6 ms·

4 petabytes eh. Bonus points for the first article in several years to use CD-ROMs as a unit of comparison. > "drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted

4 petabytes eh. Bonus points for the first article in several years to use CD-ROMs as a unit of comparison. > "drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime"

newsbinator 5y ago
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of floppy disks https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
- tejtm 5y ago
  "tapes". You may be new, but you got the gist of it. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." --Andrew Tannenbaum
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    And the essence is still true today. If you want to recover a lot of data from a backup service, they mail you a drive.
8bitsrule 5y ago
>4 petabytes – equivalent to 3m CD-Roms... Where are they getting these 1333MB CD-ROMs? Also: that article's overloaded first sentence is NOT going to win any Pulitzers. And what kind of news article has an average sentence length of 29 words?
- divbzero 5y ago
  Must be those double-sided CD-ROMs?
  - anticensor 5y ago
    I think a double-sided CD-ROM would be too thick for most CD readers to rotate at the correct speed.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  > And what kind of news article has an average sentence length of 29 words The Guardian usually has excellent writing -- and I for one don't mind reading long sentences. If anything, it's refreshing.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    A sentence can be any length, there is no rule defining the maximum number of words that can be used to convey the point, however some experts use a sentence's word count to quantify elements of an authors intelligence, put simply its one way you can spot AI bots operating on social media.
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      No it hasn't. I've been reading the guardian physically for years, it's still good. How many is a few anyway? They only broke the Panama papers 6 years ago now
      - guiriduro 5y ago
        Maybe time to revisit your assumptions. I'd grant the Guardian was still fairly decent under Rubsbridger, but under Viner its quality has dropped precipitously. Full 180 on Assange, dereliction of their previous general support for international and UK leftwing issues. Nowadays they are a joke, washy liberalism and snapping at the coat-tails of US democrat readers (if any). A taint which also loses readers and undermines the authority of their (better) climate writers, which is a shame.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Bad_CRC 5y ago
  They might be using all those Dreamcast GD-ROMs after the system's demise.
rossmohax 5y ago
Who counts in CD-ROMs in 2022?
- delecti 5y ago
  Is there a more recent storage medium with a single size (ish, 650 vs 700 is close enough)? USB drives come in all sizes, and DVD and Blu-Ray come in single and multi-layer. It's also the last time most people interacted with the media for storage, rather than buying pre-pressed copies. I struggle to think of a better measurement unit for a lay person.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    X hours of HD/2k/4k video?
    - layer8 5y ago
      That’s a bad measure, it depends a lot on the codec and the selected picture quality (and also on the picture content).
      - geenew 5y ago
        X [s/m/h] of [jwst/ska/lhc] data?
      - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        It's certainly a bad technical measure, but then stacks of CDROMs could all be super sparsely populated, those human capillaries going around the world are stretchy, etc. I think it's a reasonable metric for huge quantities of data when communicating to the general public - you can specify the movie to narrow it too. So "the LHC produces 90 Petabytes of data per year, that's the same amount of data as streaming Avengers Endgame in 4K high-definition 40 million times! Bet their ISP wishes they hadn't offered them the unlimited data package!!" yadda-yadda?
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
divbzero 5y ago
That made me chuckle too. CD-ROMs as a unit of comparison works only for a specific age group not too old nor too young.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
That really doesn't sound like enough data for all of Europe over several years to be honest. They would surely have more than that.
TheFattestNinja 5y ago
Up to a handful of years ago police data was still mostly stored in CD's in a first world country like Italy (it was a fun lecture during a Computer Security in class where we had a few sessions with court experts about procedure). It wouldn't surprise me that there are archive rooms lost to memory somewhere in Europol/Interpol full of CD's of data.
- nix23 5y ago
  >first world country like Italy Are you talking about north or south?

newsbinator 5y ago

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of floppy disks https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

tejtm 5y ago
"tapes". You may be new, but you got the gist of it. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." --Andrew Tannenbaum
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  And the essence is still true today. If you want to recover a lot of data from a backup service, they mail you a drive.

8bitsrule 5y ago

>4 petabytes – equivalent to 3m CD-Roms... Where are they getting these 1333MB CD-ROMs? Also: that article's overloaded first sentence is NOT going to win any Pulitzers. And what kind of news article has an average sentence length of 29 words?

divbzero 5y ago
Must be those double-sided CD-ROMs?
- anticensor 5y ago
  I think a double-sided CD-ROM would be too thick for most CD readers to rotate at the correct speed.
azalemeth 5y ago
> And what kind of news article has an average sentence length of 29 words The Guardian usually has excellent writing -- and I for one don't mind reading long sentences. If anything, it's refreshing.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  A sentence can be any length, there is no rule defining the maximum number of words that can be used to convey the point, however some experts use a sentence's word count to quantify elements of an authors intelligence, put simply its one way you can spot AI bots operating on social media.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    No it hasn't. I've been reading the guardian physically for years, it's still good. How many is a few anyway? They only broke the Panama papers 6 years ago now
    - guiriduro 5y ago
      Maybe time to revisit your assumptions. I'd grant the Guardian was still fairly decent under Rubsbridger, but under Viner its quality has dropped precipitously. Full 180 on Assange, dereliction of their previous general support for international and UK leftwing issues. Nowadays they are a joke, washy liberalism and snapping at the coat-tails of US democrat readers (if any). A taint which also loses readers and undermines the authority of their (better) climate writers, which is a shame.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Bad_CRC 5y ago
They might be using all those Dreamcast GD-ROMs after the system's demise.

rossmohax 5y ago

Who counts in CD-ROMs in 2022?

delecti 5y ago
Is there a more recent storage medium with a single size (ish, 650 vs 700 is close enough)? USB drives come in all sizes, and DVD and Blu-Ray come in single and multi-layer. It's also the last time most people interacted with the media for storage, rather than buying pre-pressed copies. I struggle to think of a better measurement unit for a lay person.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  X hours of HD/2k/4k video?
  - layer8 5y ago
    That’s a bad measure, it depends a lot on the codec and the selected picture quality (and also on the picture content).
    - geenew 5y ago
      X [s/m/h] of [jwst/ska/lhc] data?
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      It's certainly a bad technical measure, but then stacks of CDROMs could all be super sparsely populated, those human capillaries going around the world are stretchy, etc. I think it's a reasonable metric for huge quantities of data when communicating to the general public - you can specify the movie to narrow it too. So "the LHC produces 90 Petabytes of data per year, that's the same amount of data as streaming Avengers Endgame in 4K high-definition 40 million times! Bet their ISP wishes they hadn't offered them the unlimited data package!!" yadda-yadda?
- Brian_K_White 5y ago

divbzero 5y ago

That made me chuckle too. CD-ROMs as a unit of comparison works only for a specific age group not too old nor too young.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

That really doesn't sound like enough data for all of Europe over several years to be honest. They would surely have more than that.

TheFattestNinja 5y ago

Up to a handful of years ago police data was still mostly stored in CD's in a first world country like Italy (it was a fun lecture during a Computer Security in class where we had a few sessions with court experts about procedure). It wouldn't surprise me that there are archive rooms lost to memory somewhere in Europol/Interpol full of CD's of data.

nix23 5y ago
>first world country like Italy Are you talking about north or south?