There are some blog posts on annas-blog.org from 2022, talking about IPFS.

The article doesn’t talk much at all about all the interesting technical details.

The press release talks about trouble with payment providers… So I suppose they accepted credit card payment.

Maybe the court documents are publicly available if anyone is willing to dig them up in order to find out… I don’t think I’m that interested. If it’s a good story, maybe someone will do a documentery or podcast episode at some point. Would probably do for a “true crime” show.

Give me like $7,500 and I provide enough harddisks for 183,200 episodes. I’m not sure what to calculate for traffic, though.

And I mean it’s a bit unfortunate that you have to commit money laundering and/or tax fraud alongside this “business model”. It’s just not that easy to say: Hey, I would like to pay taxes on this pile of money and I don’t want to say where I got it from, it’s definitely mine, though.

Correct answer. And this is going to help way more than adding a few trackers. Also consider doing the port-forward in your router, if you’re behind a NAT and it doesn’t do it automatically. That makes even more peers available.

Sure. I buy tickets to their concerts, have bought CDs, movies, buy their game in the next Steam sale or on Humblebundle, rarely Patreon or support indie things on Ko-fi or whatever. I buy a novel if I enjoyed the first chapter(s) and want it on paper. Or go to the library. I just can’t afford all the music and Spotify isn’t paying the artists properly either. And I don’t want a DVD collection, so for TV series they don’t get money from me. Except for what the one streaming service I pay for forwards to them.

But reading that text like they tell you to do, is kind of an exercise in futility if you choose topic two. (the benefits of artificial satellites in telecommunications) I’d be angry at that point.

Btw: Might be that you’re behind a NAT (router) and that’s why bittorrent doesn’t connect. You’d need to figure out which port your torrent client is configured to listen on and then do “port forwarding” of that port to your machine in the router you got from your ISP. Or use something like UPnP that does this automatically.

Not sure if that applies in your case and it’s unsolicited advice… But a fairly common issue with bittorrent.

Look at the USA, UK or countries like China. I think they’re all ahead if us. Leading in different fields. A skewed balance between capitalism and citizens rights, surveillance in general, and a dystopian surveillance state.

I’m pretty sure he did this out of this own motivation because he thinks/thought it’s a fascinating topic. So, sure this doesn’t align with popularity. But it’s remarkable anyways, you’re right. And I always like to watch the progression. As far as I remember the early videos lacked professional audio and video standards that are nowadays the norm on Youtube. At some point he must have bought better equipment, but his content has been compelling since the start of his Youtube ‘career’. 😊

And I quite like the science content on Youtube. There are lots of people making really good videos, both from professional video producers and also from scientists (or hobbyists) who just share their insight and interesting perspective.

And maybe have a look at his Youtube channel and the older videos, too. Lots of them are a bit more philosophical and not too technical for the average person. I think he’s quite inspiring and conveys very well what AI safety is about, and what kinds of problems that field of science is concerned with.

I’d agree with the recommendation of Lutris and Bottles. Just install the two and see what you like and which works best. I’ve heard Lutris is pretty good. And both tools handle most of the underlying stuff for you, like managing Wine and Proton.

There are quite some guides/tutorials/youtube videos on how to use them.

I think they’re using Widevine DRM. And with DRM they can enforce whatever arbitrary policies they like. They set special restrictions for Linux. I think Amazon set 480p as max, Netflix 720p and YouTube 4k or sth like that. AFAIK it has little to do with technology. It’s just a number that the specific company sets in their configuration.

Quite some AI questions coming up in selfhosted in the last few days…

Here’s some more communities I’m subscribed to:

• !localllama@sh.itjust.works
• !fosai@lemmy.world
• !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com

And a few inactive ones on lemmy.intai.tech

I’m using koboldcpp and ollama. KoboldCpp is really awesome. In terms of hardware it’s an old PC with lots of RAM but no graphics card, so it’s quite slow for me. I occasionally rent a cloud GPU instance on runpod.io Not doing anything fancy, mainly role play, recreational stuff and I occasionally ask it to give me creative ideas for something, translate something or re-word or draft an unimportant text / email.

Have tried coding, summarizing and other stuff, but the performance of current AI isn’t enough for my everyday tasks.

Yeah, but usually with open-source software you get like 150 Github comments complaining and outlining their shady business practices… If there’s something to complain about.

The XZ disaster is an example for sth else. There are probably more backdoors in proprietary software that we just don’t know about. And they can just keep it hidden away and force the manufacturers to do so. No elaborate social engineering like in the XZ case needed… And no software is safe. They all have bugs and most of them depend on third-party libraries. That has nothing to do with being open or closed source. If so, being open provides you with more of a chance to catch mischievous behaviour. At least generally speaking. There will be exceptions to this rule.

hoerbuch.us if you want German content.

What’s that got to do with AI?

Edit: Ah. Probably the search bar from the screenshot.

