121–130 of 438 posts
I see things like this, and I wonder why the following software doesn't exist: I want a piece of software to which I can add a collection of files, say multiple TB. The software will then behave a bit like a BitTorrent tracker, and know which peer has which files. A peer joining this swarm will be able to say "I want to donate X GB of space", and the tracker would tell it "OK, then download and seed these files, whic…
I wonder if there are any search engines dedicated to indexing these kinds of libraries. I know there's a decent one just for scihub, but it would be awesome if I could do a Google-style search that returned the contents of books, magazines and journal articles instead of just websites.
Wasn't that what google books was supposed to be?
To be fair, Z-Library doesn't charge unless you want to download more than 10 books per 24 hour period. That's per account and although they ask you not to open multiple accounts they don't seem to do anything to stop you.
What kind of fairness can there be in charging for stolen books? I believe in free access to education, but charging for these books they have no rights to is a whole other thing.
"Hey, wait, literally everyone could have the entire library of Alexandria in their house for a couple hundred bucks per person. Like, all the knowledge ever. Maybe that should be considered the good default of things.
At least one in every town that everyone could use, for free, forever, without restriction to ANY of the knowledge anyone desires."
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Yup, I read about that on Wikipedia, but I can't help but not care. If a company touts massive initiatives and then gets bogged down in lawsuits, it seems like they didn't do the basic due diligence to avoid that. (Uber, AirBNB, and others seem to also have these headwinds, though not to the extent that it led to permanent paralysis, so maybe Google made a bet they thought they'd win and then didn't, whereas these ot…
This well-written article, "Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria"[0], might change your mind on that. I found it to be a compelling and tragic story. Edit: actually, I think this would make a good submission. Looks like it hasn't been posted since 2017. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
> People have been trying to build a library like this for ages—to do so, they’ve said, would be to erect one of the great humanitarian artifacts of all time—and here we’ve done the work to make it real and we were about to give it to the world and now, instead, it’s 50 or 60 petabytes on disk, and the only people who can see it are half a dozen engineers on the project who happen to have access because they’re the ones responsible for locking it up.
Could have been great but it wasn't perfect for everyone so it was scraped because surely Congress would take up this noble quest...
I see things like this, and I wonder why the following software doesn't exist: I want a piece of software to which I can add a collection of files, say multiple TB. The software will then behave a bit like a BitTorrent tracker, and know which peer has which files. A peer joining this swarm will be able to say "I want to donate X GB of space", and the tracker would tell it "OK, then download and seed these files, whic…
This sounds very similar to ipfs. How does it differ?
It's not very convenient for archival, whereas the system I'm talking about would be (in my opinion, anyway).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From their FAQ: > Q: Should the Z-Library collection be added to Library Genesis? > A: Yes! However, it is tricky. Library Genesis splits out its collection between non-fiction and fiction. They also have relatively high quality standards. If you are interested in organizing all the books to meet their requirements, let us know.
Oh, it didn't come up to me to navigate "backwards". Thanks. Actually, their whole FAQ is quite more enlightening than just the linked page. http://pilimi.org/faq.html
I OCR'ed it, and I'm slowly fixing the errors and converting to epub.
Tedious, but interesting.
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At this point is worth noting that there are reputable sources for free books, such as public libraries and Project Gutenberg. I realize that neither source will satisfy many of the people on HN, simply because there is a need for current technical books.
What on earth does "reputable" mean here? Total compliance with the regulatory capture of publishing companies? Full support of the landgrab claims of the Disney corporation et al? You don't have to be an anarchist to look at the status quo and think some amount of civil disobedience is the correct, proper and right thing to do. Also believing that a claim, fully Disney supported, that such an amount of civil disobed…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't that what google books was supposed to be?
I assume Google abandoned this along with all their earlier mission statements in favour of building another chat app.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds very similar to ipfs. How does it differ?
IPFS can't give you the least-seeded files. It can't give you any files, you have to manually pin the set you want, and you pin all of it, and it won't automatically change. It's not very convenient for archival, whereas the system I'm talking about would be (in my opinion, anyway).