[HN Gopher] A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library... ___________________________________________________________________ A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library index on the IPFS network Author : baptiste313 Score : 295 points Date : 2022-12-29 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (zlib.zu1k.com) (TXT) w3m dump (zlib.zu1k.com) | mordae wrote: | It would be even cooler if it found books of "Stanislaw Lem" with | the correct name as well as its ASCII equivalent "Stanislaw Lem". | mdaniel wrote: | You may want to try building it locally without their | AsciiFoldingFilter and see if it behaves as you wish: | https://github.com/zlib-searcher/zlib-searcher/blob/0.6.0/cr... | | I don't know tantivy well enough to know if it'd be possible to | put the folded in one field and the literal in another and then | use the search syntax to choose between them | jesusofnazarath wrote: | looks great. Is there an api for something like this so i can | make it an extension of my terminal? | baptiste313 wrote: | Of course there are examples on their | [GitHub](https://github.com/zlib-searcher/zlib- | searcher#original-sear...) | hosh wrote: | You can self-host it: https://github.com/zlib-searcher/zlib- | searcher | mdaniel wrote: | Wow, I had no idea GitHub releases would tolerate such a huge | release asset: https://github.com/zlib-searcher/zlib- | searcher/releases (index_0.6.zip is 1.48GB and index_0.5.zip | is 1.75GB) It seems their API docs do talk about 502s during | upload, but don't otherwise specify a limit: https://docs.git | hub.com/en/rest/releases/assets?apiVersion=2... | | The irony of not hosting them on IPFS does not escape me :-/ | tmpburning wrote: | Can't wait for someone to come up for a solution to copyright | that will benefit everyone. | ROTMetro wrote: | So, you mean, the current copyright solution? That has seen | creation of works skyrocket? Or do you mean a system where | people can steal what they want because 'reasons' and 'they | want to pay less because xyz'? Do you propose a system that | takes ownership from authors and redistributes their works | maybe? Why shouldn't owners get to set the pricing? Just | because people want to steal doesn't mean it's ok to. Just | because people don't like the price doesn't mean they should | get to set it. The current system not working would look | something like no works being released (because the author felt | it wasn't worth it). The fact that people put in so much effort | to steal these works shows the current system is in fact | working. People wanting to steal does not equal not working. | Authors can set their prices to free, but funny, they choose | not to (as is their right). | tmpburning wrote: | imagine if you built a building and then someone purchased | it... and everyone that visited it also had to also pay | you.... thats a bit like how copyright is today... | | But what is even worst is that they are trying to make you | pay them forever (subscriptions). | yucky wrote: | > Or do you mean a system where people can steal what they | want because 'reasons' and 'they want to pay less because | xyz'? | | If you have a copy of something, and I make a copy of it, and | you still have your copy of it, what was stolen? If I find a | book in the library and take pictures of each page, is that | also theft? What if I write all the words down? What if I use | a hand scanner and OCR to copy and transcribe it, is that | theft? | spigottoday wrote: | Not an author, are you. Not a lawyer either. When you have | spent years honing your craft and spent many months | creating a work so that you can buy what you need to live | and can't afford to support your self and your family | without that income and then YOU give that work away - then | I may find some value in your self serving questions. By | the way, the answer to your questions is yes. | tadfisher wrote: | The obvious response is that you stole the author's income, | by obtaining a copy of their work without compensating them | for it. | | So the obvious retort is that you may not have bothered to | purchase the author's work, forgoing your opportunity to | read it, thus the author did not lose their sale. | | The conversation will then turn to defending the existence | of copyright as an incentivization to produce valuable | works worth reading, and then to how the publishing | industry eats those incentives anyway. | | In the end, no one will exit the conversation having gained | any insight. | yucky wrote: | > So the obvious retort is that you may not have bothered | to purchase the author's work, forgoing your opportunity | to read it, thus the author did not lose their sale. | | I can't speak for all pirates, but I will pirate things I | want to sample and then often buy it if it's what I was | looking for. At