A local copy on a single person’s storage that isn’t available for future researchers, isn’t exactly Meeting the requirements of this article.
I have a copy of slashdot when they turned it pink for April fools day. Does anyone know that? No. Could someone find it if they wanted to read it? No. Is that helpful for preservation? No. To be helpful I’d have to make it available and searchable. You know what that does? Makes it so it can be DCMA’d.
They take your data down pretty quick when you die and stop paying for it. And as much as we all want to think AWS and GCP and Azure are sticking around forever there’s no reason at this time to believe they will be around in 100+ years.
There have been plenty of cloud services that have shut down and taken their data offline. And plenty of current ones deleted data after users have gone inactive. Or require constant payments to keep accounts active. Cloud, as it exits now, is not the answer to the archival question.
But it can be rusted.
Don’t forget, you also need drives that work that long and connect to computers or some other device to utilize the bits, and the bus they use must be available and working, and the disk format they’re written in must be readable, and the images themselves encoded with an algorithm that we still have access to, etc. it’s not just the media.
I think it’s possible, thanks to the retro enthusiasts, we still have access to some things from the 70s and 80s, but they’re getting fewer and fewer, especially in a working state. That’s only 50yrs ago. What happens when you want to go 100? Or 500? A few thousand? We are familiar with journals from the Civil War, and have found items and notes from Egypt, Roman, and Ancient Greek civilizations, how can we preserve what happened in the currently information rich time we live in, for future generations? Especially as much of it migrates online to blog posts and social networks and news sites that eventually shut down due to corporate issues or shifting internet traffic?
This makes perfect sense. The only way around it would be to randomize the location of the digits/letters, and I’m sure people would throw a fit if that was the case. Still it should be an option.
Going to 4 is just playing it safe, you gotta go to 5!
https://theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036/
Interesting and sad to hear. Personally I’ve gone with Lenovo if I’m not going with Mac. Heck, My wife has a 2011 Lenovo which has been running flawlessly. The only thing I did was bump the RAM and put in an SSD when Win7 upgraded to 10. Maybe I just skipped the crappy years?
All joking aside, I haven’t had issues with Macs overheating in years, especially with the M chips. Last time I had an issue was when they tried to cram an i9 in a MBP.
Now the Dell laptops we have at work on the other hand, I’ve had to down clock them in bios so they don’t run at 100% or they will literally overheat just running windows. One of my coworkers has to run his upside down or it doesn’t get enough air through the vents to prevent it from auto shutting down due to thermal issues.
They don’t have asmany sales, but I’ve definitely scored some good prices on games here and there. They often run 20+% off on first party titles and non-first party gets deep discounts (I scored Rabbids for $4 a while back). I just wish they’d do the equivalent of PS Greatest Hits for like $20.
For some situations a console is nicer than a PC. Solid, consistent, single unit I can just connect to a TV and play. I’ve got a PC and I prefer it, but the average console is cheaper than my PC was and simpler for non-geek family members to boot up and play on a whim.
Enter Nintendo. Crappy 9yo SOC, sure, whatever, here are some fun games that aren’t graphically advanced.
Ah, the Hapsburg of AI!