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Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

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Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#121

Post by nicolaslem »

rasz wrote: post #120
slim wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered what makes micro SD cards not suitable for long term storage. What makes them decay

Its flash memory, physically pushing electrons into a jar and hoping to count them later before all leak out. Endurance tests of SSD drives showed unplugging a worn drive for a couple of days was enough to lose all data. Not to mention SD cards usually get the lowest grade of flash memory.

I never understood why SD cards are so unreliable (or a least have this reputation) as they are usually used in cameras to store pictures. Something that people don't really joke with.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#122

Post by chriscappuccio »

glouwbug wrote: post #114
einpoklum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But - and sorry for the morbid question - what about when you grow older, and may not be able to take care of that? Or when you pass away?

Very little has survived on paper considering how many people have lived in the past. It's just life. A lot of what may seem important with our backups really isn't. Whatever we have produced today will return to the earth, and will be reinvented by generations in the future. It's their lives to live, not ours.

I love this comment

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#123

Post by WalterBright »

lm28469 wrote: post #112
einpoklum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But - and sorry for the morbid question - what about when you grow older, and may not be able to take care of that? Or when you pass away?

You have to come to term with the fact that 99.99% of (your/all) medias are useless in the grand scheme of things. Imagine having to take care of the backup of your ancestors data on 10 generations, that'd be ridiculous.

Well, sure. But I have ancestors who go back in the US before the American Revolution, but all I know about them is a name and a date or two. I'm curious about more.

You also don't really know what future people might find interesting. Archaeologists like to sift through ancient trash dumps :-)

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#124

Post by rsync »

bluetidepro wrote: post #10

Is there an easy way to download results from that vault in mass (not having to click into each item)? Or is that not available? EDIT: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/archive-downloader... - It looks like that's a solid option to use a Chrome extension for it.

"Is there an easy way to download results from that vault in mass ..."

This is neither a rebuke nor pedantry - I genuinely hope this will be useful to you:

It's "en masse".

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#125

Post by codetrotter »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #115
codetrotter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downside of that is that your ability to find a specific picture from 5 years ago is entirely restricted to the extent that you were able to organize and add specific metadata to that picture. I disagree with the premise that we should spend time manually organizing and tagging our pictures all that much. The metadata that the phone adds to pictures – time stamp and GPS coordinates – is already sufficient in a…

I would like to agree with you. However, your vision hinges on this massive invisible infrastructure which is the cloud. Your phone didn't recognize the object, you relied on a cloud service to do that for you. When you use such services for free, you'll end up with all kinds of legal compromises that don't necessarily benefit you as an individual in the long run. Your personal convenience is subservient to other goa…

> Your phone didn't recognize the object, you relied on a cloud service to do that for you.

In iOS 13 (which I am running), it is indeed my phone that does this.

https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_... (page 4) says:

> Photos is enabled by powerful machine learning to deliver unique features like Memories, Search Suggestions, and For You. Photos analyzes every photo in a user’s photo library using on-device machine learning that delivers a personalized experience for each user. And this analysis is designed from the ground up with privacy in mind, with all of the processing done on device—and the results of this analysis are not shared with anyone, not even Apple.

> Photos uses on-device processing to analyze each photo and video in a number of ways, including:

> • Scene classification

> Identifies objects, like an airplane or a bike, and scenes, like a cityscape or a zoo, that visually appear in a photo, using a multilabel network with over a thousand classes.

> [...]

The training itself as you point out, happens not on the local device but on the servers that Apple own. So that part you are right about, but that is to be expected. Otherwise, manual tagging by each individual user (as well as significantly more processing power) would be required after all in order to train the models in the first place.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#126

Post by themodelplumber »

GuardianCaveman wrote: post #106
themodelplumber wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I watched it for three hours and it got to the final scene to reveal whodunnit and the tape ran out. I ran into one of these on Youtube just a couple of weeks ago. The reaction in the comments was something less than amused. (Bittersweet memories of taping over some of Mom's seemingly non-important video in order to record...what was it, the first X-files episode? A _Wings_ episode about a favorite jet? Something l…

You’re the first person in any forum online I’ve seen reference Wings. My dads friend used to call my dad to tell him it was on and he’d switch from whatever ninja turtles / golden girls / simpsons episode we were watching. We despised wings! But actually it’s a great show.

Funny. I hadn't searched for it online much but I can understand its lack of traction. It was like a lot of commercial promotional clips spliced together, in some ways. It left a lot of questions unanswered, too! But it was great for an overview and the theme music will be forever engraved in my memory, right next to the _Strike Commander_ theme. :-)

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#127

Post by tialaramex »

codetrotter wrote: post #125
CaptArmchair wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to agree with you. However, your vision hinges on this massive invisible infrastructure which is the cloud. Your phone didn't recognize the object, you relied on a cloud service to do that for you. When you use such services for free, you'll end up with all kinds of legal compromises that don't necessarily benefit you as an individual in the long run. Your personal convenience is subservient to other goa…

> Your phone didn't recognize the object, you relied on a cloud service to do that for you. In iOS 13 (which I am running), it is indeed my phone that does this. https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_... (page 4) says: > Photos is enabled by powerful machine learning to deliver unique features like Memories, Search Suggestions, and For You. Photos analyzes every photo in a user’s photo library u…

Yes, phones are now powerful enough that if the resulting ML core can be crushed down small enough you can just send that to the phone. My Pixel is set to passively identify every song it hears and display it on the lock screen. No Clown network service nonsense involved, Google built it for other reasons and went "Oh, this would fit on a phone. Cool, might as well".

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#128

Post by penguinpalace »

EwanG wrote: post #84
eaurouge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not particularly user friendly, yet, but Arweave [0] was built specifically for this use case. 0. https://www.arweave.org/archiving.html

Sounds a lot like Archive.org? Am I missing something?

Yeah, it's similar but Archive.org relies on servers to store information, whereas Arweave is a decentralised peer-to-peer network that offers permanent data storage. Arweave are in talks with them and are working with the IA to timestamp all of their collections.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#129

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

rasz wrote: post #119
dsego wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be joking. Try to scrape off the paint and keep the plastic, see if it works.

bitrot is paint flaking off, not someone purposefully scratching it off

It is primarily humid air diffusing through the platter and corroding the aluminum coating. The "bits" are sandwiched between two layers of plastic (one thin). The paint on the surface is irrelevant.
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