I spent ages trying to work out if it would be possible to find a copy of the 2021 Encarta or Britannica.

Pre LLM And post COVID and perhaps the best we can hope for before AI taints all the info.

One of my prized possessions as a child was a CDROM based encyclopedia (well before the internet was common). I don't know why I liked it so much but on a rainy afternoon I'd kick up some of my favourite articles and read and learn more of them.

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tezza 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

2004: https://archive.org/details/britannica-2004

2009: https://archive.org/details/britannica-multimedia-dvd-2009-d...

2012: https://archive.org/details/britannica-dvd_20230709

2013: https://archive.org/details/encyclopedia-britannica-dvd-2013

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ahaspel 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know exactly what you mean — I had the same experience with CD-ROM encyclopedias. There’s something about just browsing and falling into articles that’s hard to replicate.

Part of the motivation here was to bring that kind of exploration back, but with the original 1911 text and structure.

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pawsocks 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you happen to use a language model to translate or format your comments?

	▲	ahaspel 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just me. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, so I like talking about it.

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hoppyhoppy2 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The final release of Encarta was in 2009.