Leperflesh posted:

funny tech poo poo u just remembered: there's no such thing as a permanent archival format, the only way to preserve information "permanently" is by constantly copying it to whatever the latest format is, forever, and since the total amount of information increases over time, this is an asymptotic curve of effort in which actual success at the stated goal of preserving everything, or even just everything "worthy", would mean a horrific dystopian future in which all of human effort by every living person is expended in the menial task of swapping reels on the reel to disk transferal machine (by which of course I mean its futuristic counterpart, I dunno, telling AIs to copy the internet archives onto the data crystals). Humanity enslaved by the duty to preserve its own past, unable to create anything new because of the burden of all that was made before, each passing century adding an ever greater volume of babble and Very Important Debates about events current and past and saying "lol".

Or perhaps a brave clean future in which archeologists muck around in the tattered scraps of what was lost, filling in the 99% of what's missing with imaginative narratives that more or less fit the evidence, while the rest of us nod interestedly while watching the holovids specials about the ancient peoples of pre-collapse north america and then move on to whatever new thing is of proper interest to their time and place, like playing holo-tennis or inventing better nuclear fallout cleaning robots or invading proxima centauri before they invade us. How dissatisfactory to our own present-day venalities, to think that all of this time and effort we've spent on our clever jpegs and ironic-but-not-ironic-but-actually-even-more-ironic jokes about holocaust denial will have been, in the end, lost like tears in rain, time to die? Some clever digger may yet pore over the last fragmentary remains of YOSPOS and confidently declare: "these were a subspecies of humanity, genetically similar but clearly differentiated by their mutation for monochromia, unable to see other than amber or green. Curious!"

Let me tell you, there is that aforementioned middle ground: we can take only that which we hold most dear and carve it into the rocks themselves in giant laser-etched forms, universally understandable memetic glyphs, that future generations cannot help but notice and understand, like so many pyramids of giza or statues of Ozymandias; or if you like, print out your tweets onto archival paper and store them in the deepest vaults. Curation! Select only the gems, the diamonds in the rough, encase them in amber and set them aside, and future generations may queue up and pay a modest entry fee to peer at them and clutch their chins and nod and hmm before boisterously clambering back aboard their hyberbus to return to their space school, orbiting above the clouds.

But to do this first you must make choices, what to preserve and what not to, and such has been the volume of our effluent digital converse in these recent decades that you might well spend all your days sifting through just your own shitposts in their tens of thousands, and thus as a microcosm of that dark dystopian future - become personally a shadow cast by the spectre of your own wasted potential, a basement-dwelling goon whose creative juices have dried up, left with just a crusty old sponge myopically dabbing at the messy spill of your youthful energy, dribs and drabs that stain the archived threads of a dead gay forum, sopping up a drop here or a drop there, to place into the folder marked "DO NOT DELETE" in the vain hope that your grand-nieces and step-nephews will bother to gingerly poke through your ancient dusty computer poo poo before they toss it in the bin as they prepare for the estate sale of your post-mortem remains.

What was I saying? Oh, right: lmao, I just remembered this poo poo, it's hilarious

Kitfox88 posted:

Weren't people up in arms recently because there was finally a tech gap so they couldn't keep transferring the pokemon they'd been using since their OG red and blue carts in whatever the latest game was

Cold on a Cob posted:

i delete poo poo all the time, it owns

yagni, muthafuckas

Leperflesh posted:

Leperflesh posted:

funny tech poo poo u just remembered: there's no such thing as a permanent archival format, the only way to preserve information "permanently" is by constantly copying it to whatever the latest format is, forever, and since the total amount of information increases over time, this is an asymptotic curve of effort in which actual success at the stated goal of preserving everything, or even just everything "worthy", would mean a horrific dystopian future in which all of human effort by every living person is expended in the menial task of swapping reels on the reel to disk transferal machine (by which of course I mean its futuristic counterpart, I dunno, telling AIs to copy the internet archives onto the data crystals). Humanity enslaved by the duty to preserve its own past, unable to create anything new because of the burden of all that was made before, each passing century adding an ever greater volume of babble and Very Important Debates about events current and past and saying "lol".

Or perhaps a brave clean future in which archeologists muck around in the tattered scraps of what was lost, filling in the 99% of what's missing with imaginative narratives that more or less fit the evidence, while the rest of us nod interestedly while watching the holovids specials about the ancient peoples of pre-collapse north america and then move on to whatever new thing is of proper interest to their time and place, like playing holo-tennis or inventing better nuclear fallout cleaning robots or invading proxima centauri before they invade us. How dissatisfactory to our own present-day venalities, to think that all of this time and effort we've spent on our clever jpegs and ironic-but-not-ironic-but-actually-even-more-ironic jokes about holocaust denial will have been, in the end, lost like tears in rain, time to die? Some clever digger may yet pore over the last fragmentary remains of YOSPOS and confidently declare: "these were a subspecies of humanity, genetically similar but clearly differentiated by their mutation for monochromia, unable to see other than amber or green. Curious!"

