rar2fs VS pcloud-console-client

You can use something like rar2fs to mount the archives on-the-fly.

fuse, mount the rar file https://github.com/google/fuse-archive (or https://github.com/hasse69/rar2fs)

If you use Linux, just mount your dir with that one https://hasse69.github.io/rar2fs/ and it will be unrared.

Mount zip, rar2fs. Just saying, there is little difference between both options.

What the hell is going on? I was freaking out if my recent network changes were causing this just to then find out pcloud.com has been offline for 11 hours. Wtf?

pCloud has no file size limit (source), and is a popular service with tons of features.

Another option is to pay for cloud storage, many have lifetime plans like icedrive.net or pcloud.com. Paid accounts don't get deleted for inactivity (usually).

Your first problem here is if your computer or hard drives starts failing, you lose your data. There are cloud storage services out there that offers encryption, multifactor authentication and multi device syncing. pcloud.com storage offers those services, there could be better services out there, check the reviews if you want something better. Having a cloud storage account that uses multi factor authentication and encryption is a good security. Next, have all your drives encrypted in case of theft, they wouldn't be able to access your data. Then, you can setup to sync your files from your encrypted drives to your cloud storage so that you have multiple backups... onsite, offsite, and cloud. Now, you wouldn't have a need to VPN if you just need to access your files as they are always synced in the cloud. Now that you have redundant backups and encryption, invest in a good network firewall. Netgate which uses pfSense have affordable firewalls that has scalable and highly configurable software. But if you're not running any web services, then the out of the box firewall configuration of Netgate should be good enough for the time being.

The whole domain http://pcloud.com is down. The website and all file hosting is unavailable. Is anyone else affected?

Now I have a domain with nothing on it. I have mail forwarded to Protonmail at the DNS level. I don't really have a goal in mind, I just want a new project. I already know about Nextcloud, and I guess it's an option, but I bought a lifetime 1TB from pcloud.com like 4 years ago. Mostly holding things I download that are harder to find that I don't want to lose (like ROMs). I don't really take pictures or anything. I don't mind if I lose the memes I store on my phone.