Torrents should really be the preferred method for distributing AI model weights. Why rely on a single point of failure like Hugging Face? BitTorrent was made for exactly this.
In my experience public torrents often die as they grow older. It doesn't help that BitTorrent V1 makes long term seeding annoying, and BitTorrent V2 is almost never used.
I never understood this, is there anything that makes it difficult for the original uploader, the one that supposedly offers the file directly, to offer a torrent instead for the same amount of time?
As far as perennity is concerned it seems strictly better.
Well, for a torrent to stay healthy, users have to seed after download, so it can't possibly have the same UX as a standard browser file download unless you want to either kill the ecosystem or hide from the user what is consuming upload bandwidth.
That said, for large files, I much prefer the UX of a well-designed torrent client like Transmission to my web browser. If nothing else, the downloads are reliably resumable.
> I much prefer the UX of a well-designed torrent client like Transmission to my web browser. If nothing else, the downloads are reliably resumable.
Brave browser had BitTorrent client built in for a while. I tried it a couple of times as I already use Brave for web browsing on my laptop. It was a very confusing BitTorrent client. I struggled to use it, and wasted time waiting for a download to complete only to not be able to find where the files were and then they disappeared. Using a decent BitTorrent client like you say is much preferable to the one that they had in Brave browser.
Every change to the source is effectively a new torrent. This creates a ton of fragmentation as data is reorganized, remixed, reencoded, and so on.
You can see this with many Linux distros: there is no single Debian torrent that people seed for years because there's always a refreshed version.
Distros are a bad use case for P2P anyway since you depend on upstream as soon as you start upgrading and installing packages.
> Distros are a bad use case for P2P anyway since you depend on upstream as soon as you start upgrading and installing packages.
This is true for any distribution method not just p2p. You can even download a nightly through torrents so what does it matter how the data is transferred if it’s always going to require `apt update`?
Yeah, I just use the "netinstaller" ISOs since it's much smaller and never needs to be updated. If I had a need for air-gapped/offline installs I'd either download a larger ISO or just manually install packages from .deb as needed.
You can trivially have storage deduplication for the files served via torrent, transparent to the protocol. The most trivial version of this that you can do today with pretty much any client is having a single directory containing files serving multiple overlapping torrents.
I don't see why it would be. It's transparent to other clients just like it is to the protocol. It cannot be more complex than alternatives by construction.
Yes, models are a good use for P2P especially if everyone agrees to share the same torrent and someone (or a cohort) commit to seeding for the long haul.
The problems begin with taking 5-10 minutes to locate a file on the network. That's right, when you ask for a file it takes 5-10 minutes. Also if the file isn't in the network at all then it never terminates.
Nobody noticed because everyone just used the central web gateway that cached every file anyone ever accessed.
You can add an existing HTTP download as a "web seed" to a torrent, so they don't actually need to do anything for people to share it as a torrent.
The last guy (kimdotcom) who was working on this (incentive for seeding) seems to be heading to the US: <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/651123/court-of-appeal-dismisses-kim-dotcom-challenge-to-us-extradition" rel="nofollow">https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/651123/cou...
It’s interesting he’s no longer getting any media attention any more.
Because history is path-dependent, as engineers keep learning over and over again. It doesn't matter whether Plan9 is theoretically superior to Linux - we're all on Linux and nobody's porting all the apps over.
The biggest problem with BTv1 was the lack of per-file checksumming, and swarm merging (i.e. individual files have shared seeding pools across torrents). BTv2 specs the latter, but I think only BiglyBT actually implements it. Having both of those features from the get-go would've gone a LONG way to fixing the dead torrent problem.
ages ago I tried using IPFS to more or less accomplish this, I imagined it to act more like a weights/training data network fs that everyone would be able to participate in.
HF is meant to be a single point of control. AI models and Linux distros aren't usually for normies, so distribution via torrents would make sense, especially to save the provider some bandwidth. Ubuntu has been offering torrent downloads for ages. No mention of torrents on HF. I believe most downloads will soon be account/EULA-walled.
phoyd · · focus · HN ↗
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Oxodao · · focus · HN ↗
EDIT/ Yes they did, that no longer seems to be the case though
<a href="https://x.com/MistralAI/status/1833758285167722836" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/MistralAI/status/1833758285167722836
CodesInChaos · · focus · HN ↗
monsieurbanana · · focus · HN ↗
As far as perennity is concerned it seems strictly better.
cube00 · · focus · HN ↗
csomar · · focus · HN ↗
Torrent/P2P can only add redundancy, so it’s impossible to have worse availability than a download link?
_blk · · focus · HN ↗
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pell · · focus · HN ↗
Opera did back in the day.
Wowfunhappy · · focus · HN ↗
That said, for large files, I much prefer the UX of a well-designed torrent client like Transmission to my web browser. If nothing else, the downloads are reliably resumable.
QuantumNomad_ · · focus · HN ↗
Brave browser had BitTorrent client built in for a while. I tried it a couple of times as I already use Brave for web browsing on my laptop. It was a very confusing BitTorrent client. I struggled to use it, and wasted time waiting for a download to complete only to not be able to find where the files were and then they disappeared. Using a decent BitTorrent client like you say is much preferable to the one that they had in Brave browser.
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mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
Nor do they need to. 99% of everything is crap, and not worth prescribing except for a random sample so future historians can study our crap.
zenoprax · · focus · HN ↗
You can see this with many Linux distros: there is no single Debian torrent that people seed for years because there's always a refreshed version.
Distros are a bad use case for P2P anyway since you depend on upstream as soon as you start upgrading and installing packages.
righthand · · focus · HN ↗
This is true for any distribution method not just p2p. You can even download a nightly through torrents so what does it matter how the data is transferred if it’s always going to require `apt update`?
zenoprax · · focus · HN ↗
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skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
This sounds wildly complex, especially from a discovery perspective.
chmod775 · · focus · HN ↗
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zenoprax · · focus · HN ↗
vova_hn2 · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://specs.ipfs.tech/ipns/ipns-record/" rel="nofollow">https://specs.ipfs.tech/ipns/ipns-record/
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
vova_hn2 · · focus · HN ↗
Heh, you got me :) IPFS is one of those things that I love reading and about and thinking about using someday, but somehow never get around to it.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
Nobody noticed because everyone just used the central web gateway that cached every file anyone ever accessed.
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zenoprax · · focus · HN ↗
If this site represents a coordinated datahoarding effort then there will be at least a few people who will seed indefinitely.
csomar · · focus · HN ↗
It’s interesting he’s no longer getting any media attention any more.
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