We are barely halfway done
ascii.textfiles.com
ascii.textfiles.com
To provide some more context about what the actual contents of the archive includes, a description is on their about page [2]:
"Manuals Plus buys and sells Electronic Test & Measurement Equipment Manuals. We stock over 400,000 manuals at our Westminster, Maryland location. Our inventory consists of Operator, Service, Calibration, and Programming manuals."
I however join you in applauding Manuals Plus in letting these go. It must be hard for them.
The original estimate[1] was only(!) 25k, so that explains the need to order more boxes.
Part of it could also be ronding up for advertising a number they do not know exactly. A firm like this may not have kept perfect tally of their stock ("hey guys! It's January again. The guy from accounting needs to know what we have. It's counting time!")
What is the copyright status of these manuals? I hope they don't bump into any legal problem though and they can release scans.
The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore.
[taken from the original post of the issue: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683]
Jason and the other volunteers, my thanks! You guys are heroes.
Yes, I know.
The GP comment suggested giving an expensive, large industrial scanner to "Mr. Scott", which I interpreted as giving it to him personally. My point was simply that it would be more appropriate to give it to the Internet Archive.
> Hey, go ask Google. I think people don’t understand what Google is and how much it particularly cares about doing “The Right Thing” (not much), and the next person to mention the Linear Book Scanner (a prototype that destroys books), well, they’re going to get a hug and my distracting words of love.
This is the third post in a series. The author (Jason Scott) is trying to save ~25,000 manuals, instruction booklets, and engineering notes (largely electronics related, created over the last 80 years). This is a large project, the company which owns the manuals currently is going out of business, and all the manuals will be thrown away very soon (re: tomorrow).
First post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711 Second post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683
I think the only way to go forward is to digitize the shit out of everything.
What is it that is barely halfway done?
This isn't an article, though. It's someone's personal blog and the continuation of something else; the assumption is that you've read the other ones.
He's talking about the process of saving a huge amount (25k?) of paper manuals from someone who was going to throw them out.
> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
I think we all understand that. I think we also all understand that there are times when blind adherence to that rule is bloody stupid.
I very much prefer a "snappy, BuzzFeed-like" heading that tells me what the article is about over a meaningless phrase without context.
We want reflective reactions, not reflexive ones. For that, it's good if the reader has to work a little. We're not talking about anything hard—anybody willing to work the tiniest amount, such as clicking two links instead of one, or one instead of zero, could, for instance, trivially figure out the OP.
It's good for the front page to have a mild timing-attack effect on the brain. The slight pause that induces is an opening for more reflective thought to enter. Maybe it won't, but if the door snaps shut in a second, it certainly won't.
The anger that flares up when an internet thing doesn't immediately present itself for a sugar hit is, in my opinion, the reaction of an addict. We all have this. It's necessary to catch it and inhibit it in order for the subtler reactions, like curiosity, to emerge. If you don't want to do that, plenty of other places on the internet will oblige.
What you're talking about in this specific instance is a title which is almost totally devoid of any context which would explain why a potential reader should click on it. Unless you recognize the domain and knew what about the ongoing story, there is little reason to click on this link, and that's shame, as this is an important story.
It isn't about how much work anything is or isn't... it's about the value of people's time, and how the make decisions about how to invest it. I know I can't read every single story submitted to HN, and I doubt many (if any) people can. We all have to glance at the headlines and make a decision "do I spend the time to dig into this or not?"
I'm certainly not saying that titles should be a free-for-all, but I maintain that overly rigid adherence to an "original titles only" policy is misguided. Maybe "stupid" is an overly strong word, and I apologize for using unnecessarily harsh language. But I feel pretty strongly about this, because it seems blindingly obvious to me that this policy, as it's applied, is sub-optimal.
Anyway, here's a thought: IF it's that important to preserve the original title, then add a second field with space for a brief comment supplied by the submitter. Not something like Slashdot mind you, but some way for the user to (optionally) add some extra descriptive verbiage to help clarify ambiguous or context-free titles.
People editorialise titles. Your suggested box would almost ask for editorialising.
People can leave a comment for anything they submit.
Yes, exactly! And that's a Good Thing in the cases I'm talking about. Let's quit throwing the word editorialising around like it's a pejorative. Editorialising serves a purpose and is actually needed quite often.
Mostly it serves for the editorializer to put their own spin on the topic. That's the opposite of what we want here. We want readers to make up their own minds.
But they need enough information to make up their minds. That's what I'm trying to say here. Editorialising is NOT some universally bad thing, nor is it synonymous with "spin". If a title is something useless like "Some interesting results" then it absolutely should be editorialised, or annotated to show that it's "interesting results" in quantum mechanics, vs., content marketing, or cat-picture hosting.
All I'm saying is, not all original titles are good, and some edits serve a valuable purpose and should be allowed.
"I had to follow a hyperlink to get the information I wanted" is a pretty amusing first world problem.
By the way, on HN, please don't make things look like a quote when they're not (I didn't use the word "lazy"). I know it seems minor but it's important for respectful debate.
Read the HN guidelines and you'll see that that's not true.
- the domain, textfiles.org is an incredibly well known domain, so things from there are likely to be interesting and not linkbait
- clicking the link and reading the article, this is guaranteed to answer your question
- clicking the link and reading the article did not help, so I went to the comments for context.
I got lucky on this one. I've never heard of textfiles, so I was going to question whether or not it's really "well-known", and I got a good laugh when I went to the site you recommended and found a domain for sale :)