As others have stated, it's usually as simple as downloading a torrenting program and finding something to torrent. There are many programs, and many sites dedicated to hosting torrented files, both of which would probably be breaking the rules of this instance if I were to link them. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity, if you look them up, you can find them easily. (If you're interested in what torrenting is and why it's different than just downloading, I've moved my paragraph to the bottom to ease the wall of text.)
As for internet privacy, there's no one singular repository of information or "holy bible" as it were to adhere to. Internet privacy is something you just pick up over time as you get used to the Internet and indeed make many mistakes on your own. I've done my fair share of clicking shady links and losing access to my accounts in my day, and as they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So don't be so hard on yourself, you'll learn in due time, one way or another. Don't be afraid to ask more questions and make your own mistakes, it's only human. Right now, as long as you're partially aware of some of the dangers of the Internet, you're already leaps and bounds ahead of other people, and that's a-okay.
Anyway, as for the intricacies of torrenting, it's actually a very interesting and seemingly complex but actually simple system. Torrenting is also called peer-to-peer transferring, which as the name implies, is done by transfering information between everyone! Like others have said in this thread, you're not just downloading a file from some server somewhere, but you're getting many many small pieces of information from potentially hundreds or thousands of different people. It's like if you tried reconstructing a book by going to your friend John, and he photocopies the first chapter, then you go to your friend Mike, and he photocopies the second chapter, and so on. Files in a torrenting network are broken into small blocks, which are downloaded from other peoples' computers, and then reconstruted as one file on your own computer! This does imply that, while you are downloading a file while torrenting, you're also uploading it! When you receive information from others, your computer then also turns around and broadcasts that information to anyone in the torrenting network who still needs it. When you've fully downloaded the file, you can also choose to continue uploading and broadcasting the file for other people to download from. (This is called "seeding" and is typically seen as either a nice thing to do, or downright mandatory in some circles.) You can probably see now why piracy is so prevalent here, as it's downright impossible to squash an entire network of people all sharing files amongst each other, and law enforcement can't prevent everyone from doing it. (And if you're taking proper precautions like using a reputable VPN, they won't even know you're torrenting anything at all!) It's a very interesting system, one that I think is super neat, but it does have its positives and negatives. Hope you found this as interesting as I do!
Torrenting is simply a special method of uploading and downloading files. I can elaborate if you wish, but I'll leave it at that. It's worth noting that torrenting is typically used to distribute illegal media-- there's nothing wrong with the act of torrenting itself, but because of the method of which torrenting is achieved, it's mostly used to download/upload pirated movies, games, music, etc. Lots of legitimate things can be torrented, such as Linux distributions. If you're ever considering torrenting media which may be illegal, make sure you're fully informed. (Many will argue about the ethics of pirating media, I think this is beyond the scope of this discussion.)
As for metadata, "meta" means "self-referential". So Meta data is data about data, which is to say, it's information about itself. Metadata describes many aspects of a file. If you've ever opened the properties of a file and seen that it was "created January 1, 1980", or "1.2 MB", or "authored by Big Books Inc", etc, that's all metadata. In terms of privacy, some files could possibly have metadata such as the name of the user who created it, their geological location, the device the user used to create it, etc. I personally don't think it's something to be extremely paranoid over, but it is something worth looking a bit more into if you care about online privacy. Also worth noting that most image sharing sites and services strip images of their metadata when you upload them.
Steam and an Internet connection. That's it. If you log in to the same Steam account on your PC and Phone/Steam Link/Steam Deck/etc, Steam will take care of everything and hook you up seamlessly. It's worth trying out!
Steam Remote Play is basically my Remote Desktop these days. Steam Link Box on the TV or Steam Link App from the phone, and I'm golden. It works surprisingly well with very little latency.
Great video on Benford's Law here. Matt goes into a good amount of detail outlining why this occurs, why it doesn't always apply, and what it means if data does/doesn't follow the Law.
