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Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

#11

Hmm. It's kind of weird, because I think I actually used it in the 1990s, probably shortly before Wikipedia emerged. Ever since Wikipedia, I don't think I used the CIA world Factbook much at all, so in a way I guess this partly explains why the website is now defunct. But I am a tiny bit sad that it is gone, if only for a piece of nostalgia from the 1990s era. I think we need to be careful - yes, wikipedia has that i…

Glad I was able to get the original fact book data that other archivists have gathered over the years- Project Gutenberg (plain text), Wayback Machine (HTML zips and factbook.jsons, and one from the agency's websites

Re: Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

#13

What is its copyright status?

The data from the CIA World Factbook is in the public domain (being a U.S. Government work) and is free for anyone to use. The ETL scripts and data tools available in the GitHub repository are open source and licensed under the MIT License. However, the web application itself is proprietary software, with all rights reserved.

Re: Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

#16

Nice! One thing; you're supposed to write "Cannot confirm or deny my affiliation with the CIA"

That’s a bit of a canary is it not? You don’t need to say that and wouldn’t know to say that unless you had worked in the space or wanted us to think you did :)

Re: Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

#17
post #15
post #14

Site loads very slowly for me. Tried various devices and networks. Same for a friend of mine overseas.

Will scale the website

You should include this one, will also go away soon most likely:

https://www.cia.gov/resources/cia-maps/

Re: Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will scale the website

You should include this one, will also go away soon most likely: https://www.cia.gov/resources/cia-maps/

I'll start working on this now! Thank you for sending it! It will be interesting to see if I can incorporate them into the globes or when the country info pops up!
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