I Am Parting with My Crypto Library | Hacker News Reader

I Am Parting with My Crypto Library

schneier.com

147 pointszdw29 comments

Hopefully it will be digitized, for everyone's benefit. There might be documents in there that otherwise are effectively lost to most of the world.

(The other day, I couldn't even find a Usenix C++ proceedings from early '90s online. Stroustrup and other well-known people attended, Usenix was an unusually Internet-savvy organization at the time, and yet, if you were Web-searching, you might never learn that the conference ever happened.)

BTW, I hope Schneier is well, and congratulate him on the bittersweet transition to a less book-weighted household. (I donated a significant collection of books, during a tricky move after grad school. I was gratified to see that a local library's SF collection was pretty much mine, but now very well-worn. However, I lost a set of out-of-print titles in a narrow technical niche, and I really wish they were available now, such as with good digitization.)

I received an email from Bruce that he is in discussions with the Internet Archive and two Universities, so it sounds like the books will end up in a good home and likely digitized.

Glad to see my initial immediate mental reaction of "He should get in touch with IA" was right.

If there was ever a team that could get this dealt with properly, it's them.

The only scenario I could see 150 feet of Bruce Schneiers old cryptography books adding value at this point is if they have his notes in them.

This, plus the information which books Bruce Schneier selected for his library and which he omitted. The books themselves are pretty worthless, agreed, but someone might buy it as a collection that might have some worth in and by itself.

He sounds like he has no concept of the book market at all, and like most people, vastly overestimates what his collection is worth. I guarantee you he will pay someone to haul those books away.

I don't agree. Sounds like the right interested party could get the collection for just the cost of shipping, which seems reasonable to me.

It’s the “interested party” part that’s hard. He might be a collector of rare works in the area, but it doesn’t sound like it. So it’s likely the value of the collection as a collection lies with the name attached to it. But trust me: People thousands of times more famous than him have trouble with this.

But I’m reacting more to his certainty that he will have so many people wanting to pay for his books, that he’ll actually be trying to decide whether this or that library will have the privilege (and that he’s being magnanimous by not charging for it). Again, he really doesn’t understand the book market.

It would have been wiser to ask a local bookseller to take a look (and tell him the brutal truth) before posting his “offer.”

But the local bookseller won’t have any idea who he is or what the material is. His blog readers do.

The question is whether there will be any interested party. Most of the documents in his library are probably not worth anything. But there is also no harm in trying. Perhaps his celebrity will lend the library worth it would not have had on its own.

I recently found a woman who was giving away all here computer-science books. She had things like this all in hardback, and near pristine condition:

* TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1 - Stevens

* TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 2 - Stevens

* Advanced programming in the unix environment - Stevens

* The Dragon Book

* Applied Cryptography

* Design and implementation of *BSD

In the end I received 1 meter of books for free, apparently the hassle of dealing with deliveries, collections, and the relatively low demand meant it was better for her to get the damn things removed all at once, even at a loss, than deal with it.

I feel pretty lucky, as I used to own most of these books but they didn't survive an (international) relocation.

He's only asking shipping costs (he says "maybe a purchase price"). I think some library out there would take it off his hands for media mail shipping rates.

I wouldn't give it to most institutions, especially the rich boy schools.

My father had some 16mm footage of Lon Chaney.

After talking to someone at UCSF, they offered him a vhs tape for the original, and all the rights.

It always bothered me.

(lon Chaney was an actor, and some of you might recognize the name from old horror movies. He did all his own makeup. And no--UCSF is not a rich boy school.)

The only reason I recognize the name is Zevon's "Werewolves of London".

That was a reference to his son, Lon Cheney Jr, best known for his starring role in The Wolf Man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_Man_(1941_film)

Was it? It has one line which says "Lon Chaney" and another that says "Lon Chaney Junior". I had assumed it was referring to the father and the son, but maybe it's referring only to the younger.

Your first instinct was correct, both walking with the Queen, doing the werewolves of London.

Research libraries aren't exactly rich. Their regular budget barely covers employees, maintenance, subscriptions, and new releases, so they don't tend to splurge on such "collectibles".

It's also quite common for individuals' archives to be donated to libraries, since they provide the service of maintaining it and allowing public access. Plus, they are non-profits.

So it's not completely unlike taking your dog to an animal shelter and expecting money. Maybe not quite as extreme, and not morally wrong or anything, but probably just unusual, and it may not even have registered with the person that they are negotiating.

Why would a medical school collect that?

Maybe to send to UCLA? :)

I really hope some public institution will pick it up :)

Does this mean retirement?

I love his blog and I'm curious as to why he's getting rid of his books.

Anyone want to ping Jason Scott on Twitter?

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1421201702363992077

I hope it ends up in good hands!

Thought he decided to step down as the maintainer of his crypto.lib ...

(wild speculation) if Bruce Schneier is selling his library: does that imply that quantum computers have managed to break crypo keys and he got disilussioned with the subject? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KGG3YBhU_0&t=95s the link tells about Zuchongzhi quantum computer 10 billion times faster than Sycamore by Google)

No it does not imply that.

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