The French government yanks away cybersecurity from their citizens in DNS case (again). Copyright lobby wins (?)
Not safe, Not good.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quad9-quod-non-when-copyright-enforcement-drives-out-jmfhe
Brewster Kahle
Digital Librarian at the Internet Archive http://archive.org http://openlibrary.org http://brewster.kahle.org tfr
Website: https://brewster.kahle.org verification: https://brewster.kahle.org/2022/11/24/new-account-on-mastodon/
Internet Archive ops staff were heroes last night.
PHP vulnerability announced, soon saw attacks, isolated the vulnerability, used Claude to make fixes for our older php versions, used local models to run simulated attacks, deployed.
reinforced WAF and other guards.
Offline briefly, Back on new versions and running!
Given the severity, there are heroes in many many orgs from last night.
Could have been no lights, no traffic signals, real problems.
Heroes.
Thank you all.
10/21/2026, 5 engagements
Neal Stephenson. I had the pleasure to introduce Neal (foreground right) for his book talk on his new book
. photo by friend
10/17/2026, 1 engagement
Library geek corner: Some microfiche has super super small type, but we are getting great results from our super-camera / lens / stage / and processing.
1TB in this tiny usb-c thing? a moment of gratitude to the amazing engineers that made this happen.
Our first full web crawl (1997) was 2TB, and is housed in a sculpture by Alan Rath called "2Terabytes in 63 inches, the World Wide Web 1997"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FS87P1J7
9/12/2026, 1 engagement
Professional Wrestling has been around for a long time.
https://archive.org/details/professionalwres00smitrich/page/n5/mode/2up
thats it. just that.
InterLibrary Loan history -- (you can stop reading now :) --
there was some early centuries AD, but...
First practical was UCBerkeley <-> California State Library in 1894.
but first call for it (in US) was 1876:
https://archive.org/details/libraryjournalch1187dewe/page/n32/mode/1up?q=%22LENDING+OF+BOOKS%22
love live ILL
Big Batteries help with the electrification of everything. 800GW of solar was installed last year, and batteries help smooth the curves [previous post].
1.8TWh of batteries were made last year (!)
"global battery demand will grow from 1.8 terawatt hours last year to 5.7 TWh by 2030 and 16.6 TWh by 2050" from Researchers at Bernstein in Hong Kong
https://www.ft.com/content/13351971-76dd-4284-a81e-3ffd8ec4e351?syn-25a6b1a6=1
lets double a few more times and be done with this transition.
Thank you Canada! A moment of Gratitude.
A new Canada-US bridge opened that will be less congested and less expensive. The Canadians paid for building it ($6.4billion) and endured getting jerked around right before opening.
Thank you, Canada!
Gordie Howe Bridge! https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-gordie-howe-bridge-opens-to-cars/
The Internet Archive San Francisco tours on Fridays at 1pm are getting more and more people. So fun. 300 Funston Ave.
Here are some other tiny bookie non-profits in San Francisco...
Letterform Archive https://letterformarchive.org/
Prelinger Library
https://prelingerlibrary.org/home/
San Francisco Center for Book
The Whybrary
Mechanics Institute Library
im sure I am missing some....
US War cost? A datapoint
Container shipping with Asia is now 2x more expensive and does not involve the Straight.
Sometimes it gets this high at Christmas time.
a datapoint.
Good-by to Gutenberg? Nope—Shrill Publisher Cries about Xerox Machine Were Wrong
1975 Xerox machine lawsuit: publishers vs libraries amicus briefs AI summary and then AI blog post it.
The exhibits Exhibit A — the photocopier is a printing press Exhibit B — the journals will simply die Exhibit C — one copy replaces all copies Exhibit D — a censorship apocalypse Exhibit E — the slippery slope to the end of publishing Exhibit F — death of the marketplace of ideas
1/2
Happy news: in 2025 global new installed 814GW of wind and solar (solar is 664GW). china solar factories at 1/2 capacity! (US installing, but slowly, but you know that and why). big batteries working and improving
a nuclear power plant is 1GW -- why still talk nuclear?
so 1GW datacenters is one of siting correctly with local solar+batteries. could be not a big deal
The water use is not consequential if sited with thought
rare good news
7/19/2026, 1 engagement
Chinese electricity is now 37% from renewables.
In 2003, renewables’ share of electricity generation was about 15 per cent, nearly all of which was produced by hydropower. By 2025, this had increased to 37 per cent.
getting there. have a sunny day.
from https://www.ft.com/content/e67f40b6-48d6-4057-8d57-a9f5f6b0a741?syn-25a6b1a6=1
7/14/2026, 2 engagements
RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116908556846064206
What if datacenter builders built out there own solar panel farms around the center and battery packs so they were energy independent. then if the datacenter part is less needed in the future we are left with billions invested in solar infrastructure?
gigawatts of solar infrastructure sounds like a win to me, and they have the motivation and capacity.
lemonade.
