Pretty Petty

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

We love Mullvad (this is 5 bucks a month and can be paid for anon via either mailed cash or XMR) and Proton VPN (iirc they also do XMR??? but they also have a sale rn).

If you're into self hosting, check out Prowlarr to use as a search engine since some sites are genuinely just ass to use.

If you don't like qBittorrent, there's also Motrix (which is a great general download manager and suggested by Anna's Archive if you don't have a memership with them anyways) and Transmission if you prefer something simpler but doesn't also handle http(s).