BitTorrent Loses Recent CEO, Adds Crypto-Currency To uTorrent (variety.com) 58
Longtime BitTorrent executive and recent CEO Rogelio Choy left the company just 6 months after its acquisition by blockchain entrepreneur Justin Sun. Coincidentally, Choy's departure comes just as BitTorrent is doubling down on blockchain tech: The company announced Thursday that it is adding a crypto-currency to its popular uTorrent client.
From a report: Choy had been BitTorrent's chief operating officer from 2012 to 2015. After a 2-year stint at an on on-demand startup, he rejoined the company in 2017 as its CEO. His departure was confirmed by a company spokesperson Thursday, who said that he "decided to pursue other opportunities." One possible point of contention is BitTorrent's increased focus on crypto-currencies: The company announced Thursday that it was adding a crypto token to its popular uTorrent Windows client. The token will initially allow uTorrent users to achieve faster download speeds. The exact reasons for his departure are unknown at this time, but a source close to the company suggested that there had been disagreements about the direction of the company.
From a report: Choy had been BitTorrent's chief operating officer from 2012 to 2015. After a 2-year stint at an on on-demand startup, he rejoined the company in 2017 as its CEO. His departure was confirmed by a company spokesperson Thursday, who said that he "decided to pursue other opportunities." One possible point of contention is BitTorrent's increased focus on crypto-currencies: The company announced Thursday that it was adding a crypto token to its popular uTorrent Windows client. The token will initially allow uTorrent users to achieve faster download speeds. The exact reasons for his departure are unknown at this time, but a source close to the company suggested that there had been disagreements about the direction of the company.
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Could be big. (Score:3, Interesting)
If the intent is to have leechers send microtransactions to seeders this could be big news. Seeders dropping off is the Achilles heel of peer-to-peer file sharing.
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Yeah, this actually seems like one of the few applications that's really been yearning for an anonymous microtransaction, aka cryptocurrency, solution.
The Althea Wireless Mesh does something similar. If you run an AP or backhaul link that handles a lot of traffic, you get paid in microtransactions by the folks whose traffic you're handling. So you have incentive to make your signal and placement as good as possible.
There will also, presumably, be bad actors who realize they can get more reward if they assai
qBittorrent (Score:1)
https://www.qbittorrent.org/ [qbittorrent.org]
"The qBittorrent project aims to provide an open-source software alternative to ÂTorrent"
Works better for me. Ignore currency miner appplications wearing the skin of well known products, and use community-focued open source tools wherever you can.
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https://www.qbittorrent.org/ [qbittorrent.org]
"The qBittorrent project aims to provide an open-source software alternative to ÂTorrent"
Works better for me. Ignore currency miner appplications wearing the skin of well known products, and use community-focued open source tools wherever you can.
ugh.. oh man but I prefer the uTorrent UI so much. I've tried so many alternative BT applications and they all suck at having a tight UI except for utorrent even with the bloody ads that for whatever reason pimp my utorrent isn't removing anymore.
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ugh.. oh man but I prefer the uTorrent UI so much. I've tried so many alternative BT applications and they all suck at having a tight UI except for utorrent even with the bloody ads that for whatever reason pimp my utorrent isn't removing anymore.
I see the qBittorrent UI about two seconds every time I add a torrent file and five seconds when I launch a finished file. Why do you spend enough time with it to care?
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I switched to qBittorrent after uTorrent started including ads and malware. It hasn't let me down.
Re: qBittorrent (Score:2)
Mine misteryously stopped working a couple years back and started throwing some python errors. I reinstalled it a few weeks ago thinking a newer version might have resolved the problem ... and it's still throwing the same damn errors. Would love to try it again but it just won't work, and support is nonexistent.
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ugh.. oh man but I prefer the uTorrent UI so much. I've tried so many alternative BT applications and they all suck at having a tight UI except for utorrent even with the bloody ads that for whatever reason pimp my utorrent isn't removing anymore.
I see the qBittorrent UI about two seconds every time I add a torrent file and five seconds when I launch a finished file. Why do you spend enough time with it to care?
because I do things like actually USE my bittorrent client. I sometimes download mega packs and priorotize or deprioritize. I use the pop up download viewer so I can keep track of what's going on with a download when I'm not live on the client. Yeah maybe if you torrent once a month it might not matter to you but most of us need more interaction than that. Honestly if you need so little interaction you might be better off with something like Transmission which has a poorish user interface when you're workin
This is not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
This is not the first time utorrent has "adopted" crypto-coin tech. They are known to bundle Litecoin miners with their torrent client and install it covertly, something that has forced most self-respecting torrent communities to ban utorrent (at least versions after 2.2.1).
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Deluge/Deluged is still better.
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Money is involved, people have a reason to get interested and take their cut. Cue death of uTorrent.
Given the malware they've been bundling in their installers for years, I'm surprised they aren't already dead. I abandoned them over 5 years ago.
