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.
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.
phoyd · · focus · HN ↗
CodesInChaos · · focus · HN ↗
bilegeek · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]