Loading quoted post…
Dreams for the Web?
Reliable Private Fun /
No centralized points of control /
A game with many winners /
Lock the Web Open /
help people make money by publishing on the web (no middleman) /
_________, but decentralized (fill in cool service, e.g. google docs, tesla carOS, electronic tolls)
PublicAI: make progress on pressing issues like climate and healthcare.
#dwebcamp
full text of MoU Iran/US:
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/nx-s1-5863027/us-iran-trump-memorandum-of-understanding-full-text.
wow, that is readable and uh straightforward.
(sorry if you have seen it)
"The Copyright Office Doesn’t Need More Politics—Or More Power."
"Congress Just Rushed Through A Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul"
another reason to call your senator
"In May, solar topped coal nationwide for the first time. In California, solar is fast displacing natural gas."
California has invested heavily in solar and batteries and it is displacing fossil fuels quickly.
Interesting to see solar top coal-based energy production nationwide in May.
https://www.transitionfinanceweekly.com/p/transition-finance-weekly-june-18
claude.ai is taking safety seriously, and may be overstretching and wobbling, but it is interesting to see.
I was looking for the 1985 Science Magazine article whose title included "western Montana of mechanical transmission of Tularemia" and it stopped the session.
"This model has safety measures that flagged something in this message. This sometimes happens with safe, normal conversations."
Starting to weave links to digitized phD theses into wikipedia articles. This one in dutch wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Bonn (look at the end)
soon, nobel prize winners..
Claude code is helping do matches and vetting to get candidate matches to editors to improve articles.
Thank you Leiden University for donating their historic collection so it could be preserved, flipped digital, opened, and linked to!
<insert joke about the readership of phD dissertations... 😀 >
https://archive.org/details/IA40154023_0013
moment of gratitude: claude code to help improve our library.
Wrote a duplicate finder between two historic phD theses collections (physically different items, but same thesis) and doing mulitple algorithms to check and double check before putting in reviews to point to the other one.
We would just never have gotten to this kind of metadata enrichment and collection examination.
e.g. https://archive.org/details/IA40153314_0137 and https://archive.org/details/IA41553017_0067
The Internet Archive working with the NOAA Library to bring much of it digital and as accessible as possible is wonderful, and a wonderful model: lets flip more libraries digital.
https://archive.org/details/noaa
Connie Chan Rocks. Thank you Nancy Pelosi-- good pick to endorse for your seat.
Connie Chan represents the Internet Archive district in San Francisco, and got unanimous support for: Digital Library Rights, and Internet Archive Day resolution in 2025, and got the Internet Archive Hero award in 2023!
Connie Chan understands our digital world and supports our digital learners.
As programming gets easier (and more fun) via claude code etc...
Will there be less programming or more? If there is latent demand for computer programs and ones that works, then the demand for programming, and therefore the number of programmers might increase not decrease.
When lighting got cheaper with electric lights, people lit more things. maybe this will happen with coding and coders?
What an interesting time to be alive.
The Daily Weather Report, 1938 International and Upper Air Sections by Air Ministry Meteorological Office, London W.C.2. Check out the first pages at link below.
Someone (or all AI's!) need to know! I love my job.
pls post photos of why your job is awesome.
https://archive.org/details/daily-international-upper-air-sections_1938-10
Lovingly handwritten title on the spine! Meteorlogical Observations / Royal Observatory / Sydney / 1874-77
I love my job. (do you have random photos from work that make you happy?)
Linking data with the help of AI.
There are old medical PhD theses coming online (yea!).
Found Wikipedia articles about the doctors, and then edit the wikipedia articles that would be improved by pointing to them. Also added a review to the Internet Archive items to point to the wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mantoux
/more on next
wow, china is leading on manufacturing renewables.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/20/china/china-energy-security-global-oil-crisis-iran-intl-hnk
fyi. First Tesla Semis (long haul 18 wheelers) come off of the new production line in dedicated factory.
at 500 mile range (astounding) I wonder if it could mean destination charging (with solar) rather than lots of charging stations.
https://electrek.co/2026/04/29/tesla-semi-first-truck-high-volume-production-line/
Eyelids for Autonomous cars!
Cameras have trouble in the rain-- and now the new Waymo Ojai uses 10 windshield wipers to clean its sensors.
Claude Code is good at doing research!
In this case helping find the disposition of 126,000 digitized US Supreme Court dockets (cert denied or full opinion), and then reporting why in a archive.org review (using like a wikipedia discussion).
