Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

weeraman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 168 posts

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

#151

Post by xboxnolifes »

belinder wrote: post #12
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…

Drm is not targeted at the hardcore pirate, it's targeted at a potentially larger percentage of people who would be tempted to get the thing for free if it was easy. Drm may be circumventable, but any complex set of steps for doing so is enough to deter that target audience.

While i agree, certain DRM (video streaming) has gotten to the point where its made getting a show legally, at 1080p+, more trouble than pirating. And not from lack of DRM. There's a certain good middle ground and I think we've passed it.

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

#152

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

yalogin wrote: post #149
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that the idiot does favors for the highest bidders. If you follow that money it points you, in various ways, to the AI companies. Who would have an incentive to tax physical goods entering and exiting the country? Somebody who is competing for investment dollars and whose product is digital. Who benefits from immigration overreach? People whose products are especially relevant to mass surveillance. Dismant…

Yes I wasn’t questioning that the market and government is controlled by the AI companies. What I am saying is that cannot be a moat. If anything it will be an anchor that will pull these companies down. If anything that is a signal that they don’t have a moat

If the scale necessary to get the job done cannot be achieved without a corrupt government in your pocket--somebody to drag people out of town hall meetings and ensure that the infrastructure gets built regardless of consequence--and your competition in another country can't influence their government to do the same thing (and that government itself doesn't care to do so), that functions as a moat, doesn't it?

It's not a new dynamic. The US lets companies do all kinds of things to its citizens re: privacy or the environment or disinformation... things that would be illegal in other countries. It's the American trade-off and although I don't appreciate the explosive diarrhea angle to it, it does give American businesses some protection against foreign competition.

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

#153

Post by jameshart »

crest wrote: post #133
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.

DES doesn't accept 128 bit keys. It's native key size is 56 bits which was commonly extended to 168 with 3DES (encrypt-decrypt-encrypt).

You’re right - 128bit SSL 2/3 used RC4 not 3DES. I was misremembering - one did occasional see marketing describe 3DES with two 56bit keys with 8 bit parity checks as 128bit (actual key strength: 112bit) and I was thinking that Netscape and IE SSL had been part of that wave.

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

#154

Post by jameshart »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #120
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.

Illegal Tattoos: RSA https://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/ DES doesn't really come in 128 bits, and certainly not its SSL implementations. Perhaps you are thinking of AES? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#SSL_1...

You’re right. RC4 was what I meant. See sibling comment.

128bit SSL precedes the AES contest.

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

#155

Post by laserlight »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #148
laserlight wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn’t explain why piracy rates are much lower, despite having a lot of service problems. Can you explain why you think piracy rates must be higher? Piracy isn't “free” after all.

Very common for some movie, tv shows or music not be available here. Or also, fairly expensive to buy/rent for some. If it was service issue, this would drive people who want to enjoy the media to piracy. Yet it doesn’t.

Piracy has its own costs. It's likely that given the trade-offs, piracy rates don't increase.

PS: I have no idea whether piracy rates are up or down.

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

#156

Post by inigyou »

inigyou wrote: post #142
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…

Or ask your savvy friend for a copy on DVD-R. That's quite easy.

And to be clear: this was the original piracy, friend-to-friend networks. This was the original "scene" before torrenting and can still work this way with torrenting, or Usenet or whatever. We've just become more atomized and less group-oriented in general so chances are you aren't a member of a friend group that has a piracy guy, and you have to learn it yourself to get it done.

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

#157

Post by fc417fc802 »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #147
fc417fc802 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the explanation self evident? Piracy requires nonzero technical competency (not much but still), dedicated computing hardware, and a decent chunk of storage. It's a fairly low barrier to entry but it is nonetheless a barrier and your typical person off the street these days doesn't reliably know what files and folders are.

I know Japanese people who can easily pull it off, but ideologically very against it.

Sure, there are those who ideologically oppose it in most or all scenarios. But there are also obviously those who don't exhibit such unconditional opposition to it.

So what is the answer to your original question? I don't believe it to be some large cultural shift on a global scale regarding its acceptance (as I took you to be suggesting) given that such opposition clearly is not itself universal.

My impression of cultural acceptance of it in the US is that it is highly dependent on (at least) one's socioeconomic situation as well as the effectiveness of the solutions on offer. As a concrete example, if you're well off and everything you watch is available on netflix people will probably judge you if you're bragging about how you pirate it all in order to avoid a few dollars a month. Meanwhile I know plenty of people who preface their explanation with "well I do have several subscriptions, however ..." and no one seems particularly bothered by this.

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

#159

Post by perpetuallunch »

kyriakos wrote: post #94
perpetuallunch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No there are services that provide global cdn access to torrents. Your provider sees https traffic from your closest cdn edge. You don't share back at any point. These things are a couple of steps more to setup than getting a Netflix subscription and work almost an any device.

So all of these free (or paid apps? I don’t know, I don’t use any) that offer access to pirated content…

They’re all above board? Not doing anything nefarious?

That’s obviously not an argument anyone would intentionally make.

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

#160

Post by kyriakos »

perpetuallunch wrote: post #159
kyriakos wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No there are services that provide global cdn access to torrents. Your provider sees https traffic from your closest cdn edge. You don't share back at any point. These things are a couple of steps more to setup than getting a Netflix subscription and work almost an any device.

So all of these free (or paid apps? I don’t know, I don’t use any) that offer access to pirated content… They’re all above board? Not doing anything nefarious? That’s obviously not an argument anyone would intentionally make.

They are making money out of this. Subscription is like a month's Netflix for a year's access to everything. Multiple "providers" offering this which means there is money to be made.
Post reply on HN