So why always bitch about just Apple?

For years, Apple have been locking down parts to their phones. In this case with batteries, you get a message saying that your battery needs to be serviced, even if you are using a genuine Apple battery from another phone.

Batteries, cameras, screens and sensors are locked down on newer iPhones. Replacing them will remove some of the phones functionality.

I'm not sure if I've missed other manufacturers doing this with batteries, the only other one I remember was OnePlus encrypting the battery in their new OnePlus pad. It's unfortunate that some manufacturers see what Apple have been doing, then followed in their footsteps with pairing screens - on some phones you can't use the fingerprint scanner if you have swapped the screen, it's ridiculous.

The phone I use from oppo won't complain if I were to replace parts in it. Though given that oppo and oneplus are owned by the same company, I wouldn't be surprised if that changes soon.

r/GenP talks about the safety of monkrus in their wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenP/wiki/patchmethods/

Most people who claimed they got malware from the Adobe collection repack had either downloaded it from an unofficial source, downloaded from YouTube, or downloaded other pieces of sketchy software - just so happens that a monkrus repack was the last thing they installed. Then there are others who have been using monkrus for years and haven't had issues.

In the Quttera analysis, the malicious files are from a blacklisted domain [M.BL.Domain.gen], fv20[.]failiem[.]lv - this is a file host from Latvia. The files being flagged probably aren't malicious, though if this host isn't taking down malware, it would make sense that they are blocked by some antivirus companies. Especially since Quttera isn't checking the torrents - they are uploaded to other sites.

All in all, if you have any doubts, don't install it. Check out GenP instead of you don't really trust monkrus!

https://vimm.net and https://myrient.erista.me are my go to sites for ROMs! Especially myrient since you can use FTP to download files. https://archive.org works too, though downloads are quite slow for me

For BIOS files, you can find them on the emulation wiki: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/

I don't know of any free vpns for torrenting, though I believe ProtonVPN (paid), Windscribe (paid) and AirVPN (paid) offer port forwarding at the moment. PIA can be used to port forward, though they are owned by kape which is kinda sketchy to me.

You can use windscribe free for torrenting, but you will quickly hit the data cap they have in place

After a quick glance over your post, I have some thoughts;

Free: ProtonVPN

ProtonVPN is good for torrenting on the paid plan, not the free plan. Proton doesn't allow torrenting on their free plan. They will block your connection if they detect that you are torrenting, or they will disconnect you from their VPN tunnel - exposing your real IP on the torrent.

Paid: Mullvad

Mullvad is a decent choice, though they no longer support port forwarding. ~~You are still able to download, though you won't be able to seed iirc~~

VirusTotal

The problem with a virustotal scan is that pirated software is often false flagged for malware. It's difficult to tell what is safe from what you've downloaded. It's best to download from a trusted uploader, though that doesn't always guarantee safety as they can always go rogue (As an example, FTUApps were seen as safe until one of their uploads to 1337x contained malware).

Older uploads tend to have less false positives in my experience, though it can be very easy to become complacent.

edit; score out comment about mullvad seeding, others have pointed out that it still works fine! oops

Can someone make a switchpirates community? I miss that

Already exists: !switchpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com - although it's not really active right now

They also thought that FileCR was dangerous because they also got a defender alert on a download 🙃

nope

I've been playing the Sims 3 from fitgirls repack (steam release). Both my steam account and EA account are fine!

Try irc.IRCHighway.net/6697 instead, your client may not have IRCHighway in its list of servers

airplane mode 24/7

Highly suggest people do this if they are transferring books using calibre. Connecting to WiFi removes book covers, keeping it in airplane mode should prevent this!

It also helps to reduce battery usage in my experience, but that might be a coincidence

Avoid uTorrent and use qBittorrent instead (not to be confused with BitTorrent, a client by the same team as uTorrent)

I think you should go for option 2!