ArchiveBox

ArchiveBox looks like something I’m going to have to find the time to look into:

ArchiveBox takes a list of website URLs you want to archive, and creates a local, static, browsable HTML clone of the content from those websites (it saves HTML, JS, media files, PDFs, images and more)

You can use it to preserve access to websites you care about by storing them locally offline. ArchiveBox imports lists of URLs, renders the pages in a headless, autheticated, user-scriptable browser, and then archives the content in multiple redundant common formats (HTML, PDF, PNG, WARC) that will last long after the originals disappear off the internet. It automatically extracts assets and media from pages and saves them in easily-accessible folders, with out-of-the-box support for extracting git repositories, audio, video, subtitles, images, PDFs, and more.

I currently pay to have my Pinboard account archive pages I bookmark, but as a matter of principle I like the concept of having a toolset that enables me to have the ability to save and browse local copies of stuff. [note]I fully recognise that in principle once you publish stuff online it should be left at that same URL pretty much in perpetuity, but as someone who hasn’t yet got round to republishing huge swathes of the stuff I’ve published at Sore Eyes using different content management systems over the years I’m the last person to try to shame anyone on this front. But then, the simple reality is that this site is at best a very low-profile weblog, so the vast majority of the stuff I’ve published here consists of pointers to stuff that other people have published. Whatever tiny importance my link to that content might have had in drawing attention to that content is ancient history now.[/note] I currently tend to grab stuff I think I’ll want to read and refer to later and either chuck the URL at Pinboard or else use Evernote’s ability to grab a page’s content and file it away safely, but it’d be nice to have another option for accessing stuff that caught my eye open to me.

[Via Four short links]

Tactical Evaluation

An essential read as the Marvel fan base prepares for Avengers: Endgame, courtesy of The Angry Staff Officer:

The world is blessed that Steve Rogers never made it past captain. The Battle of Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War is a master class in how not to use an infantry battalion. However, from his failure, we can extract some fundamental lessons[…]

[On Steve Rogers’ willingness to send his vehicular support away before battle was joined…] It is true that the transport craft were unarmoured and open-topped. If fighting an adversary with strong anti-armour or indirect fire capabilities, sending them away would be reasonable. However, the Thanosian forces lacked this entirely. Their troops were incapable of using ranged weapons, or indeed, higher brain functions. They traveled on foot and bit the opposition to death.

Captain Roger’s disregard for vehicles is perhaps excusable as being on brand for a career light infantry officer. […]

Excellent, level headed work.[note]I suspect Capt. Rogers will find himself given plenty of opportunities to put his undoubted personal attributes as a brave and effective soldier to good use in the next film. Probably not so many big setpiece battles to organise, hopefully lots more sneaking around and surprising/overpowering his adversaries one enemy combatant at a time.[/note] The thing is, I’m not sure any of the Avengers are terribly good generals: not unless it’s revealed at the end that everything has transpired according to Doctor Strange’s grand strategic plan.

[RT via Charlie Stross]