brainw0rms [they/them]

By all means please go on, don’t let me stop you from making a fool of yourself.

damn you typed a lot of words just to be completely incorrect.

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When the source of a crack/patch isn’t trusted, I’d do like you said and install it in a VM, then compare the patched files with their unpatched copies using diffing software (Beyond Compare’s hex compare feature is useful for this). If there are a huge amount of changes, like completely different size and content, or it is protected with a packer (typically will be a several MB larger), I would definitely steer clear of it. If it’s just a few changed bytes (and maybe the digital signature overlay is stripped off), then it’s most likely safe and you can just copy the patched files out of the VM and overwrite your main install.

Edit: Also, always prefer official installers directly from the developer’s site if they are available; “pre-cracked” installers are always a red flag to me.

Takes like this are so bizarre to me ngl. I highly respect developers of free software - especially those that give up their time without any compensation. However, at the end of the day people are going to use what they know works best for them. If that’s the free alternative for you, then great! But digging your heels in the ground and only using certain software - not because it’s better functionally or in any material way, but only because it’s free, at the expensive of your own productivity (or worse, the productivity of your peers because now they have to deal with your broken shit) is incredibly childish. No one actually cares in real life. Being a smug open-source zealot, and belittling people who don’t have the same narrow perspective isn’t “making a stand,” or really doing anything besides making you sound insufferable lol. Saying this as someone who’s contributed to and maintained several FOSS projects, as well as commercial ones. (edit for clarity: I’m using free/open-source/FOSS interchangeably, not referring to freeware.)

Beyond Compare 4 - various types of file comparison and merging operations.

WinDirStat - makes it easy to identify and clean up files taking up your drive space.

Everything - I resisted using this for a long time and wish I hadn’t.

Joplin - note taking app with markdown editor.

QTranslate - discontinued freeware, most recent version that I’m aware of is 6.10.0. very useful translation app that supports Google, DeepL, Yandex and others.

RapidCRC (Unicode) - file hash creation and verification

also shout out to Windows Firewall, not really a new thing but many people don’t bother learning how to use it properly.

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