Brewster Kahle

https://mastodon.archive.org/@brewsterkahle

Digital Librarian at the Internet Archive
http://archive.org http://openlibrary.org http://brewster.kahle.org internetarchive (npub1umd…wfr7) tfr

Website: https://brewster.kahle.org
verification: https://brewster.kahle.org/2022/11/24/new-account-on-mastodon/

Public Key

npub1ftlrl36zhu09klw5qt75ksjd8z8wafzp37ht2h3d2uzjmnr9eeesu83e6s

NIP-05 Address

brewsterkahle_at_mastodon.archive.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsy4l3lcapt78jm0h2q9l2tgfxn3rhw53qclt44tck4wpfde3juuucpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsr275p2

Publishing to

relay.nostr.band

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1ftlrl36zhu09klw5qt75ksjd8z8wafzp37ht2h3d2uzjmnr9eeesu83e6s

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Last Notes

2025-10-09 17:48:30 UTC

"First Coal Lease Auction in a Decade: Only One Bidder, Pennies on the Dollar
Trump is trying to make coal happen again, and it just isn’t."
from a friends free newsletter: https://www.transitionfinanceweekly.com/subscribe
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/345/461/920/909/777/original/6bea48d4023095e3.png

2025-10-04 13:48:55 UTC

4,000 tickets a month by one photo robo-cop. (I have not gotten one yet)
36mph drivers in San Francisco now getting automatic tickets one block after exiting freeway on a 4 lane one-way street...
braking to the 25mph posted speed limit-- dangerous?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/speed-camera-san-francisco-21081832.php
(1st timers at 11-16mph over get warning via snail mail, $50 to $500 fines for others, depending on speed. 56 new cameras in SF.)

2025-07-27 23:50:04 UTC

Tom Lehrer, Musical Hero gave away his songs before he passed. Even more reasons to love this man.
"All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. " https://tomlehrersongs.com/
(and he just passed at 97)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html

2025-07-21 01:10:13 UTC

quick stat for we library nerds:
it takes 1 month to dehydrate books in a cardboard box from 70% relative humidity to 50% with an environment of 35% relative humidity.
next-- time for books in close-packed boxes, and low cost techniques to sustain low hydration.
(low humidity is good for book preservation.)

2025-07-10 20:51:56 UTC

"In an age of informational chaos, the Wayback Machine feels like one of the few institutions that never lies to us."
Nice comment from Current Affair editor
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-to-keep-the-truth-alive
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/830/913/634/525/172/original/1d19ec34bfa1de97.png

2025-07-09 16:50:05 UTC

"AI for Public Good @PublicSpaces: From Hype to Humanity"
browsable post with useful pull quotes on what is going on in Europe.
https://www.internetarchive.eu/2025/07/09/ai-for-public-good-publicspaces-from-hype-to-humanity/

2025-07-07 20:14:31 UTC

- reply

indeed, sorry, my mistake.

2025-07-06 23:02:01 UTC

Interview of the new librarian of the British Library :
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-rebecca-lawrence-weekend-interview/
Q&As on AI:
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/808/758/258/633/746/original/b05d83958f23a71d.png

2025-06-23 00:46:11 UTC

If US AI lawsuits settle-- how would non-litigants make out? creators?
the public?
new startups?
an analysis suggests an answer (spoiler alert: not well )
We saw this movie before with Authors Guild v Google, but that settlement was stopped by an uprising. Will that happen again?
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2025/06/20/what-happens-if-the-ai-copyright-class-actions-settle/

2025-06-15 23:09:02 UTC

Moment of Gratitude: CloudFlare
CloudFlare saved the Internet Archive servers from a TCP Flood yesterday.
The max rate of this DDOS attack was 525 Gbps (44.93 Mpps) of a "TCP flood."
The Internet Archive does not have enough bandwidth to fend off that kind of attack.
Thank you #cloudflare or we would have had a very bad Saturday at the @npub1umd…wfr7
DDOS attacks are coming more frequently.

2025-06-09 03:03:06 UTC

Wanted: Voigt-Kampff operator (?)
I had a BladeRunner moment this week—
I video interviewed a tech candidate. I was rattled —was I talking with a person? an AI? An AI assisted human? What?
Aced the programming tests, including the on-the-fly ones. low bandwidth, heavy asian accent, AI'd résumé.
I failed the Turing test. A subsequent engineer recorded their interview.
Others sent me articles (see below). I now think this was low-end effort. maybe I was training fodder.
unnerving.
1/2
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/651/161/643/976/074/original/f073a2176ad7ea12.png

2025-06-06 16:45:57 UTC

A power outage shut https://archive.org down, and some equipment did not come back-- argh, sorry.
Replaced and back!

2025-05-31 16:35:40 UTC

Moment of gratitude:
Uber and Lyft shared rides are back for getting from San Francisco Airport. (pick up multiple people for one trip)
These are more energy efficient, cheaper, and had a good conversation. I also saw a part of town I have not seen in a long time.
these stopped with covid and glad to see them back.
Thank you, Uber and Lyft.

