from Hacker News

The Technology Behind Making the Internet Archive into the Worlds Worst DVR

by knowtheory on 5/12/16, 6:25 PM with 14 comments

  • by riordan on 5/12/16, 7:01 PM

    This is such a good post about:

    a. how the internet archive is building its political archive

    b. proving to other cultural heritage institutions that they can get their act together and preserve culture today and make it relevant today

    Ok, so Ted Cruz ads are a particular part of culture, but bravo.

    I used to work at The New York Public Library's Labs and we had to fight to do anything with anything that wasn't blatantly in the public domain. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues there, Leonard Richardson, would go off and create massive archives like the Minecraft Geological Survey (http://mcgs.crummy.com/#mcgs) in the evenings.

    Seriously, we need more folks working in these big organizations that are very good at surviving for more than a hundred years, acting as arks of human culture, that can collect and make useful today's materials. It's just our ability to remember today at stake.

  • by Roger_Archive on 5/12/16, 7:14 PM

    I like how the Center For Public Integrity just used "Duplitron5k" discovery of a supposedly "Internet-exempt" hybrid super PAC political ad garnering free time in cable news.

    (https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/12/19677/news-media-...)

    The PAC asserts because the ad is a “Web video” they are exempt from the kinds of public disclosures applied to paid political communications broadcast over the airwaves.

  • by scrumper on 5/12/16, 8:04 PM

    Well the project is bizarre and whimsical and I guess pretty expensive, but the way it's written about here makes me an enthusiastic fan. Well worth a read.

  • by korethr on 5/12/16, 11:02 PM

    Looking at the site, it looks like this focuses on US politics. Being a US citizen, I'm totally fine with this. An easily searchable archive of political ads should make it easier to call BS on our politicians when necessary.

    I find myself wondering, however, what it would take to extend this effort to other countries of the world. I have a few friends in Canada and in Europe, and speaking with them, I get the impression that the politics of their respective countries are just as susceptible to shenanigans as that of the US. I think someone politically active in say, Sweden, would want to be able to call out his or her leaders for supporting puppy-kicking or baby-eating just as much as someone in the US would.

  • by ghaff on 5/12/16, 11:46 PM

    When I was an undergrad (a few years ago), we had a visiting lecturer[1] who taught journalism classes mostly for the newspaper folks on campus. Well prior to consumer VCRs, he had students tape a wide range of political ads and other political-related video. It was really interesting having access to all this stuff in a pre-YouTube and Internet Archive era.

    [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/12/nyregion/edwin-diamond-a-w...

  • by lokedhs on 5/13/16, 10:25 AM

    I picked a random candidate and then clicked on play on all of the videos at the same time. That was a special kind of insane.

  • by tim333 on 5/12/16, 8:29 PM

    tl;dr they are archiving political ads off TV and try recognising them in software by their sound using http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/matlab/audfprint/ I think.

    They don't say how political ads sound different from other TV - I guess it works? Or maybe they are just using it to check if they have that ad already like how Shazam works?