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> It's weird reading about my life as if it's history. Everyone was doing it. Here in Latvia that's still somewhat the case, at least according to statistics l

> It's weird reading about my life as if it's history. Everyone was doing it. Here in Latvia that's still somewhat the case, at least according to statistics like these: https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/latvia-leading-in-online-piracy.a194644/ https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/latvia-leading-in... I've personally seen people who choose to pirate everything from movies, to OSes and IDEs, and have no problem with doing that whatsoever. That said, I can kind of understand it, due to many not exactly having lots of money to throw around. Personally, I live a bit more ethically, but it kind of sucks: I'm not sure what I'd do without JetBrains offering student licenses, followed by a graduation discount and recurring discounts. I've also not bought a AAA game on release in years, it's always sometime later on sale etc. The same goes for server hosting, most PaaS solutions are too expensive and vendors like AWS and GCP are outside of my price point. But hey, OSes like Linux and software like LibreOffice are a godsend. As are free IDEs and text editors as well, sometimes.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wkat4242 4y ago
I used to copy like crazy but now that I have a good job I pay for most of my software. Mainly because I like to keep my computer clean from malware. If I ever need to run something pirated because it's ridiculously expensive (like Adobe stuff or IDA pro) I run it in a VM or an isolated machine. It's less out of an ethical sense though. Video I still pirate by the terabyte. Most of that comes from large media concerns that I don't really have much care for. The small games industry I support as much as I can on GOG. Latvia and Bulgaria are great for torrent sites indeed, there seems to be nobody even trying to take them down unlike in western europe.
- isatty 4y ago
  Yeah the world has changed. Sure, limewire had tons of trustmebro.mp4.exes but these days I don’t trust cracked software to not be mining coins or exfiling my personal data. I suppose it was still the case back in the day (more for botnets than coins?) but I just simply cared less. Had to get my hands on the AAA games.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Hell I don't trust most legit software with my data. I still remember people being in awe of how I made Teams work on my Linux notebook (the previous guy couldn't make it right for some reason) by just running it in Chromium. The more sandboxed these 'apps' can be the better.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      I myself run it in Edge, specifically because I believe Microsoft is less capable of exfiltrating and collecting my data effectively that Google. That and the "official" "Linux" app is basically unsupported.
      - ornornor 4y ago
        MS dropped support for the “Linux” “client”. That client was basically an electron app. How lazy is it to drop support for it? Especially as they’re pretending to be nice now, not hate Linux anymore, rolling it into windows etc. MS will always be the greedy MS. Embrace extend extinguish. Fwiw, teams runs well enough in chromium. I don’t use chromium for anything else so chromium has basically become my MS teams “Linux” “client” since they dropped support for it. I’d run it in its own Firefox container but it would seem like MS purposefully cripples teams in Firefox as I can’t get background blurring or live captioning/translation to work there. Just like google that requires you to use chrome AND be logged in to unlock background blurring… same evil, but story for another time.
- arsome 4y ago
  If you're pirating IDA Pro, you're probably the type of person who can figure out which cracks are real and which aren't pretty quick.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    True yes but a lot of cracks are real and still include malware. And it can even be introduced remotely. A malware downloader is a few lines of code hidden among millions. Also analyzing malware tends to make one more paranoid. This is definitely a thing too. And the most powerful features of it like hexrays require cloud cooperation so they don't work :( I really wish it was affordable for individuals because I would pay for it if I could.
    - nicolas_t 4y ago
      Yes, if only IDA pro had a hobbyist license :(
      - seanp2k2 4y ago
        luckily, Ghidra exists now
      - FastEatSlow 4y ago
        There is IDA Home https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/ https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/
      - rft 4y ago
        For what it's worth, IDA now comes in an IDA Home version [1, 2]. It is a one year subscription for 365 USD (single arch) and is cloud tethered for at least the decompilers. I no longer have access to IDA Pro via my university, so I am now using Ghidra. I can recommend newcomers to take a look at it or other tools (e.g. binary ninja), if you are not locked into your IDA workflow. For me IDA Home seems to lack at least one key feature we needed back then: customizable CPU plugins. We had to extend one with a newer version of the instruction set. On top of that, that CPU type is not even available via Home. Also no RISC-V support (yet?). On another note: the whole cloud based concept for a disassembler/decompiler with debug support sounds like a recipe for disaster. One wrong key press and you might run malware on an internet connected system. Even when only disassembling, I am tempted to run everything in an offline VM to defend against bugs in the disassembler. [1] https://hex-rays.com/cgi-bin/quote.cgi/products https://hex-rays.com/cgi-bin/quote.cgi/products [2] https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/ https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/
- harha 4y ago
  It’s funny how regular software now seems fishy now that everyone is calling home. I’m close to getting a VM or a raspberry pi to run Citrix and zoom because they have all this junk that runs at startup and removing it causes strange error messages.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Yeah I just run Linux and I’ve not needed to pirate or pay for software in years. Doesn’t work for everyone but as a robotics engineer it all works out for me. It took me some time to switch from windows ten years ago but I’ve never looked back.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  I too am Linux only 99% of the time. I keep some Windows VMs around for tools I rarely need to run. Some are 10+ year old legitimate commercial software with online activation that now accuses me of piracy. Even when you try to do the right thing you get screwed.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Yep I’ve got a crusty old Windows 7 VM, though I’ve not needed to use it for my work in many years. Certainly handy to have now and then. It is remarkable however how much I’m able to do with Wine these days! When something says it’s windows only I go straight to the EXE and run it and most of the time it works! Always makes me happy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wkat4242 4y ago

