3 ms·

Well, with Dropbox the default setting is to keep local copies of all files in every computer connected to the system, so it probably wouldn't be catastrophic.

by Fargren 11y ago

Grue3 11y ago
Not until the first sync, that is. Then all your files go poof.
sillysaurus3 11y ago
There was a bug where Dropbox wiped a few of someone's files. These changes were sync'd to the customer's computers, which dutifully wiped the files. I think he was able to recover most or all of his data (I forget if it was photos or what) but it was interesting to realize that even with Dropbox's stellar record and pedigree, errors like that can still happen. It makes you realize data is just so fragile. Our bits are unlikely to last centuries, which is kind of unfortunate. I've wanted to take on this problem in a systematic way somehow. It seems like bittorrent offers a way to make a digital time capsule -- theoretically, if you have seeders, your data will persist forever. So you could imagine setting up a "time capsule" of sorts. Example: $2,000 on Digital Ocean will get you 33 years of server time. So that's one seeder, "guaranteed" to last 33 years. I wonder how far the costs could be reduced? Could you reach the 1 century mark for less than $3k? Costs will continue to go down, so it should be possible to have 10 seeders for your time capsule. And then of course you have to think of what to put into your time capsule. There's not any guarantee the computing architecture will be the same a century from now. But somehow I suspect Python 2.7 might still run. :) You could write some kind of rudimentary AI program that responds to basic questions, maybe using the data embedded in the time capsule... The only part I can't figure out is the most obvious one: Digital Ocean probably won't be around 20 years from now, let alone a century from now. So even if you get a bunch of money together, how do you reliably transform that money into running servers over the course of a century?

Well, with Dropbox the default setting is to keep local copies of all files in every computer connected to the system, so it probably wouldn't be catastrophic.

by Fargren 11y ago

Well, with Dropbox the default setting is to keep local copies of all files in every computer connected to the system, so it probably wouldn't be catastrophic.

Grue3 11y ago

Not until the first sync, that is. Then all your files go poof.

sillysaurus3 11y ago

There was a bug where Dropbox wiped a few of someone's files. These changes were sync'd to the customer's computers, which dutifully wiped the files. I think he was able to recover most or all of his data (I forget if it was photos or what) but it was interesting to realize that even with Dropbox's stellar record and pedigree, errors like that can still happen. It makes you realize data is just so fragile. Our bits are unlikely to last centuries, which is kind of unfortunate. I've wanted to take on this problem in a systematic way somehow. It seems like bittorrent offers a way to make a digital time capsule -- theoretically, if you have seeders, your data will persist forever. So you could imagine setting up a "time capsule" of sorts. Example: $2,000 on Digital Ocean will get you 33 years of server time. So that's one seeder, "guaranteed" to last 33 years. I wonder how far the costs could be reduced? Could you reach the 1 century mark for less than $3k? Costs will continue to go down, so it should be possible to have 10 seeders for your time capsule. And then of course you have to think of what to put into your time capsule. There's not any guarantee the computing architecture will be the same a century from now. But somehow I suspect Python 2.7 might still run. :) You could write some kind of rudimentary AI program that responds to basic questions, maybe using the data embedded in the time capsule... The only part I can't figure out is the most obvious one: Digital Ocean probably won't be around 20 years from now, let alone a century from now. So even if you get a bunch of money together, how do you reliably transform that money into running servers over the course of a century?