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

The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 228 posts

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#191

Post by ecliptik »

maxglute wrote: post #185
LarsDu88 wrote: post #3

I remember being super hyped for the successor of the floppy disk back as a kid in the 90s... Iomega Zip Drives. And then getting super hyped for the successor to the CD... the BluRay, and wondering what sort of holographic multi terabyte wizardry would be the nextgen of optical disks. Now we are in 2024 and what actually happened is no one owns their movie or music libraries anymore... they are all streamed from som…

MiniDiscs for peak portable storage aesthetic. I'm still holding out hope that maybe someday we'll go back to visible mini platters on portable devices.

Not only am I holding out too, but I'm just swerving hard back to physical media for music and buying new MDs while Sony is still selling them.

Be the future you want to see.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#192

Post by hinkley »

vikingerik wrote: post #189
hinkley wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a predecessor to the Zip Drive that could do 120 MB. I’m blanking on what it’s called. My friend who was into MD data was into those first, then Iomega killed them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk was 120 MB, but it came after the Zip drive, not before. The ones that came before the Zip were the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_Box , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floptical , and various flavors of magneto-optical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive

Interestingly that article says Iomega was working in these five fore the Zip drive and abandoned the idea for Zip, others picked it up and ran with it.

But the article asserts they came out in 1997 - with no citation, and my friend had moved by 1996 so I think that date is off by a year or so. Though given where he worked it’s theoretically possible someone have him a prerelease version as a developer prototype.

Edit: PC Mag claims 1996 https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/ls-120

And the NYT says March 1996: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/11/business/3m-chases-the-dr...

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#193

Post by otherme123 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #102
francescovv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What (...) happened to easily sending data, over the Internet And for mobile phones - without internet is similar, unnecessarily hard. The other day I was hiking with friends, and wanted to share a .gpx file with the route, at some spot with no cell coverage. I thought: "I 'member, bluetooth can send files". Well, we spent good 15 minutes trying and miserably failed, that's no longer possible in the name of "securi…

There are many ways of sending files between phones, none of them good. Bluetooth can work, but it is slow as hell, and Apple doesn't support it. Cloud services are convenient, but you not only you need some signal, but you also uses up your data plan. If you have USB OTG support, you can simply use a thumb drive, like with your PC, but it is cumbersome and you need the hardware. There are some somewhat proprietary s…

I use https://github.com/marcosdiez/shareviahttp all the time, to share with other phones or with my ereader or PC.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#194

Post by redblacktree »

jll29 wrote: post #82
0x0000000 wrote: post #32

> If you ask the average person what the company 3M does, odds are if they have a few gray hairs hanging out on their scalp, they might say that the company makes floppy disks. That's crazy, I wouldn't think anyone would first and foremost associate 3M with floppies instead of adhesives, even those with a few grays like myself. They make post-its for chrissake, and we're gonna pretend they're most known for floppies?

> They make post-its for chrissake Wikipedia to the rescue: "3M Company (originally the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) is an American multinational conglomerate operating in the fields of industry, worker safety, healthcare, and consumer goods. The company produces over 60,000 products under several brands, including adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, personal protective equipment,…

> Although recently not doing so well due to one lawsuit, they have a wonderful rule that nudges management to add new products to its portfolio sooner and more aggresively than other companies, so I associate them with innovation.

What rule is that?

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#195

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

ssl-3 wrote: post #44
LarsDu88 wrote: post #3

I remember being super hyped for the successor of the floppy disk back as a kid in the 90s... Iomega Zip Drives. And then getting super hyped for the successor to the CD... the BluRay, and wondering what sort of holographic multi terabyte wizardry would be the nextgen of optical disks. Now we are in 2024 and what actually happened is no one owns their movie or music libraries anymore... they are all streamed from som…

I used to miss being able to hand a floppy disk to someone to give them some data, but then I got used to using email instead (once disk quotas, transfer rates, and attachment sizes caught up). The disks were cheap enough (eventually) to not care much about. And for a while, I enjoyed handing people CD-Rs or DVD-Rs full of data, and the disks were also cheap enough (eventually) to not care much about. (And disk quota…

