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The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

torrentfreak.com

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Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can download the contents of a torrent by its hash How are hash collisions resolved? I'd hate to think I'm downloading my favorite TV show & find that I've downloaded something that makes ma attract the attention of law enforcement.

Aren't hash collisions supposed to be extremely unlikely in general?

Yes, but I don't want to explain to the FBI I was really trying to download a nature documentary.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#52

Side-note: I will always be in awe of the BitTorrent protocol. A resilient and efficient piece of tech that at its height was responsible for LARGE amounts of internet traffic (facilitated by sites like the TPB) and was (mostly) developed by just one guy: Bram Cohen.

Another Cohen project worth noting for its novelty is the Chia crypto network [1] which implements Proof of Space-Time. [1]: https://www.chia.net/about/

I've tried to upvote you back up not because I think Chia is anything good (looks like not) but because you are merely noting its existence and the novelty of it, etc.

Don't kill the messenger, people. It doesn't help the discussion.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#53
post #25

Peak civilization

unironically. The continued existence of the pirate bay and torrents is like the remaining aqueduct from a crumbling civilization, a reminder of what we once could do, before usurpers gobbled it up to squeeze the last cent out of everything

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Proof of Space-time" Oooh, what a fancy, high-falutin word for... writing bingo tickets to your SSD. Could more accurately be called "proof of bingo card", and then it doesn't infringe on actually interesting concepts, like relativistic physics. I remember when the new of Chia caused SSD prices to spike around the time I was buying, in the speculative fever for free money. At least it crashed, causing the Chia miner…

I've always found it odd that people have such guttural reactions to cryptocurrency. It's a technology. Calm down. It's become like politics now. "Fuck Republicans, fuck conservative nonsense." is what I'd expect to hear, not getting pissed over an algorithm. Kinda brings me comedic relief.

Cryptocurrency is a political project, designed to take power from governments and give it to markets.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#55
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was designed by Cohen but he didn't write most of the commonly used implementations.

This seems like a great accomplishment; a design so good that others are inspired to implement it.

Not to diminish his contributions but the high level idea was relatively simple. Break a file into pieces and then reconstitute them using hashes. The devil really is in being able to actually implement that which he also did. Ashwin Navin was pivotal in getting it out there for people to use as well.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Proof of Space-time" Oooh, what a fancy, high-falutin word for... writing bingo tickets to your SSD. Could more accurately be called "proof of bingo card", and then it doesn't infringe on actually interesting concepts, like relativistic physics. I remember when the new of Chia caused SSD prices to spike around the time I was buying, in the speculative fever for free money. At least it crashed, causing the Chia miner…

I've always found it odd that people have such guttural reactions to cryptocurrency. It's a technology. Calm down. It's become like politics now. "Fuck Republicans, fuck conservative nonsense." is what I'd expect to hear, not getting pissed over an algorithm. Kinda brings me comedic relief.

> I've always found it odd that people have such guttural reactions to cryptocurrency. It's a technology. Calm down.

Because the resource waste and scalping had real, measurable impact to a lot of completely unrelated people's life.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be happier if people were having their guttural reactions to the people involved in creating or using cryptocurrency instead of the technology itself? Would it make a difference?

Yes. Be mad at the people using it to scam people. Not everyone is.

Being mad at the creators of the tech isn't new to cryptocurrency, though.

Just as it's frustrating to have the tech dismissed as universally evil, it's also frustrating to see the technologists continue to create systems that fail to address the criminality and ecological concerns.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was literally shot during a speech but continued speaking for an entire hour while bleeding out. Sounds like actual adversity to me. You're free to try that and prove history wrong. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/theodore-rooseve...

And my entire point being that that was dumb. It doesn't make him tough. It makes him an egomaniacal idiot to have not sought treatment.

God forbid you fact check American mythology!

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Proof of Space-time" Oooh, what a fancy, high-falutin word for... writing bingo tickets to your SSD. Could more accurately be called "proof of bingo card", and then it doesn't infringe on actually interesting concepts, like relativistic physics. I remember when the new of Chia caused SSD prices to spike around the time I was buying, in the speculative fever for free money. At least it crashed, causing the Chia miner…

I've always found it odd that people have such guttural reactions to cryptocurrency. It's a technology. Calm down. It's become like politics now. "Fuck Republicans, fuck conservative nonsense." is what I'd expect to hear, not getting pissed over an algorithm. Kinda brings me comedic relief.

> I've always found it odd that people have such guttural reactions to cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency has been used for a huge number of scams, and generally to allow criminals launder their money and do more easily their job. All of this, and more, at a huge environmental expense. Technically the concept is great, but the implementation and use has been mostly harmful so far.

Re: The Pirate Bay's 20th Anniversary

#60
post #16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our school had a gnutella network on the campus network. It was incredibly fast, and some people were fairly prolific with their content upload reputations. E.g. I remember the highest quality Game of Thrones episodes being uploaded within minutes of them airing. Though my understanding was that Gnutella worked better than torrents because it was an incredible fast local network, i.e. our campus was connected with th…

DC++ was what we used across our school LAN back in the day.

Same here. The server lived in our student library, there were also some very creative parody video of our university president and of various teachers that I unfortunately didn't keep.
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