6 ms·
Show HN: Epstein Files Organized and Searchable
Hey all,
Throwaway in case this is assumed to be politcally motivated.
I spent some time organizing the Eptstein files to make transparency a little clearer. I need to tighten the data for organizations and people a bit more, but hopeful this is helpful in research in the interim.
- garciasn 11mo agoI would say these are 'tagged'; organized is a bit of a stretch, IMO. This is some sort of searchable index that reminds me a lot of what the web was like prior to Google; the Altavista days. It's just a jumble of poorly formatted text that isn't really contextually aware and is largely useless for the volume of textual documents. Then there's the whole 'I landed on an email that offers the text of an email that, I assume, the pertinent information is in the attachment listed, of which I cannot easily access. -- I'd be more interested to see how you enhance this in v2.
- baby_souffle 11mo ago> It's just a jumble of poorly formatted text that isn't really contextually aware and is largely useless for the volume of textual documents. I did a quick spot check and the lack of _clear_ date field is going to make contextualizing a bit trickier. It looks like most of the `email` have them but other types like `report` may have an unknown "first, created/circulated internally" date and a broader "the public can see it" date. Nevertheless, it's only a matter of time before this gets loaded into a graph DB so the context becomes more apparent similar to what the journalists did for the panama papers.
- searchepstein 11mo agoThanks for your feedback. Agreed it's not perfect and can be improved. That said, I wanted to put it out there in case it did help someone, even in it's imperfect state. Marked improvements incoming...
- domainn 11mo ago[flagged]
- mtmail 11mo agoWhat are you trying to say? It seems to be a brand new domain.
- domainn 11mo agoI'm saying that none of the site is indexable
- WolfeReader 11mo agoNah, I won't go to Google unless you pay me.
- wtfwhateven 11mo agoBrand new account, nonsensical comment... spambot?
- domainn 11mo agoWrong. And nothing nonsensical about my comment.
- tacker2000 11mo agoGreat job! Would be nice if the messages are formatted with just date, sender and message and the metadata is hidden in a popup or whatever.
- searchepstein 11mo agoThank you for the feedback. Unfortunately it's several thousand raw text files, and determining a single relevant date, sender and message for each file is a bit more complex than I had time for this week. Next week we'll make the files more readable, ingest & display the images, amongst other usabillity improvements.
- legitster 11mo agoThanks for putting this together. The stuff I am coming across in here is WILD. If you could find a way to make some of this more easily searchable/readable/etc. (Minimize headings/convert links/fix line breaks etc) BTW, the chat logs of other parties anonymous, but you can clearly tell these are with Steve Bannon: https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025408.txt https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025... https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027735.txt https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027...
- searchepstein 11mo agoNice finds! Yep, I've had a snoot-full of this project this week - but next week I'll start pulling in the images and making improvements. Thank you for the feedback!
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- berbec 11mo agoLooks great and terrifying, as expected.
- g-b-r 11mo agoThis is of course not what they're still trying to get released, so what is it based on? The stuff at https://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-committee-releases-additional-epstein-estate-documents https://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-committee-rele... ?
- elif 11mo agoThis is a noble gesture but you should know that this is a deliberate "drip" tactic that is utilized to soften the impact gradually, making the consumption and analysis of this data part of a broader social normalization process which works ironically against the interests of any substantial response that could occur. Essentially we are helping them brain hack the masses into accepting the status quo.
- torben-friis 11mo agoWeird that you could argue for the opposite effect. Slow drip and fight the quick news cycle forgetfulness by taking a front page spot for each drop.
- throwup238 11mo agoIIRC the slow drip was an explicit tactic used during the Snowden revelations and that seemed much more effective at getting everyone talking about it than Drake’s revelations or Congressional inquiries.
- accrual 11mo agoI have heard it framed as a slow drip to keep the pressure on those who signed on from recinding their support. Like a one-way parking ramp - making it more and more painful to reverse course.
- exasperaited 11mo agoExactly this. This week: not answering questions. Three weeks time: it’s old news. This pattern was used particularly effectively to escape scrutiny throughout Trump 1.
- dpkirchner 11mo agoThey're just going to say they can't release them because they've opened new investigations in to Democrats (and only Democrats) that appear in the trove.
