Fortunately I have enough of the rar parts to extract the data I want but damn.
And don't forget, when it finishes to seed that SOB for a long long time
The seas are treacherous to go about alone
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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it took me forever to grab star-crossed season 1 since it's very niche and cw cancelled it like before it ended because it only had 1 seeder and everyone was trying to get it; now it has two potential seeders and i've been seeding for like a year just so nobody else goes through the pain.
It's the file headers, right? Without those, they are unreadable. 🫠
It's never that .txt file that says where it was originally uploaded
I'm missing the NFO file, 250KB of one of the rar parts and 300KB of a video sample.
250KB of one of the rar parts
Ouch!
Often rars in torrents have a bit of redundancy so the source files can be recovered even if the rar isn't complete
I had one at 62% for years I watched peers come and go but never lost hope. Today it's at 99%. All I'm missing are some padding files so basically 100%.
There's me and one other peer who seems to be willing to seed until the end of time. My ratio keeps climbing so I assume someone somewhere is thankful
I’ve replied this to another comment already, but it is probably this:
Most of the time it is due to Cross-seeding and additional or manipulated files.
I.e. the 99% torrent contains an additional file like an nfo or srt that was not in the original upload on a different site. People cross-seeding the original torrent don’t have that file, so you can only get 99% from them. And if the uploader of the torrent with the additional file stops seeding, there’s no one you can get it from.
Or if it is stuck at 99% without additional files, it’s possible that the file that was uploaded was manipulated. Stripped UID or other metadata that was changed. So there will be a mismatching piece that you can’t get from the cross-seeders. And again, if the uploader stops seeding the manipulated file, you can only get 99% from the cross-seeders.
I wonder how viable it would be to bruteforce it. Not a serious proposal but still fun to think about
It absolutely could be brute forced, we litrally have the hash of the chunk. I've thought about it before too, if one seeder is constantly giving, or refusing to even give, the chuck because of the hash mismatch, odds are it's only a bit flipped somewhere.
Another option that I've done before is find the file elsewhere, and switch it out. Seed for a long time then, you weren't the only person at 99.9%.
SHA1 has a fairly even distribution, it produces 160 bit digests, so each possible variation of a chunk will have a roughly 2^-160^ probability to hit your hash. Now assuming you have some insane computing device that can do an exahash per hour (that's 10^18^ hashes, a lot more than any modern hardware can do), finding one would take around 1.7E+26 years. Now the funniest part. Assuming your chunk is 32KiB large (practically nobody uses such small chunks today, so it's the best-case scenario), there are 2^(32×2^10^×2^3^)/2^160^ possible variations of the chunk that would produce your exact hash. That's roughly 1.1E+78865 fitting chunks with only one being correct. And it takes you 1.7E+26 years to get to just one of them.
absolutely could be brute forced
Yea, I wouldn't say that.
This should be the next cryptocurrency proof of work algorithm
Bitcoin uses two rounds of SHA256 if I recall correctly.
This is why recovery info for archives is a boon - sadly it's pretty out of fashion.
The problem is there will be multiple solutions that result in the same hash (collisions), but only one of them will be correct
And it would take an extremely long time to find them all, I don't even think a modern GPU could do it in a lifetime
It looks like bittorent version 2 hashes with sha-256 at a 16kb resolution.
pieces root
For non-empty files this is the the root hash of a merkle tree with a branching factor of 2, constructed from 16KiB blocks of the file. The last block may be shorter than 16KiB. The remaining leaf hashes beyond the end of the file required to construct upper layers of the merkle tree are set to zero. As of meta version 2 SHA2-256 is used as digest function for the merkle tree. The hash is stored in its binary form, not as human-readable string.
Seems like that should be easily parallelizable and can fit into thread memory on a modern GPU.
It would just depend on how many 16kb blocks are remaining in that 0.1%
Well the hashes are always much smaller than the actual data, otherwise downloading the hashes would take just as long as downloading the data lol.
So 16KB blocks means 131072 bits per block, subtract the 256 bit hash size and that means 2^130816 hash collisions
That's a lot lol, you'll never find which one is the correct one. Even if you instantly had a list of all values that match the desired hash, you'd have to check them all and somehow determine which one was correct.
This is how I found the torrent for “God of Cookery (1996)” ending and can totally relate. If you see Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, this one is worth seeing.
A man of exquisite taste, bravo.
