HN is basically current events social media where people even admit they read the comments instead of TFA. And I think that getting lost on Wikipedia every few weeks is a far cry from browsing old shit on a 1TB SD card for fun in your ramshackle hovel with the family Android tablet.
To me it kinda comes off as the hilarious "wow, those poor people must be so bored watching their paint dry. Maybe I can interest them in something nobody does" wrapped up in some feel good idea about sharing knowledge.
Lot's of people still go to the library, and many of them still check out books a century or more old.
A 1TB dump is not about expecting people to read all of it, it would be about getting a broad enough section of knowledge that the chances of a decent subset of it being of interest to a decent number of people.
And if the purpose is to "spark the next Einstein" as the comment suggested, it doesn't matter if 99% of them ends up being used for games, or sold, or used for all kinds of other things, if a tiny portion triggers an interest in learning and provides a good starting point.
I don't see the parallels.
HN is basically current events social media where people even admit they read the comments instead of TFA. And I think that getting lost on Wikipedia every few weeks is a far cry from browsing old shit on a 1TB SD card for fun in your ramshackle hovel with the family Android tablet.
To me it kinda comes off as the hilarious "wow, those poor people must be so bored watching their paint dry. Maybe I can interest them in something nobody does" wrapped up in some feel good idea about sharing knowledge.