least with books. I haven't bought music | in 20 years. | brunoqc wrote: | Is that web site accessible with ipfs? | ROTMetro wrote: | I hope every project you work on has it's source code stolen | resulting in failure. And this is coming from a pretty crappy | person, but this website sure does love stealing from authors (so | that it can enjoy the fruits of their labor). | cratermoon wrote: | A question about z-lib, libgen, and regular libraries | | Suppose I check an e-book out of my local library. Because | Reasons, the library doesn't "own" unlimited "copies" of the | book, so each "copy" can only be checked out to one patron at a | time and if there are enough holds then a patron can't renew a | checked out book. In short, ebooks in libraries are just like | regular paper books, except to you don't have leave your house. | | I had this ebook on hold for three months because it's very | popular, but finally have it on my device, but I only have 3 | weeks before I can no longer read it because of holds. I get | about 2/3rds the way through before lock closes on the bits on my | device. It's a very popular book, it will be 3 months before I | can read it again. | | I go online, use some service, find the exact same book, down to | all but the locking bits, and download it, finish reading it a | few days later, and then forget about it. I might delete it later | if I need room. | | Is that a crime? Have either the author or publisher lost money? | On the one hand, I can say yes because if the libraries purchased | more "copies", the waiting list wouldn't be so long, I might have | been able to renew it and finish it. On the other hand, I wasn't | going to buy the book myself, and the library has to balance | budget and demand, so they probably wouldn't purchase additional | "copies". | | What ethical questions do authors and readers see here? | juuular wrote: | You might find this interesting: | | Reverse engineering yet another ebook format (Nemanja | Mijailovic) https://mijailovic.net/2022/12/25/hkpropel/ | wccrawford wrote: | My layman's understanding of copyright law says you didn't | commit a crime, but whoever sent you the book _did_ commit a | crime. My understanding is that it 's not illegal to download a | book, it's illegal to distribute a book. (Or other copyrighted | work.) | staunch wrote: | I'm looking forward to some new AI system making it possible to | generate high quality audiobooks from epub files. | | This "AI book reader" doesn't exist yet, right? | mdaniel wrote: | The Google Books mobile app will read any(?) book in your | library, and at least they used to support uploading your own | books, although I haven't tried it in a while: | https://play.google.com/books/uploads?type=ebooks and in the | individual book, tap on it, tap the bamboo menu, choose "Read | aloud" | rockemsockem wrote: | Working on this now, cherry-picked audio from such AI systems | abound, but submitting arbitrary text for audio synthesis | requires a much higher quality bar to be listenable. Planning | to have something out early 2023. | o_____________o wrote: | What's the best off the shelf solution you've found? I've | been trying a few different apps to read my queued articles | to me, but all of the voices are awful. | FounderBurr wrote: | [flagged] | jarboot wrote: | Loving the simplicity of a typescript frontend + rust backend | Nican wrote: | I like reading about IPFS, but I do not really have the time to | learn about it and get involved. | | Last I remember, Z-Library was having an issue scaling the DHS to | handle the number of files [1]. Did those issues get resolved? | How is it going now? Also, is there anything being done to ensure | every file has seeders? | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33716560 | survirtual wrote: | I've dived deep into IPFS and built several prototypes on top | of it. It ended up not being performant enough for me, and that | was after heavily modifying the codebase so that it was true | p2p browser & server (their webrtc transport had a lot of | issues and they didn't seem too interested in it, but my needs | required it as a backbone). | | The security was also a concern, and the scaling had issues. | Pinning millions of small items got so slow it would not | function. Then I ended up having concerns over hashed based | addressing being easy to censor with the architecture IPFS was | using (more hub & spoke than anything, given signaling and | relay servers were centralized). | | I could go on but I ran into so many issues I ended up | implementing my own solution that did everything I wanted. | Wanted to squeeze even more performance, I've been converting | that solution to Rust. | | This was a couple years ago so maybe things have changed since | I used it. Last I checked, they seemed busy on Filecoin. | | The idea of IPFS