Before the Internet, there was a certain value to knowing how to find out about things. Reference librarians could help you locate specialized data like the Thomas Register, the EE and IC Masters for electronics, or even an encyclopedia or CRC handbook. But if you wanted up-to-date info on any country of the world, you’d often turn to the CIA. The originally classified document was what the CIA knew about every country in the world. Well, at least what they’d admit to knowing, anyway. But now, the Factbook is gone.
The publication started in 1962 as the classified “The National Basic Intelligence Factbook,” it went public in 1971 and became “The World Factbook” in the 1980s. While it is gone, you can rewind it, including a snapshot taken just before it went dark on Archive.org.
Browsing the archives, it looks like the last update was in September of 2025. It would be interesting to see a project like Wikipedia take the dataset, house it, and update it, although you can presume the CIA was better equipped. The data is public domain, after all.
Want to know things about Croatia? Unfortunately, the archive seems to have missed some parts of some pages. However, there are other mirrors, including some that have snapshots of the data in one form or another. Of course, these are not always the absolute latest (the link has data from 2023). But we would guess the main languages (Croatian and Serbian) haven’t changed. You can also find the internet country suffix (.hr) and rankings (for example, in 2020, Croatia ranked 29th in the world for the number of broadband internet subscribers scaled for population and 75th in total broadband usage.
We are sorry to see such a useful reference go, but reference books are definitely an endangered species these days.
Probably redundand given the state of wikipedia
The 2026-2027 version is out. Maybe they’re going to privatize the thing.
The Fact Book was full of, well, facts. Wikipedias entries more depend on how their gaggle of editors and contributors feel that day.
Bureaucracies regularly do ludicrous things just because. “Parks and Recreations” illustrates such things quite well, one doesn’t have to be smart in order to be paid well.
I am quite sure the report was compiled by someone who was properly educated, knew the world history and the background, etc etc, but hit the retirement age and went offline (or simply died of old age on the job). I am also speculating that seeing nobody, who could potentially step in, managers awarded themselves raises for “saving the budget”, ie, cancelled any benefits of removing another payroll off the books. I wager that they’ve tried using AI to write the thing, but seeing just how dumb it really was at this task, decided not to bother and just pull the plug.
I regularly interact with both, government entities and for-profits. Actually, non-profits too, but those are few and between.
I don’t need to be “in the system” to see how it works. Especially the ridiculous “merit” and “non-merit” separation and all kinds of endless ladders and conveyor belts crisscrossing back and forth, jotted by pointless tree house “boys only” clubs with their ladders pulled in, lest some lowly Sam dares to step onto one.
“Parks and Recreations” and “Office Space” (and “The Office”) describe the dynamics of what I see on daily basis quite well. The names and the tags maybe different, but the idiocy of having those who clearly don’t know how to do anything without destroying first, suddenly whisked into the managers’ boys only tree house “society” is quite noticeable – especially when/if they suddenly decide they know everything just because they are managers, ie NOT backed by the years of experience and at least some education.
English Major ones, please stay out of my English as Second Language hairs – I’ve had you as my “technical managers” long enough to deserve the ridicule. (I’ve had a grand total of 5/FIVE managers, all “English Major”, presently on their sixth reincarnation, btw, what is it with the English Major that keeps inviting/attracting them into my lowly programmers’ hair?)
I am speculating, not saying, and of course, there are merit positions that do both, pay well and employ those who know how to do their job. Because even the dumbest of the dumb NEED real workers to do their jobs for them, so they hire all kinds of “assistants” or “vice-managers”, or whatever. But the end result is almost always like this – if the said employee is even half-inch smarter than the manager, then he/she is the first to get a permanent thick glass ceiling above their heads, and/or get demoted/dumped-out/retired to lessen the impression that the managers’ job was unimportant to start with.
Something like that.
Rinse twice before reading, add salt/pepper according to taste, thoroughly mix in, and then through away with the bathwater, whichever comes first. Sarcasm. It was sarcasm :- ]
Honestly what I remember most about the Factbook was how disappointed I was when I read it. Like, the CIA man! Their factbook! that stuff should be cooooool. What did I get? blah blah tin exports
People get very excited about their tin exports! Doesn’t Kazakhstan mention potassium in their national anthem?
Spy stuff isn’t all James Bond, somebody has to find out how many mangos Malaysia exported in the last year.
Perhaps there was no plan, maybe the server just crashed and they could not figure out how to fix it because they fired the admin and then they just announced it was retired.
The Library of Alexandria got burnt. There’s always a group who don’t understand the value of actual knowledge as opposed to consensus opinion. It looks like their descendants are continuing the tradition… :)
OK, champ. As someone who actually used the data in his job, I’ll publish a lament.
I used in while working for an engineering company. Often we had to calculate impacts of material changes to processes – fuel consumption increase / decrease, trade, limitations due to resource constraints, expected population changes. Many times, the things we needed were synthetic: X didn’t get tracked but could be inferred from Y and Z. The fact book was indispensable for stuff like that. The reason? The data was a researched and maintained by a source perceived to be knowledgeable, reliable, and stable.
I’m saddened at the loss of the Fact Book. I’m heartbroken at the gutting of the source’s characteristics that generated it.
I spent a lot of time travelling for business in my career. I referred to the Factbook often to have some idea about the place I’d be flying to next. I’m sorry that you can’t see that having a resource like this is a good thing regardless of one’s political stripe. And yes, I can deduce yours easily by the tone of your post.
It’s still in my info repo next to the cryptome archives.
Used to refer to it from time to time, but wikipedia does a reasonable job. Reasonable enough to get donations.
I’ve used it since the early days of the internet. It was /a/ view on the world, and a useful one. While obviously opinionated it was factual. Sucks that it is going away, as does your preemptive & imagined anger at anyone who might miss it.
Seems strange they would just deep six it, it is a “reputable” reference so you think they could have just made it a subscription service. And for people saying they wouldn’t want the extra work the job of the CIA is collecting information, the Factbook is money for old rope.