4 ms·

Anna’s Archive has backed up the world’s largest comics shadow library

68 points by Bugaddr 3y ago

pilimi_anna 3y ago
Author here. Happy to answer questions. We're excited to finally be getting this collection out there!
- toyg 3y ago
  Meritorious work, but one huge file makes it hugely impractical. Am I really supposed to find local space for 12TB of stuff if I'm just after a few series, i.e. probably a couple of GBs at best? Or is there some torrent hackery that allows me to peek inside the file and only get the chunks I want?
  - pilimi_anna 3y ago
    The torrents are only for hard-core data hoarders. If you want just a few individual files, you can use Anna's Archive.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  You are doing some solid work regardless of " ethical" considerations that IP laws impose. Please be safe and don't be greedy. Have seen many icons fall over the years.
boramalper 3y ago
> For every $2k that we raise, we’ll release another big torrent! I’m worried that tying monetary benefits to the release of (others’) intellectual property won’t end up well for them.
- pilimi_anna 3y ago
  Yeah, maybe not the best idea. And pointless, because we intend to release all torrents soon anyway (most are still processing)! Removed this part, thanks for the feedback.
  - gigglesupstairs 3y ago
    So glad to see you here and thanks so much for anna’s archive, it has been super helpful to me personally for access to so many books mostly inaccessible to normal people in my country due to exhorbitant pricing structures.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
> That’s better for your hard drive and torrent software than a gazillion smaller files. Oh, that's for sure. Is there an easy way to mount .tar on Windows? I have some library data which would benefit from serving as a single/a couple of large files, but most of the folks would be on Windows. VHDX is out of question (would be modified as soon as mounted)... maybe .iso ?
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  For the use case of "mountable archive on windows" there's .wim files, but that use case is pretty small and there is no reason to pick it over .iso here.
- pilimi_anna 3y ago
  Not sure about Windows. On Linux we use https://github.com/mxmlnkn/ratarmount https://github.com/mxmlnkn/ratarmount
iudqnolq 3y ago
Curious why you don't consider refactoring the file layout before making the torrent.
- pilimi_anna 3y ago
  Good question! We did consider that, but the structure of the directories themselves conveyed a ton of information, so ultimately we thought that it was better to keep it like this.
alterdaddy 3y ago
20000$ for making torrents from comics taken from LibGen? Are you serious? Damn, you even worse than Z-Library. At least they did a real job and haven’t run away after taking money, like you after receiving donations and shutting down IPFS seeding because of your technical incapability to maintain IPFS hosting.
stavros 3y ago
It's a shame that there doesn't exist a tool where you can say "I want to seed X gigabytes of this dataset" and it automatically selects and seeds the X rarest GB". It would be fantastic for distributing storage for archivists, while the data set could still be edited and added to and downloaded and automatically balanced across the seeders. Does such a thing exist? Why isn't it more widely used, and everyone still relies on immutable torrents?
- ankaAr 3y ago
  That is a really nice idea for datahoarders like me. A protocol to announce a change on the collection by one of their members and being announced by the whole system.

68 points by Bugaddr 3y ago

pilimi_anna 3y ago

Author here. Happy to answer questions. We're excited to finally be getting this collection out there!

toyg 3y ago
Meritorious work, but one huge file makes it hugely impractical. Am I really supposed to find local space for 12TB of stuff if I'm just after a few series, i.e. probably a couple of GBs at best? Or is there some torrent hackery that allows me to peek inside the file and only get the chunks I want?
- pilimi_anna 3y ago
  The torrents are only for hard-core data hoarders. If you want just a few individual files, you can use Anna's Archive.
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
You are doing some solid work regardless of " ethical" considerations that IP laws impose. Please be safe and don't be greedy. Have seen many icons fall over the years.

boramalper 3y ago

> For every $2k that we raise, we’ll release another big torrent! I’m worried that tying monetary benefits to the release of (others’) intellectual property won’t end up well for them.

pilimi_anna 3y ago
Yeah, maybe not the best idea. And pointless, because we intend to release all torrents soon anyway (most are still processing)! Removed this part, thanks for the feedback.
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago
  So glad to see you here and thanks so much for anna’s archive, it has been super helpful to me personally for access to so many books mostly inaccessible to normal people in my country due to exhorbitant pricing structures.

justsomehnguy 3y ago

> That’s better for your hard drive and torrent software than a gazillion smaller files. Oh, that's for sure. Is there an easy way to mount .tar on Windows? I have some library data which would benefit from serving as a single/a couple of large files, but most of the folks would be on Windows. VHDX is out of question (would be modified as soon as mounted)... maybe .iso ?

Dylan16807 3y ago
For the use case of "mountable archive on windows" there's .wim files, but that use case is pretty small and there is no reason to pick it over .iso here.
pilimi_anna 3y ago
Not sure about Windows. On Linux we use https://github.com/mxmlnkn/ratarmount https://github.com/mxmlnkn/ratarmount

iudqnolq 3y ago

Curious why you don't consider refactoring the file layout before making the torrent.

pilimi_anna 3y ago
Good question! We did consider that, but the structure of the directories themselves conveyed a ton of information, so ultimately we thought that it was better to keep it like this.

alterdaddy 3y ago

20000$ for making torrents from comics taken from LibGen? Are you serious? Damn, you even worse than Z-Library. At least they did a real job and haven’t run away after taking money, like you after receiving donations and shutting down IPFS seeding because of your technical incapability to maintain IPFS hosting.

stavros 3y ago

It's a shame that there doesn't exist a tool where you can say "I want to seed X gigabytes of this dataset" and it automatically selects and seeds the X rarest GB". It would be fantastic for distributing storage for archivists, while the data set could still be edited and added to and downloaded and automatically balanced across the seeders. Does such a thing exist? Why isn't it more widely used, and everyone still relies on immutable torrents?

ankaAr 3y ago
That is a really nice idea for datahoarders like me. A protocol to announce a change on the collection by one of their members and being announced by the whole system.