Jon
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/diehard-coders-just-saved-nasas-earth-science-data/
https://rosamondpress.com/2016/02/05/the-gideon-computer-2/
I don’t know whether to be grateful for this, or frightened out of my mind. Scientists and hackers all over the country are hunkering down to save data. They’re… collecting it and saving it on servers outside the direct control of government – for fear the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole.
Some are going further. Groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which recently organized a hackathon to collect data from NASA’s earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are building systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And they’re keeping track of what’s already been removed—because yes, the pruning has already begun.
The Trump administration not only wants to create a universe of alternative facts. It wants to get rid of evidence of the truth.
What do you think?
Diehard Coders Just Rescued NASA’s Earth Science Data
Jamie Lyons
But now they’re going even further. Groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASA’s earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And they’re keeping track of what’s already been removed—because yes, the pruning has already begun.
Tag It, Bag It
The data collection is methodical, mostly. About half the group immediately sets web crawlers on easily-copied government pages, sending their text to the Internet Archive, a digital library made up of hundreds of billions of snapshots of webpages. They tag more data-intensive projects—pages with lots of links, databases, and interactive graphics—for the other group. Called “baggers,” these coders write custom scripts to scrape complicated data sets from the sprawling, patched-together federal websites.
Rosamond Press 
Leave a comment