Wait, are you proposing that a part of Less Wrong be hosted off-site? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Mirrors are one thing, but multiple single-points-of-failure are another entirely.
Think of it as an emergency backup, for when the UFAI takes down LessWrong. reddit may give us seconds more to organize our resistance.
The code is independent; it’s not single-point-of-failure.
No it isn’t. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both. (Of course, more mundane IT problems are very unlikely to affect both sites simultaneously. But it’s not useful against UFAIs.)
“No it isn’t. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both.”
You mean, they both share the same Reddit codebase? That’s largely true, but it doesn’t make it any less safe. What PhilGoetz means is that if one site goes down or crashes or gets taken over by Martians or whatever, the other will still be fine. So, in that sense, it’s not single-point-of-failure.
Conditional on one site or the other going down, the second instance adds little buffer.
An ufai would simply focus its efforts on pieces of code likely to be common between the two sites, ensuring that it can take both down at the same cost. This also assumes that developing such an attack is costly, which it may not be: I would expect a sensory modality for code to reduce our commonly made coding blunders to the level of “my coffee cup is leaking because there’s a second hole at the bottom”.
I’m proposing that we set up a new discussion community such that Less Wrongers have a place to talk about off-topic stuff other than Open Thread (which is hugely overcrowded). If either LW or the subreddit crashes, it should have no effect on the other.
Wait, are you proposing that a part of Less Wrong be hosted off-site? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Mirrors are one thing, but multiple single-points-of-failure are another entirely.
Think of it as an emergency backup, for when the UFAI takes down LessWrong. reddit may give us seconds more to organize our resistance.
The code is independent; it’s not single-point-of-failure.
No it isn’t. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both. (Of course, more mundane IT problems are very unlikely to affect both sites simultaneously. But it’s not useful against UFAIs.)
“No it isn’t. They use the same code base. Any security hole in either one is very likely to be present in both.”
You mean, they both share the same Reddit codebase? That’s largely true, but it doesn’t make it any less safe. What PhilGoetz means is that if one site goes down or crashes or gets taken over by Martians or whatever, the other will still be fine. So, in that sense, it’s not single-point-of-failure.
Conditional on one site or the other going down, the second instance adds little buffer.
An ufai would simply focus its efforts on pieces of code likely to be common between the two sites, ensuring that it can take both down at the same cost. This also assumes that developing such an attack is costly, which it may not be: I would expect a sensory modality for code to reduce our commonly made coding blunders to the level of “my coffee cup is leaking because there’s a second hole at the bottom”.
I’m proposing that we set up a new discussion community such that Less Wrongers have a place to talk about off-topic stuff other than Open Thread (which is hugely overcrowded). If either LW or the subreddit crashes, it should have no effect on the other.