RIP: The CIA World Factbook

The internal classified version was started in 1962 as The National Basic Intelligence Factbook. It was a resource that gave you very detailed information about countries around the world: form of government, economic information, population and make-up, etc. Very useful information. It went public in 1971 as the World Factbook and later joined the World Wide Web in 1997 in an unclassified version. It was available between '71 and '97 in print form and on CD.

And now it's gone. Any page for any country that you may have had linked now redirects to the closure notice. Everything's now inaccessible. Of course, you can still look into it via archive.org, but the information was updated regularly when the site was live, and it will now grow increasingly stale.

No reason given. The CIA was subject to the same chainsaw-trimming that most other government agencies were given courtesy of DOGE and the Muskbrats. We also have the intense administration's dislike of facts. Either or both could have contributed to its demise.

But with a little luck, in a possibly truthier future, it could be resurrected. There's no doubt that the CIA found the resource useful, so it may again become available to the public in a better tomorrow.

https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-cia-stops-publishing-the-world-factbook-184419024.html

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/05/187252/cia-has-killed-off-the-world-factbook-after-six-decades

EDIT: added Slashdot link.

Out shopping this evening, and...

Amongst the things that I was purchasing was a set of replacement heads/brushes for my electric toothbrush.

The cashier rings them up and then, since it popped up on her register screen, ASKS ME IF I WANT THE PROTECTION PLAN FOR THEM.

WTF?!

We were both quite puzzled over that one. What exactly would a protection plan cover? If they wear out, I can get them replaced? THEY'RE EFFING DESIGNED TO WEAR OUT!

When I told it to Russet just now, she said 'Do they offer a protection plan on these paper plates?'

That would make just about as much sense.

The ISS is scheduled to be deorbited in '31. A lawmaker wants to push it up to a higher orbit.

In 2022, the bill that funded NASA extended funding for the International Space Station to 2030, and that was it. NASA started researching ways to end the life of the ISS at that point, and decided that a controlled deorbit was the best bet: lower it to a planned orbit where the increased friction with Earth's atmosphere will eventually cause re-entry and for it to crash into the Pacific Ocean's "space graveyard". That way it's controlled and theoretically won't hit land, potentially causing some really significant damage. The station would be shut-down in 2030 and the deorbit burn would happen in 2031, I'm a little unclear when it would actually re-enter the atmosphere.

Well, that plan might end up being scratched because of an effort being led by California Democratic Representative George Whiteside.

He's on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (vice-ranking member) and on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics (according to Wikipedia). His career has involved a lot of the space industry, and he's worked at NASA, but the roles seem to be in management and as a director. His Masters degree is in GIS and remote sensing, not in engineering.

He attached a rider to the new NASA funding bill, currently in committee, for them to study boosting the ISS to a parking orbit rather than deorbiting the thing. He thinks it can have a longer life.
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