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I Am Parting with My Crypto Library
- speeder 5y agoI really hope some public institution will pick it up :)
- 3maj 5y agoI hope it ends up in good hands!
- hellbannedguy 5y agoI wouldn't give it to most institutions, especially the rich boy schools. My father had some 16mm footage of Lon Chaney. After talking to someone at UCSF, they offered him a vhs tape for the original, and all the rights. It always bothered me. (lon Chaney was an actor, and some of you might recognize the name from old horror movies. He did all his own makeup. And no--UCSF is not a rich boy school.)
- hn_go_brrrrr 5y agoThe only reason I recognize the name is Zevon's "Werewolves of London".
- sparky_z 5y agoThat was a reference to his son, Lon Cheney Jr, best known for his starring role in The Wolf Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_Man_(1941_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_Man_(1941_film)
- linsomniac 5y agoWas it? It has one line which says "Lon Chaney" and another that says "Lon Chaney Junior". I had assumed it was referring to the father and the son, but maybe it's referring only to the younger.
- techbio 5y agoYour first instinct was correct, both walking with the Queen, doing the werewolves of London.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y agoResearch libraries aren't exactly rich. Their regular budget barely covers employees, maintenance, subscriptions, and new releases, so they don't tend to splurge on such "collectibles". It's also quite common for individuals' archives to be donated to libraries, since they provide the service of maintaining it and allowing public access. Plus, they are non-profits. So it's not completely unlike taking your dog to an animal shelter and expecting money. Maybe not quite as extreme, and not morally wrong or anything, but probably just unusual, and it may not even have registered with the person that they are negotiating.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tingletech 5y agoWhy would a medical school collect that?
- Ericson2314 5y agoMaybe to send to UCLA? :)
- sperm 5y agoThe only scenario I could see 150 feet of Bruce Schneiers old cryptography books adding value at this point is if they have his notes in them.
- weinzierl 5y agoThis, plus the information which books Bruce Schneier selected for his library and which he omitted. The books themselves are pretty worthless, agreed, but someone might buy it as a collection that might have some worth in and by itself.
- sramsay 5y agoHe sounds like he has no concept of the book market at all, and like most people, vastly overestimates what his collection is worth. I guarantee you he will pay someone to haul those books away.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ink_13 5y agoI don't agree. Sounds like the right interested party could get the collection for just the cost of shipping, which seems reasonable to me.
- sramsay 5y agoIt’s the “interested party” part that’s hard. He might be a collector of rare works in the area, but it doesn’t sound like it. So it’s likely the value of the collection as a collection lies with the name attached to it. But trust me: People thousands of times more famous than him have trouble with this. But I’m reacting more to his certainty that he will have so many people wanting to pay for his books, that he’ll actually be trying to decide whether this or that library will have the privilege (and that he’s being magnanimous by not charging for it). Again, he really doesn’t understand the book market. It would have been wiser to ask a local bookseller to take a look (and tell him the brutal truth) before posting his “offer.”
- spoonjim 5y agoBut the local bookseller won’t have any idea who he is or what the material is. His blog readers do.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoThe question is whether there will be any interested party. Most of the documents in his library are probably not worth anything. But there is also no harm in trying. Perhaps his celebrity will lend the library worth it would not have had on its own.
- bhickey 5y agoAnyone want to ping Jason Scott on Twitter?
- pabs3 5y agohttps://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1421201702363992077 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1421201702363992077
- ianai 5y agoDoes this mean retirement?
- Proven 5y agoThought he decided to step down as the maintainer of his crypto.lib ...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- neilv 5y agoHopefully it will be digitized, for everyone's benefit. There might be documents in there that otherwise are effectively lost to most of the world. (The other day, I couldn't even find a Usenix C++ proceedings from early '90s online. Stroustrup and other well-known people attended, Usenix was an unusually Internet-savvy organization at the time, and yet, if you were Web-searching, you might never learn that the conference ever happened.) BTW, I hope Schneier is well, and congratulate him on the bittersweet transition to a less book-weighted household. (I donated a significant collection of books, during a tricky move after grad school. I was gratified to see that a local library's SF collection was pretty much mine, but now very well-worn. However, I lost a set of out-of-print titles in a narrow technical niche, and I really wish they were available now, such as with good digitization.)
- mike_d 5y agoI received an email from Bruce that he is in discussions with the Internet Archive and two Universities, so it sounds like the books will end up in a good home and likely digitized.
- Firehawke 5y agoGlad to see my initial immediate mental reaction of "He should get in touch with IA" was right. If there was ever a team that could get this dealt with properly, it's them.
- MichaelMoser123 5y ago(wild speculation) if Bruce Schneier is selling his library: does that imply that quantum computers have managed to break crypo keys and he got disilussioned with the subject? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KGG3YBhU_0&t=95s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KGG3YBhU_0&t=95s the link tells about Zuchongzhi quantum computer 10 billion times faster than Sycamore by Google)
- seanhunter 5y agoNo it does not imply that.
- Goety 5y agoI love his blog and I'm curious as to why he's getting rid of his books.