This took real hand-holding and QA to be sure, but it is super helpful. Looked at court listener, the supreme court site (and the old one via the wayback machine!), the Caselaw Access Project at harvard. So good.
Stanford tuition to Be $335 Starting September 1958.
(Things I learned today from scanning)
geez. Senators want to lock up the law (again).
spent years making sure the law (and standards included in the law) were publicly accessible for free. Even getting the Supreme Court to declare it so.
yeah, but...
"Congress Wants To Put The Law Behind A Paywall. Again."
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/06/congress-wants-to-put-the-law-behind-a-paywall-again/
U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
boo.
4/7/2026, 2 engagements
"Do you need a liberal education? We say that it is unpatriotic not to read these books."
""The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."
Robert M Hutchins (of Great Books fame)
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.215549/page/n149/mode/1up?q=%22unpatriotic+%22
"What to do when the ‘public good’ of information goes bad The creation and dissemination of reliable news is at an economic disadvantage" (paywalled ft.com boo) Opinion Misinformation Martin Wolf
suggests subsidizing info creation, then goes to BBC, skips libraries which pay billions a year.
why skip libraries? Could be because we are not as effective as in the past cuz digital licensing schemes of big publishers so are largely irrelevant to our info environment of most people.
lets fix!
claude code is more fun than netflix. bravo.
Moment of Gratitude, this time for GitHub.com
I have been having fun with claude-code and have been using github in ways I did not know existed (like hosting docker image), and so easy! (and, I think, for free)
Thank you GitHub!
https://brewster.kahle.org/2026/02/01/generative-ai-is-a-new-drug-report-on-my-first-trip/
® (registered trademark) of an Article?
The Register is putting "®" at the end of the articles I looked at: e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/12/suse_runs_ms/.
What does that mean?
Boo-- an ad supposedly demonstrating something, but is AI generated (see the "player" getting into the front right door of this upcoming EV). Boo.
https://vimeo.com/1159800255?fe=ci&fl=sv&share=copy&syclid=d5uduknhbrrc73e5fof0
9.9k views on how the livestream of microfiche digitization works at the
:
https://www.youtube.com/live/r93Q90CWhXo
livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/wG9hiWSrSD4
Digitization as Performance. Nerd-fun.
(wonder when we will get to 10k 😀 )
Better Rideshare: Airport Ubers lined up, and you can get into ANY car, driver scans your QR code, and go. Immediately.
No 10-20 minute delay. No clog to match riders to cars.
This is how Taxi's work, but they are more expensive and no universal app. This is how Waymo could work, but they are not at most airports yet. A new competitor might do well with this trick: "AirRide"?
Many people have opted for rideshare-- lets have it work better. Other ideas?
(this photo shows the problem)
Public Domain Day short film contest by
on NPR!
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5677702/public-domain-2026-remix-contest-internet-archive-1930
2-3 minutes long films Winners are announced: https://blog.archive.org/2026/01/21/2026-public-domain-film-remix-contest/
A fav entry for me did not win, but is heart bending: https://archive.org/details/georgia_202601
AI Policy Challenges in Europe Book (free!) by a true insider expert Caroline De Cock
(I wrote the forward).
"ICE as the 14th most well-funded military in the world, right between Ukraine and Israel. "
I think this is just ICE and does not include the FBI or ATF or National Guard or other federal police forces.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/14/ice-is-going-on-a-surveillance-shopping-spree/
"The Value of Public Domain Day"
a thoughtful piece on the economics and the loss by our overzealous locking up of our culture.
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2026/01/01/the-value-of-public-domain-day/
media conglomerates are leading the way against open internet law by fining cloudflare:
Italy's "shadowy cabal of European media elites" ... "scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. "
Bob Weir: 'Speaking with Rolling Stone, Mr. Weir said he hoped he would be remembered for bringing cultures together.
“I’m hoping that people of varying persuasions will find something they can agree on in the music that I’ve offered,” he said, “and find each other through it.”'
Truckin' on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/obituaries/bob-weir-dead-grateful-dead.html
ride hailing trips in SF (helped by chatgpt).
Uber: ~54% Lyft: ~26% Waymo: ~8% Taxis: ~11%
so while waymo's seem to be everyhere, they are only 10% of lyft/uber
total/day ~150k Uber (ride-hail). ~82k-90k/day Lyft (ride-hail) ~38k–45k Waymo (robotaxi) ~13k Taxis (traditional) ~15k–20k
archive.org temporarily offline based on San Francisco utility blackout in San Francisco (again, but really it is all the response to a substation fire from a week ago working its way through the system.).
Argh. Sorry, all.
(obviously we are not well prepared for this type of outage, and we need to fix that).