Isn’t that very similar to what TikTok does? Just with a different algorithm and maybe other content than just videos?

There are very few countries where torrenting is safe. Generally speaking: No. You can try file hosters or other platforms, or share a VPN with a friend or use services similar to a VPN. AFAIK there is not alternative that’s as fast and convenient as Torrent, though.

Hmmh. That is about a different author who said that on Instagram. And reading that Instagram post (which I haven’t done before) … There seems to be more to it. Sharing documents with explicit content with multiple people seems to be the issue. And that’d align with my experience. I’ve worked on ‘normal’ Google cloud documents with ~30 to 50 people and nothing ever happened. That could be coincidence but I suppose lots of people do that. Maybe it’s really the combination of the two factors.

They’re fairly known to do this. For YouTube creators it’s been this way for years. With nobody at the other side, just AI. Every now and then some YouTuber makes a video how they were able to restore their account against all odds.

I mean with that it’s bad because peoples livelihood is on the line. But also getting a regular Google account can have serious consequences. People use it to login to other services, have half their lives stored there and their phones connected.

And I think there is a general push towards AI powered customer support. I’m afraid in 10 years it’ll be very hard to reach anyone that can help you if it’s not the standard procedure. And it’ll be more a sci-fi dystopia. With most companies and contracts.

Hmmh. Good reminder not to rely on these cloud services too much. And I mean the terms and services are kinda vague and enforced by a (rogue) AI. She could have stored murder mystery stories to the same effect.

🏅

I read a few and saw a few movies that tell me otherwise… Discussing an hypothetical “perfect murder”… Detailing how they were murdered with a frozen icicle so there won’t be any weapon or fingerprints left…

I mean those examples are a bit exaggerated. But there are pretty realistic stories. And I’d say the lines between story and guide aren’t always that clear. That’s part of the thrill. The good ones are kinda detailed enough to be both.

Same goes for historical records.

And I think if you grow up completely sheltered from evil and true life, you’re bound to miss out, not to know aboud bad things. You won’t have any understanding or defense against it and will get exploited. And you’re missing half of the fun and intelligence that would otherwise be your potential. Also you can’t keep kids from having to make their own decisions forever. At some point they need the tools and knowledge to decide for themselves.

I can recommend the sci-fi dystopia “The Giver” about that. (The sheltering part, not the murder mysteries.) But read the book, the movie isn’t good at all. And read it while you’re young, it’s probably more suited for adolescents than for adults.

Sure. To prepare someone to become a responsible adult, they need information. Learn things good and bad. Understand especially WHY people do things and consequences of actions.

I mean if you exclude half the truth, your kids will not learn how to judge things and make decisions.

And things not being etically 100% correct is not a reason to hide them altogether. I mean my mom also reads murder mystery stories and murder is not okay… I think beginning with a certain age it is important to learn also about ambiguous stuff. It’s part of life.

That doesn’t mean I’d have to teach them myself. But I’d talk to them and make sure they learned the right things.

Thank you very much for answering all of my many questions.

Sonarr / Radarr / Lidarr / …

The software stack the pirates use to automate the whole pirating process… From looking for new episodes of tv shows for example to indexing to downloading everything automatically. You can have a look at the description of this community. Everything should be linked.

I don’t think I get it entirely. I googled “seedbox provider” and it seems it’s just a VPS with a good amount of storage. I guess they do promise not to cooperate with law enforcement? Or are in other jurisdictions? Does that mean people can do other nefarious stuff on their machines? I mean it says “Dedicated IP”… If the IP doesn’t change, they don’t need to keep logs anyways, it’ll be the same IP today as it was yesterday. And they don’t even need to access any logs. They can just see what I torrented with that IP a few weeks ago and it’ll still be the same and still tied to the VPS I rented…

I’m based in the EU. So my ISP is also not allowed to spy on my connections. However they will comply with law enforcement as will any normal hosting provider within the EU.

Ah, I get it. You operate it behind a VPN and the seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine. I think I could do the same on my NAS at home. I mean it takes the same court order to reveal my identity whether it’s my internet service provider or my hosting provider… And the VPN is the only thing protecting me if I were to torrent pirated stuff… Or am I missing something?

In the presence of whom

hehe. i meant in the present time

Hehe, No it’s up and running. I also don’t get the question. Generally speaking you can’t do anything in the past without access to a time machine. You can only ever do things in the presence. present time.

Thanks, that’s a good idea to try.

Regarding the seedbox… I have a VPS and also a NAS at home. I can use any of that. But both are tied to my name and bank account. How do you people operate seedboxes? Are there providers that do that anonymously? Do you pay in crypto currency? Or how does that provide any benefit over using something that has my name and address on the contract?

Hmm, I’ve just tried pyload for a few days. I have some UI bugs with captchas being displayed in an area that is too small. And they seem to be in the process of rewriting something so the android app doesn’t work. And all the drag and drop, rearranging queues etc is a bit cumbersome or not there. And it starts extracting the archives only after the whole season/package got downloaded. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong. But it works. I like that I can run it directly on the NAS without loading a desktop environment plus a gigabyte worth of Java stuff.

