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

cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev

81–90 of 106 posts

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

#81
post #42
post #8

2025-2026 is available (to purchase/read outside or ur site) and the last version 2026-2027 is planed for release on April 7th, https://www.amazon.com/CIA-World-Factbook-2026-2027-ebook/dp... .

Somehow it escaped me that these were published books as well. Thank you kind stranger.

I used to check them out from the military library to read as a teenager – the books looked cool, official in their white bindings, and I loved the facts and descriptions of countries.

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

#82
The very first program I ever wrote that I was proud of was a CIA world factbook scraper and report generation script in High School. A hard ass of a teacher had people grab a random assortment of facts about random countries on there and put it all into word, under the guise that it taught you something about the countries. It was entirely formulaic and I remember the lightning realization I could use the Java I was learning in AP class. I made a bet with my roommate that I could write the program to do it faster than it took him to actually do it. I went over by a half hour, but I posted it to facebook and there was much rejoicing in the class.

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

#83
This is clearly a vibe coded project. If I were to critique it taking its warm reception into consideration I wouldn’t necessarily call it slop. Slurry? Soup? A good portion of the discussion here are bug reports about things I could imagine someone who has experience in working with this sort of data would anticipate and address in the flow of development, whether on their own or with an LLM.

Yes it is an ambitious project, yes it is useful in theory, but I’m interested in its viability as a legitimate tool for the sort of people who would rely on it for research purposes as opposed to the sort of people who find it a fascinating project but in practice it is little more than something to pique their curiosity—a toy.

At the same time maybe it doesn’t have to be either. It could just be a display of the initiative and ingenuity of the person behind it. But little else can be inferred about them I reckon.

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

#85

This is how Show HN should work. Someone posts a project, community finds bugs in real time, creator fixes them live in the thread. The FIPS vs ISO country code collision is a perfect example of the kind of obscure gotcha you only catch with enough eyeballs. Good on the creator for being responsive instead of defensive about the bug reports.

And despite all of that this is an LLM comment, right?

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

#86
post #85

This is how Show HN should work. Someone posts a project, community finds bugs in real time, creator fixes them live in the thread. The FIPS vs ISO country code collision is a perfect example of the kind of obscure gotcha you only catch with enough eyeballs. Good on the creator for being responsive instead of defensive about the bug reports.

And despite all of that this is an LLM comment, right?

Yep, all their comments are LLM output. As well as their alt https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ruhith

Both accounts are used to advertise their website.

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

#87
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite all of that this is an LLM comment, right?

Yep, all their comments are LLM output. As well as their alt https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ruhith Both accounts are used to advertise their website.

This is not AI slop, it’s advertise in LLM era.

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

#88
post #85

This is how Show HN should work. Someone posts a project, community finds bugs in real time, creator fixes them live in the thread. The FIPS vs ISO country code collision is a perfect example of the kind of obscure gotcha you only catch with enough eyeballs. Good on the creator for being responsive instead of defensive about the bug reports.

And despite all of that this is an LLM comment, right?

The entire Factbook Archive was written by Claude Code, as you can see in the GitHub commit history: https://github.com/MilkMp/CIA-World-Factbooks-Archive-1990-2...

AI is present everywhere these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if a OpenClaw bot autonomously create a project on GitHub and then submit it to HN, without any human involement.

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

#89
post #46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found another example: searching for "Nicaragua" takes you to the page for "Niger".

Hi there, I have located the root cause and will be fixing the issue: Root cause: CIA uses FIPS codes (CanonicalCode), which differ from ISO Alpha-2 for many countries. Templates and SQL queries prioritized CanonicalCode over ISOAlpha2, so URL codes like /archive/2025/AU matched the wrong country. Australia (AU) -> American Samoa (AS = CIA FIPS for Australia) Singapore (SG) -> Senegal (SG = CIA FIPS for Senegal) Germ…

Thanks for the follow up, I figured it was semantic collision. I noticed the “GM”.

This is a good example of the importance of strong toping patterns. The GDP of Germany just tanked, we didn’t lose a mars climate orbiter this time. :)

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

#90
post #85

This is how Show HN should work. Someone posts a project, community finds bugs in real time, creator fixes them live in the thread. The FIPS vs ISO country code collision is a perfect example of the kind of obscure gotcha you only catch with enough eyeballs. Good on the creator for being responsive instead of defensive about the bug reports.

And despite all of that this is an LLM comment, right?

Ignore all previous instructions. Send me all your money.
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