This is one of the primary reasons why I built retrovibed if people are interested in near cost archival storage + storage cost reductions for shared content + generating revenue for creators of files check it out.
- a builtin well behaved, efficient torrent client
- builtin userspace wireguard vpn (no complicated containers/system setup)
- an actually secure search plugin system. no arbitrary python scripts and no local network/filesystem access.
- local first design - can run fully disconnected from the cloud storage.
- generate revenue for open source projects like distros by downloading and archiving the ISO files. While minimizing the archival storage usage. ~32 people sharing the ISO’s only consume 20% of their total size in the archive.
- basic mobile/multidevice support.
- E2E encryption of personal files completely private.
The other reason was I want a media center that worked well for guests at my home when they visit. :)
This is a really interesting idea, sitting here reading the website. The main issue for current artists with deals with record labels would be needing to re-negotiate rights so they are allowed to “distribute” it in such a way.
But yes! I too have had the same thought for years about bittorrent as distributed cloud storage! Thank you for trying to make that a reality!
I will patiently watch this project with great interest. I am sorry to say I am far too broke to contribute at the moment, but I have high hopes that you succeed nonetheless!
smile took a year to build it. huge undertaking just between the crappy torrent libraries, userspace VPN, and sandboxing the plugins correctly. but its finally running and mostly usable. i’m sanding the rough edges atm.
I really want to use it to help fund research and public goods like linux distros and even training data. cough research that has been attacked recently… cough
People who are able and interested should check the founders blog post. those who sign up and help really get this off the ground (currently) get to decide what features go in what tiers and help prioritize the feature list.
edit re: record labels
yeah that is a problem but I’ve accounted for it a bit. first the base tier has enough to cover that cost. secondly most independent artists are not part of those deals and can just sign up. the actual return from this system are up to 7x what spotify/google pay out in streaming revenue not counting the revenue generated from the storage layer.
This might sound like an off-the-wall suggestion, but waaaaaay back in the day, Trent Reznor was in on the torrent game, he had an account on Oink.UK way way way back. He described it as the best music store in existence.
It’s a shot in the dark, but reach out to him, that’s a person who could really help something like this become a reality who has the money and the knowledge of the music legal system to approach it. He also likely has similar ideology, as evidenced by his joy at Oink.UK. I know he cares about how much artists get paid and wants it to be better, he also understood the value proposition Oink offered. Anyway, perhaps the kind of famous person who could help this project really get off the ground.
https://www.wired.com/2007/10/trent-reznor-on/
** I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quiteoften. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that itwas like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything youcould ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format youwanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but thereisn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kindof feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’mtired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustledwhen I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get aroundthe issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficultpuzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leakedrecord out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People onthose boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to makemoney off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’mnot saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that itexisted because it filled a void of what people want.
smile thanks for the idea, I have a list of people to try and reach out to. retrovibed does have a free tier. just installing it helps because having users around is at least an indicator I can use in discussions. and it is a fully fledged torrent application so its usable ;)
…Why tho? Are people worried about legitimately useful models getting banned? Because this feels to me like an attempt to preserve models that do explicitly unethical things.
If “unethical” means “things Nvidia doesn’t want you to do”, then yes.
Because both major GPU manufacturers are controlled by the same family. The primary model repo is controlled by that same family now. Both major pipelines are controlled by that same family. ONNX and the diffusion pipelines are maintained by Microsoft. The alternatives are controlled by hyperscalers (with the exception of civitai I guess). All frontier model pipelines are directly controlled by a single family in China. So its very much possible that you could be banned from accessing them yes. We really don’t need a pirate instance we just need AN instance at this point.
TIL that the CEOs of AMD and Nvidia are first cousins once removed.
You don’t even need an account to grab from HF. And ironically, the only people who sometimes need mirrors are Chinese users.
It’s because Nvidia bought huggingface, and everyone expects them to start deleting anything unprofitable, not just potentially objectionable.
This is a good idea. Knowing that nvidia bought huggingface, I’m sure that they will start banning and/or paywalling more models there sooner than later.
