Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are stored – CNN Business

Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved

By Hadas Gold, Updated 23 hr ago

See inside the old San Francisco church that houses nearly all of the internet’s history…

San Francisco  —  Just blocks from the Presidio of San Francisco, the national park at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, stands a gleaming white building, its façade adorned with eight striking gothic columns.

But what was once the home of a Christian Scientist church, is now the holy grail of Internet history — the Internet Archive, a non-profit library run by a group of software engineers and librarians, who for nearly 30 years have been saving the web one page at a time.

Inside the stained-glass-adorned sanctuary, the sounds of church sermons have been replaced by the hum of servers, where the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserves web pages.

The Wayback Machine, a tool used by millions every day, has proven critical for academics and journalists searching for historical information on what corporations, people and governments have published online in the past, long after their websites have been updated or changed.

For many, the Wayback Machine is like a living history of the internet, and it just logged its trillionth page last month.

Archiving the web is more important and more challenging than ever before. The White House in January ordered vast amounts of government webpages to be taken down. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is blurring the line between what’s real and what’s artificially generated — in some ways replacing the need to visit websites entirely. And more of the internet is now hidden behind paywalls or tucked in conversations with AI chatbots.

It’s the Internet Archive’s job to figure out how to preserve it all.

“We are here to try to provide a record of what happened, so that people can learn and build on that to build a better future, or to build new ideas that are worthy of being in the (Internet Archive’s) library,” said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.

The internet’s library

Kahle created the archive in 1996 when a year’s worth of saved pages could fit on about 2 terabytes worth of hard drives, the amount of storage you can get today in an iPhone. Now, the archive is saving closer to 150 terabytes, or hundreds of millions worth of web pages, per day.

Kahle is the driving force and personality behind the archive, with the exuberance and energy of your favorite science teacher and like an evangelist whose religion is libraries and technology. Sitting for an interview on the original wooden pews of the church, Kahle said he was inspired to purchase the building because it resembles the group’s logo. But more importantly, he said it’s a symbol of permanence and a reference to the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.

“That was the first time somebody tried to go and collect everything ever written by humans,” Kahle said. “Of course, now that place is the internet, and the Internet Archive serves the whole internet as a library.”

The Wayback Machine tool does more than just screenshot the page. It also saves the technical architecture — the HTML, CSS, JavaScript codes and more — so that it can attempt to “replay the page as it existed” even if the server is no longer functioning, said Wayback Machine Director Mark Graham.

The rise of artificial intelligence and AI chatbots means the Internet Archive is changing how it records the history of the internet. In addition to web pages, the Internet Archive now captures AI-generated content, like ChatGPT answers and those summaries that appear at the top of Google search results.

 Referred by: Library Link of the Day
http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/  (archive, rss, subscribe options)

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are stored | CNN Business

Why Halloween candy is getting more expensive and less chocolate-y – CNN Business

Business• 4 min read

Why Halloween candy is getting more expensive and less chocolate-y

By Ramishah Maruf and Matt Egan

Updated 44 min ago

New York  — Even the joy of Halloween will cost more this year, with less chocolate than in years past.

Expect more packages of tangy gummies, riding off a meteoric high last year. Your kid’s trick-or-treat bag may be filled with a lot of pumpkin-spice-filled-anything. And like last year, cocoa bean industry experts are expecting high price tags to be passed down to consumers.

Andwith high cocoa prices, every producer from specialty chocolate makers to candy giants are changing up how they sell their treats. For consumers, this could mean less chocolate per package, higher prices and less cocoa content – meaning less chocolate-y chocolate – compared to before.

Overall, candy is 10.8% more expensive this Halloween season than last year,according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data conducted by progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative and shared first with CNN. That’s nearly quadruple the overall rate of inflation.

In 2024, Halloween candy prices only rose 2.1%, the analysis found.

Halloween spending is no fun-sized matter. Americans shelled out $7.4 billion in Halloween chocolate and candy sales in 2024, a 2.2% increase from 2023, the National Confectioners Association said.

Escazú Chocolates, a bean-to-bar chocolate shop in Raleigh, North Carolina, sources most of its beans from Latin America. The shop said it has always worked with smaller farmers and paid them three to four times the commodity price of cacao – which essentially sets the minimum wage. The spike in prices has pushed up what Escazú pays those workers as well.

Other cost-cutting measures include offering a smaller hot chocolate size, advertising non-chocolate ice cream toppings and moving to a cheaper location in Raleigh to save on rent.

And like many small businesses in America, Escazú is being hit by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, affecting not just the chocolate, but also aluminum in its packaging.

