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The drives to read them (Blu-rays) will be the problem. Pioneer stopped manufacturing them in 2024, only LG drives are available now. Coincidentally I just bou

The drives to read them (Blu-rays) will be the problem. Pioneer stopped manufacturing them in 2024, only LG drives are available now. Coincidentally I just bought one, they’ve doubled in price now recently. Also bought some M-Discs to try. They’re half the price in Japan (Amazon) compared to Germany.

QuantumNomad_ 27d ago
In a 1000 years even if they don’t have the drives, as long as they still know roughly how it works maybe they will photograph it with a microscope and read the tracks in the M-Disc from that. Then they will have to decode it also of course.
- bluGill 27d ago
  Maybe. The question is why are we needing to read these disks in a thousand years. I would guess right now that the most likely case is information we care about is archived on modern formats such as hard drives, which are constantly being copied to different drives as the old ones go out and so in a thousand years they'll still have all the data in a much more accessible format than a very obsolete disk. If, instead, we are talking about some human disaster and, that constant copies is lost at some point, we're kind of stuck. I don't think the technology to read those disks will exist either, even though in theory, yes, that could be done. It would be a massive reverse engineering effort and I don't think they will even know to start doing that with these weird disks that the agents had. If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked, although we sometimes can't read the letters but at least seeing something with the eyes says there's something and if there's enough of them we have decoded language. The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long. Paper has only been stored successfully in Egypt for that long. I'm sure there are other deserts though that would count just as well.
  - vkaku 27d ago
    Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. Masked ROMs and M-Discs are those two things which can really last a very long time; Floppies, Hard Disks, Solid State Storage and present day ROMs all require periodic costs, efforts and refreshes to keep them going (that means they can't be kept in storage and then re-opened in 30 years). We also need a mechanism that outlasts that archival lifespan so how to read Discs or Masked ROMs and how to interpret them, also needs to be stored as well. Repairing electronics is a valuable skill that needs to be passed on across generations as well. Keeping humans around seems to be the best bet, given how things are going, I wouldn't count on the present set of beings around to preserve any of this information that well either.
    - mapontosevenths 27d ago
      > Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. Any tiny fraction of a fraction that is important will have been copied thousands, millions, or billions of times into various formats. "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." - Ozymandias - By Percy Bysshe Shelley
      - throw0101a 27d ago
        > For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. All sort of things done a thousand years ago still shape how we live today: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_Reasonable_Doubt https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_o... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-origins-of-the-legal-profession https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-ori... Who knows what the actions of a single, seemingly inconsequential, individual could trigger: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
kolinko 27d ago
If I’m not mistaken only optics are really unique to BD and need dedicated production? Everything else is rather universal components so even a hobbyist should be able to build a BD reader from scratch - having access to servos, cnc, and 2000s-level electronics?
- ssl-3 26d ago
  It's universal for us, right now. But that doesn't mean that it will stick around. History shows that when we figure out a better way to do stuff, we tend use the new way going forward and the old stuff tends to get forgotten.
  - kolinko 21d ago
    I think when it comes to precision movement we never went back and we probably won’t go back. We’ll surely have different ways to accomplish it, but society would need to collapse big time for us to not be able to recreate mechanics to operate the laser.

QuantumNomad_ 27d ago

In a 1000 years even if they don’t have the drives, as long as they still know roughly how it works maybe they will photograph it with a microscope and read the tracks in the M-Disc from that. Then they will have to decode it also of course.

bluGill 27d ago
Maybe. The question is why are we needing to read these disks in a thousand years. I would guess right now that the most likely case is information we care about is archived on modern formats such as hard drives, which are constantly being copied to different drives as the old ones go out and so in a thousand years they'll still have all the data in a much more accessible format than a very obsolete disk. If, instead, we are talking about some human disaster and, that constant copies is lost at some point, we're kind of stuck. I don't think the technology to read those disks will exist either, even though in theory, yes, that could be done. It would be a massive reverse engineering effort and I don't think they will even know to start doing that with these weird disks that the agents had. If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked, although we sometimes can't read the letters but at least seeing something with the eyes says there's something and if there's enough of them we have decoded language. The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long. Paper has only been stored successfully in Egypt for that long. I'm sure there are other deserts though that would count just as well.
- vkaku 27d ago
  Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. Masked ROMs and M-Discs are those two things which can really last a very long time; Floppies, Hard Disks, Solid State Storage and present day ROMs all require periodic costs, efforts and refreshes to keep them going (that means they can't be kept in storage and then re-opened in 30 years). We also need a mechanism that outlasts that archival lifespan so how to read Discs or Masked ROMs and how to interpret them, also needs to be stored as well. Repairing electronics is a valuable skill that needs to be passed on across generations as well. Keeping humans around seems to be the best bet, given how things are going, I wouldn't count on the present set of beings around to preserve any of this information that well either.
  - mapontosevenths 27d ago
    > Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. Any tiny fraction of a fraction that is important will have been copied thousands, millions, or billions of times into various formats. "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." - Ozymandias - By Percy Bysshe Shelley
    - throw0101a 27d ago
      > For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. All sort of things done a thousand years ago still shape how we live today: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_of_Reasonable_Doubt https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_o... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-origins-of-the-legal-profession https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-ori... Who knows what the actions of a single, seemingly inconsequential, individual could trigger: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

kolinko 27d ago

If I’m not mistaken only optics are really unique to BD and need dedicated production? Everything else is rather universal components so even a hobbyist should be able to build a BD reader from scratch - having access to servos, cnc, and 2000s-level electronics?

ssl-3 26d ago
It's universal for us, right now. But that doesn't mean that it will stick around. History shows that when we figure out a better way to do stuff, we tend use the new way going forward and the old stuff tends to get forgotten.
- kolinko 21d ago
  I think when it comes to precision movement we never went back and we probably won’t go back. We’ll surely have different ways to accomplish it, but society would need to collapse big time for us to not be able to recreate mechanics to operate the laser.