The worst part is the banks. You have to get lucky to be allowed to use online banking without agreeing to some sucky TOS.

If I run some AI model on my GPU and power my computer via solar power and some batteries, am I actually contributing significantly to GHG emissions?

Like what is the embodied energy of an AI model?

As usual, pundits and scientists confuse what is and what could be with the truth. For example plastic recycling isn’t possible because “right now economics don’t make it profitable”. Meaning capitalism is killing us, not plastics. I suspect the same is true for AI.

Not sure what sapphire means, but here is the article. Just appending records and differential backups would seem to be the way to go.

the new optical disks are claimed to be “highly stable so there are no special storage requirements.” The researchers tout an expected shelf life of 50 to 100 years

I had (naively) hoped that starlink wouldn’t even need a license to operate in a specific country. When their satellites eventually fully communicate between them without ground station it becomes incredibly powerful. Sort of like one of those ancient world wonders. Technology now allows to live and work everywhere in the world or on the ocean in seasteads.

Unfortunately it’s owned by greedy oligarchs and the planned multiple constellations make a kessler syndrome more and more likely.

I wish there was a cheap and millennia-long lasting microfilm you could transfer books to. A projector is a pretty simple device to operate. Hmm that reminds me of “Last Words (2020)”.

Well yeah but BluRay is still much more expensive and smaller capacity. Lets hope this new 125TB disk works out

M-Disk is rated to last like 100 1000 years. They are also working on a 125 Terabyte CD. Optical storage is the way to go.

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I think it’s a problem with VPNs

I think it would be easier, since it does not require agreement on transaction between two parties, only signing your own transaction. Anyone can fork and clone anything, and then add to their own signed version. All that is required is that you cloned from an existing trusted version and you made these changes to it. It’s easy to verify.

It only requires that the user can select some release group that they trust and store their public key.

Yeah. I mean theoretically you could use all the other nodes, similar to Tor or I2P to relay and temporarily store chat messages and room states. I mean that is basically those networks except maybe you route a package multiple ways and mark them for late delivery. And you measure the speed and latency of nodes so better connected nodes get more workload and act as temporary floating servers. All via DHT.

Then theoretically there should be no performance difference between server based and P2P chats. But it’s even more complicated. I don’t even need a chat like that, really not at all. But I think it should exist already.

There is Tox which is P2P and encrypted and basically does this, but it’s not that popular.

Basically with P2P things get complicated still having fixed rooms that you can find in a list or send offline messages, presumably using other nodes as temporary relays.

This uses free VPNs? And even port forwarding?

What I think is missing is a kind of signed database version control system. So you make a list of data (maybe just a markdown table) and you sign it wiht a private key and put that in a DHT / distributed hashtable. Then people can use that and you can update the database / list. People can also fork this list, add their own stuff and distribute it as their own and signed with their own private key. And you could have pull requests and merge back good additions. All without requiring proper servers but possibly benefiting from being hosted on a seedbox.

And of course a simple client to find and view such lists.

Ideally you’d have some template that describes typical metadata for a kind of distribute movie database, but also books, subtitles, songs, albums, articles, scientific papers, fonts. But you can also fork the templates and extend them. So you might have a perfectly legit open source database of movies with links to what legit streaming service is selling it, and then an extra template that extends that with magnet releases.

I have never seen something like this though, my puny brain has trouble imagining the technical hurdles. Maybe this could just be done with a simple version control system client. I think torrent V2 also has some extensions that allow update-able torrents (which some FUD confused with this being the default). Or maybe it’s that proper web pages allow people to make money through advertising.

Hmm, sounds like the P2P version has been paused for the forseeable future:

https://arewep2pyet.com
https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p2p-matrix
https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0

Good argument but if the guy uploading it would be in another country this law couldn’t be enforced. Basically it’s an unenforceable standard. To insist on enforcing it could lead to draconian measures.

The article mentions upload filters but that then again create a large burden. This burden requires more work or more money. Which leads to a centralization or monopolization of the internet. Which would be in the interest of social media corporation who can shoulder the burden.

In the future the ethical issues of porn could be solved by investing in and creating a near perfect AI porn model that can serve all our degenerate needs WITHOUT requiring humans to take their clothes off. Basically ethically sourced synthetic “vegan” porn that is created for your on demand in your own home. And then you can ban all the real porn because the demand for it will plummet. Of course there will still be people who get off on the abuse instead of on the fantasy.

Ironically, someone have a non-paywall link?

I just want a holodeck future without having to pay by the hour to DisneComBroSonyFlixMount.

“You rape one child and you get booed at the olympics!”
– some hypothetical case, hopefully /s

Thanks for the info. But lets say you want to train a (future) AI to spot and tag disinformation and misinformation. You’d need to use and curate actual data from social media sites and articles.

If copyright is extended to learning from and analyzing publicly available data, such an AI will only be possible by licensing that data. Which will be monetize to maximize profit, first some lump sum, then later “per gb” and then later “per use”.

I’m sure open source AI will make due and for many applications there is enough free data, but I can imagine a lot of cases where there wont. Anything that requires “commercially successful” media, articles, newspapers, screenplays, movies, books, social media posts and comments, images, photos, video clips…

We’re basically setting up a world where the intellectual wealth of our civilization is being transformed into a commodity and then will be transferred into the hands of a few rich capitalists.

And even if there is acceptable amount of free data, if the principle is that data needs to be specifically licensed to learn and train and derive AI works from it - that makes free data use expensive too. It needs to be specifically vetted and is still vulnerable to be sued for mistakes or outrageous claims of copyright. Similar to patents, the uncertainty requires higher capitalization for any startup to defend against lawsuits.