Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

disclose.tv

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 256 posts

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#61

Post by bergoid »

bshipp wrote: post #49
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

I don't disagree, but it's not really different with spinning rust. the solution would likely be similar: seal it in an enclosure to prevent intrusion of dust, scratches, etc.

> spinning rust

TIL

https://etherealmind.com/network-dictionary-spinning-rust/

> Spinning Rust – term for conventional hard disk drives with motors and using ferrous-based platters for data storage. Probably derogatory now that Flash Drives are beginning to replace conventional drives.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#62

Post by jdironman »

chii wrote: post #55
sudhirj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd likely know it had information on it, even if they couldn't necessarily read it immediately. Anyone storing information is likely to mark it or arrange it in some non-natural way, otherwise it'll just look like rocks.

so how do you know that the crystalline structure of some rocks aren't encoding some information? Alternatively, information encoded in rocks could've been encrypted. And encrypted information should be indistinguishable from random noise.

Our bodies are coded with DNA and rocks and geo formations are encoded with the earth's history.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#63

Post by anentropic »

bshipp wrote: post #49
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

I don't disagree, but it's not really different with spinning rust. the solution would likely be similar: seal it in an enclosure to prevent intrusion of dust, scratches, etc.

and/or add some degree of redundancy and error correction to the storage codec

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#64

Post by wongarsu »

schpaencoder wrote: post #47

I still remember the promise of the CD-Rom. Billions of years.

You could probably build CD-ROMs that last millions of years if you really tried. You can buy regular CD-Rs that are estimated to last hundreeds of years. But of course most people buy whatever is cheapest, and the cheapest CD-Rs won't last you a decade.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#65

Post by jimktrains2 »

benj111 wrote: post #20

Can I rant about the 5D? "It's been dubbed five-dimensional (5D) digital data because, in addition to the position of the data, the size and orientation are extremely important too" Orientation is inherently important anyway. Have you ever tried reading a book upside down, and what does size bring? Other than lowering density. And obviously position is important, it's the difference between data and randomness.

Absolute position isn't always important, and position may not always take full advantage of the available space. Take a magnetic tape (or a radio transmission), it's essentially a 1-d data steam (magnetic intensity), not a 2-d matrix. Moreover, depending on the encoding, just taking a specific slice may not let you decode that specific bit of data, you need to know some number of previous states.

Now, that said, the stream itself is defined by a 3-dimensional dataset: amplitude, phase, and frequency. Every modulation technique is some way of twiddling those 3 dimensions.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#66

Post by andrey_utkin »

bshipp wrote: post #49
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

I don't disagree, but it's not really different with spinning rust. the solution would likely be similar: seal it in an enclosure to prevent intrusion of dust, scratches, etc.

But the rust which is supposed to be spun, doesn't live long when not being spun?

So far the most viable "solution" is to store data in the cloud service like Backblaze or AWS S3, where it's someone else headache to maintain high enough duplication and swap the drives as they reach their EOL.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#67

Post by lvh »

ru999gol wrote: post #57
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

And the picture they release show the christian bible. Tells you everything you need to know about them really.

The university in question is Southampton. Hardly a Christian fundamentalist stronghold. Meanwhile, there is a tradition of using the Bible for new printing media, including one of the first printed works, the Gutenberg bible.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#68

Post by djdidf »

ru999gol wrote: post #57
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

And the picture they release show the christian bible. Tells you everything you need to know about them really.

What’s wrong with the Christian bible?

What is it telling me about the researchers!

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#69

Post by unhammer »

orbital-decay wrote: post #54
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

Yeah, actual museum-grade archival is so much more than just having an aging-resistant media. You also need to be able to read and decode it many years into the future, which is really tricky to guarantee - you can't assume the future generations will know how to make a reading device and remember your formats/encodings. So it's a bit like unzip.zip problem.

relevant: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2015004_cuneiform.pdf talks about archiving computer programs so they may be read by future civilizations

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#70

Post by megablast »

orbital-decay wrote: post #54
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

Yeah, actual museum-grade archival is so much more than just having an aging-resistant media. You also need to be able to read and decode it many years into the future, which is really tricky to guarantee - you can't assume the future generations will know how to make a reading device and remember your formats/encodings. So it's a bit like unzip.zip problem.

Just put the instructions in a plain txt file as the first file on the disc.
Post reply on HN