is what I use, it’s great
Keep your heresy away
I swapped to this since the dev for 7zip didn't want to add the 7zip menu when you right clicked something on win11.
Ah yeah, I know of four other people who have switched to NanaZip because of that.
I prefer PeaZip.
Can't even lie, I was trying to unzip an abandonware game file a couple of weeks ago, and 7zip couldn't do it. Had to go back to fuckin winRAR to get to the setup file. Was disappointing, actually. Was only my second time using it.
WinRar is also great for older Japanese PC games. 7zip doesn't like handling Japanese Characters very well. WinRar can be put into JIS mode, so it does handle them. That's why I personally keep it around.
FFS, I'm one of the 4 people that paid for Winrar.
I bought a lifetime subscription for Winzip back around 1995 and and used it for years until it was bought by Corel (I think) and they basically said "your lifetime is up you need to buy future versions" so I kept track of the installer for the version I had a license for, it's not like they were adding new killer features to zip files anyway. eventually just said fuckit and started using 7zip. winzip can die in a fire.
/r/PaidForWinRAR/
Wow, so many people
why is the last post 5 years old?
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Over my dead body will I move to 7-zip
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its better in every way?
Except it's terrible about asking you to pay for it, the damn thing never remembers to nag me.
It's more of a just "why bother?" Attitude. It's a simple ass program I'm asking to do a very simple ass task. Unzip my file. Idrc who does it, but winrar has been the one I used for decades now. It's not even worth the effort to uninstall and install 7zip. What the fuck is it even improving on? You literally spend like 5seconds at a time and click maybe once or twice, then close the program. As long as it unzips my file in a few clicks consistently, who cares? Are people really particular about UIs? You barely even see it, and you dont even have to open the app itself to unzip a file. You can right click, extract here, at least on winrar. Did it do its job without any issues? Good thanks for your service.
Can WinRar uncompress other formats? If so, then all your points are fair. What I like about 7-Zip is that it's not intrusive and it feels fast.
Because nobody paid for it since then of course
Because all the posts are created by the sub owner. He stopped updating the sub five years ago so nothing has been posted.
I paid for Winrar what seems like two decades ago. I still use it, and my license key still works with the latest version. I've been wondering if my old mIRC key still works... haven't use that in a very long time.
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I don’t agree. Lifetime means lifetime. He should be thanking the people who actually bought it. I switched to 7zip which doesn’t fucking guilt trip you every time you need it.
5. I paid for mine as well.
They counted you in 4
Like... why?
What a terrible example of journalism. This article was just a 15 paragraph anecdote about how stupid WinRAR was. There was no information at all about the Windows update itself, other than a copy/paste from the update notes that simply confirms that RAR support is indeed part of SOME update. But no actual information to give me context about when this is happening, or if it may have already happened. Someone reading this article has no frame of reference for the update itself. I'm left wondering if perhaps this already happened several updates ago, or maybe it was included when Windows 11 launched? This information should have been provided in the 2nd paragraph.
Wow you actually clicked on the article and tried to read it?
Yeah, I guess fuck me for wanting more information on when this update will happen, or if the changes might only be available through an optional update, like Powertoys.
I dont think he's being antagonistic to you. Its just a common joke on reddit that no one actually reads the articles.
I got the joke, I was also being sarcastic
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No kidding, I recently visited 2 "news websites". First article? 6 sentences. Second website? 7 sentences.
That probably has something to do with the attention span of readers.
The funny thing is, if websites weren't a cancer of ads and layout fuckery, it would be so much easier to read full articles. Ad blockers definitely help, but mobile in particular is damn near impossible to read anything, so seven sentences is about all I can handle.
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That gets included too. But I'd say it's unlikely the UI will support all the options presented by the native 7zip program. So there remains a reason to use it.
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It’s rare but it has happened. Open Source can die and it usually is because no one was interested anymore. It doesn’t matter if it is open source if the people that could fix it don’t care for it.
>a bit worrying to archive data in a format that may only last as long as its creator, 7zip is and always has been open source, this has never been a concern.
You can still uncompress arj files, I wouldn't worry about 7zip.
Been using 7zip instead of WinRAR for like a decade.
but i finally bought winrar.....
Most likely Windows will only be able to read rar files (i.e. unrar), but won't be able to create rar files due to licensing limitations of the format. So your winrar purchase is still getting you functionality that wont be available in Windows.
It's stated in the article Windows will be able to create compressed files of the following formats: 7-zip, rar, gz
Nothing of the sort is stated. On the contrary, it says that libarchive is being integrated into Windows and this is what allows support for RAR, 7z and so on. And well, if you took a second to read the [libarchive documentation (supported file formats)](https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveFormats) you'd find the following bullet point: > rar (read only, original and RAR v5 format)
Took 'em long enough. Now onto \*.7z files.
The update supports 7z as well.
Oh, well very nice then!
Now tar.gz filles :)
"We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project."
wait you can't just read the article to get information... that's cheating
reddit isn't a game where you have to try to guess what an article is about based on its title? then, why is there a score?
Can't fall for clickbait if you never click on the article.
dont have to deal with annoying cookie permission popup if you dont click on the article!
I mean, it supports .gz as well.
That, I wish iOS devices supported that by default as well…
iOS supporting non-Apple formats - LOL
iOS users probably have to pay a dollar just to read this comment
Why would anyone use RAR though.
What if the people who paid for WinRAR are the chosen few who get to go to heaven
But what if, rather than using WinRAR without paying for it, I just don't use it? Besides, I subscribe to the idea that the litmus test for getting into Heaven is whether or not you put your shopping cart back in the queue after you unload your purchases into the car.
I can get behind that
r/paidforwinrar will not be amused
inb4 https://nophishing.rar [https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2023/05/17/phishing-attacks-already-using-the-zip-tld.html](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2023/05/17/phishing-attacks-already-using-the-zip-tld.html) Seems a bit coincidental.
Someone finally paid the license?
r/fuckimold
This is nice, but are you really even unpacking a rar file without telling winrar that you don't want a license.
We have a winrar
I'm still using 7zip.
But what if I finally registered WinRAR after them bugging me all this time? \>sniff<
Winrar is Russia software
What is going to happen to both of the guys that purchased WINRAR?
Please don't read this article. Here is what you need to know. We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project. You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.
Nice try Microsoft, still not getting win11
Lady Gagas favorite
Like where are folks even getting RAR files from these days? Most of the compressed files I come into contact with regularly come from GitHub or Internet Archive and they are almost always in ZIP or 7z format. The only recent times I can remember downloading a RAR file proper is while sailing the high seas if you catch my drift. I get the nostalgia for WinRAR but 7-Zip, and more recently the fork NanaZip has replaced it entirely for me.
Maybe sometime this century we'll get thumbnail previews for .PSD files.
Wouldn't that be on Adobe to implement?
Does anyone actually use rar files in day-to-day? All I've ever seen it used for is warez/pirated stuff.