“The tariffs have hit every single piece of what goes into every single thing,” Tiana Young, co-owner of Escazú, told CNN. “There is no new normal.”

Halloween treats may look — and taste — a little different

Most Americans are not shopping at bean-to-bar specialty shops for Halloween candy. But even consumers of mass-produced candy can taste – and see – the difference compared to a few years ago.

Wells Fargo economist David Branch said users can expect to see more shrinkflation. Hershey told its retail partners in May that it would adjust its “price pack architecture,” corporate-speak for reducing the amount of product in a package so customers don’t feel like they’re paying more for chocolate.

Some specialty chocolate makers are also reducing the cocoa content in their bars and increasing the sugar, like selling a bar with 65% cocoa content instead of 75%.

Gummy candy and rising cocoa prices enjoy a sort of symbiotic relationship. Younger customers have been gravitating toward chewy, sweet treats – sales of sour candy, for example, grew 7% year over year, according to the National Confectioners Association. By making more gummies and less chocolate, candy companies appeal to those sugar- craving customers while saving their profit margins.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Why Halloween candy is getting more expensive and less chocolate-y | CNN Business

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Media outlets, including Fox News and CNN, refuse to sign Pentagon’s press access rules – CNN Business

Business Media • 4 min read

Media outlets, including Fox News and CNN, refuse to sign Pentagon’s press access rules

By Brian Stelter, Updated 6 hr ago, 168 comments

The Pentagon is telling beat reporters to sign restrictive new rules by Tuesday or surrender their press passes by Wednesday. Virtually every news outlet is rejecting the ultimatum and saying they will not sign.

The Pentagon Press Association, a body that represents the beat reporters, says the new policy championed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “gags Pentagon employees and threatens retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release.”

In a statement on Monday, the association said that “potential expulsion from the Pentagon should be a concern to all.”

Last month, Hegseth’s press office outlined new rules requiring beat reporters to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material, even if the information is unclassified. Any journalist who doesn’t sign the pledge, Hegseth said, risks losing physical access to the Pentagon — something that has been a standard part of Washington-area news coverage for decades.

ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News and Fox News (where Hegseth was an on-air host for a decade) issued a joint statement on Tuesday afternoon condemning the new rules and refusing to sign the paperwork.

“Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the statement read. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Media outlets, including Fox News and CNN, refuse to sign Pentagon’s press access rules – CNN Business

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FAQ: Why America just bailed out Argentina with a $20 billion lifeline – CNN Business

FAQ: Why America just bailed out Argentina with a $20 billion lifeline

Business Economy• 4 min read

By Bryan Mena, Updated 13 min ago. 311 comments

The Trump administration is bailing out Argentina in a move critics are saying has more to do with politics than economics or American interests.

That means $20 billion US taxpayer dollars will be used to bail out a country led by a close ally of President Donald Trump: chainsaw-wielding, libertarian Javier Milei.

The two men are set to meet on Tuesday at the White House for a bilateral meeting, where the discussion is likely to include the extraordinary bailout and tariffs.

“Argentina faces a moment of acute illiquidity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X Thursday. “The US Treasury is prepared, immediately, to take whatever exceptional measures are warranted to provide stability to markets.”

Meanwhile, the US federal government is nearing two weeks of being shut down and US businesses and industries continue to reel from Trump’s ongoing trade war.

Here are some key details about the administration’s extraordinary financial rescue of Argentina.

What’s the problem?

Argentina is at risk of a financial collapse.

The country’s currency fell sharply after President Milei’s party suffered a significant defeat in elections last month. The losses shook investors’ confidence in Milei’s ability to see through his economic reforms.

Milei has slashed government spending, cut regulations and fired tens of thousands of public-sector workers since taking office in 2023. His administration has seen some success; inflation in Argentina eased this year to the slowest monthly pace in more than four years.

The Trump administration has argued that Argentina’s financial strife could spill over into other economies if it isn’t contained swiftly.

Administration officials say they also see a risk of Argentina, a major economy in South America, strengthening its ties with China.

The next legislative elections in Argentina take place on October 26.

What is the US doing?

On Thursday, Bessent confirmed on social media that Argentina’s bailout is moving forward in two keys ways.

Bessent said the administration has finalized a $20 billion currency swap agreement with Argentina’s central bank, allowing it to exchange its local currency for the US dollar.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Editor’s Note: See also my DWD post in response to this bailout. (Link to come)

Continue/Read Original Article Here: FAQ: Why America just bailed out Argentina with a $20 billion lifeline | CNN Business

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