How and why does this happen? I have more torrents stuck at 99.9% than anywhere else combined.
My theory is that either its from people deleting associated files like .srt and .txt or companies intentionally sabotaging torrents so that it looks like they're being seeded still but not fully.
In any case, the times this has happened to me I'll try to play the file and most times it works still.
Stupid protocol can't send the big file if the small file next to it is missing. Gotta have the whole block.
Most of the time it is due to Cross-seeding and additional or manipulated files.
I.e. the 99% torrent contains an additional file like an nfo or srt that was not in the original upload on a different site. People cross-seeding the original torrent don’t have that file, so you can only get 99% from them. And if the uploader of the torrent with the additional file stops seeding, there’s no one you can get it from.
Or if it is stuck at 99% without additional files, it’s possible that the file that was uploaded was manipulated. Stripped UID or other metadata that was changed. So there will be a mismatching piece that you can’t get from the cross-seeders. And again, if the uploader stops seeding the manipulated file, you can only get 99% from the cross-seeders.
I'm probably one of the people causing this issue to others. I always uncheck info, text, subtitle and other minor files that are not needed for the video/game, and so while me and presumably others are seeding the game files, rarely anyone seeds the info files, which end up being that 0.01%
Why do this? Somebody might need those files, and they only cost you a couple kb of space
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sigh the pain of trying to get obscure nbc sitcom boston common for five months now
I'm still waiting on early 2000s flac files of GOB.
Trying to get an audio copy of the Witcher prequels here
All the mainline books were easy, but these last couple have been a pain.
try soulseek for those
I've found torrents for seasons 1 and 2 of Boston Common on a private tracker
Sigh, the last 3 seasons of Becker for me....
3 months waiting for 4mb left, I contemplated trying to brute force that last bit
If it were 1 bit, that would be easy. But 4 million bytes? Oof.
Oof
I can highly recommend usenet instead.
Usenet has a capitalist corporation vibe. Torrenting is about community, sharing and giving back. I feel a lot better when I torrent, like I'm a part of something.
Whatttt xD
If no one shares with usenet, there's nothing there to download.
I'm part of several closed usenet communities and torrent communities. The usenet ones feel much more like real communities than the torrent ones. The quality and support is also much better.
My bad I guess. Do people on usenet actually create original releases though? I had the impression that private torrent trackers create the vast majority of original high quality releases.
With usesnet are you not downloading from a central server? How can you share things? I'll admit I don't know a lot about usenet.
Yeah it's all on servers. It's a different layer of the internet. You can share by uploading to usenet servers. To get large retention you should pay for a decent server, but with that you also pay for privacy. I pay €7,50 per month. But there are also free servers. Stuff gets uploaded, also many usenet original posts, and indexers can find it so you can download it. The downside is that you need to pay to be able to download old stuff, the upside is that you're not dependant on seeders like with torrents. But the amount I can find is vast. Much more than torrents. I can find series from the 1960 from my country. I can find litteraly everything. There has not been a single thing I couldn't find with usenet but we're able to find with torrents. There have been so many occasions where I couldn't find a torrent, or it wasn't seeded, or it failed at 99%. Usenet is properly maintained by a vast community.
That's interesting. Surely you can't compete with the library that's on OPS or RED. I also watch movies and I don't usually download particularly niche things and I've never been stuck at 99% or was unable to fine a movie.
I guess with Usenet you can get access to a good content library immediately but with torrents you need to work your way up. Also 7,50 a month is way too high lol.
Whether you pay 7,50 on usenet or a VPN. I mean, you could do without a VPN, but in Germany you get hefty fines for downloading with torrents and when you're a decent uploader any government can use you as an example or you get fines from companies like Disney, Paramount or a copyright violation hunter company like the Dutch Brein. One movie in Germany can set you back 1200 euros. In the US there are kids who were taken by SWAT, fined thousands of dollars and got banned from using electronics for years by a judge. Next to that torrents aren't safe. There is a lot of malware, several download clients are known to use your machine in the background to mine crypto, there's an open connection to your machine which could be used by hackers as torrent connections aren't very safe.
I personally don't think 7,50 a month for privacy and safety is too much. It's less than half of a Netflix subscription while you can download litteraly anything.
But there are also free usenet servers, the retention (days uploads stay on the server) is just much lower. Like 50 days compared to 5000+ days for a paid server. It works fine for downloading new series episodes and movies for example.
