DrNeurohax

(As part of the Reddit migration, any time I'm only able to find info on Reddit, I'm reposting it to kbin/Lemmy.)

TL;DR - To get the page's OCR text from Newspapers.com, replace /image/ with /newspage/ in the url with the thumbnail.

EDIT: @godless Pointed out that some libraries have access to Newspapers.com through a Library Edition portal. My local library has several newspaper archives, and I figured the first couple would be the most complete. Nope, but there was Newspapers.com Library Edition access buried under the fold. That worked!

Bonus tip - Also search for current info of close family members. The spokeo hit was due to searching his mother's name, and spokeo is too dumb to understand that deceased people don't move with their families to future homes. It treated his records like he was living ("Current" address, phone numbers, etc were listed, even though they were for his sister, who's still alive).

And here's my rant/vent/story...

I was looking for an obituary in that nebulous early 90's time period where only some info is digitized. Hi s family's having a memorial for him next week and I was hoping to bring a pic of the newspaper from his birthday and deathday, along with the obit. I had a general idea of the date of death, knew the city and funeral home, and his name minus middle initial. Sites like legacy.com refused to return a match. Even the state and county records sites were useless.

After a couple hours, I had only 2 partial hits. Bing Chat (yeah, I was surprised, too) said it found the obit, but it was locked behind a paywall. The newspaper that had it (which I checked earlier) said nothing was there. It appears that the obits are available going back to 2004. Dates before that were supposedly available in the paper's archive. The archive was 404. Or, rather, the entire domain was 404.

The second hit was on spokeo - one of those obnoxious sites that gives partial info and then wants you to subscribe to 3 different levels of services. But, from there I got his middle initial and the exact birthday and death date. That info helped.

I eventually made it to Newspapers.com, which threw up a paywall, but indicated it had the info. I did the usual checking the source and css, reader mode, incognito, etc. It was clear that the image was probably there, judging by the css. Nope. The only info I could find on getting through that barrier was on Reddit. It doesn't lead to the paper image, but the OCR text. Just replace /image/ with /newspage/ in the url with the thumbnail.

Good. It existed and was exactly where I was expecting through the whole search. Now to get the paper image that the text was extracted from... nope. Gotta sign up.

One last thing to try again, since Newspapers.com gave me the exact PAGE NUMBER.

I tried looking into the archives of the paper available in the library's database. It appears most obits (non-newsworthy ones) were excluded. My hypothesis is that the paper sold the archives to a site that stipulated that they must be excluded from other sources. It's the only explanation.

So, looks like I'll be visiting the library Monday to see if they have microfiche of the paper. WTF is going on that I can't find a major metropolitan newspaper's obit section in 2023? I can find 15 million pictures of influencers' breakfasts, but a 2x2 inch shred of paper is completely inaccessible. Not even a torrent out there of this stuff because who the fuck would make it hard to find an old newspaper?

(Forgot to mention that I used Google, Bing, DDG, and SearXNG. Bing was the most helpful, Google the least helpful.)

This shit right here is why I pirate - "great" business models. If there was a torrent of the entire decade's worth of that newspaper, it would have been easier to download that, compared to jumping through all these hoops.

Hey all,

I know many of us have avoided Reddit entirely, while others have been working to ween themselves off the toxic bot nest. Speaking for myself, I know I've had a few technical problems whose solutions were only found on Reddit.

The migration dust has settled a bit and it's pretty clear that bots mass migrating subreddits isn't the direction the kbin/Lemmy community wants to go.

I propose that these explicit recommendations be mentioned at signup and as part of the user's profile page:

• If Reddit is the easiest to access or only source of information you're searching for during regular browsing, please consider reposting that information to the relevant Fediverse community.
• Begin these title of these posts with "[RX]" so that Fediverse users know why a seemingly random post has been added.
• Please tag these posts with "RDX" (or "RedditExtraction") and the subreddit name it came from for easy filtering.
• This is especially important for technical and detailed posts, as liberating this information will prevent it from disappearing at a corporate goon's whim, and it helps other users transition off Reddit.
• Use whatever method you prefer for the format of the body. It's more important that the info is extracted than any rigid format be followed. You can:
  • Link to the original Reddit post.
  • Copy-paste the text, only mentioning the authors' screen names.
  • Simply summarizing the info.

General Example:

• You search Fediverse posts for a solution to a computer problem, but find nothing.
• A search from Google yields nothing useful except a post on r/TechSupport.
• Create a new thread on kbin/Lemmy titled:
  • [RDX] (the question you searched)
  • Description of problem, including why it was hard to find.
  • Description of solution, preferably including some indication of time in the original post. (Was this post 1 year old or 10 years old?)
  • Any additional information you deem relevant.
  • Tags: RDX, RedditExtraction, TechSupport, troubleshooting, etc.

Specific Example:

[RDX] Do PCIE to PCI slot conversion adapters require the PCIE or PCI version of drivers?

I have an old PCI card that I would like to use on a current PC. I've seen adapters that should work, but my particular card had both PCI and PCIE versions released. Which driver should I install, or does it even matter?

Response by u/..... in 2013:

Install the PCI version.
Since the card itself is PCI, that is the "language" the PC needs to speak for it to understand. PCIE should be backward compatible, just not physically compatible.

I performed the steps recommended and it solved my problem.

Tags: RDX, TechSupport, PCI, PCItoPCIE, PCHardware

With proper identification (title or tags), it should be easier to add features to the website and apps for filtering out such posts.

I would be even more helpful if there was an option on the New Thread page that auto-filled some of this info or redirected to a form page with separate entries for each element.

Another, more complicated, possibility would be to include a user editable wiki with each community, with extracted data listed as a section. New entries and notes can be submitted, but require moderators approval. Unapproved entries would still show, but with a warning that it hasn't been approved yet.

Thoughts?