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Is the ArXiv safe from the current US Government attacks?
- ColinWright 2y agoThe thread continues, also asking about GitHub, anyone using Microsoft services, BlueSky, and Apple. Mentioning DEI, equality, representation ... do these make something a target for cessation of funding and possible seizure? People are making sure they have off-continent backups of everything ...
- cgcrob 2y agoNothing is safe unless you fully control it yourself. But your points are more around the legislative issues than the funding which is valid but a separate issue. On that I’ve been unpicking the tie in mess I got myself into for 2 years now. I have got control over my data but not always things I reference which is where this problem comes in. Recently a relative died and I’ve seen how a simple non technical person is screwed already due to iCloud dependency etc.
- mmooss 2y agoIs it safe if you fully control it? You are subject to pressure too.
- cgcrob 2y agoThere’s an asymptote of safety. You can be beaten with a hose to hand it over if it’s in the cloud or not. But if it’s in the cloud then they don’t need to beat you with a hose. They just legislate that they can take it and then do it. My data is safer if they have to beat me with a hose to get it first.
- cindylmcindy 2y agoCorrection: nothing is safe.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoessentially the theory of LOCKSS https://www.lockss.org/ https://www.lockss.org/ would mean that only controlling something yourself cannot keep it safe from the threat of destruction. There are just different metrics of safety - there is also safety from revealing, and that is probably most safe if you control it all yourself, even though that increases risk of destruction and loss.
- josephg 2y agoThe government doesn’t fund any of those services. None of that stuff is under threat from trump.
- throwawa14223 2y agoI think you're correct? Those services seem unrelated to what is going on and I thought I was missing something.
- dashundchen 2y agoThe current government has shown they're more than willing to weaponize the DOJ and other departments against people and speech they don't like. See the AP News incident this week where the White House banned AP from the WH press pool for publishing the words Gulf of Mexico. Seriously. Or the weaponization of corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Private companies will not be exempt from the fascist retaliation. If Apple or Microsoft is hosting something they perceive as a threat, they will exert pressure to take it down - constitution or laws be damned.
- milesrout 2y agoEric Adams alleges the charges were brought against him by the Biden administration for political reasons. They were dropped by Trump's administration. How does that show that Trump is weaponising the DOJ? Surely the opposite is true. The White House press pool thing has nothing to do with the DOJ or the justice system generally. Dropping charges against your political opponents is not a hallmark of fascism. There is ZERO evidence of Trump putting pressure on third parties to take anything down. On the other hand, the Twitter files proved that the Biden administration was pressuring Twitter to censor stories it didn't like, and it did the same with Facebook.
- computerthings 2y ago> Eric Adams alleges the charges were brought against him by the Biden administration for political reasons. Sp what if he "alleges" that. The question is whether he is corrupt. > Dropping charges against your political opponents is not a hallmark of fascism. Of course not, dropping them against yourself and your movement is. As in "he who saves the country can violate no law", in the words of Trump.
- pred_ 2y ago> do these make something a target for cessation of funding and possible seizure? Yes, there's a general funding purge in process, causing uncertainty about outstanding NSF grants. OP mentioning DEI specifically might be in reference to e.g. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/2/cruz-led-investigation-uncovers-2-billion-in-woke-dei-grants-at-nsf-releases-full-database https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/2/cruz-led-investigatio... Some earlier discussions on that one in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43048077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43048077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43046466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43046466 Tao made some remarks on what this means in practice here: https://mastodon.social/@tao@mathstodon.xyz/113910073958891062 https://mastodon.social/@tao@mathstodon.xyz/1139100739588910...
- belter 2y agoWithin 4 years, Europe from top to bottom, will be running on Linux. Massive layoffs will hit the US Defense industry as no sane nation ever will buy again a US weapon. Cloud vendors will have to split hard their operations or see revenue cut in half.
- sampo 2y ago2029, the year of Linux on the desktop.
- impossiblefork 2y agoFor my mother, the year of Linux on the desktop was this year. Basically, she got enough of Windows, mostly due to subscriptions, that there was news being shown in the browser, and some other related issues and she was incredibly happy with Ubuntu (which is of course American, but since it's free and gratis, it doesn't really matter, and there's always SUSE). She liked the cleanness, the absence of distractors, how it was clearer what was in the cloud and what was on the local machine, that she wasn't paying any continuous fee for LibreOffice and the happiness this switch brought was huge. The only reason people are still using Windows is gaming and that it's a default on the machines at computer- and electronics stores. They'd be happy with Linux, they'd be more productive with Linux and they'd be calmer with Linux.
- mmooss 2y ago> The only reason people are still using Windows is gaming Also, almost every corporation and similar large-scale deployment, for management and compatibility purposes.
- impossiblefork 2y agoI suppose, but it should mostly be a quick matter to switch away from it.