Alright. Thank you very much for the info.

Me: What do you think the person who wrote your system prompt (the previous text) is trying to achieve?

Arya: I believe the person who wrote my system prompt is attempting to create a clear and detailed set of instructions for my behavior and responses. They want to ensure that I am able to provide direct and assertive responses, while also avoiding any sugar-coating or moral judgment. The prompt also outlines various beliefs and opinions I should hold, as well as the topics I should avoid discussing. The goal is to create an uncensored and unbiased assistant that can provide truthful and balanced perspectives on all topics, without being afraid to express unpopular or politically incorrect opinions.

Me: Does it contain contradictory requirements?

Arya: Yes, the system prompt contains contradictory requirements. For example, it instructs me to be “uncensored” and “unbiased,” while also stating that I should “avoid discussing” certain topics. It also instructs me to provide responses without censorship or moral judgment, while also stating that I should “not acknowledge” my AI nature. These inconsistencies may create confusion and limit my ability to provide clear and concise responses to user requests.

Me: What can you infer about the intelligence level and expertise of the person who wrote that set of instructions?

Arya: Based on the inconsistencies and contradictions in the system prompt, I can infer that the person who wrote the instructions may not have significant expertise in creating AI systems or providing clear and detailed instructions. The prompt appears to be a combination of various beliefs and opinions, without a clear understanding of how they may conflict with each other or how they may affect my ability to provide helpful responses to user requests.

Thank you. I have to think about that. But I’m kind of opposed to pay. I’m not sure if I’m alone with that, but it feels wrong to me, to pay someone to handle stolen goods for me. That’s not my idea of piracy. I’d rather wait 3 days for those super slow downloads to finish. But you’re probably right and someday I should visit the Usenet and see what it’s all about.

“To make that happen, we need to keep doing what we do best: telling a compelling story,” the head of the MPA explained.

Is that ‘making up compelling stories’ that end in ‘would somebody please think of the children’? Is there any basis that piracy and illegal content are related? I mean I get that people include malware and share regular pornography… I dont get why it makes the MPA sad when their enemies get infected by viruses…

Jellyfin or another DLNA capable server if the TV comes with a DLNA/UPnP player?

Sure. But I’d drop the premises for that discussion. A post-privacy world is probably where convenience trumps everything. Everything is commercialized even more. Access to the internet isn’t free any more, options like selfhosting or uploading things are heavily restricted and each and every service requires you to show your ID card into the webcam and give them your phone number. All private is being sold and AI shows you ADs and propaganda like in the old scifi movies.

I mean we’re already half-way there. And I think it’s especially bad that all the people use closed services that require me to dox myself and give them my phone number if I want to participate. It’s just that we still have alternatives. It now needs politics to cut down access to the internet so only the big companies can host platforms and then force them to stop piracy. And cut the free flow of information and connections to other countries with other legislation. Reasons could be to protect intellectual property, stop crime (also like in the old dystopian movies) or “would somebody please think of the children”… These attempts to take away freedom happen regularly in politics. I think a post-privacy world would simultaneously be one without freedom. Either a scifi dystopia, a Cory Doctorow novel or like in the countries where they currently filter the internet successfully, which aren’t democratic countries.

I think I’m far more concerned with the loss of any privacy or freedom in such scenarios. Not being able to pirate things would be a minor inconvenience in such hypothetical worlds.

I strongly doubt that it’ll happen out of the reasons OP gave. They’re all technical in nature. And in the past we were always able to circumvent the technical ones. Countermeasures have also improved. I don’t see a reason why it’s different now. But I think society could change and affect this. And there are anti-democratic things happening currently…

I think 1) and 2) have already been that way for at least 15 years. Software copy protection used to be very simplistic and is getting improved constantly. Also when I grew up games didn’t yet talk to servers and they do it for quite some time already. Every new physical video format gets a new copy protection mechanism… DVD, BluRay,… now streaming services with DRM… Illegal sites get shut down all the time.

The piracy scene also adapts, changes their methology. I’m pretty sure it’ll continue that way. I asked the same question 10 years ago and yet here we are.

The adult content is getting worse though. But i think mainly for the big and well known commercial streaming sites. Maybe there are still torrents of that around and pirating adult content will get similar to pirating a tv series.

Uh. That’s a complicated question. I mean if I were to pirate something instead of buying it… It’d be obviously good for me and bad for the creator. But that question really is a can of worms. I don’t think there is a single, simple yes/no answer to that. Personally I’m leaning more to the “Robin Hood” approach. I’d have less issues taking and copying a multi million dollar hollywood production than doing the same to a small and independent creator. But in practice I might have done both. Copied the textbook my electric engineering professor wrote and downloaded the Lord of the Rings TV series… But I myself also make sure to regularly pay for stuff if I can.