CIA to Sunset the World Factbook • Hacker News Board

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#101

Post by chuckadams » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #68

afavour wrote: post #3

Feels very short sighted, the Factbook is a great example of low cost soft power.

Or maybe a conscious decision, as neoconservative Robert Kagan writes: "President Trump has managed in just one year to destroy the American order that was and has weakened America's ability to protect its interests in the world that will be. Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive. Wait until they start paying for what comes next," https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5699388/is-the-u-s…

> Wait until they start paying for what comes next

They'll just blame liberals and double down on the authoritarianism as they've always done.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#102

Post by sofixa » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

> Wikipedia

There is nothing wrong with Wikipedia, at least in the main languages. It's crowdsourced and has citations (and where there aren't "citation needed" help identify that).

It gives you superficial, in depth and factual information, with links to sources for more details if needed.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#103

Post by philipwhiuk » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #69

hk__2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody, you just mention the different points of view that are in the sources.

Which nobody does (really) because it turns into a giant narcissist shit fight then for who can come up with the most absurd ‘truthy’ answer for publicity. Everyone has to end up filtering at some point or it’s all just noise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico_naming_controve... There's an entire article on it.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#104

Post by pardon_me » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #65

regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

At least Wikipedia is supposed to cite its sources, while AIs don’t.

AIs that were trained on data obtained through naughty channels actively avoid citing sources and full passages of reference text, otherwise they'd give the game away. This seems to increase the chance of them entirely hallucinating sources too.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#105

Post by sofixa » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #100

hk__2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Wikipedia is supposed to cite its sources, while AIs don’t.

Have you used one recently? The big providers all cite sources if give a research prompt.

Sometimes they hallucinate them, or if they exist, sources include blatant nonsense (like state owned propaganda, such as RT) / don't support the claims made by the output.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#106

Post by SanjayMehta » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

notRobot wrote: post #27

Antibabelic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the information on Wikipedia comes from? Not that Wikipedia strongly relies on The World Factbook, but it can't exist without other secondary sources like these.

Wikipedia is actually the secondary source when someone reads a page on it, and it requires primary sources (like factbooks) to cite to exist.

Wikipedia does not allow primary sources.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#107

Post by vdqtp3 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #92

adammarples wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this soft power and what can the US do with it?

Having friends means that you can build bases where if you ask nicely, rather than having to invade. It prevents those friends from undermining you in a lot of cases. It makes them help you when you need, e.g. to get your hands on someone plotting attacks against you. It makes them more likely to trade with you under advantageous terms. I am sure you could think about at least a dozen other cases in a couple of minut…

> build bases where if you ask nicely, rather than having to invade

How much of that actually came from soft power rather than "hard power", like USA actions in WW2?

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#108

Post by im3w1l » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

lyu07282 wrote: post #91

kergonath wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation. Even then, political motivation in itself does not make it inaccurate. It’s easy to see why a liberal democracy supposed to defend liberty across the globe would be interested in making facts accessible. Facts and education are the best way to fight obscurantism and totalitarianism. It’s also easy to see why a regime sliding back towards autocracy would hav…

[flagged]

You're too naive if you think it's completely true, but too cynical if you think it's completely false.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#109

Post by Noumenon72 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #49

nanna wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit confused, what's this to do with the CIA World Factbook?

> this book has little difference between total words and distinct words because it has so many distinct numbers in it. It ended up being a regular stress test to make sure our approach to capping memory use was working

So the factbook is an actual book too? That's what I missed, I thought it was a webpage so this was referring to some other post.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#110

Post by SanjayMehta » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #75

Facts always create problems for authoritarian regimes. So they do everything they can do get rid of facts. The primary reason they spread disinformation is not to get people to believe the nonsense (which is merely an occasional bonus), it is to get people to give up on finding the truth. Once people have no substantial quantity or quality of truth, they can be entirely manipulated. This regime is following the stan…

This regime is just following the same path openly.

Give Trump some gold points for not being a hypocrite like all of his predecessors.