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Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

skytorrents.in

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Re: Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

#62

Post by y4mi »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #52
carbonmachine wrote: post #37

The top 1000 has a lot of software. The thought of running pirated software always filled me with unease, having been burned by malware in my younger days. Only tangentially related to this really well done torrent search (so snappy!), but does anyone have a feel for how safe this software is in general? Do security firms do any analysis on it?

Growing up I heard horror stories of people pirating versions of Windows, Office, etc that had backdoors installed. If you download pirated software there isn't a real way to know for 100% certainty that it isn't laced with something . So I avoid it like the plague. Even if the majority don't have anything it only takes the one and then, depending on its level of sophistication, you're screwed.

i think we can be quite certain that there are backdoors into windows also without it being pirated, so your phrasing makes it easy to argue back.

i'd personally argue with the backdoors hidden by the pirates are significantly more likely to be used for nefarious things than the 'official' ones, as whitehats are responsible for the former, while blackhats created the latter.

Re: Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

#63

Post by unicornporn »

yakult wrote: post #40

Suggestion: get rid of the torrent files and just serve magnet urls in plain text without a clickable button. This way you get rid of the knowledge of who-downloaded-what, and also save some bandwidth.

> just serve magnet urls in plain text without a clickable button

That would make it impossible to copy the magnet link from the search results page, which I believe is a really nice usability perk. For users that are less technically inclined, clickable links could be crucial (even if it gives you the theoretical possibility to track the click).

I guess it depends on if you are prepared to be a search engine only for the 1337 crowd, or if you want casual users to have access to a decent search engine too. The Hacker News crowd could still just right click and copy the magnet link, so essentially you're just removing features for those who don't understand how technology works but are still dependant on it.

Perhaps the best idea would be to keep the link and have a text area for selecting and copying like requested above.

Consider this.

Re: Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

#67

Post by rz2k »

yakult wrote: post #40

Suggestion: get rid of the torrent files and just serve magnet urls in plain text without a clickable button. This way you get rid of the knowledge of who-downloaded-what, and also save some bandwidth.

I don't do web development or design, but is tracking the selection of text that will be copied more difficult that tracking clicks in actual practice?

Re: Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

#69

Post by karthikp »

kasumis_ wrote: post #31
lelandbatey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the relatively slim page size (23Kb for me), and given that SQLite can pretty easily host a relatively simple database like this one and serve 100K-1M queries per day[0], I would expect that whoever is hosting this could pretty easily host this on a single dedicated server which only costs ~$50. So for the foreseeable future, I suspect this site will be fine. [0] - https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html

SQLITE cannot handle indexing queries of our kind and is not used. We have kept the page slim, so as the website is as fast as possible.

If you don't mind me asking, what technologies are you using?

Re: Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine

#70

Post by slg »

jordsta wrote: post #68

Uh, could purely be a coincidence but the favicon looks identical to the logo of UK TV corporation Sky (albeit with less colour): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sky_plc_logo.png

Are you really complaining that a site that is dedicated to copyright infringement might be misusing a trademark? I have a feeling that is the least of their legal concerns.
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