Great idea...not (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think for a moment that people will just be buying "bandwidth" with this.
Now when you download somebody's digital life works, or other intellectual property, in the form of torrented movies or games, etc. some other unknown third party can directly profit by making it available to you for a little bitcoin? You used to get all this stuff for free, but now there are profit motives involved as well. Who would have thought that some third-party person would eventually learn how to directly profit off of
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I think you missed the part about the utility of having your torrenting of somebody's digital life works, or other IP, permanently recorded in a blockchain to the MPAA, RIAA, and their like. Sure, if you want that *NIX ISO or some Creative Commons a little quicker then perha
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I don't think for a moment that people will just be buying "bandwidth" with this.
This is already the business model of most premium file sharing hosts. You get very slow/limited download for free, allegedly you pay for bandwidth. Those who provide premium links that drive a lot of traffic get kickbacks. Guess what most popular links are? This looks like the same principle just with less desirable protocols and less plausible deniability.
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What, is utorrent going to arbitrarily slow down ALL traffic if you don't buy a token? (...) So this is some convoluted way of bribing seeders to bump their bandwidth to you. Why would you do that when you could just use any other torrent client on the planet and say fuck utorrent users altogether?
Because those "other torrent client" seeders haven't got any reason to stick around so the torrent is quickly abandoned or left incomplete if it's not very popular. I assume the theory here is to create users seeding lots of torrents at very, very low speeds fishing for crypto currency. The positive side is that it could keep a lot more "long tail" torrents alive, the negative side is that uTorrent users could end up hoarding bandwidth for coin rather than seed for free.
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If the coin is arbitrarily exchanged, sure.
If the coin is redeemed only through seed/leech mechanisms/priority/whatever, you might as well have a black market for internet points.
Well, okay, technically you can buy socnet likes and shit, but you get my point.
Why the fuck does anyone use uTorrent? (Score:2)
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bittorrent is what people call the technology, so don't expect people to even know you're talking about somebody's Brandybrand(TM). They should choose a new brand, one that is whimsical instead of functional. That's true even if their old brand was originally whimsical before it became functional.
And in any case, deluge is way better.
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I have never had this happen ever. I think you are either mistaken, or your ISP is fucking you. Try full stream encryption.
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So, your ISP throttles torrents, you blame torrent client... proceed to use torrent client that forces ads and now is going to make you pay for bandwidth. lol have fun.
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Wow don't cry about it. I simply said you're mistaken as I said I have multiple torrents seeding with upload limits set. Still max my connection(100mbit) using deluged As I type this. So you get mad and throw a fit because you're wrong. I bet you have a lot of friemds..
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No deluge throttles your D/L if you throttle your U/L. I use Deluge when I'm seeding something, but not as my regular leacher.
Not correct. Many clients show preference for other clients that are actively uploading. If you don't even upload while you download then you're not a full participant in the swarm. Each client limits the number of other nodes that it connects to. Strong preference is of course given to clients that are available to download from.
For example, if you only connected to clients that were downloading, your own download stay at 0%, and you'd have nothing to share. When you're uploading fast enough to stay in ano
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Look, asshole, do you really get paid to have opinions on the internet?
If yes, go to "shut up troll." If no, go to "fuck off, why did you think other people do?"
It is fucking open source. It doesn't benefit if you use it, or don't use it. There is absolutely fucking nothing to shill for unless you're impressed by a number on a screen that increases. If you learned some programming, you could just make your own number display that increments as high as you want.
You respond to attempts to educate you with det
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You didn't ask any question. You gave your opinion, other people gave other opinions, then you started whining and lying about deluge.
You needed education, because you were whining in public about stuff that isn't broken, or even hard, you just didn't know how to do it. And you're being an asshole too, bug that's OK. Being whiny+ignorant+dishonest is a really lame combination.
Being wrong and not even having asked or listened?! Are you sure you're a nerd? Are you sure you matter?
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Hasn't been worth using in a while (Score:2)
I pretty sure that was the last version that didn't have any ads.
This could be interesting (Score:2)
The artist/creator gets funded away form the politics of banks, CC, membership platforms, social media.
The user has their own bandwidth move the content globally.
"The token will initially allow uTorrent users to" (Score:2)
The token will initially allow uTorrent users to achieve faster download speeds.
WTF does this mean? On a good day, with many peers, the bt client should download fast enough to saturate a typical home broadband connection (in the US at least). Are they now going to make the downloads artificially slower so that people pay for faster downloads?
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I've seen large torrents saturate 10gbps datacenter links. IMO it is them saying they're going to throttle downloads otherwise.
They are at least giving an incentive to throttle your seeds if you don't pay. Which defeats the purpose anyways.. Maybe the R/MIAA have a part in this?
Sad what utorrent has become (Score:2)
Thankfully, a bittorrent client isn't something as complex as an office suite so there're plenty of alternatives that're as good or better than utorrent ever was.
So, if you keep using it it's your fault.