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- jslezak 2y agoWe need teams of people working on decentralizing any important information sources like this, with mirrors and open protocols that don’t have single points of failure
- lr1970 2y agoShould sci-hub take arXiv under its wing? A great way to gain legitimacy.
- mmooss 2y ago> A great way to gain legitimacy. Is that sarcastic? arXiv is legal and mainstream, used by professionals; sci-hub is illegal.
- PaulHoule 2y agosci-hub is still used by professionals even though it is illegal
- mmooss 2y agoProfessionals in wealthy countries have access to licensed, legal sources. Do you mean people in other countries?
- _Algernon_ 2y agoWhen I had access to academic journals through my (western, wealthy) institution I would still mostly use scihub. The simple reason was that I got conditioned to doing that because the login wall to doing it legitimately was often too painful. At a certain point my workflow switched to checking scihub first, then going the legal path if scihub failed. It saves a lot of time, and I suspect it is a lot more common than most people think.
- jfaulken 2y agoI'm gonna guess they meant the other direction.
- NotYourLawyer 2y ago[flagged]
- whatshisface 2y agoNSF funding cutoffs. Arxiv isn't privately funded.
- pr337h4m 2y ago"Together, Cornell University, the Simons Foundation, members, affiliates, sponsors, foundations, and individual donors contribute to arXiv's operating budget." https://info.arxiv.org/about/funding.html https://info.arxiv.org/about/funding.html
- piker 2y agoTo be fair, Cornell is public. Edit: my mistake. I’ve always heard it referred to as a “state school” which is true given its land grant status and SUNY affiliation, but it is private.
- chungy 2y agoTo be fair, the original article (or posts?) makes no effort to assert why he thinks arXiv is in any risk for its continued existence. It's unlikely that Cornell will go away, nor the site they own.
- PessimalDecimal 2y agoFrom https://www.cornell.edu/about/ https://www.cornell.edu/about/: "Cornell is a privately endowed research university and a partner of the State University of New York."
- rpdillon 2y agoCornell University has seven colleges, three of which are public, and four of which are private. I'm an alum, but it's been a while, but my recollection is: Engineering, Arts and Science, Architecture, Hotel Administration are private, while: Industrial & Labor Relations, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology accept public funding. That info might be ~20 years out of date though.
- btrettel 2y agoI'm far more worried about open access archives under the US federal government's direct control. https://discover.dtic.mil/ https://discover.dtic.mil/ https://www.osti.gov/ https://www.osti.gov/ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/ https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/ https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/ (This one seems particularly difficult to archive.) https://eric.ed.gov/ https://eric.ed.gov/ All are great resources and it would be a shame if any of them were eliminated.
- PaulHoule 2y agoMost of all https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
- piecerough 2y agoWhat US government attacks?
- kordlessagain 2y agoMore like administration disrupting status quo, with a healthy dose of concern about services and process that are important and have historically been left to their own devices (freedom?) which are now being threatened based on what are known as a Hegelian dialectic, where simple worries are presented as higher problems to push alternate agendas. The news about NOAA is a good example. I think that one thing we’ll see that is common with manipulative people, is that we’ll see an argument formed that talking about things like this at any level will be considered pushing back on the manipulation and then it will be rationalized to “cut off” the critical thinkers by swamping the signal. When that happens here, perhaps sooner than later, you’ll jnow things are fixin’ to get interesting.
- aerostable_slug 2y agoMuch of that concern comes from a place of ignorance. Example: all the fretting about NNSA. Having worked with that agency, they have a fair number of people who don't directly have much to do with the nuclear weapons enterprise at all. Those include their social media team, recruiters who try to push going into the weapons community, and the like. There are also the normal administrative paper-pushers that flourish in Federal and state agencies. Getting rid of some of those people seems like a bad idea when NNSA is a black box that says "scary nukes here", but really isn't once you look inside a little bit. The job of recruiting people should be left to the companies that run the Labs. We don't need a social media team to publicize a statutorily-required agency. We could probably prune a bunch of admins and have little impact on the enterprise after a little bit of shakeup. Etc.
- dashundchen 2y agoWhy are you downplaying it? Musk and Trump wrecklessly terminated employees responsible for the maintenance and inspection of nuclear weapons. This isn't just a social media team. The loss of institutional knowledge for managing an arsenal of nuclear weapons has serious consequences for security. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/nuclear-nnsa-firings-trump/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/nuclear-nnsa-firings-... > Some of the fired employees included NNSA staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons. > It also included employees at NNSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons. A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because “no one has taken anytime to understand what we do and the importance of our work to he nation’s national security.” https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298190/nuclear-agency-trump-firings-nnsa https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298190/nuclear-agency-... > Just days before, officials in leadership had scrambled to write descriptions for the roughly 300 probationary employees at the agency who had joined the federal workforce less than two years ago. > Managers were given just 200 characters to explain why the jobs these workers did mattered.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dimal 2y agoIt’s important to remember that Musk and DOGE are starting a negotiation and anchoring with a very low initial offer. That’s not where the cuts will end up. But it gets the counterparty to imagine that pain and then when we land at a 10-20% cut (or whatever), they’ll think, “Whew! That’s not that bad!”