I used to copy like crazy but now that I have a good job I pay for most of my software. Mainly because I like to keep my computer clean from malware. If I ever need to run something pirated because it's ridiculously expensive (like Adobe stuff or IDA pro) I run it in a VM or an isolated machine. It's less out of an ethical sense though. Video I still pirate by the terabyte. Most of that comes from large media concerns that I don't really have much care for. The small games industry I support as much as I can on GOG. Latvia and Bulgaria are great for torrent sites indeed, there seems to be nobody even trying to take them down unlike in western europe.

isatty 4y ago
Yeah the world has changed. Sure, limewire had tons of trustmebro.mp4.exes but these days I don’t trust cracked software to not be mining coins or exfiling my personal data. I suppose it was still the case back in the day (more for botnets than coins?) but I just simply cared less. Had to get my hands on the AAA games.
- namaria 4y ago
  Hell I don't trust most legit software with my data. I still remember people being in awe of how I made Teams work on my Linux notebook (the previous guy couldn't make it right for some reason) by just running it in Chromium. The more sandboxed these 'apps' can be the better.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    I myself run it in Edge, specifically because I believe Microsoft is less capable of exfiltrating and collecting my data effectively that Google. That and the "official" "Linux" app is basically unsupported.
    - ornornor 4y ago
      MS dropped support for the “Linux” “client”. That client was basically an electron app. How lazy is it to drop support for it? Especially as they’re pretending to be nice now, not hate Linux anymore, rolling it into windows etc. MS will always be the greedy MS. Embrace extend extinguish. Fwiw, teams runs well enough in chromium. I don’t use chromium for anything else so chromium has basically become my MS teams “Linux” “client” since they dropped support for it. I’d run it in its own Firefox container but it would seem like MS purposefully cripples teams in Firefox as I can’t get background blurring or live captioning/translation to work there. Just like google that requires you to use chrome AND be logged in to unlock background blurring… same evil, but story for another time.
arsome 4y ago
If you're pirating IDA Pro, you're probably the type of person who can figure out which cracks are real and which aren't pretty quick.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  True yes but a lot of cracks are real and still include malware. And it can even be introduced remotely. A malware downloader is a few lines of code hidden among millions. Also analyzing malware tends to make one more paranoid. This is definitely a thing too. And the most powerful features of it like hexrays require cloud cooperation so they don't work :( I really wish it was affordable for individuals because I would pay for it if I could.
  - nicolas_t 4y ago
    Yes, if only IDA pro had a hobbyist license :(
    - seanp2k2 4y ago
      luckily, Ghidra exists now
    - FastEatSlow 4y ago
      There is IDA Home https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/ https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/
    - rft 4y ago
      For what it's worth, IDA now comes in an IDA Home version [1, 2]. It is a one year subscription for 365 USD (single arch) and is cloud tethered for at least the decompilers. I no longer have access to IDA Pro via my university, so I am now using Ghidra. I can recommend newcomers to take a look at it or other tools (e.g. binary ninja), if you are not locked into your IDA workflow. For me IDA Home seems to lack at least one key feature we needed back then: customizable CPU plugins. We had to extend one with a newer version of the instruction set. On top of that, that CPU type is not even available via Home. Also no RISC-V support (yet?). On another note: the whole cloud based concept for a disassembler/decompiler with debug support sounds like a recipe for disaster. One wrong key press and you might run malware on an internet connected system. Even when only disassembling, I am tempted to run everything in an offline VM to defend against bugs in the disassembler. [1] https://hex-rays.com/cgi-bin/quote.cgi/products https://hex-rays.com/cgi-bin/quote.cgi/products [2] https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/ https://hex-rays.com/ida-home/
harha 4y ago
It’s funny how regular software now seems fishy now that everyone is calling home. I’m close to getting a VM or a raspberry pi to run Citrix and zoom because they have all this junk that runs at startup and removing it causes strange error messages.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

Yeah I just run Linux and I’ve not needed to pirate or pay for software in years. Doesn’t work for everyone but as a robotics engineer it all works out for me. It took me some time to switch from windows ten years ago but I’ve never looked back.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
I too am Linux only 99% of the time. I keep some Windows VMs around for tools I rarely need to run. Some are 10+ year old legitimate commercial software with online activation that now accuses me of piracy. Even when you try to do the right thing you get screwed.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Yep I’ve got a crusty old Windows 7 VM, though I’ve not needed to use it for my work in many years. Certainly handy to have now and then. It is remarkable however how much I’m able to do with Wine these days! When something says it’s windows only I go straight to the EXE and run it and most of the time it works! Always makes me happy.