Surely you can't compete with the library that's on OPS or RED
I'm not familiar with those, but there are many communities uploading loads of rare stuff. I don't think you can exceed usenet libraries. Usenet is also much older than torrents, it's from the early days of the internet. The infrastructure is vast.
Whether you pay 7,50 on usenet or a VPN
VPN's don't cost nearly that much. You can find a VPN on this lemmy post. It doesn't matter what you chose no VPN that I've ever seen costs that much money. And many people on private trackers risk going without VPN's because copyright trolls are quite rare on them.
There is a lot of malware
This is true on certain public trackers. But not on private trackers, or trackers verified by fmhy.net.
several download clients are known to use your machine in the background to mine crypto
This is easily avoided by using a popular open source BitTorrent client, the most popular one being qBittorrent.
there’s an open connection to your machine which could be used by hackers as torrent connections aren’t very safe.
I'm not sure this is true, could you possibly provide a source? I had believed torrents are quite secure since the connection is encrypted and it uses hashing to verify what you downloaded matches the .torrent file.
I've always been on the team torrent, although I have never tried Usenet. I can definitely see the appeal of not having to worry about ratio or giving back to the community, but that is part of the appeal to me. Do Usenet groups or indexers have a community surrounding them? Private torrent trackers always have forums to chat about media your watching/reading/listening or talk about quality or other random things. Does Usenet have a similar situation?
This is easily avoided by using a popular open source BitTorrent client, the most popular one being qBittorrent.
Lol yeah qbittorrent is known to exploit your device for crypto mining. They also bought utorrent, which is also used for that. A safe download client is Deluge.
I had believed torrents are quite secure since the connection is encrypted and it uses hashing to verify what you downloaded matches the .torrent file.
The encryption is very poor. As soon as you download a movie with a torrent the German government will send you a letter stating the movie you downloaded, with the exact date and time, and a hefty fine. The encryption is old and simple.
Do Usenet groups or indexers have a community surrounding them?
Yeah, there are many tracker sites with a vast community and there are applications which function as indexers which have a large community too. There are comments under almost every post.
Lol yeah qBittorrent is known to exploit your device for crypto mining. They also bought uTorrent, which is also used for that. A safe download client is Deluge.
Where are you getting this from?? These are huge claims and I'm not sure if there is any evidence for either of them. qBittorrent is a highly trusted torrent client used by thousands maybe millions of people and you are the first person I have ever seen make these claims.
The encryption is very poor. As soon as you download a movie with a torrent the German government will send you a letter stating the movie you downloaded, with the exact date and time, and a hefty fine. The encryption is old and simple.
Firstly this doesn't describe how it can be used by hackers. Secondly I'm also not sure this is true either. My personal knowledge (mostly what I have heard from the piracy community) says ISP's can block torrent connections but they don't know what your downloading. You can get copyright infringement notices from ISP's when copyright trolls join the torrent swarm and log all the IP addresses in the swarm.
It seems like you don't know much about how torrenting actually works so please stop making these claims that aren't actually backed up by sources/evidence.
Yeah, there are many tracker sites with a vast community and there are applications which function as indexers which have a large community too. There are comments under almost every post.
This is interesting, thanks.
Where are you getting this from?? These are huge claims and I'm not sure if there is any evidence for either of them. qBittorrent is a highly trusted torrent client used by thousands maybe millions of people and you are the first person I have ever seen make these claims.
This is one of the many articles you can find about it.
It seems like you don't know much about how torrenting actually works so please stop making these claims that aren't actually backed up by sources/evidence.
Right back at ya mate. I've been downloading for 30 years, of which most years were with torrents. I know the protocol pretty well. I also know it's risks. Here's an article about it. Here's another. The internet is swarmed with information about the safety and privacy risks or torrents, I'd suggest to do a search yourself.
My personal knowledge (mostly what I have heard from the piracy community) says ISP's can block torrent connections but they don't know what your downloading.
Hmm that's weird. Then how did the German government know I downloaded 2 specific movies when I visited Germany and forgot to shut down my torrent client when I got onto the hotel wifi? I got a letter with the names of the movies, date and time and a hefty fine.
Here's an article on the German practices.
I must confess, I mistook qbittorrent for a product of BitTorrent Inc. which is a shady company that bought utorrent and used all their clients to push ads and allegedly mine crypto.
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Every other peer: The same 99.9.
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