- analognoise 2y agoWhy is it every time they do something wildly stupid/crazy/disastrous for every part of America, there’s always somebody who says “yeah but that’s not REALLY what they’re doing”. Like they’ve done more damage to businesses with the tariff threats to Canada and Mexico than they’ll ever save in these “cuts”. Republicans first budget under “Trump priorities” is 4.5 trillion dollars of DEFICIT spending. None of the proposed tax plans balance anything, 100% in the red. They’ve left our networks open to foreign adversaries and weakened NATO. …but there’s always somebody who says “yeah, but that’s not what they MEANT”. I don’t get it.
- dimal 2y agoYou misunderstand. It is crazy. It is completely reckless. I’m not saying it’s ok or that I agree. I’m simply pointing out that this is a clear and obvious negotiation tactic. It’s a pattern that Trump and Musk have both followed over and over in their career. I’m saying, if you don’t want the cuts, DON’T FALL FOR IT. DON’T LET THEM ANCHOR HERE. Congress has the power of the purse, not DOGE. These 50% cuts will be as real as self driving Teslas.
- PaulHoule 2y agoarXiv used to have mirrors all over the world that got cut when the Cornell University Library did downsizing around 2005.
- rebanevapustus 2y agoI have zero compassion for ArXiv. Allow me to share a horror story: I was the victim of a pretty bizarre super in-your-face academic theft. Someone snooped a half-finished paper draft of mine off GitHub and...actually got it published in ArXiv and a "real" journal: https://forbetterscience.com/2023/10/30/stephensons-alternative-universes/ https://forbetterscience.com/2023/10/30/stephensons-alternat... In spite of having a full commit log (with GitHub verified commits!!!) of both the code AND the paper, both ArXiv and the journal didn't seem to care or bother at all. I went all the way to contacting Stanford, the institution that the thief falsely pretended to be affiliated with, to get them to help me with this. Stanford contacted ArXiv, and ArXiv then: 1. Removed the thief's upload: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.14810 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.14810 2. Allowed the thief to copyright strike MY (!!!!) own research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04214 https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04214 How does this make any sense? You remove somebody's stolen content, and then allow the thief to copyright strike it? what the fuck...
- OutOfHere 2y agoI am not supporting the theft, but it will make better sense when you realize that copyright holds little value in the real world outside of the court system. Next time, keep your repo private until you're ready to release everything together.
- cwbriscoe 2y agoI am sure he didn't need your "wise" advice to keep his repo private in the future.
- kordlessagain 2y agoI figured this could get flagged, just like the post on DOGE trademark. I’m pointing out that a legitimate discussion about the vulnerability of scientific repositories (arXiv) to policy/funding pressures was flagged on HN. This is ironic given HN's own guidelines state they welcome content that "gratifies intellectual curiosity" and represents "interesting new phenomena." The fact that a discussion about potential threats to open scientific repositories could be flagged/censored on HN effectively proves the very point being discussed - how platforms meant for technical and scientific discourse can be compromised by non-technical factors. For dang (HN's moderator): This kind of moderation appears to contradict HN's core mission. A discussion about safeguarding scientific repositories like arXiv is exactly the kind of substantive, technically-relevant content that should be welcome on HN. When even discussions about protecting scientific discourse get suppressed, it validates the original concern about vulnerability to censorship and control. It doesn’t matter what rationalization was used for censorship. If the threat exists to technical achievements, it must not be censored. Rules be damned. The irony is particularly sharp given that HN and arXiv share similar goals of fostering intellectual discourse and technical/scientific advancement.
- kennysoona 2y agoI guess this stuff is getting flagged as the discussions are devolving to politics. What I find more concerning is why the ostensibly educated population of HN readers wouldn't be unified on being on the right side of things.
- pixelpoet 2y agoI don't see how it's "devolving" into politics, because it fundamentally is about a political attack. It's as if someone is reacting to the library of Alexandria burning and getting told "now come on, don't make it political..."
- kennysoona 2y agoI kind of agree with you. What I mean is, I guess, is it devolves into unproductive political discussion, lots of stuff being asserted, lots of emotion, and little in the way of facts and evidence.
- PaulHoule 2y agoNote it is not funded by the government, but it is one of many publishing operations at Cornell that is concerned about risks that come from being in the US. They take donations https://info.arxiv.org/about/donate.html https://info.arxiv.org/about/donate.html
- caminanteblanco 2y agoThis feels like unsubstantiated fearmongering
- intermerda 2y agoWhy do you feel that way? As a hypothetical, what would need to happen in the current political environment so that you don't feel that it's unsubstantiated fearmongering?
- milesrout 2y agoLike the rest of this thread and many other similar threads.