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The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

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Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#91

Post by cal85 »

textfiles wrote: post #50
textfiles wrote: post #28

See you all in the backrooms

Anyway, I'm sorry if some people are reading this hastily written blog entry to seem like the archive is taking credit for the process of discovery being done by people. The phrase likely does not mean definitely and perhaps I should have used a different word when I wrote the entry. But the fact remains that the wayback machine is the only place you can see the image in the context of its original website, and that…

I found the article very interesting and didn’t for one second feel the author was ‘taking credit’ in any way. A few unreasonable critics are a good signal that you wrote something that was widely read and enjoyed. They’re not representative, they just comment a lot.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#92

Post by de_nied »

marzetti wrote: post #70
throwaway2046 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a link to those photos? Sounds like an interesting story, whether true or not.

https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/I_Found_a_Digital_Camera...

The photos feel like a story being told. Meant to be in an almost serial way.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#93

Post by jsjohnst »

_cenw wrote: post #73
zerocrates wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cybershot is a point-and-shoot digital camera, not a phone. Though Android does still use the DCIM folder, that whole basic structure, for compatibility with things that are looking for photos on drives, SD cards, etc. I think Sony phones even still use the DSC filename prefix for their photos.

Maybe you want to re-confirm that. In the late 2000s Sony Ericsson had a line of phones that had a focus on (then) high end integrated cameras called the C-Series, the C standing for Cybershot.

The photo was taken in the early 2000s though!

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#94

Post by chuckadams »

celdon25 wrote: post #86
msephton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's part of the recent trend to not mention Twitter/X because of its owner.

Any evidence for this or just mentioning it because you can?

I try to not mention Xitter because I just want it to go away. It was terrible as a conversation format before, and it's completely unusable now. Oh yeah, the owner is a raging douchecanoe too. But mostly it's just broken.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#95

Post by deskr »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #57

“ However the original, anonymous user stumbled onto this photograph, it appears it was taken from either the Wayback directly, or the Wayback Machine crawled the same site the user had found, and kept that webpage’s preservation for over 20 years.” Something people used to do is to use search engines to find images with file names that indicate they were from a digital camera. You could find all sorts of interesting…

Back in the day, searching for "top secret", "highly confidential", "for private use only", etc, ... would return interesting results.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#96

Post by pfraze »

magic_hamster wrote: post #71

I was sort of expecting an article called "the backrooms of IA" to tell me some interesting things about the unseen parts of IA. But it's still cool to see where the backrooms image came from. Presumably the building is still around and the hobbytown store seems to be in business as well. Some videos I found of the store from 2014 mention it's the source of the "backrooms", so maybe this wasn't such a huge mystery to…

You can visit the Internet Archive in SF. It’s worth it. They use an old church

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#97

Post by elaus »

Nition wrote: post #83
mikae1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an even more fitting (inactive) subreddit for filename searches here: https://old.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/ Here's a list of prefixes to search for: IMG XXXX MVI XXXX MOV XXXX 100 XXXX DSC XXXX SAM XXXX HDV XXXX 102APPLE IMG XXXX FILEXXXX GOPRXXXX

There's also the excellent http://astronaut.io , which I found via Hacker News. It automatically plays short segments from YouTube videos with those default filenames, inevitably surfacing a kind of gallery of the mundane: The unproduced, untargeted, mostly unwatched, everyday moments of real life.

The amount of (AI generated?) crypto spam is mind boggling. Most of the other videos seem to be amateur sport events, but the rest contains a few gems of random stranger's life :)

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#98

Post by IndrekR »

zerocrates wrote: post #68
frob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a YouTube video covering the discovery process. Ultimately, one person found it, but they were part of a wider team piecing together many parts of a puzzle, including outdated phone image numbering schema. I found it to be a worthwhile summary that doesn't really assume the viewer has much previous knowledge. https://youtu.be/-1EKIIM3ShI

The Cybershot is a point-and-shoot digital camera, not a phone. Though Android does still use the DCIM folder, that whole basic structure, for compatibility with things that are looking for photos on drives, SD cards, etc. I think Sony phones even still use the DSC filename prefix for their photos.

It seems there is actual standard behind it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#99

Post by codelobe »

deskr wrote: post #95
WantonQuantum wrote: post #57

“ However the original, anonymous user stumbled onto this photograph, it appears it was taken from either the Wayback directly, or the Wayback Machine crawled the same site the user had found, and kept that webpage’s preservation for over 20 years.” Something people used to do is to use search engines to find images with file names that indicate they were from a digital camera. You could find all sorts of interesting…

Back in the day, searching for "top secret", "highly confidential", "for private use only", etc, ... would return interesting results.

Distinguished seekers also searched: "NOFORN" "EYES ONLY"
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