8 ms·

Good old negligence, never fails to amaze me what people let happen. Did they digitize any of this? is the information lost, not just the artifacts? The origi

Good old negligence, never fails to amaze me what people let happen. Did they digitize any of this? is the information lost, not just the artifacts? The original article[0] is much better, and should ideally replace this thin Gizmodo rehash. [0]: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-packard-archives-at-keysight-destroyed http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-pa...

Alex3917 9y ago
> never fails to amaze me what people let happen. Especially since the exact same thing happened a few miles down the road with Terence McKenna's archives at Esalen.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Let us not forget that, until a petty political hysteria[0], there were no plans to have a mirror of Archive.org; just one pretty little building between chaos and order. As a recurring donor and huge fan of the Archive, I find this pretty concerning. [0]: https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-accessible-and-private/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive...
  - UnrealIncident 9y ago
    I'm also a yearly(-ish) donor and also find it a bit concerning considering they did have a fire in the building 4 years ago. Archive Team have the INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK[0] project. I think they're in need of more disk space if anyone has some to spare. [0]: http://iabak.archiveteam.org/ http://iabak.archiveteam.org/
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      Thanks for the link! I did not know about IA.BAK. I think I will commit to backing up the whole drive over the next year. ~110TiB is totally doable!
      - notyourwork 9y ago
        Thanks for sharing I can lend a few TB to this!
      - tmzt 9y ago
        Could BackBlaze or somebody do this, maybe as they are burning in new storage clusters? Seems like it could be some good PR.
      - 24gttghh 9y ago
        Looks like their wiki says there is roughly 14 petabytes of data to be backed up, and only ~105 terabytes have redundant backups now?
- siliconunit 9y ago
  I was going to say that too, Terence book collection loss is a bleeding wound still now..
sengork 9y ago
Interesting photo of the burned down buildings considering the trees/bush plants immediately surrounding the two buildings are completely intact.
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  It's confused a lot of people. There's a whole subculture of conspiracy theorists [1] who believe that the trees are evidence of an intentional government operation. It involves laser weapons shot from space, apparently. [1] https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1942601975998002&id=1685985511659651&refid=18&__tn__=H-R https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1942601975998002...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- karlkatzke 9y ago
  Often, plants will survive wildfires (especially in CA, where wildfires are somewhat normal and plants have evolved to survive them) because they have moisture inside them. Buildings do not usually have moisture inside of them, and when embers land on common cladding materials or rubberized roofs with wood beneath them... well.
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    Well that's obviously a pretty bad way to build a house for an archive.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    Buildings do not usually have moisture inside of them Do sprinkler systems count? (I know about water damage, but that's usually not as bad as fire damage... and there would be the highly effective Halon if it weren't for the CFC-scare banning it...)
    - Fomite 9y ago
jimnotgym 9y ago
Hewlett Packard archives not being digitised would be a very cruel kind of irony. Shouldn't this kind of stuff be in a museum?
- microcolonel 9y ago
  For what it's worth, they were authored before digitization was feasible, and they were collected before it was cheap. I can see why, but it's sad to see.
- nshelly 9y ago
  Agree. This is really inexcusable. I just had my college and high school papers and letters digitized at 4 cents a page (8 cents a page if the machine detects writing on the other side). Ironically it’s a place in East Bay that’s receiving a lot of business due to the fires. The standard industry grade machines can scan 60 pages per minute and provide basic OCR. Higher power machines can apparently do 600 pages per minute. So, a box of papers containing about 2500 pages would be $100 and take a professional 45 minutes. It’s too bad this wasn’t digitized and put online or in a museum, like the ones Wells Fargo have in their major flagship bank locations. I guess banks want to show a 100-year history whereas it’s not a selling point for tech.
  - komali2 9y ago
    Where is this? I've been a hobbyist writer since I was 3 and really want to get all my stuff digitized.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      > Where is this? I've been a hobbyist writer since I was 3 and really want to get all my stuff digitized. You learned to write when you were 3?
      - macintux 9y ago
        I was reading to my kindergarten class when I was 4, self-taught (lots of Sesame Street and Electric Company), and I am not remotely brilliant. I can certainly believe someone writing at 3, although it's pretty damned impressive.
wpietri 9y ago
That's easy to say, but there is typically very little money available for archiving records, and there's very little sense of urgency about it. A friend right now is trying to find money to preserve a sizable collection of SF historical documents, and it is far from easy.
- joosebox 9y ago
  Weird to talk about a lack of money in SV of all places.
  - tedivm 9y ago
    There's a lot of that here. It's one of the richest places on the planet but we can't afford to build homeless shelters or significant public transit projects.
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      For most of recent history the problem has never been the gross availability of resources; proper allocation is the real problem.
    - mavhc 9y ago
      Can't, or don't want to?
- ProAm 9y ago
  > there's very little sense of urgency about it. That probably means it doesn't really matter.
  - fsloth 9y ago
    No, it means it has worked fine so far. As long as negligence has no immediate and direct maladies as result it's easy to ignore it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
hcs 9y ago
Is there really a reporter named Robert Digitale on the analog tech archive beat?
dang 9y ago
OK, we've changed the url to that from https://gizmodo.com/the-california-wildfires-burned-down-irreplaceable-docu-1819955915 https://gizmodo.com/the-california-wildfires-burned-down-irr....

