Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights • Hacker News Board

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#61

Post by mannanj » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:20 AM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #11

The same argument applies to DRM and piracy. DRM only disadvantages people who want to consume content legally. Only one person has to bypass it (be it through cryptographic or software failings or the good old fashioned analog hole ala telesync) then upload the resulting unencumbered media file to a piracy site. As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it…

I often buy content to support the creators, then download it on torrent sites because the UI and experience is better. I can use whatever player I want, modify the screen size more and have no branding bloat (Amazon Prime! Youtube! Netflix! etc) and have a better, more focused, and even off-line friendly experience.

It gets deleted, I move on with life.

But man the experiences in branded players really sucks, and I wish it were better.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#62

Post by perpetuallunch » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

bladeacidic wrote: post #54

Aurornis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piracy is a service problem > Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice. I think the only people who believe that pirating is easier than using the streaming services are people who spend so much time with computers that they round the mental overhead of navigating torrent websites, finding the corre…

There's apps for that these days. Not going to names them, but if you're still downloading a torrent file on a computer, you're behind the times. It's as easy as Netflix on an Android TV with a remote these days.

Don’t all those apps also expose you to VPN services using your connection as a gateway, or enrol you in a botnet, or exfiltrate your watch history to this weeks popular bad-actor, or expose everything on your local network to the internet?

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#63

Post by Pfhortune » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:24 AM UTC

perpetuallunch wrote: post #42

aftbit wrote: post #11

The same argument applies to DRM and piracy. DRM only disadvantages people who want to consume content legally. Only one person has to bypass it (be it through cryptographic or software failings or the good old fashioned analog hole ala telesync) then upload the resulting unencumbered media file to a piracy site. As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it…

Cheaper & easier - not by much. Australia blocks all the good torrent sites, so now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain. Or I can usage discount offers for the variou…

> The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.

How does one put malware in media? Are we talking exploiting unlatched vulnerabilities in codecs, or are we talking random exe files?

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#64

Post by markmental » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

I feel like eventually we're going to end up just like how the cryptography restrictions were in the 90s. They might have seemed necessary back then, but now looking at it, the technology and AI is probably going to become so ubiquitous in the next 10 years that we're going to wonder why we even restricted it in the first place, when it's something that's just going to be everywhere. Like they said at the end of this blog: "What arrived in my letterbox after two weeks on a CD can be downloaded today in fifteen minutes."

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#65

Post by esafak » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

Cryptography is nothing like AI. It does not have the ability to upend the economy, and enable people to launch cyberattacks, etc.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#66

Post by perpetuallunch » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

yndoendo wrote: post #44

matheusmoreira wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed. Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn'…

Issues and topics that are reduced to a single idea are oversimplified to were lost of reality can take hold. Example, say person chooses to never fund Amazon. Amazon owns MGM. The only way that person can watch an MGM movie is through piracy. The only alternative would be to buy second hand content so MGM / Amazon do not get a finical cut. As media corporations become more monopolistic, like Paramount buying Warner…

[flagged]

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#67

Post by bonoboTP » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

This is AI written. Next time just paste your prompt or conversation with the AI that wrote the article. I'll then converse with Claude about it myself. There is no need for this intermediary.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#68

Post by vermilingua » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #51

bitwize wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple TV has a search function that allows you to find a film or series irrespectice of whatever service it's on, and launch the appropriate app to play it.

Some times I read these mental gymnastics comments about piracy being easier and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like an Apple TV. I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button. Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play fi…

Sometimes I read these mental gymnastics comments about being leashed to half a dozen providers for “convenience” and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like a NAS.

I think the part they really dislike is the undermining of the moral superiority they claim by donating their money to corporations that contribute ~nothing to the actual evolution of culture. Inventing strawmans about how difficult it is to click one button in Jellyseer and have a max-quality, buffering free copy of what you want to watch in perpetuity is an order of magnitude more work than renting a poor-quality subset of the media that publishers consider it profitable to provide.

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#69

Post by ninjin » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #6

jameshart wrote: post #2

Slight timeline correction: 25 years ago in 2001 Blowfish was no longer contraband - the crypto export rules had been changed by 2000. As of January 2000 Netscape and IE were both shipping 128bit DES internationally. Still, the t-shirts with Blowfish source printed on them were a cool bit of retro hacker chic.

Also, the first OpenBSD hackathon was 1999; it was in fact semicryptographic (they shipped IPSEC) but they've had hackathons in the US since, and for a time developers were coming out to Calgary because that's where Theo was. The dumb export control shipping dance was real though.

Had one of the OpenBSD Blowfish t-shirts [1] and wore if for many years until it broke. My best memory of it was as an intern in Silicon Valley, when suddenly the CEO who never had seemed that technical, walked past me and one of the secretaries talking and going: "Blowfish, right? Nice!". He earned a lot of respect from this intern that day.

It is a shame that the OpenBSD folks do not reprint their old designs as I would buy about ten different ones in an instant.

[1]: https://www.openbsd.org/tshirts.html#4

Re: Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights

#70

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #67

This is AI written. Next time just paste your prompt or conversation with the AI that wrote the article. I'll then converse with Claude about it myself. There is no need for this intermediary.

I think you're joking, but there are some topics where what you're describing might be a great way to communicate an idea.

> I believe {audacious claim}. I've prepared this chatbot to defend the claim. If don't already agree, tell the bot why I'm wrong and it'll convince you that I'm right.

Because if you've anticipated and countered all likely objections, you still don't know, for any given reader, which of those objections are going to be on the forefront of their mind. Encoding the argument as a bot means the important parts come first, even if those are different parts for different readers.

Not sure if I'm alone here, but I'd play.