[Verizon HTC One (M8)] grantjunior:
Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation; I've scoured these forums and can't find a fix for my problem, you'll see why:

And I've posted on these forums before; but please disregard my lack of visible commenting/participation, I've gotten considerably better with rooting and modifying my Android device just by reading threads and following links. However, I've run into a problem that unfortunately even after hours of research and trial and error I think I have to ask for help with. Here goes:

I bought a S-ON, locked and un-rooted Verizon HTC One M8 for the express purpose of rooting it and using it for my primary phone/hotspot for my house seeing how I live alone and have grandfathered unlimited Verizon data (blessed be). I was going to use PdaNet to turn on tethering (like on my Nexus 6P) but was met with a message saying I couldn't and to contact Verizon for a plan. Okay, that was to be expected; it's a Verizon phone, of course they're gonna put their greedy restrictions on it. So, I had to go the root way even earlier in my ownership than I thought I was going to. I was able to unlock the bootloader via SunShine (expensive, but I didn't find any other way; stupid Verizon) and after installing fastboot and ADB on my macbook pro was also able to gain root via TWRP. So far so good.

My next step was finding a way to get my phone to broadcast a hotspot in spite of the aforementioned restrictions. After a decent amount of searching, I found this guide. However, the person explaining the method said that the process wouldn't work unless it was on a vanilla (Nexus, basically) version of Android or a custom ROM. Okayyyy, I thought. I'd never installed a custom ROM just yet, but that was an eventuality because I've heard a lot of good things about Cyanogenmod, so I went and downloaded that from their page. That is where things went awry. Even though I thought I was being safe and putting the mod's .zip file in my /downloads folder on my HTC via Android File Transfer (the "official" Android file transfer app for mac), when I attempted to install it via TWRP, I got stuck in a bootloop.

I decided to wipe the phone as I didn't have any personal information on the device yet (except for a screenshot of root access verification to send to my friend as a "hell yeah!") but I guess I DELETED THE ENTIRE OS instead somehow. Classic noob mistake. I figured "Hey, no big deal, I'll just flash a stock OS or sideload one." So I dug around on these forums again and found this page by moderator dottat with a bunch of modified ROMs including two OTAs at the top that he said not to use unless you're S-OFF and willing to lose all your device info (which as I said above I was more than willing to do since I didn't have any data on the phone), but the download to both of those links is broken or something, as my browser seems to freeze and stop whenever I try to click on the link.

So I tried a couple of other ROMs in the blind hope that either by flashing via TWRP or ADB sideloading I could get back to where I was with my rooted unlocked phone. Nothing worked. Apparently what I was doing was trying to flash ROMs when they wouldn't really work because I had no OS installed on the device to begin with. Kept on getting a "Could not find 'META-INF/com/google/android/update-binary' in the zip file" error, I'm assuming because the .zip files I was actually NEEDING to sideload were on that broken link on dottat's page that I was referring to before. I googled and searched and couldn't find any OTA, stock OS files from what looked like reputable sources. Am I missing something? I have S-OFF and I'm unlocked AND my mac recognizes my device when it's in fastboot, is there an easier way to do this?

Once again sorry for the noob-like question but I figured I could post on here rather than going to another android forum since I am really deft at following directions and won't just annoy you guys with any "coddle me" attitude.

Thanks in advance, kind developer souls