Digital Communism Meets Piracy, Shadow Libraries have reignited my love of learning
Digital Communism Meets Piracy, Shadow Libraries have reignited my love of learning
I have been teaching myself more programming stuff for c/gamedev over the last several weeks as my ambition is to make a using Godot to share with people. Just making a game for the sake of trying my hand at a creative work, no real "profit motive" just wanna make a thing 
. However, but I was feeling like I wanted to get back into the old-school C++ programming rather than using a game engine and was looking for a primer as it's been a bit since I have done it. In my quest I discovered Academic Torrents, I found a ton of great computer science courses and the last weakened synapses of academic rigor in my internet poisoned brain to fire once again.
I have always been for open-information (most just downloading .pdf files of textbooks during college) and stuff but I didn't really know about the concept of a Shadow Library. I'm finding myself interested in just learning more computer nerd shit for the sake of learning. I like the idea I have access to pretty much every computer science department that has a webcam and torrent link, I think that's good.
This idea applies beyond not just for tech stuff of course, but just about anything. I think it's really weird that knowledge creation is soloed away behind nations, institutions, and IP laws. Everyone everywhere should have access to knowledge for the sake of knowledge. I don't know much about the actual process of knowledge creation but the created knowledge itself should be assessable to everyone in a library sense. Knowledge is one basic things that makes us human and should be free and open to everyone. Discovering a website reminded that learning is just cool and worth doing for the sake doing (if that's your thing of course, if you don't wanna learn that should be considered cool too).
The promise of the internet still exists outside the walled gardens and I think that's pretty dope. So long as people wanna learn I'm glad that these sorts of Shadow libraries are there to help people.
Also support your actual local library. Light and Shadow Libraries are cool and lefty and good.
That’s awesome! Browsing LibGen by new is one of my hobbies lol. It’s super interesting to see what kinds of books pop up. Sometimes super cool stuff, other times it’s nazis. But yeah, enjoy learning!
Sometimes super cool stuff, other times it’s nazis.
It's very annoying that "other times it's nazis" is a potential issue in just about any facet of the net.
Ikr. Sometimes it’s apparent in the title/bio but there’ve been times I’ve had to google the book/author cuz the bio is empty and i come across their Wikipedia (usually dead nazis), Twitter (alive nazis), and a couple times a whole nazi book publisher. The world is wild.
reminds me a bit of this classic from 2015: https://thepiratebook.net/shanzhai/
Another interesting feature of Shanzhai industry is that because they were the pirates secretly working in remote factories, they built a vast system for cooperation and competition. They shared plans, news, retro-engineering results and blueprints on instant messaging groups. Despite not having a promotional label like “open-source” and the like, they were actually practitioners of distributed manufacturing. In many regards, Shenzhen echoes the dream of a “fab city” where design houses and small factories collaborate for the public and private good. The continuation of Shanzhai is open-source manufacturing, and local players like Seeed Studio or Cubietech have understood it completely. This new generation of Chinese makers is gathering a large community of tech followers, with all the best practices from documentation, community care and promotion. You can freely check the quality of their designs and have nice and enjoyable tours in their factories in Shenzhen. Far from the grim world of pirates, they publish methodologies and plans online, support their users, and will even make your crowd funding campaign a success if you ask them. They know that products aren’t born in the mind of a designer, but in the hands of a factory worker.
YEAH! Exactly!