- NedF 11mo ago[dead]
- jimt1234 11mo agohttps://couriernewsroom.com/news/we-created-a-searchable-database-with-all-20000-files-from-epsteins-estate/ https://couriernewsroom.com/news/we-created-a-searchable-dat...
- deadbabe 11mo agoYou need an AI to go through each one and assign a score of how damning it is so we can sort all files by that.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo agoEpstein MCP server may be useful.
- y-curious 11mo agoIt keeps telling me that it will only perform functions after I find someone to give him a massage?? Anyone else run into this bug?
- searchepstein 11mo agofeature
- searchepstein 11mo agohttps://searchepsteinfiles.com/collections/compelling https://searchepsteinfiles.com/collections/compelling
- deadbabe 11mo agoHow is this not the default front page
- searchepstein 11mo agoGlad you like. I just posted the images onto the site and I need to better orient default content. ty for the feedback.
- deadbabe 11mo agoyou're welcome it's good to see feedback incorporated
- ks2048 11mo agoZeteo News published some searchable archive. It seems this links the original (?) PDFs and provides a Google-based search. https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/search?collection=2283eeed70befac7 https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/search?collecti...
- stirfish 11mo agoI was expecting all emails, but there's some really grim stuff in here: https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/document-view?collection=2283eeed70befac7&p=1&docid=816503007b344c92_2283eeed70befac7_0&dapvm=2 https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/document-view?c...
- CamperBob2 11mo agoNote that this particular document was made public before the 2016 election, much less the 2020 election. As usual with Trump, nobody who cared had any power, and nobody who had any power cared. I expect that's how it'll play out this time... just another missed swing at the mad king.
- estearum 11mo agoEh I disagree. This is breaking through to more and more MAGA. It doesn’t feel like it because with each fracturing off of the moderate end of MAGA (insofar as that exists), the core gets more committed, more extreme, and therefore more vocal. This is on its way to being a very small but extreme group of citizens and a fairly large and extreme group of politicians (since backing up isn’t as easy as removing a yard sign and avoiding the topic in social engagements).
- MangoToupe 11mo agoEven having so much clear evidence why this is so absent from national discourse (namely, so many people from such a wide swath of society have been named, even if not in a directly incriminating manner), I'm shocked that there hasn't been more if a push to discuss the potential implications. The kind of money that could be made just speculating outside of partisan discourse is.... jaw-dropping. But it's really just independent people here and there, and mostly framed around some (typically partisan) polemic. Really leaves me scratching my head.
- CactusBlue 11mo agoHow long until people build EpsteinGPT that does semantic search on this?
- desireco42 11mo agoThank you for your service
- trebligdivad 11mo agoThis is an odd one; it seems to be the text of an AI book by James Tagg ? https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015675.txt https://searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015...
- y-curious 11mo agoVery curious how it got in there. I found this snippet while searching for the connection: “James Tagg, a tech entrepreneur, wanted to found a Penrose Institute in San Diego to pursue the consciousness theories. Penrose went along with the plan and Tagg set about fundraising. At a meeting of consciousness aficionados in 2017, Penrose was told there was someone who wanted to talk to him who might be willing to put big money into the institute. This turned out to be Jeffrey Epstein, who had for some time financed initiatives in physics as well as in mind and brain research. ‘I was sitting there talking to Jeffrey Epstein and he was asking me about this institute,’ Penrose told Barss. ‘Now I didn’t really know anything about him. He said he had these parties. He was wondering whether I’d be interested to go to New York. He could invite Woody Allen.’ Penrose’s colleagues told him that Epstein was a convicted sex offender; Penrose recommended to Epstein that he support a colleague of his, a female physicist, but decided to skip the party.” Could this be prompt injection or something that snuck an ai book in?
- mickael-kerjean 11mo agoWould love to know more about the underlying tech
- sema4hacker 11mo agoThis is the kind of web site that makes we wish searches were encoded in the URL (...search?page=40), so URL edits allow me to jump anywhere, especially to the last page.
- notjulianjaynes 11mo agoThis is great! I made an attempt at something similar, but putting it online was a bit beyond what I know how to do. https://github.com/JonGerhardson/Epsteindb https://github.com/JonGerhardson/Epsteindb
- doppelgunner 11mo ago[flagged]