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I love where the headline cuts of:
knowledge is permanent - ly monopolized on private servers
Anna's Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
Not only that, of course, but easily edited. It's a "mandala effect" generator. AKA modern gaslighting. They name the thing, point to legitimate examples, then abuse our new "understanding" to cover their crimes. 1984 indeed.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia
"mandala" effect
You sure you remember that name correctly?
Dang it, they changed it again!
Getting rid of physical copies of books so we can be monthly subscription slaves, disgusting
It's worse than that. I'm sure they're getting wet dreams about eradicating as many books as possible so that they can finally sell AI slop books at a premium price, claiming that will be "the last way to get something in [author] style!".
I'm rather thinking that hey want to make their slop machines the single source of truth. Much easier to get control over information, when all information is located in your own house.
Fucking scanning books without destroying them, the philistines! /s
Is this gif from that tom hanks movie?
Yeah it’s Toy Story 3
No I know AI companies are doing that, I just don't think they would be making gifs about it.
But there's a Tom Hanks movie that came out a few years ago where in the beginning of the movie he lives in a bunker because the UV index outside is so high the sunlight is basically radioactive, and he's building a robot and he uses a machine to chop the spines off of books to feed them into a scanner to train the robot brain.
That all takes place in the very beginning and then he leaves the bunker with the robot and some shit happens. But that's what I thought this gif was from.
Finch? Yeah it’s the same machine, just with a fun robot hand to make the sacrilege seem less awful, maybe?
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I guess the next step is picking specific people to memorize specific books and pass that knowledge down to an assistant/acolyte who will keep the memories alive. Rinse and repeat. Fahrenheit 451 anybody?
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Remember, USA and it's AI companies did that.
Ah the American dream. Be greedy, selfish and only care about yourself.
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it"
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Yet your countries keep helping and benefit almost like this is a global class war.
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I agree about not destroying books, but Anna's archive is ok with providing all of their info to llms
https://web.archive.org/web/20260305153357/https://annas-archive.gd/blog/llms-txt.html
Not like it’s their books to begin with. It’s all available as torrents
Eh, perfect is the enemy of good. I'll take the wins we can get. It's not like having to buy the books is gonna stop the biggest offenders from burning investor money (along with the books).
The defeat of LLMs isn't gonna come on that front. Let the cultists believe that more words will somehow become more than words. Their silicon gods run on power and water. That's where they're most vulnerable.
It's not necessarily trying to stop them burning the books, just stop their ability to monopolise the knowledge, that's their aim, lock the knowledge behind a subscription, Anna's archive will always be available for all, so why pay for their subscription if its available for free.
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I am all up for starving machine learning of new knowledge but I view this as the least friction path. Otherwise, if the machines try to brute force their entry, what harm can kt cause?
If you read the blog post, they don't provide help or guidance for regular bookworms on how to scan. No information about what they expect.
Also, flatbed scanning a whole book takes many hours. It's one page at a time, line up each page, press the book flat and scan, for hundreds of pages.
You'd likely need to buy, or have access to a book scanner. Which is fine, there are cheap models, but who knows if that would work for them? They don't say. It doesn't seem like they're expecting help from you or me.
I was wondering how feasible this is for an average Joe. My assumption was not very, thank you for confirming.
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I own some rare books but no book scanner. What should I do?
Those who want to conduct large-scale scans and upload many titles can reach out to the archive for support, as the archive says that it “can help pay for the scanning fees and other rewards.”
Hmm, it's just a few books but I do think they're pretty rare. Not something I'm willing to send away. I wonder if a library would be willing to help?
My local library has some large format scanners. I've considered using them to do my photo albums. I have the individual photos scanned and backed up, but the layout and margin notes are worth preserving also.
If you've got some comfort with tinkering:
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These AI companies are just being Nazis, books on pyres…again.
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Any reputable orgs I can donate to for assisting the cause? I just don't feel I have the means otherwise to make a dent in the buying and preservation.
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They're destroying everything like locusts
Anyone know any good book scanners was looking around and not sure what i should get.
Ages ago I had mimicked the "overhead scanner" with a mounted digital camera, but now I'd go with a mounted smartphone + light bars + bluetooth photo trigger. Scrolling through Bezos' was pretty depressing in terms of cost/quality and even a $150 device seemed like a repurposed webcam, with a sole non-free confirmed buyer saying it died after 3 months while freebies praise it lol. As long as you don't scan drawings/designs/comic books - just set lights evenly and that'd be enough, and even moreso if you OCR it and turn a scan into an e-book where visual fidelity stops to matter.
same, probably when I'll have time in an other dimension I would love to make my own
i would help you in that dimension as well lol
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So, my question is, of all these books being scanned and then destroyed, aren't there many more copies of these books? And BTW, knowledge isn't permanent. It can be lost.
the AI ran out of Reddit slop material to scan, because reddit has been purging alot of content/accounts even suspected of spamming, so they go for physical books now.
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Fahrenheit 451 ass
With modern phones having a document scan option with our phone cameras, is it possible we can scan and combine into a PDF file?
I am going to test it myself, see how easy it is, and find a way to ensure anyone can follow with low cognitive load, but hopefully it’s as easy as I think to do.
The sad part, is to do so would require a slow tedious task for books with hundreds of pages. It would be nice to see a large group tackle chunks at a time to the point we eventually have groups dedicated to genres and scouring to find them to preserve them.
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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