I don't understand why this is set up the way it is. Maintaining a BitTorrent tracker for models seems like a reasonably good idea, but you have to "apply to join" to be able to contribute?
To what end?
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
Its standard for private trackers, you don't want a malware infested hell like piratebay, plus generally you would want people to seed back what they downloaded at least.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
> generally you would want people to seed back what they downloaded at least
But the goal is preservation rather than sharing.
I'm confused about how the economics of that would work. If I wanted to contribute to this, I'd have to download the models, so I'd immediately be in the red, and then I could never get out of it because who's going to download these obsolete models? There's no download demand for them; if they were, the whole project would not be necessary.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
>then I could never get out of it because who's going to download these obsolete models?
Private trackers usually overcome this issue by also rewarding the length of time you share, even if no one downloaded. Either you get a ratio of 1 or share for a full week/whatever length they decide is enough.
The ai description of this specific site seems to imply they do it as well.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
Accountability?
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
You mean for people trying to poison the swarm? Or what? I'm genuinely confused.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
people not maintaining 1:1 ratio, read about private trackers
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
The content will be mostly obsolete LLM models. I don't see the incentive to download them in large quantities.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
I can definitely picture a piece of content that's been scrubbed from everywhere except old copies of LLMs in which it still exists in a lossy form, with people trying to extract it from those old copies with the help of newer models. Private trackers have thrived for decades and will continue to do so because they allow a community to foster around a shared purpose (pardon the pun).
Although that being said, i doubt i would go through the trouble of signing up just for this purpose, personally.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
> I can definitely picture a piece of content that's been scrubbed from everywhere except old copies of LLMs in which it still exists in a lossy form
Yes. So it seems to me that the purpose of the project is to maintain a common good, but then I don't see how keeping it private achieves that.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
Just do it like how libgen does. Maybe publish a RSS torrent feed people can subscribe to for the newer publications - knowing someone is curating the feed.
Weird to have open licensed stuff on private tracker.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
And what are you going to train the models on?
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
Why the restriction to safetensors and GGUF? onnx is the more common format and specifically made for interchange.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
Does anybody use ONNX for LLMs? I've only encountered it for small models packaged to run on consumer devices, and never seen it show up in any workstation or datacenter scenario.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
What is the difference between this and https://pirateface.co/ ? Private tracker, and a focus on old models?
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
There doesn't need to be a difference, as with other torrent trackers, there are many of them, and I think thats good if nothing else, for redundancy.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
I see the merit in keeping a decentralized archive for open models. But there has to be a better way to do it vs keeping it behind auth and an application form.
[3 hidden]5 mins ago
it's light, not like usual trackers, it's only to make sure people seed 1:1 and to reduce load on a couple of people seeding large models to everyone. the only way to do that is to enforce it, and for that you need a place where you can possibly enforce it without making it platform run, so, that's why you have this.
HN.zip
To what end?
But the goal is preservation rather than sharing.
I'm confused about how the economics of that would work. If I wanted to contribute to this, I'd have to download the models, so I'd immediately be in the red, and then I could never get out of it because who's going to download these obsolete models? There's no download demand for them; if they were, the whole project would not be necessary.
Private trackers usually overcome this issue by also rewarding the length of time you share, even if no one downloaded. Either you get a ratio of 1 or share for a full week/whatever length they decide is enough.
The ai description of this specific site seems to imply they do it as well.
Although that being said, i doubt i would go through the trouble of signing up just for this purpose, personally.
Yes. So it seems to me that the purpose of the project is to maintain a common good, but then I don't see how keeping it private achieves that.
Weird to have open licensed stuff on private tracker.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace
https://pirateface.co/audnai/penclaw-GLM-5.3-abliterated