4 ms·

Perhaps one idea is to let people choose what they want to protect. This way people wanting to support it can have their mission.

card_zero 2y ago
I want it to protect all sorts of random obscure documents, mostly kind of crappy, that I can't predict in advance, so I can pursue my hobby of answering random obscure questions. For instance: * What is a "bird famine", and did one happen in 1880? * Did any astrologer ever claim that the constellations "remember" the areas of the sky, and hence zodiac signs, that they belonged to in ancient times before precession shifted them around? * Who first said "psychology is pulling habits out of rats", and in what context? (That one's on Wikiquote now, but only because I put it there after research on IA.) Or consider the recently rediscovered Bram Stoker short story. That was found in an actual library, but only because the library kept copies of old Irish newspapers instead of lining cupboards with them. The necessary documents to answer highly specific questions are very boring, and nobody has any reason to like them.
- oxygen_crisis 2y ago
  You could let users choose what to mirror, and one of those choices could be a big bucket of all the least available stuff, for pure preservationists who don't want to focus on particular segments of the data. Sort of like the bittorrent algorithm that favors retrieving and sharing the least-available chunks if you haven't assigned any priority to certain parts.
- deafpolygon 2y ago
  My favorite question is: whether or not Bowser took the princess to another castle.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Since the IA had a collection of emulators (some of them running online*), and old ROMs and floppies and such, it could probably help with that one too. * Strictly speaking, running in-browser, but that sounded like "Bowser" so I wrote online instead.
dawnerd 2y ago
You already can, they have torrents for everything.
- diggan 2y ago
  > they have torrents for everything Including the index itself? That would be awesome.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  Their torrents suck and IME don’t update to changes in the archive.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    This is accurate, their torrent-generating system is basically broken to the point of being useless.
  - addandsubtract 2y ago
    Aren't torrents terrible at handling updates in general? If you want to make a change to the data, or even just add our remove data, you have to create a new torrent and somehow get people to update their torrent and data as well.
    - blurbleblurble 2y ago
      There's a mutable torrent extension (BEP-46) but unfortunately I don't think it's widely supported. I think IPFS/IPNS is the more likely direction.
      - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        Which IA has moved into and hasn’t found much luck in, unfortunately.
        jpk 2y ago

card_zero 2y ago

I want it to protect all sorts of random obscure documents, mostly kind of crappy, that I can't predict in advance, so I can pursue my hobby of answering random obscure questions. For instance: * What is a "bird famine", and did one happen in 1880? * Did any astrologer ever claim that the constellations "remember" the areas of the sky, and hence zodiac signs, that they belonged to in ancient times before precession shifted them around? * Who first said "psychology is pulling habits out of rats", and in what context? (That one's on Wikiquote now, but only because I put it there after research on IA.) Or consider the recently rediscovered Bram Stoker short story. That was found in an actual library, but only because the library kept copies of old Irish newspapers instead of lining cupboards with them. The necessary documents to answer highly specific questions are very boring, and nobody has any reason to like them.

oxygen_crisis 2y ago
You could let users choose what to mirror, and one of those choices could be a big bucket of all the least available stuff, for pure preservationists who don't want to focus on particular segments of the data. Sort of like the bittorrent algorithm that favors retrieving and sharing the least-available chunks if you haven't assigned any priority to certain parts.
deafpolygon 2y ago
My favorite question is: whether or not Bowser took the princess to another castle.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Since the IA had a collection of emulators (some of them running online*), and old ROMs and floppies and such, it could probably help with that one too. * Strictly speaking, running in-browser, but that sounded like "Bowser" so I wrote online instead.

dawnerd 2y ago

You already can, they have torrents for everything.

diggan 2y ago
> they have torrents for everything Including the index itself? That would be awesome.
tourmalinetaco 2y ago
Their torrents suck and IME don’t update to changes in the archive.
- vundercind 2y ago
  This is accurate, their torrent-generating system is basically broken to the point of being useless.
- addandsubtract 2y ago
  Aren't torrents terrible at handling updates in general? If you want to make a change to the data, or even just add our remove data, you have to create a new torrent and somehow get people to update their torrent and data as well.
  - blurbleblurble 2y ago
    There's a mutable torrent extension (BEP-46) but unfortunately I don't think it's widely supported. I think IPFS/IPNS is the more likely direction.
    - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
      Which IA has moved into and hasn’t found much luck in, unfortunately.
      - jpk 2y ago