Until the instance you choose to set up on ends up in a feud with any, or all of those instances.
The whole fediverse experiment is going to end up with a number of small, highly segregated communities, and even more political polarization. I guess if you want to live in an echo chamber, a federated environment is the best way to go about it.
And this is why the fediverse will never work out - if I gamble wrong and set up shop on an instance that gets in a pissing match with other ones, I either have to make an account elsewhere (and then have to do it again later the next time two instances defederate each other) or live with only seeing some of my subscribed content.
This is a project I've been working on for the last couple of years (on and off - some work in early 2022, the rest in 2023). It's a hyper-casual game - pick a mystery image, and fill in the numbered squares with their matching colors. If you've seen something like Cross Stitch World on mobile devices, you get the idea.
DamPBN was created for PCs running MS-DOS with a 386 or higher, and uses VGA mode 13h for a full 256 colors (though images themselves are limited to a palette of 64 colors). The development environment is based on a much older version of DJGPP (using GCC 2.8), though it builds and runs fine on recent (GCC 9.x-based) DJGPP releases as well. I do all development in Visual Studio Code (because DOS-era text editors aren't very good) and build/test mainly in DOSBox-X, with occasional tests in 86Box and real hardware.
I also have a repo containing a number of other DOS related projects (https://github.com/Damaniel/dos_games), some of which I'll highlight in the future.
He actually moderated jailbait? I always assumed he was the type of person to have an alt for it, but to actually use his real account? What a scumbag.
Speaking of open signups, is there any organized community on Lemmy that highlights when they're available (especially, in my case, for audiobooks)?
And double check to make sure it doesn't leak. On my Windows system using Eddie/AirVPN, I found my IP address was still leaking when seeding torrents - not that uncommon on Windows, apparently, especially if you have multiple network interfaces. I just ended up doing my torrenting from a Linux system instead.
I guess it depends on the tracker. The only private tracker I ever used was actually for arcade and video game ROMs (PleasureDome), and they structured things so that their most popular torrents (MAME sets) were free to leech but contributed to the upload side of ratio (so you could download the entire thing for 'free', but that download didn't count against your ratio requirement, and you could build ratio by seeding it). It generally worked - at least most of the time, but unless you had a seedbox, a VPN with port forwarding or exposed ports for BitTorrent, you weren't likely to build up much ratio on other torrents.
I don't use torrents much anymore (I'm pretty much in the Usenet camp these days), but I wouldn't really do it seriously unless I paid for a seedbox.
I'm not so picky - my movies are generally 720p or 1080p (I use 1080p x265 for things I rip myself), and my music is a combination of (mostly 320kbps) MP3 and FLAC.
I ended up building a new NAS (35TB current, 100TB eventual capacity) to replace my old 12TB unit, specifically because I wanted to start grabbing more 7th gen console stuff, and to start ripping/downloading more movies (specifically because streaming services are becoming a clusterfuck, where you never know which service - if any - will have the movies or shows you want on any given day).
If port forwarding is essential, then AirVPN is probably your best choice. I've been using them for years (including port forwarding) and I have no complaints.
For video games alone, a lifetime. I have essentially complete ROM sets for everything through sixth generation consoles, and a wide variety of newer stuff (a full Wii set minus the obvious shovelware, a selection of the better PS3/Xbox 360 exclusives).
For movies, not quite as much. I'm mainly an emulation hoarder (who had to buy a bigger NAS because my ROMs were crowding out my family's music and video files), but we have 10-15TB of movies, TV and music laying around.
I've been using AirVPN for many years (including port forwarding). I have zero complaints.
I have a Spotify (family) subscription, but it's mainly for the others in my household. I'm a big believer in having a local media library and local ownership (legally acquired or otherwise) - I don't like the idea of content you're paying for disappearing due to licensing issues or other BS (perhaps it's not as big of an issue with services like Spotify, but video streaming is a huge mess).
And it's extra shitty because Beehaw has the largest technology community in the fediverse, so if you want to access it you better make sure you're a member of one of their 'blessed' federated friends.