Alex3917 9y ago

> never fails to amaze me what people let happen. Especially since the exact same thing happened a few miles down the road with Terence McKenna's archives at Esalen.

microcolonel 9y ago
Let us not forget that, until a petty political hysteria[0], there were no plans to have a mirror of Archive.org; just one pretty little building between chaos and order. As a recurring donor and huge fan of the Archive, I find this pretty concerning. [0]: https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-accessible-and-private/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive...
- UnrealIncident 9y ago
  I'm also a yearly(-ish) donor and also find it a bit concerning considering they did have a fire in the building 4 years ago. Archive Team have the INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK[0] project. I think they're in need of more disk space if anyone has some to spare. [0]: http://iabak.archiveteam.org/ http://iabak.archiveteam.org/
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Thanks for the link! I did not know about IA.BAK. I think I will commit to backing up the whole drive over the next year. ~110TiB is totally doable!
    - notyourwork 9y ago
      Thanks for sharing I can lend a few TB to this!
    - tmzt 9y ago
      Could BackBlaze or somebody do this, maybe as they are burning in new storage clusters? Seems like it could be some good PR.
    - 24gttghh 9y ago
      Looks like their wiki says there is roughly 14 petabytes of data to be backed up, and only ~105 terabytes have redundant backups now?
siliconunit 9y ago
I was going to say that too, Terence book collection loss is a bleeding wound still now..

sengork 9y ago

Interesting photo of the burned down buildings considering the trees/bush plants immediately surrounding the two buildings are completely intact.

lobster_johnson 9y ago
It's confused a lot of people. There's a whole subculture of conspiracy theorists [1] who believe that the trees are evidence of an intentional government operation. It involves laser weapons shot from space, apparently. [1] https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1942601975998002&id=1685985511659651&refid=18&__tn__=H-R https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1942601975998002...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
karlkatzke 9y ago
Often, plants will survive wildfires (especially in CA, where wildfires are somewhat normal and plants have evolved to survive them) because they have moisture inside them. Buildings do not usually have moisture inside of them, and when embers land on common cladding materials or rubberized roofs with wood beneath them... well.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Well that's obviously a pretty bad way to build a house for an archive.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Buildings do not usually have moisture inside of them Do sprinkler systems count? (I know about water damage, but that's usually not as bad as fire damage... and there would be the highly effective Halon if it weren't for the CFC-scare banning it...)
  - Fomite 9y ago

jimnotgym 9y ago

Hewlett Packard archives not being digitised would be a very cruel kind of irony. Shouldn't this kind of stuff be in a museum?

microcolonel 9y ago
For what it's worth, they were authored before digitization was feasible, and they were collected before it was cheap. I can see why, but it's sad to see.
nshelly 9y ago
Agree. This is really inexcusable. I just had my college and high school papers and letters digitized at 4 cents a page (8 cents a page if the machine detects writing on the other side). Ironically it’s a place in East Bay that’s receiving a lot of business due to the fires. The standard industry grade machines can scan 60 pages per minute and provide basic OCR. Higher power machines can apparently do 600 pages per minute. So, a box of papers containing about 2500 pages would be $100 and take a professional 45 minutes. It’s too bad this wasn’t digitized and put online or in a museum, like the ones Wells Fargo have in their major flagship bank locations. I guess banks want to show a 100-year history whereas it’s not a selling point for tech.
- komali2 9y ago
  Where is this? I've been a hobbyist writer since I was 3 and really want to get all my stuff digitized.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > Where is this? I've been a hobbyist writer since I was 3 and really want to get all my stuff digitized. You learned to write when you were 3?
    - macintux 9y ago
      I was reading to my kindergarten class when I was 4, self-taught (lots of Sesame Street and Electric Company), and I am not remotely brilliant. I can certainly believe someone writing at 3, although it's pretty damned impressive.

wpietri 9y ago

That's easy to say, but there is typically very little money available for archiving records, and there's very little sense of urgency about it. A friend right now is trying to find money to preserve a sizable collection of SF historical documents, and it is far from easy.

joosebox 9y ago
Weird to talk about a lack of money in SV of all places.
- tedivm 9y ago
  There's a lot of that here. It's one of the richest places on the planet but we can't afford to build homeless shelters or significant public transit projects.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    For most of recent history the problem has never been the gross availability of resources; proper allocation is the real problem.
  - mavhc 9y ago
    Can't, or don't want to?
ProAm 9y ago
> there's very little sense of urgency about it. That probably means it doesn't really matter.
- fsloth 9y ago
  No, it means it has worked fine so far. As long as negligence has no immediate and direct maladies as result it's easy to ignore it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

hcs 9y ago

Is there really a reporter named Robert Digitale on the analog tech archive beat?

dang 9y ago

OK, we've changed the url to that from https://gizmodo.com/the-california-wildfires-burned-down-irreplaceable-docu-1819955915 https://gizmodo.com/the-california-wildfires-burned-down-irr....