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>Plus, why would you believe that (working) systems able to read USB drives will be available in 200+ years? This. The best long term archival media that can o

>Plus, why would you believe that (working) systems able to read USB drives will be available in 200+ years? This. The best long term archival media that can outlive generations has proven to be non-electronic ones (paper manuscripts, animal hides, cave paintings, rock engravings, etc). Even if you can still find USB readers 200+ years from now when we'll all use quantum computers and wear AR headsets or neuralink implants (provided we don't extinct ourselves through war and climate change till then), there's no guarantee the systems of the future will still be able to read file systems and data formats encoded in the standards of today, but to read stuff off paper/stone all you need is your eyes, no technology. For example, some retro computing youtubers I follow are struggling to decode 5.25" floppy data from 50 years ago because it was encoded in some niche proprietary non-standard format that modern SW has no idea about, so they have to low-level scan the magnetic flux off the things and then trial and error various encodings hoping something will stick. Meanwhile, a random small church in my country just found 500 year old books in its attic that are perfectly preserved and readable, and they have survived a church fire and over a dozen wars. Not saying such USB drives aren't useful for a specific niche, I'm sure they are, but if you're looking for 200+ year endurance you'll definitely want to diversify your data storage to non-electronic mediums as well and not bank it all on a USB drive with new unproven technology.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> there's no guarantee the systems of the future will still be able to read file systems and data formats encoded in the standards of today If modern society survives continuously for 200 years, I don't see any reason we couldn't read current formats if they're actually standard and/or well-documented; we can, for example, still read original unix filesystems, if nothing else by running actual original unix in (open)simh, and that's 45-50 years old already.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  OK, but what about more than 200 years? What about the next civilizations? Also, a lot can happen in 200 years that can have unforeseen effect on the FRAM of that USB stick (EMPs from nuclear explosions, solar storms, etc)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Sure, there's a reason I scoped to data formats within the continuity of this civilization (ish). I agree that the hardware side is harder (albeit not impossible for the stated target), I'm mostly trying to push back on the idea that civilization and computers will be completely unrecognizable in what is honestly not that long a timeframe in context. If you want to make something last arbitrarily long or through electronics-destroying events, then yes you should consider other options (or really, multiple options at once), but I think that's moving the goalposts.
    - cdchn 2y ago
      60 years on we haven't forgotten how to read EBCDIC. Punch cards can still be deciphered. Most languages aren't unrecognizable from what they were 200 years ago. I don't think we'd have much issue reading an USB stick in 200 years.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        Punch cards you cand decode with your eyes, you don't need tech for that. Good luck with USB drives in 200 years. Even old USB 1.0 devices sometimes struggle on modern HW.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
bitwize 2y ago
Microsoft is working on a way to modernize rock engravings by etching binary data in glass: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil... Despite the claimed 10,000 year lifespan, I doubt this will satisfy the kind of hackernews who prefixes four-digit years with an '0' like 02024. We just don't know whether we will have or be able to make the machinery to read it back millennia from now. It will make a nice archival solution for businesses and governments who want a data preservation solution over a time horizon of decades to centuries, though.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >It will make a nice archival solution for businesses and governments who want a data preservation solution over a time horizon of decades to centuries, though. I doubt it. Even governments and businesses suck at preservation: just look at game studios who loose source code of valuable IP they themselves developed 20+ years ago. People working there just don't care about something so long term when their own skin isn't in the game and they're not getting paid enough for it to care much about what happens when they're gone or what their predecessors did. This isn't the famous Voyager space probe where people hang around well past their retirement date to keep something alive due to emotional attachment, in most cases digital data just is left to rot and die out as people leave companies/institutions and new people come in with different agendas and career goals. Microsoft's magic Tesseract data storage cube is cool, but good luck finding the tech to read it 10k years from now when Microsoft is long gone. Written paper and cave drawings will outlive us all.
- cdchn 2y ago
  For every person saying the year is 02024 there are at least a few who are thinking "its not year 1044 decimal?"

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

> there's no guarantee the systems of the future will still be able to read file systems and data formats encoded in the standards of today If modern society survives continuously for 200 years, I don't see any reason we couldn't read current formats if they're actually standard and/or well-documented; we can, for example, still read original unix filesystems, if nothing else by running actual original unix in (open)simh, and that's 45-50 years old already.

Rinzler89 2y ago
OK, but what about more than 200 years? What about the next civilizations? Also, a lot can happen in 200 years that can have unforeseen effect on the FRAM of that USB stick (EMPs from nuclear explosions, solar storms, etc)
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Sure, there's a reason I scoped to data formats within the continuity of this civilization (ish). I agree that the hardware side is harder (albeit not impossible for the stated target), I'm mostly trying to push back on the idea that civilization and computers will be completely unrecognizable in what is honestly not that long a timeframe in context. If you want to make something last arbitrarily long or through electronics-destroying events, then yes you should consider other options (or really, multiple options at once), but I think that's moving the goalposts.
  - cdchn 2y ago
    60 years on we haven't forgotten how to read EBCDIC. Punch cards can still be deciphered. Most languages aren't unrecognizable from what they were 200 years ago. I don't think we'd have much issue reading an USB stick in 200 years.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Punch cards you cand decode with your eyes, you don't need tech for that. Good luck with USB drives in 200 years. Even old USB 1.0 devices sometimes struggle on modern HW.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

bitwize 2y ago

Microsoft is working on a way to modernize rock engravings by etching binary data in glass: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil... Despite the claimed 10,000 year lifespan, I doubt this will satisfy the kind of hackernews who prefixes four-digit years with an '0' like 02024. We just don't know whether we will have or be able to make the machinery to read it back millennia from now. It will make a nice archival solution for businesses and governments who want a data preservation solution over a time horizon of decades to centuries, though.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>It will make a nice archival solution for businesses and governments who want a data preservation solution over a time horizon of decades to centuries, though. I doubt it. Even governments and businesses suck at preservation: just look at game studios who loose source code of valuable IP they themselves developed 20+ years ago. People working there just don't care about something so long term when their own skin isn't in the game and they're not getting paid enough for it to care much about what happens when they're gone or what their predecessors did. This isn't the famous Voyager space probe where people hang around well past their retirement date to keep something alive due to emotional attachment, in most cases digital data just is left to rot and die out as people leave companies/institutions and new people come in with different agendas and career goals. Microsoft's magic Tesseract data storage cube is cool, but good luck finding the tech to read it 10k years from now when Microsoft is long gone. Written paper and cave drawings will outlive us all.
cdchn 2y ago
For every person saying the year is 02024 there are at least a few who are thinking "its not year 1044 decimal?"