With Telegram, you can send ulimited amount of data. Transfer is not always gast, and file size is limited to 2gb, but it works. Including to yourself, so you can use as a free cloud storage. Don't how they pull that off, costwise.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#196

Post by skissane »

0x0000000 wrote: post #32

> If you ask the average person what the company 3M does, odds are if they have a few gray hairs hanging out on their scalp, they might say that the company makes floppy disks. That's crazy, I wouldn't think anyone would first and foremost associate 3M with floppies instead of adhesives, even those with a few grays like myself. They make post-its for chrissake, and we're gonna pretend they're most known for floppies?

> They make post-its for chrissake, and we're gonna pretend they're most known for floppies?

How many people actually remember that post-its is a 3M product? Maybe buried deep in my memory, but not at the top of it

If you’d asked me to name a 3M product, the first thing that would pop into my head is Fluorinert-range of electrically inert cooling chemicals, used to cool electronics, e.g. in the 1980s Cray 2 supercomputer: stuff many overclockers daydream about but very few ever use (primarily due to how extremely expensive it is, although environmental and safety issues are also a factor). Never seen the stuff in person, but the idea of it is cool

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#197

Post by skissane »

OJFord wrote: post #56
esafak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why they shoehorned 3M into the article. Floppies rose and fell independently of 3M.

If I picture a floppy it definitely has a 3M logo either on the paper label or stamped into the plastic. But I'm with the sibling commenter to you who says 'adhesive tape' as the first thing '3M' brings to mind. People talk about '3M-backed X' to mean basically 'self-adhesive X' (and maybe express a preference for adhesive brand, but it's common enough the knock-offs use it as an SEO keyword too).

> If I picture a floppy it definitely has a 3M logo either on the paper label or stamped into the plastic.

I do remember seeing 3M floppies, but in my memory Verbatim were more common. And, in the 5.25 inch era, Nashua

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#198

Post by TapamN »

mrguyorama wrote: post #130
flyinghamster wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised nobody has made SD cards with mask-programmed ROM or even traditional write-once PROM.

It's called a Nintendo DS game card. I don't know if the Switch game cards are flash or mask-ROM.

I don't have a source, but I think I remember reading somewhere that Switch games are some kind of archival flash, designed for 50+ year retention.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#199

Post by mercutio2 »

alt227 wrote: post #177
TheGRS wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry has shifted greatly for creatives. Musicians especially. In the 90s which was peak old industry music, the labels would take chances on various artists and those artists would have a shot at something big for little while. The label paid for the studio time. These days with creative tools so accessible and widespread, and the ability to publish so cheap, artists need to produce their own music and find t…

>The label paid for the studio time. I am sorry but this is completely false. All artist contracts in the 90s stated the label would pay upfront, but all costs would be recouped from future album sales and touring profits before the artist saw a dime. The labels didnt take a chance on anything, they heavily covered their asses by monumental contracts which were very famously difficult to get out of once signed.

If the label contracts were structured as loans that had to be repaid, I agree with "completely false".

But if, as I suspect, most contracts were structured as advances, then if the musician was successful, you could look at it as the musician just having gotten a loan.

But, famously, most musicians aren't very successful, and they aren't in general asked to pay back their studio time.

So I don't think "completely false" is a reasonable response to "the label paid for studio time".

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#200

Post by ssl-3 »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #148
everfrustrated wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android builtin as Share -> Quick Share/Nearby share Available since Android 6 (c.2015)

Have you tried it? It's horribly slow.

I've tried it.

I've had it be horribly slow, wickedly fast, and also absolutely fail to work at all.

The wickedly fast method seems to involve the two devices forming an ad-hoc WiFi network -- just for themselves. 802.11ac/ax is pretty darned fast when there's no competition, on a network with exactly two nodes, and when those two nodes are separated by only a couple of feet.

IIRC, this is not the default mode of operation.

Post reply on HN