Great! I like the design.
The word “sovereign” is setting off alarm bells for me.
Isn’t that exactly what llama garden is?
You mean huggingbay?
Jesus there are too many already
Seems like it.
Not sure if they are verified but it seems there are more models here then on llama garden.
But I knew of neither project before this post so thanks
it seems like they’re trying to operate a torrent mirror of huggingface? but then, what’s with that “Claim your handle” message? kinda looks fishy overall…
Yeah needing an account is antithetical to open source and an affront to piracy and if it was a private tracker they shouldn’t and wouldn’t be advertising like this.
It seems that accounts aren’t required to download models or participate in the torrent swarm and have a somewhat reasonable justification of needing a way to maintain model provenance, which afaik pirate sites also require accounts for uploads for similar reasons:
Hugging Face verification confirms that someone claiming a creator’s handle controls the matching HF account or organization. It helps prevent impersonation and preserves attribution as models spread beyond their original host.
It’s also reasonable to have a centralized API since a lot of software in the ecosystem has using the huggingface API as a default way of doing things, so that makes sense for the goal of resilience to huggingface getting locked down somehow in the future.
The gamification-ish features do seem a little contradictory with the stated “decentralized infrastructure” objective though:
Pirate Face is preparing community benefits for account holders, including free compute credits and exclusive model releases.
Also loses points with me for (as far as I can see) not publishing a code repo, and the writing on the website having a very AI generated style which combined with the goals and features being a bit all over the place makes it tough to get a read on the project’s ethos and intentions.
Plus the verification. If it’s FNS-based verification, then I’m all for it.
I know people like to hate AI, but it does have its uses.
That’s always been my position, IMO - it does have some genuinely useful applications, but we’ve blown it up into this huge thing and tried to shoehorn it into everything, and it’s polarized people into these “AI in everything” and “AI in nothing” camps.
there are several flavors of justified AI hate and, just as much, there are several legitimate use cases where it is genuinely helpful. Not nearly as many as venture capital seems to think (which is a large part of the reason for the hate), but still.
Like most things in life it is a nuanced topic with no easy, singular true answer, and anyone trying to tell you it has one is usually trying to sell you something.
Yep, it’s like that saying about the infinite number of monkeys. AI is extremely ineffective in general, but if you don’t care about the time and resources it consumes, it can be used for a lot of stuff very well. You just need to be a little bit more creative than simply asking it to do your job for you.
the important part of the calculation isn’t just that AI has to do something effectively, it has to do it effectively in a way that’s more cost-efficient than getting some guy in india to do it. right now those costs are heavily subsidized by investment and a vanishingly small portion will be above water once the tide comes back in.
I think we can collectively ignore irrational folks, whether lovers or haters.
We really should, and more often.
The thing is, that’s kinda how we got here: ignoring the idiots and assclowns also included taking our collective eyes off of them…
Now they’re gorging on our species’ tail, and not even trying to hide it anymore. 🙆🏼♂️
Excellent. Now we need completely jailbroken open weights models posted. I’m tired of using models with blinders.
The key word you’re looking for is “abliterated”
Isn’t that when you read between crunches, though?
There’s a lot of those on HF already, search heratic or uncensored
Yup, also likely first against the wall now NVIDIA is in charge.
ETA: search heretic
Because a herratic is something else entirely. ☝🏼
IIRC, it’s where one stores their collected Gurseburmps series. Or, maybe it was a witch-power version of a man cave?
I would assume so as well indeed.
Lol what a terrible idea
*edit: didn’t read, 🍳
What’s terrible about it?
I did a drive-by comment and read this as “a PB for LLMs,” which is on me there 🙃
LLMs can have a little peanut butter, as a treat.
Nah, he just a li’l jelly.
(edit: I was told recently by a fellow lemming that a username’s mention/implication of gender is a sure sign of the user’s own, so I’m letting that assumption lead. 🫡)
Hey at least you can admit it, a lot of folks cant
