They may make their law, but can they enforce it?

pi is 3

Yeah, I don’t really understand networking, so I apologize if I say stupid things. I guess I was under the impression peer tube already used webtorrents, but if it doesn’t I can see how that would improve things by allowing the creators to seed their own content.

Why does the main instance have to have a copy? This seems like it creates a major storage problem for running a peertube instance, and I don’t understand why the creator couldn’t just seed their own videos – again, it’s not like creators delete their own copies anyway, the creators should be the primary source. Setting up a laptop running a torrent program isn’t a serious challenge, nor is backing it up on another computer. If the instance wants to hold a copy (particularly for new videos or popular creators or some combination depending on their available storage) to make sure everything runs smoothly, I think that’s a reasonable thing to do, but ultimately the creator should be responsible for their own work.

Again, I think there needs to be some system for viewers to seed persistently. Even something as simple as some javascript where the like button copies you a magnetic link to whatever resolution of the video you just watched would improve things. If normal torrent clients then had a dismiss after age or seed ratio toggle on each torrent, that’d be half the battle. Obviously it’d be better if the everything talked to each other and operated seemlessly, but even a rough version would improve things.

If it’s not stored many places, it doesn’t [matter if it solves] solve the distribution problem. If only one person (the instance) is distributing the video, it’s watched and discarded (which it will be except in the case where multiple people are watching it simultaneously), then the distribution problem isn’t really solved. If that instance goes down, the video is lost. Maybe peertube is meant to be a streaming service rather than a general video service, and you don’t care about the more general, but then we still need a generalized federated video service.

Also, I’m not really convinced Torrents don’t solve the storage problem. Why does the instance need to host any of the videos if the creator can put them on a torrent? It’s not like creators delete every video they make after it’s posted. If videos are then stored and seeded for a month after people watch them, I think you can get pretty reliable access. Store the videos in whatever resolution you watched it in and below. The people who want high resolution can live with higher storage costs, the rest of us can set aside a 5-10 GB and go about our life.

Webtorrents are torrents that run in the browser.

Do they only run as long as the page is open? That’s the core problem here as I understand it. Peer tube instances don’t have the space to store every creators videos. Frankly, if torrents aren’t addressing that core problem, they’re just a gimmick and don’t really do much for the infrastructure. I guess they prevent the page from being completely overwhelmed for things really popular in a moment, but that’s pretty short term. The browsers need to speak torrent in some fashion so that someone can make an extension or something that can support videos for some time (indefinitely seeding if you’re the creator, seeding for months or years if you’re a viewer).

Ugh, resolution.

Unpopular opinion, but I feel like resolution is a vocal minority issue. Most people listen to videos in the background or only glance at it now and then. Even when watching the video, resolution just doesn’t matter that much to the vast majority of people. But of course, a vocal minority will loudly complain if they don’t have super resolution, and it makes everything harder for everyone else.

Like, I can tell you I’d not be willing to seed a high resolution video for any length of time because I value my hard drive space. Maybe they could split the torrent up into several torrent by resolution and I can change my setting to seed the reasonable ones? I do think it’ll take a dedicated application of some sort unless browsers want to start integrating torrent download management – actually that seems like it should be doable… I don’t know enough about networking maybe that’s already thing.

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What are your thoughts on PeerTube? I’ve heard people complain about storage costs, which makes me think they should have let viewers seed torrents (i.e. make an application with torrents built in have some setting to seed for different times based on if you completed/liked/disliked a video add in a seed forever button). While I’m sure video profits are lower for now, creators can cross post to youtube, and I thought most profits come from patreon and ad reads rather than youtube ads. I think there’s a way to link peertube and lemmy / mastadon accounts, but I haven’t looked into it yet.

Yeah, I’d like to add that there’s something to being dedicated to one language, especially if you’re self taught. I could certainly cobble something together in C, but having coded in python for nearly a decade I’ve built up an intuition for it. I know where things fail. I know what to do when things fail. I know what packages are common. I’ve built up a collection of utility functions. I know common patterns. Despite never having been taught algorithms or data structures, being committed to one language has led me to learn how to write efficient code in that language (rather than hoping switching to C will magically solve bad algorithms).

My code is still weird as hell and offends professional programmers, but it’d be hard to deny that I know what I’m doing.

The race towards what exactly? More advanced AI would take research funds, and the US cut research, so… What are we racing towards? A dystopian surveillance state?

they shouldn’t get to vote in local elections

For a long time I assumed this was a rule. Figured, I’m not from here why would I have a say.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize I’m not really from anywhere anymore. I think I visited my hometown maybe once in the last decade. Didn’t really feel that comfortable weighing in on local politics as a student in a college/university town/city. I still voted on national stuff (not that it did any good), but at this stage I struggle even to think of myself as American. It’s not a country where me or people like me have had any influence or agency. It’s not my country it’s their country, the oligarchs. Feels like there’s no place where I belong, and any push for my views is just interfering in other people’s business.

It creates a bit of a paradox since (broadly speaking) it’s good when people don’t push their views onto others, yet in this case that’s creating a terrible selection bias. I still don’t know if there’s a good solution to this. I don’t want to vote where I don’t understand the situations and won’t fully face the consequences. Yet, I don’t want society to crush me out of negligence either.

Nah, that can’t be right. What would protect the powerful if there was no government?

I heard one of the Green Brothers claim that billionaires tend to develop really strange out of touch opinions. To me, they often seem a mixture of stupid and self-serving. I suspect any actual laws will be undermined within a month, but it’s really annoying that these people keep sticking their nose in other people’s business.

I’m just glad people will write off my terrible code as AI.

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We should have a lottery, like a true democracy.

Florida elects manatee claiming to be mermaid in AI generated ads.

The “It’s not clear who’s doing it” section is what’s baffling to me, like I’m very far from into networking and I’ve definitely done some crude scraping the few times I’ve needed it, but even I am pretty sure I could do better than this. Makes me think someone with more money than sense hooked up an “Agentic” AI and told it to gather data to train the next AI then just let it decide how – except not because I’m pretty sure the AIs would have more sense. It’s really weird.

Depends on what you want. You’d be surprised just how appealing increasing that monthly dividend is – If I have just a little more invested I could do X, Y, or Z. For me, the more freedom / agency / financial independence I get, the more I want and so the more I save.

Having little with no obligations is very appealing. Having a bit more with no obligations is even more appealing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV8H8HVD with linux mint installed.