The zip-ups also help deter bed bugs, I believe. Maybe it's just a misconception, but I believe that if you get a bedbug infestation, having that zip-up means you're more likely to be able to salvage your mattress (rather than need to buy a new one), as the bed bugs obviously are unable to infest your mattress.
Butter Chicken (curry), usually. It's so stupid easy, it just takes a few hours of marinade and simmer time. But you're just frying chicken cubes, boiling together tomatoes, onions, spices etc, blending it together, and serving. Couldn't be simpler, and it is always delicious.
Completely irrelevant, but that other commentor was the very first spam bot I've ever seen on Lemmy, felt like that was worth commenting on. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing--- good that Lemmy has enough traction to warrant someone somewhere to code a spam bot, bad for obvious reasons.
If they didn't like metal, why did they get into the car in the first place? The entire chassis is made of metal, they shoulda got back into their wooden cars!
It sounds like a terrible feature, but it really works in some circumstances. A minesweeper app I had long ago allowed swapping between flagging and uncovering by pressing the volume buttons, and let me tell you, what an amazing feature that was. You could get almost as good times as you could on a PC, it wasn't clunky like most mobile minesweeper apps are. Having to tap a flag/uncover icon to swap wastes a few seconds, and long tapping on a square to flag it is just miserable.
To give you an idea of what you're in for, where the story was in episode 30 in the original, they get to in episode 10 in Brotherhood. The story gets way different very, very quickly.
As far as I understand it, in terms of physiology, aliens could and likely are different-looking than us humanoids. But in terms of biology, our best guesses are that aliens would also be carbon-based and drink water-- not because we're arrogant enough to assume that all life must be like us, but we have no evidence in any direction to prove or disprove that. We have to start somewhere, otherwise we'd be spreading way too thin. That's why we limit our search to Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone that could be capable of holding water-- again, not because we know aliens need water, but because if we don't start with that assumption, we'd get absolutely nowhere.
As others have stated, it's usually as simple as downloading a torrenting program and finding something to torrent. There are many programs, and many sites dedicated to hosting torrented files, both of which would probably be breaking the rules of this instance if I were to link them. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity, if you look them up, you can find them easily. (If you're interested in what torrenting is and why it's different than just downloading, I've moved my paragraph to the bottom to ease the wall of text.)
As for internet privacy, there's no one singular repository of information or "holy bible" as it were to adhere to. Internet privacy is something you just pick up over time as you get used to the Internet and indeed make many mistakes on your own. I've done my fair share of clicking shady links and losing access to my accounts in my day, and as they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So don't be so hard on yourself, you'll learn in due time, one way or another. Don't be afraid to ask more questions and make your own mistakes, it's only human. Right now, as long as you're partially aware of some of the dangers of the Internet, you're already leaps and bounds ahead of other people, and that's a-okay.
Anyway, as for the intricacies of torrenting, it's actually a very interesting and seemingly complex but actually simple system. Torrenting is also called peer-to-peer transferring, which as the name implies, is done by transfering information between everyone! Like others have said in this thread, you're not just downloading a file from some server somewhere, but you're getting many many small pieces of information from potentially hundreds or thousands of different people. It's like if you tried reconstructing a book by going to your friend John, and he photocopies the first chapter, then you go to your friend Mike, and he photocopies the second chapter, and so on. Files in a torrenting network are broken into small blocks, which are downloaded from other peoples' computers, and then reconstruted as one file on your own computer! This does imply that, while you are downloading a file while torrenting, you're also uploading it! When you receive information from others, your computer then also turns around and broadcasts that information to anyone in the torrenting network who still needs it. When you've fully downloaded the file, you can also choose to continue uploading and broadcasting the file for other people to download from. (This is called "seeding" and is typically seen as either a nice thing to do, or downright mandatory in some circles.) You can probably see now why piracy is so prevalent here, as it's downright impossible to squash an entire network of people all sharing files amongst each other, and law enforcement can't prevent everyone from doing it. (And if you're taking proper precautions like using a reputable VPN, they won't even know you're torrenting anything at all!) It's a very interesting system, one that I think is super neat, but it does have its positives and negatives. Hope you found this as interesting as I do!