2025-05-17 19:53:03 UTC

- reply

last may there were 133k paid rides, 4300/day. not sure how many waymos were on the road then, so dont know the average paidride/car/day
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-waymo-robotaxis-19592112.php

2025-05-17 19:14:44 UTC

Waymo in San Francisco: super popular?
for in-town ride:
sometimes a 10-20 minute wait in rush hour.
$5-$10 more than uber/lyft,
sometimes $20 more on surge.
see them everywhere, but often empty (deadheading)
600 waymo's in SF (an article said).
explained by novelty/tourists? or do people just like them better, and enough better to pay more and wait.

2025-05-12 02:00:05 UTC

I do not see Waymo robotaxis on the sides of roads in SF: why not?
I understand there are 600 Waymo's in SF, they are everywhere!
Many moving Waymo's have no one in them, if they pulled over to wait it would reduce wear-and-tear, energy, and traffic congestion.
Maybe there is a rule against it or the neighbors would not like it...
So what if they used parking spots with no parking meters, and if someone pulled up and stopped, blinked their lights, the Waymo would leave the spot?
An idea.

2025-05-04 15:11:51 UTC

Evolution of Airfoil design
#happysunday
https://archive.org/details/430772main_naca_airfoils
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/450/199/279/678/856/original/252780bf92abd01b.jpg

2025-05-01 13:17:23 UTC

Corn vs Solar Panels: no contest:
"31 hectares of corn ethanol ... produce the same amount of energy generated by one hectare of land covered in solar panels."
so corn is < 1% efficient?
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compares-growing-corn-for-energy-to-solar-production-its-no-contest/

2025-04-22 17:49:54 UTC

1/2 of container shipping from China to US now cancelled. Wow.
"The shipment situation in China is changing rapidly and we have just come to learn (in the last hour) that many carriers such as COSCO and ONE have now cancelled more than half their sailing from weeks 16 (this week) to week 18 for North America which has never happened before
Cargo exempt from tariffs is very limited (basically phones) and Trump has already suggested that this may be short-lived." (from reliable email)

2025-04-17 05:36:08 UTC

- reply

our periodicals show the popularity of the term over time.
There were colleges of eclectic medicine, like the Georgia College of...
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/351/672/401/132/385/original/e73185f40eff0004.png

2025-04-14 05:03:09 UTC

have french magazines always been fabulous?
just scanned from University of Illinois Chicago collection:
https://archive.org/details/la-revue-theatrale_1902-10_1_1/page/2/mode/2up
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/334/556/004/253/965/original/cd17399999b9226d.png

2025-04-09 09:00:11 UTC

thoughtful but terrifying idea of how the copyright industries could get the goverments to help insert themselves into AI based helpers:
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/08/if-ai-agents-catch-on-expect-the-legacy-copyright-industry-to-turn-them-against-you/

2025-03-30 18:34:44 UTC

- reply

why "slop"? is this because it is using AI tools? and the AI tools are not procedural therefore not decomposable and debuggable in the familiar ways?
OCR recently went from hand coded feature extraction and rules based identification to the machine-learning system in tesseract. Is this also "slop" ?
trying to understand why "slop". Seriously, I'm curious.

2025-03-30 10:34:05 UTC

"Predicting computer programming skill" from 1986 says their study concludes Math (for logic) and Language skills (for syntax) are predictors.
I wonder if AI programming tools will change the programmer pool by removing as much need for good syntax skills. how about logic? more product mgmt skills?
from: Computers & Education 1986: Vol 10 issue 2
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/250/901/264/625/284/original/fc6216caefe41b76.png

2025-03-15 22:23:06 UTC

eye candy-- journal just scanned
ok, pls forgive a book nerd... but I Love the positive artworks of other times.
https://archive.org/details/queensland-agricultural-journal_january-june-1946_62_contents
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/168/769/721/784/771/original/c88fb5ad8a743355.png

2025-03-15 10:59:38 UTC

"Record labels attempt to bankrupt Internet Archive over grandpa's dusty old 78s"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/record-labels-attempt-to-bankrupt-internet-archive-over-grandpa-s-dusty-old-78s/ar-AA1AMiM8

2025-02-25 11:57:38 UTC

EV's on the rise in Europe:
European consumers purchased 166,000 battery EVs in January, up 37% from a year ago.
(Tesla sales were only 9,900 units, down 45% from last January)
I see many tiny EVs (like Biro and Opel) in Amsterdam. Not sure these are counted in the 166k.
https://www.ft.com/content/cdd0b5c8-2703-4fd4-9ebf-26087cac8523
https://www.opel.nl/personenwagens/rocks-electric/overzicht.html
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/064/060/964/596/836/original/3dea982de3e91cc9.png

2025-02-10 05:09:38 UTC

I just got this popup by visiting nytimes.com-- frightening.
it says it gives tracking info to 207 companies, including precise geolocation for tracking physical in-store purchase tracking (what?).
oh, and the link to the 207 companies list ones that are absolutely frightening. I am a paying subscriber and they do to subscribers (if they innocently say yes)? is this for real?
Is this popup only because I am in Europe, and it is on sunday morning at 6am? Anyone else?
https://mastodon.archive.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/977/845/441/435/729/original/a962b21232819138.png

2025-01-31 14:58:09 UTC

FAA Key Officials
Jan 16 all positions are staffed https://web.archive.org/web/20250116202415/https://www.faa.gov/about/key_officials
Jan 29 half (9 of 18) are "Vacant"
https://web.archive.org/web/20250129122818/https://www.faa.gov/about/key_officials
(via antoine)