I mean Claude literally does not have eyeballs, it cannot feel discomfort, it does not need to squint, it cannot be annoyed by low contrast, and it cannot desire something better, it will not seek to improve this unprompted as a human would to "scratch its own itch".
For that to matter, the user has to bother setting it up, but the user is too lazy to do that, the user doesn't want to do anything at all, which is why they asked Claude to do it
The real irony about the seething and salty tears being spilled over the loss of the site: Aren't the CIA world-renowned experts in propaganda? What better way to run an influence campaign than publishing your own "factbook"?
That proves it was never about the content; rather, the time and by whom it was removed.
CIA Factbook was mundane things like population, land area, system of govt, major exports, etc. Stuff that is now on the right-hand sidebar of Wikipedia. Presumably it was made for US govt employees to have a basic understanding of other countries. It was useful to do a 7th grade research report on Uzbekistan circa 1997.
Thank you for including data sources as well as some basic data analysis. The scatter plots are quite helpful in analyzing some demographic assumptions that often arise when discussing economic and social development.
You know what else they killed? The SIGAR.mil website (special inspector general for afghan reconstruction), the congressionally chartered oversight/audit entity that had a very well laid out website with chronological ordered list of every document that the SIGAR had ever produced. But no, let's sweep it under the rug.
All of its PDF are still out there in the public domain, just scattered and not well organized in a single set of tabular pages. Here's its final report for an example of what it did.
The Biden admin already had a plan in place to dissolve the agency months before the 2024 election even took place. The government tends to not maintain websites for organizations that don't exist anymore. It's hard to get staff to keep the site running when you have zero employees. Not everything is a conspiracy.
You are just making stuff up.
This is what happens when you get your facts from Reddit.
I'm not even going to bother writing several long paragraphs lecturing you on the Trump administration plan to hand the country back to the Taliban, which was executed in early spring 2020 in the "Doha Peace Deal" during the peak of covid19, when the world news media was thoroughly distracted.
The internet was so fucking great up until around the time facebook showed up and became overbearing. Starting with an era of 'multimedia' CD-ROMs and first wave of internet, through the second wave of internet around the dotcom era and the third era of "AJAX" it felt really open, accessible, full of everything.
I can't tell for sure what happened around 2005 or so, youtube spawned up as well and it seemed for a while it was going great and then things started dying off, getting walled-in and dying within those walls as well.. I don't know how it happened, maybe as Hemingway put it - two ways. gradually, then suddenly.
Factbook was one such place that carried memories of ye olde past.
Also, CIA FACTbook, not CIA FACEbook, although when you think about it and In-Q-Tel lol.
For those who aren't aware, the CIA World Factbook was a bit like a modern day atlas with many well sourced headline statistics about each and every country. Things like it's political structure, religion, economy, population, history etc.
I missed it recently when wanting to compare government revenue and expenditure for several countries. Without it, I didn't bother as I'd have to look figures up manually through each respective countries' own budget websites, and ensure I was comparing like-for-like, which would be miserable since every country has its own conventions. Therein lies the value of Factbook; all that miserable work was done for us.
The rationale for defunding was 'why should the US tax-payer fund something that's equally valuable for everyone in the world'. I think that's fair. But I lament its removal and wish the US could rattle the tin so other countries chip in and bring it back.
I always figured the answer was that the information was for the US Taxpayer, and if other countries would like to use it. well, it is not for them, but if they can get access, fine, The effort required to try and keep them out is not worth it.
Sort of the same reason US government works ends up in the public domain "This work was funded by the US citizens and as such it is owned by the US citizens(in the public domain), it is too much hassle to try and prevent non-US citizens access so if they can get a copy they are free to use it as well"
I don't think the rationale makes sense. If you want to provide a free resource why not just provide it for free for everyone, considering it doesn't even cost anything because downloads/online lookups are not a limited resource. Not everything has to be in "competition" with other countries. The whole mindset that if it doesn't give enough of an advantage to one countries people over everyone else means it shouldn't be done at all is very weird.
The CIA most certainly has this information already. Surely making that info in to a basic web page isn't going to cost more than a couple of thousand per year?
52 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 74.2 ms ] threadMaybe @dang can fix the autocorecto
(p.s. @dang doesn't work - I just saw this randomly. If you want semi-reliable message delivery, hn@ycombinator.com is the only thing that works.)
Traffic was likely low and did not justify the manpower for upkeep.
darkreader.org helps.
Low effort looks like low effort, even if you have an AI helping.
I mean Claude literally does not have eyeballs, it cannot feel discomfort, it does not need to squint, it cannot be annoyed by low contrast, and it cannot desire something better, it will not seek to improve this unprompted as a human would to "scratch its own itch".
but it's the 99% that don't care who are responsible for the low contrast websites we're talking about
Those 99% are going to make it harder to find the good 1%, too
c'est la vie
That proves it was never about the content; rather, the time and by whom it was removed.
You’ve earned yourself a bookmark :)
All of its PDF are still out there in the public domain, just scattered and not well organized in a single set of tabular pages. Here's its final report for an example of what it did.
https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/2145129/sigar-final-repor...
The Biden admin already had a plan in place to dissolve the agency months before the 2024 election even took place. The government tends to not maintain websites for organizations that don't exist anymore. It's hard to get staff to keep the site running when you have zero employees. Not everything is a conspiracy.
You are just making stuff up.
This is what happens when you get your facts from Reddit.
Then why do you keep editing your post doing just that?
> cost effectively nothing to keep up
That's not how it works in any competently run business or public sector.
> some sort of fascist apologist
Nice personal attack, bruh.
https://worldfactbookarchive.org/
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114530)
I can't tell for sure what happened around 2005 or so, youtube spawned up as well and it seemed for a while it was going great and then things started dying off, getting walled-in and dying within those walls as well.. I don't know how it happened, maybe as Hemingway put it - two ways. gradually, then suddenly.
Factbook was one such place that carried memories of ye olde past.
Also, CIA FACTbook, not CIA FACEbook, although when you think about it and In-Q-Tel lol.
I missed it recently when wanting to compare government revenue and expenditure for several countries. Without it, I didn't bother as I'd have to look figures up manually through each respective countries' own budget websites, and ensure I was comparing like-for-like, which would be miserable since every country has its own conventions. Therein lies the value of Factbook; all that miserable work was done for us.
The rationale for defunding was 'why should the US tax-payer fund something that's equally valuable for everyone in the world'. I think that's fair. But I lament its removal and wish the US could rattle the tin so other countries chip in and bring it back.
Sort of the same reason US government works ends up in the public domain "This work was funded by the US citizens and as such it is owned by the US citizens(in the public domain), it is too much hassle to try and prevent non-US citizens access so if they can get a copy they are free to use it as well"
There's also some propaganda power in maintaining a widely-cited encyclopedia (and maybe a psyops angle).
Terminating it for US citizens as well so no-one else can have it? That's more like small.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
this is the new open source site:
https://openfactbook.org/
https://archive.org/download/factbook-2020
Because America has a hammer which makes everything a nail.