Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team • Hacker News Board

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#481

Post by ndriscoll » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 12:10 PM UTC

paradox460 wrote: post #391

troupo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music got commoditized. In the 90s the good bands got lucky that their distributors picked them up and promoted them etc. You just don't remember the amount of crap that was on at any given point in time. Today you have instant access to millions of songs around the world in every genre imaginable: https://everynoise.com/ And not just to the whatever few records your local store carried, or what the Big Four paid the…

Always been the case. I have a late boomer early Gen x friend, who will insist that music was better back in the day, and that everyone was listening to Zeppelin and such, and nothing else. You can pull up the billboard charts for any year he waxes about and read off the top n, and rarely if ever find a track from the bands he claimed "everyone listened to." Survivorship bias is and always has been real. If you don't…

Are you talking about the billboard hot 100 (singles)? The billboard 200 (albums) seems like what you might expect. e.g. I believe Led Zeppelin never had singles but they had 2 number one albums in 1970.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_200_number-o...

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#482

Post by Firehawke » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 12:14 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #211

ndriscoll wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books seem somewhat unique to me in that the physical product is better or at least different from the digital one, so it kind of makes sense to buy it even if you already have a digital copy. This is unlike e.g. streaming services where the paid service is strictly worse than the pirated one (e.g. no offline, doesn't work at all with some monitors/setups, only low bitrates allowed).

"Better" is of course subjective. Digital is better to me: I can read the digital version on my laptop, phone, or e-reader. I prefer the e-reader, but don't like to carry it everywhere; at the very least I can always read on my phone if that's all I have on me. I'm someone who used to be a voracious reader. In my childhood alone I would devour paperbacks and hardcovers like nobody's business. My summers were spent de…

This is exactly the same for me. I definitely like being able to switch between a tablet/e-reader for regular reading and using my phone when I'm stuck waiting in line or transport.

I don't specifically need the physical book; space-wise it'd be difficult to keep all of the books I'd like to own. Just not enough space. That means that DRM becomes a major concern; I have absolutely no issue with stripping DRM for my own use whether it's a game, movie, music, or book.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#483

Post by Thorrez » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #258

jancsika wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi's pride: * ability to fund shadow libraries without fear of censorship * lists with a single item still count as lists

> ability to fund shadow libraries without fear of censorship Bitcoin is much worse than cash in that regard

How would it be feasible for Anna's Archive to accept cash?

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#484

Post by chung8123 » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 12:20 PM UTC

It is somewhat ironic that these archiving sites are what enable the massive LLM companies to get to where they are. I love the advancements of what people have accomplished but in the back of my conspiracy mind we have just enabled a few people to control a lot of information.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#485

Post by altern8tif » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

bdhcuidbebe wrote: post #480

vasco wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a saying about not being able to solve a social problem with technology. Bitcoin is the blueprint on how to do that. What problem did we solve with bitcoin?

The blockchain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

The blockchain isn't the problem. It's supposedly the solution.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#486

Post by Idesmi » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

haltcatchfire wrote: post #218

dfxm12 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I follow. There's no recommendation engine in AA, right? Do you download a bunch of books from AA, read them, then if you happened to like one enough, you will buy it from a local bookstore?

That’s exactly how I do it. I enjoy reading DRM-free epubs on my Kobo, and whenever I finished a book I enjoyed, I buy it from the local sci-fi bookshop. I buy about 90% of all books I read.

You have a SciFi bookshop? Where is it?

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#487

Post by Gareth321 » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:13 PM UTC

noirscape wrote: post #464

kemayo wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficult bit is working out what percentage of pirated copies are actually replacing a sale that would have happened if the content wasn't available to pirate. The more dramatic industry numbers like to claim it's 100%, which is ridiculous. It's certainly more than 0%, though. I'd assume that for your indie game, there were a lot of people who wound up thinking "I would play this if it's free, but I wouldn't spe…

The problem with game pass is that it takes the Spotify model to games. In practice, it doesn't seem to scale well - Microsoft has seemingly hit a market cap of ~35 million users because of a lot of existing aversion to subscription services in games, which isn't enough customers to actually amortize the cost of development, even at an indie scale. Indie developers in particular don't like Game Pass because it appare…

It's true that Game Pass subscriber growth has slowed, but I don't think 35 million is any kind of permanent cap. There are 910 million PC gamers in the world today, and this is growing by approximately 35 million per year. This is, of course, in addition to Xbox owners. As more people become PC gamers each year, more people discover and subscribe to Game Pass. Ditto for existing gamers who discover Game Pass, or decide to finally try it and stick. Tastes and expectations are changing, and just as we accepted subscriptions for music, I think subscriptions for gaming are becoming more normal.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#488

Post by AIPedant » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:16 PM UTC

Vektorceraptor wrote: post #444

AIPedant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information and well-crafted sentences are available on the Language Tree, easily plucked by anyone at zero cost. It's greedy for those so-called novelists and subject matter experts to expect a living wage. "Information wants to be free," which means that any cost of producing that information can be abstracted away due to ideological inconvenience.

Then show me the easily available "information on the langauge tree" to solve the unsolved problems in science. Btw. books are not mere information, they are also products of effort and sacrifice and intentions. They are also embedded in an economic system of paper, books, ink, transport and what not producers. So you are either poor or too lazy to buy a book from the store. But this doesn't justify mind theft or it'…

My comment was sarcastic.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#489

Post by rkomorn » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

Gareth321 wrote: post #487

noirscape wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with game pass is that it takes the Spotify model to games. In practice, it doesn't seem to scale well - Microsoft has seemingly hit a market cap of ~35 million users because of a lot of existing aversion to subscription services in games, which isn't enough customers to actually amortize the cost of development, even at an indie scale. Indie developers in particular don't like Game Pass because it appare…

It's true that Game Pass subscriber growth has slowed, but I don't think 35 million is any kind of permanent cap. There are 910 million PC gamers in the world today, and this is growing by approximately 35 million per year. This is, of course, in addition to Xbox owners. As more people become PC gamers each year, more people discover and subscribe to Game Pass. Ditto for existing gamers who discover Game Pass, or dec…

I've gotten tremendous value out of GamePass. I very rarely replay games, so all the games that swing by long enough on GamePass for me to play through and enjoy (and that I would otherwise never have bought) have made the subscription model work really well.

It has also reduced my game "clutter" in a way I very much appreciate.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#490

Post by goku12 » Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

gia_ferrari wrote: post #85

goku12 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptography has negative connotations? Like what? Do you mean cryptocurrency by any chance? (If so, it's feasible to practice cryptography without touching cryptocurrency).

Not op, but in my bubble: - DRM. - Owner-unfriendly device locks (such as manufacturer-controlled secure boot or locked-down OSes). - Inability to audit network traffic from one's own devices, i.e. an IoT device. - Remote attestation, when in opposition to open computing. I could also see folks seeing the use of cryptography as "having something to hide" - I don't personally agree.

DRM, device locks and remote attestation are hate-worthy uses of cryptography. But don't you think that crypto has far more well known and beneficial uses? I have a hunch that even a layperson will understand the implications if anybody decided to ban E2EE or secure messengers. Not to mention the fact that the solutions for those clandestine uses are also based on crypto and reverse engineering.

If I correctly understand your point, you're highlighting the importance of perceptions. But I was under the impression that crypto is perceived as good in spite of its unpleasant applications.