Let me tell you, there is that aforementioned middle ground: we can take only that which we hold most dear and carve it into the rocks themselves in giant laser-etched forms, universally understandable memetic glyphs, that future generations cannot help but notice and understand, like so many pyramids of giza or statues of Ozymandias; or if you like, print out your tweets onto archival paper and store them in the deepest vaults. Curation! Select only the gems, the diamonds in the rough, encase them in amber and set them aside, and future generations may queue up and pay a modest entry fee to peer at them and clutch their chins and nod and hmm before boisterously clambering back aboard their hyberbus to return to their space school, orbiting above the clouds.

But to do this first you must make choices, what to preserve and what not to, and such has been the volume of our effluent digital converse in these recent decades that you might well spend all your days sifting through just your own shitposts in their tens of thousands, and thus as a microcosm of that dark dystopian future - become personally a shadow cast by the spectre of your own wasted potential, a basement-dwelling goon whose creative juices have dried up, left with just a crusty old sponge myopically dabbing at the messy spill of your youthful energy, dribs and drabs that stain the archived threads of a dead gay forum, sopping up a drop here or a drop there, to place into the folder marked "DO NOT DELETE" in the vain hope that your grand-nieces and step-nephews will bother to gingerly poke through your ancient dusty computer poo poo before they toss it in the bin as they prepare for the estate sale of your post-mortem remains.

What was I saying? Oh, right: lmao, I just remembered this poo poo, it's hilarious

WilWheaton posted:

there was a call in show on the radio station in my kneck off the woods that had a “computer expert” on in the late 90s

12 year old me called in and asked if I could use a Zip disk could be used as a hard drive replacement to install video games onto. I remember really hounding him for an answer on live radio and there was no way if he could tell me if that would work well

nudgenudgetilt posted:

remember loving laplink

Leperflesh posted:

funny tech poo poo u just remembered: there's no such thing as a permanent archival format, the only way to preserve information "permanently" is by constantly copying it to whatever the latest format is, forever, and since the total amount of information increases over time, this is an asymptotic curve of effort in which actual success at the stated goal of preserving everything, or even just everything "worthy", would mean a horrific dystopian future in which all of human effort by every living person is expended in the menial task of swapping reels on the reel to disk transferal machine (by which of course I mean its futuristic counterpart, I dunno, telling AIs to copy the internet archives onto the data crystals). Humanity enslaved by the duty to preserve its own past, unable to create anything new because of the burden of all that was made before, each passing century adding an ever greater volume of babble and Very Important Debates about events current and past and saying "lol".

Or perhaps a brave clean future in which archeologists muck around in the tattered scraps of what was lost, filling in the 99% of what's missing with imaginative narratives that more or less fit the evidence, while the rest of us nod interestedly while watching the holovids specials about the ancient peoples of pre-collapse north america and then move on to whatever new thing is of proper interest to their time and place, like playing holo-tennis or inventing better nuclear fallout cleaning robots or invading proxima centauri before they invade us. How dissatisfactory to our own present-day venalities, to think that all of this time and effort we've spent on our clever jpegs and ironic-but-not-ironic-but-actually-even-more-ironic jokes about holocaust denial will have been, in the end, lost like tears in rain, time to die? Some clever digger may yet pore over the last fragmentary remains of YOSPOS and confidently declare: "these were a subspecies of humanity, genetically similar but clearly differentiated by their mutation for monochromia, unable to see other than amber or green. Curious!"

Let me tell you, there is that aforementioned middle ground: we can take only that which we hold most dear and carve it into the rocks themselves in giant laser-etched forms, universally understandable memetic glyphs, that future generations cannot help but notice and understand, like so many pyramids of giza or statues of Ozymandias; or if you like, print out your tweets onto archival paper and store them in the deepest vaults. Curation! Select only the gems, the diamonds in the rough, encase them in amber and set them aside, and future generations may queue up and pay a modest entry fee to peer at them and clutch their chins and nod and hmm before boisterously clambering back aboard their hyberbus to return to their space school, orbiting above the clouds.

But to do this first you must make choices, what to preserve and what not to, and such has been the volume of our effluent digital converse in these recent decades that you might well spend all your days sifting through just your own shitposts in their tens of thousands, and thus as a microcosm of that dark dystopian future - become personally a shadow cast by the spectre of your own wasted potential, a basement-dwelling goon whose creative juices have dried up, left with just a crusty old sponge myopically dabbing at the messy spill of your youthful energy, dribs and drabs that stain the archived threads of a dead gay forum, sopping up a drop here or a drop there, to place into the folder marked "DO NOT DELETE" in the vain hope that your grand-nieces and step-nephews will bother to gingerly poke through your ancient dusty computer poo poo before they toss it in the bin as they prepare for the estate sale of your post-mortem remains.

What was I saying? Oh, right: lmao, I just remembered this poo poo, it's hilarious

nudgenudgetilt posted:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KBPBYSH

is this thing just a usb-c cable?

"Can also be used for any recreational purposes like displays, external HDs, etc."

ok, so i can use it recreationally, but what about professionally or medically

eschaton posted:

if you had a Mac and a SCSI Zip drive though it would work just fine

Progressive JPEG posted:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara