Pirate's Haven

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

it installs a user-login-time "startup" executable that ignores any windows directives to disable it on startup. doing so only removes the even-more-malicious taskbar-icon-creating advertisement-notification-creating process. no matter what you do, the sleeper "updater" process starts when you log in, and runs perpetually

it sends & receives encrypted network traffic both periodically and non-periodically. both are bad, both are suspicious, and a program doing both is more suspicious than the sum of their parts. and to boot: acrobat will polymorphically edit its code after such network activity

this isn't new: it has always done this. now, it does not even do the thing it is meant to: provide a way to interact with documents, which is amongst the very first features computers were built to provide. you can merely open PDFs and read some of their content in the narrow space between the requests for adobe to give them your money, and interface for features you cannot use (because you don't) or do not, have not, and will not ever need

adobe and microsoft would very much like the user's cultural norms around computers to allow for advertisement built into the local software and even operating system itself. the web being 100% advertisements was not enough! sure enough, acrobat will hijack the windows notifications system thing to give you the 2026 equivalent of pop-ups

i don't really know enough about windows software equivalents, so i'll paypal $20 to the first person that reblogs this with a list of 3-5 PDF reader/editor/etc acrobat equivalents that meet the following criteria:

open source, locally-built executables must match checksum of prebuilt distributed executable

no paid features/premium version/subscription/whatever

not a toy hobby project thing, must be windows-users-proof

KDE Okular: is a decent viewer and can also do basic annotations, and is so not-a-toy that you can even download it on the Windows app store.

For at least 4 years now, Adobe Acrobat has scanned to detect antivirus and anti-malware software, because it knows that its behavior runs afoul of their monitoring, and then adjusts its behavior to avoid detection when doing shady things:

See this Reddit thread.

Also, all this behavior is threatening to users' security and privacy in multiple ways. Not only is it bad on its own, but Adobe Reader has, for years, been a vehicle for hackers, viruses, and other malware to get access to people's computers and data.

When Adobe Reader itself starts evading and bypassing security measures, and this becomes accepted as the default, it will make it much easier for other bad players to use it as a way of taking control of your machine. A compromised application with lots of privileges and ability to evade oversight by antivirus programs is much more dangerous than an arbitrary compromised application.

If you care at all about security or privacy, never ever install Adobe Reader.

like. genuinely. you shouldn't be seeing ads. philosophically speaking. aesthetically speaking. psychologically speaking. you MUST remove them from the spaces that you consider *yours*. imagine some dropshipping company came up to you and went "hey can we put these ads all over your home so everywhere you turn you'll be seeing an ad for us?" would you let them?? FUCK no you wouldn't.

https://unblockedsites.straw.page/

To all you fuckers saying "BUY DIGITAL MEDIA" lol. Lmfao, even.

Physical media will not save you and were never going to save you. Especially when people making them are the same greedy companies that run streaming services.

Learn to torrent. If you also want to back up your pirated media on Audio CDs or DVDs that's opposite of a bad thing, but buying random pre-made DVDs off Amazon is not it.

There are no real affordable archival solutions for digital media that don't decay with time, as far as I know. SSDs can lost a long time, but flash memory isn't invincible. All magnetic storage can decay over time or with mechanical accidents, and that includes hard drives or floppy disks. Optical disks are vulnerable to disk rot (like in OP).

Torrents seem nice, but P2P connections in the end is just the file on somebody's SSD or hard drive - you just add more redundancies. It can be pretty resilient if specifically organized for, but that almost never is the case, and old torrents for obscure media are almost always dead.

here's an all-in-one site where you can download everything you need to emulate it!

also, with an emulator, you can directly screenshot and record your game, and even mod it! add custom hair parts! import photos directly! remove region locks! emulate it!!

edit: the creator of the site, @blorblegoop, has created their own post about it, explaining who they are, addressing security concerns, and helping out with some common problems from the notes! please see their post if you have any further questions :)

everything?

everything! this site will walk you through downloading the ryujinx switch emulator, the firmware and keys needed, and the nsp game file for tomodachi life ltd.

is this safe?

the files are all directly downloaded from this site, so there's no third party to worry about. i didn't make this site - it was created by @blorblegoop , who recently contacted me with this post on their blog addressing security concerns. they scan all the files themself before hosting. i scanned my own pc after downloading as well, and it all came up clean! but it’s good to be aware of pc safety, especially when pirating. it can’t hurt to do your own scan to be sure!

how much pc knowledge do i need for this?

you should know how to download files, how to make and manage folders in file explorer, and how to navigate a program's settings menu.

any settings i should change in ryujinx?

here's some i recommend checking before starting the game:

And a chaser, for those interested: