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Visualizing All ISBNs

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Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#121

Post by Over2Chars »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #59
globnomulous wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All action is "subjective and subject to biases that change over time". This is poppycock. Backing up all books -- the very action discussed by the person you're answering -- is by definition neither subjective nor subject to biases. > This would then imply I could never take any action, because it's just subjective and biased. And even if the first quoted claim were true, this, too, clearly isn't. Nowhere does the…

Thanks for this. I wasn't going to feed the trolls; but you are not wrong > this is the snottiest, rudest, least constructive comment I've seen on HN in quite some time I wish ;-). I see a lot worse here regularly. But it's certainly not nice behavior. Luckily, I have a thick skin.

Anyone who takes a position you don't like is, presumably, a troll.

Well, it takes one to know one. So there.

Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#122

Post by Over2Chars »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #61
Over2Chars wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All action is "subjective and subject to biases that change over time". This would then imply I could never take any action, because it's just subjective and biased. Maybe that's an exaggeration of your position, but you do seem to be suggesting inaction or the impossibility of judgement. I reject this position 100%. I would suggest that judgement is a critical part of our civilization, and it's judgement that says t…

I don't think you're doing it on purpose, but this is Holocaust denial. The Nazis did destroy all extant copies of several works – for example, research of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft . (Edit: Some Judaica were sent to Prague instead of being destroyed – though apparently Hitler's planned Judaism Museum is an urban myth.) They absolutely were trying to utterly destroy – not just symbolically reject – vast swa…

Hmm... Godwin's law much?

My argument is that the symbolic rejection, not the practical destruction of books, was important. Also, I pointed out through a subtle (too subtle for you so I'll spell it out: this is a wholly irrelevant argument - arguing that books don't deserve to be backed up has nothing to do with book burning) - so I played along - as I noted. Get it?

The practical destruction of all books considered non-German, or Gandhi's destruction of all British fabrics - might have been a desire, but there's no need to publicly burn books to destroy them. They can be efficiently destroyed privately. The Nazi's could have destroyed all the books they liked in some private little place.

Ergo, my argument stands! PUBLIC book burning is about PUBLIC rejection of something (non-German elements, or Foreign made goods, etc) and may in fact be less efficient than simply quietly and privately putting them in a landfill which no one will see. Get it?

I'm not making stuff up about World War Two, I'm arguing about a ridiculous analogy to not backing up romance novels being akin to book burning. Apparently, not wanting to back up romance novels and cookbooks makes one a holocaust denier. Go Hacker News.

Mr. Godwin? Are you around?

Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#124

Post by Over2Chars »

lyu07282 wrote: post #62
simpaticoder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sturgeon's Law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law ) states "90% of everything is crap" so you're not too far off.

This thread should've really summoned Jason Scott, I remember him causally mentioning that he has a backup of every single 4chan post ever made (99% crap in that case, but probably invaluable for future generations of sociologists/historians who want to piece back together where it all went wrong).

Hmm, maybe we need some "Over2Chars' Future Value Law of Garbage" that says for any pile of garbage there is someone who thinks it will be extremely valuable to someone someday.

How plausible the argument to the value is depends on the eloquence of the person under the Law.

This is the logic of hoarders everywhere.

Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#125

Post by Over2Chars »

lyu07282 wrote: post #63
tiagod wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the case. IIRC The British Library has copies of all published material in the UK, including flyers and such. What seems banal and useless to you, might be extremely important for future historians, and to be honest, books are pretty compressible and storage is cheap.

I think its a law in almost all nations in fact that forces publishers to sent a copy of everything they publish to a national archive like that (the US equivalent is the Library of Congress). If you bring up the topic of preservation, most people won't understand why, or even be opposed to the idea, goes to show that sometimes its a good idea to ignore the ignorant public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

A rule that dates back to when books were rare, expensive, and useful I suspect.

Many books are just electronic garbage at this point, and backing them all up is like going to a landfill and saying "We should make another one, exactly like this one, in case this landfill proves to be valuable to someone, someday."

It might be useful for LLM training to produce garbage. Although many say they already do a good job at that already.

Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#128

Post by lyu07282 »

Over2Chars wrote: post #125
lyu07282 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a law in almost all nations in fact that forces publishers to sent a copy of everything they publish to a national archive like that (the US equivalent is the Library of Congress). If you bring up the topic of preservation, most people won't understand why, or even be opposed to the idea, goes to show that sometimes its a good idea to ignore the ignorant public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

A rule that dates back to when books were rare, expensive, and useful I suspect. Many books are just electronic garbage at this point, and backing them all up is like going to a landfill and saying "We should make another one, exactly like this one, in case this landfill proves to be valuable to someone, someday." It might be useful for LLM training to produce garbage. Although many say they already do a good job at…

I don't think you seriously suggest that there aren't books worth saving published even today, so the argument left over is who determines what is worth saving? The only reasonable answer to that question is: nobody.

Re: Visualizing All ISBNs

#129

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

n2d4 wrote: post #106
graypegg wrote: post #90

I see that bounty at the bottom, so tossing away my chances here, but this visualization is just asking to be mapped onto a Hilbert Curve. [0] When you "stripe" the data like this, points that are sorted close together could end up pretty far apart, since a distance in the Y axis skips an entire row of data as you move down, rather than a distance in the X axis which is 1-to-1 with the source data. If you map it onto…

What property makes the Hilbert curve desirable compared to, say, a snake pattern, with which neighbouring ISBNs are also neighbours in the visualisation? The worry I have with Hilbert curves is that they make the result look like there are distinct "squares" of data [0] when really this is just an artifact of how Hilbert curves work. In that sense, the current visualization is more useful, because it's straightforwa…

> What property makes the Hilbert curve desirable compared to, say, a snake pattern, with which neighbouring ISBNs are also neighbours in the visualisation?

2D neighbourhood is better than 1D one

> The worry I have with Hilbert curves is that they make the result look like there are distinct "squares" of data

that's the point, tho? instead of distinct lines of taken ISBNs in a row, you get distinct squares if taken ISBNs in a row - much more noticeable

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