is great and I want to see it succeed, but I | think that they got so caught up in their jargon and | modularity, the project lost track of some fundamentals. | oldgregg wrote: | Honestly I think Consensys/IPFS/Libp2p is just some | corporatized way to derail real P2P and decentralization. | Their libraries are total garbage. Lots of complicated code | that simply doesn't work. No documentation. I mean look how | much IPFS and Libp2p is pumped but IT DOESN'T WORK. IPNS is a | joke. All way overengineered crap that does everything but | actually nothing. Look at the $$$ and pedigree behind | Consensys it's 100% establishment. | survirtual wrote: | Anything is possible, but having some limited github | interactions with the core team, that seems unlikely. My | impression is that they are a passionate group that hit the | jackpot a bit prematurely. | | Their intentions seemed good to me they just have an | ungodly amount of financing while perhaps lacking a core | vision & understanding of what is at stake. | | Put another way, seems more like an academic building | something rather than a seasoned industry pro. | | In any case, I don't want to disparage their project. I | learned a lot from their code & concepts. We are all on our | own roads towards brilliance, contributing to each other in | all kinds of ways. | oldgregg wrote: | I certainly wouldn't disparage the talent- no doubt vast | majority have good intentions but unfortunately they are | being paid handsomely to have their work be rendered | ineffective. Gobble up all the best P2P devs and get them | focused on work that is largely ineffective. Lots of code | and specs but nothing really usable. Code is not very | original, they just take other libraries and tweak them. | mplex is their version of yamux, autonat is their version | of stun/ice... but then none of their libraries really | work together seemlessly. Embrace extend extinguish? If | you look at their massive code output then google "what | apps use libp2p" you won't find anything because nobody | uses it. Berty is really only app worth a mention. | password4321 wrote: | > _my own solution that did everything I wanted_ | | Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to | your newsletter! | | (I really would appreciate any pointers to additional info on | something that actually works...) | survirtual wrote: | If you find something, let me know. It would save me a lot | of trouble. | | Until then, what I'm building unfortunately doesn't seem to | have a peer. So I will keep at it. If it gets to a point | where I believe it can be useful to others, I will share it | freely. | codetrotter wrote: | > If it gets to a point where I believe it can be useful | to others, I will share it freely. | | It sounds very useful already. | | I'd love to see the code even if it's not in a quite | working state yet. | steponlego wrote: | Works great, that's old news which is no longer current. | ComputerGuru wrote: | ZFS (Zettabyte File System) is very much separate from | Z-Library (and its alternative frontends like libgen). | Nican wrote: | Thanks. My brain crossed wires between Z-Library and IPFS. I | updated my post. | ComputerGuru wrote: | Completely understandable! | deanc wrote: | Is the catalog on IPFS different to the catalog available via one | of the libgen front-ends? I just performed a search on both for | one title and it found it right away on a libgen front-end, but | not here. | [deleted] | nestorD wrote: | I just did a quick test, it could do with slightly fuzzier | searching ('Epub' as an extension got me no result while 'epub' | did, a drop down menu with options might be better/simpler for | some fields) but, otherwise, it seems functional and useful. | Cort3z wrote: | It seems case sensitive on some (or all?) of the input fields. | At least for the author field in some of my searches. | ComputerGuru wrote: | FWIW https://libgen.rs already has good search for basically the | same books. I like the denser layout that makes better use of | whitespace than this HN submission does. | mohamez wrote: | I think the best thing about libgen is their detailed filter to | search books with covers which makes it really easy to scan | books you are looking for assuming you know the cover pages. | [deleted] | [deleted] | [deleted] | layer8 wrote: | Has LibGen already caught up to Z-Library? I thought that was | still very much a work in progress. | makeworld wrote: | You can use https://annas-archive.org/ | moffkalast wrote: | Fantastic, I knew something would come up eventually after the | old site was taken down. | benevol wrote: | Well, nice work. But poor authors... | [deleted] | SpelingBeeChamp wrote: | Anyone know of a similar search engine that allows the user to | filter search results by year? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-29 23:00 UTC)