I have a big "hard disk museum." Partly because it's sort of a cool collection going back to old 5 1/4" platter days. But also because, at a minimum, I'd want to give the drives a few whacks with a sledgehammer before I tossed them. I'd also want to at least look through my floppies to make sure there's no "personal info backup" one.
Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
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Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#22I used to salvage a lot of discarded PCs (use the parts, refurbish, etc.). I quickly decided on a rule to immediately wipe any hard drive, and destroy any drive that couldn't be wiped. One reason is that I'd been involved in some early online privacy discussions, so I had an awareness that snooping might be invasive. But if curiosity might tempt me to rationalize away the nagging sense of possible invasiveness, there…
Depending when you did this, it's possible you destroyed private keys to BTC. I always check any discarded computer I come across for that reason, before wiping.
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#23Archivists are increasingly sad and concerned that this generation of security and privacy may leave little trace of reality in history, but instead fill it with carefully-curated versions of history without the "undesirable" bits. It's definitely a tough problem to answer.
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#24This is nothing new - if you ever worked with computers, in a retail setting This is normal everyday life.
It's computer archaeology in a way, but the article would've been better if it covered the source code/discovery of e-waste lately for video game consoles.
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#25Old computers are the new "old farmer's barn". You open it up and find some interesting stuff inside.
There was even a “barn find” ceramic 6502 — https://www.cpushack.com/2020/01/14/barn-find-mos-mcs6502-a-...
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#26Teenage-me once found a DOS porn text adventure on a used 286 I bought from someone up the street, at a garage sale. This was shortly before dual-core processors hit the market as a common item, so the 286 was already ancient by then. Never found it anywhere else, but I later scrapped the thing without thinking to preserve any of the stuff on the disk, in part because I didn't yet realize this was rare software, and…
> a DOS porn text adventure
It's not porn if it's text. It was interesting explaining the English vocabulary in a Chinese class that covered how to refer to porn.
黄色的电影 ["yellow movie"]: "dirty movie"
黄色的图片 ["yellow picture"]: "dirty picture"
黄色的杂志 ["yellow magazine"]: "dirty magazine"
黄色的书 ["yellow book"]: "romance novel"
There's a double standard in English, where pornographic books can't actually be porn because women don't consume porn.
The other interesting aspects of that lesson were that I wouldn't really have expected a module in a class formally offered through a Chinese university to focus on this topic, and that -- in the textbook's opinion -- the correct English vocabulary should have been "blue movie", "blue picture", "blue magazine", and "blue book".
(The module also covered phone sex! But for whatever reason, that isn't "yellow" in Chinese; it's "pink".)
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#27Archivists are increasingly sad and concerned that this generation of security and privacy may leave little trace of reality in history, but instead fill it with carefully-curated versions of history without the "undesirable" bits. It's definitely a tough problem to answer.
Relevant: http://astronaut.io/
(a website that plays youtube videos with default filenames or 0 views. unexpectedly great capsulation of humananity. or at least where humans can get cameras)
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#28Teenage-me once found a DOS porn text adventure on a used 286 I bought from someone up the street, at a garage sale. This was shortly before dual-core processors hit the market as a common item, so the 286 was already ancient by then. Never found it anywhere else, but I later scrapped the thing without thinking to preserve any of the stuff on the disk, in part because I didn't yet realize this was rare software, and…
> a DOS porn text adventure It's not porn if it's text. It was interesting explaining the English vocabulary in a Chinese class that covered how to refer to porn. 黄色的电影 ["yellow movie"]: "dirty movie" 黄色的图片 ["yellow picture"]: "dirty picture" 黄色的杂志 ["yellow magazine"]: "dirty magazine" 黄色的书 ["yellow book"]: "romance novel" There's a double standard in English, where pornographic books can't actually be porn because w…
> It's not porn if it's text.
Well the Greek roots are literally "writing about prostitutes". I'd argue explicit depiction of sex for the sake of getting off is porn. In literature, drawing, photo, or video. There's even the audio form.
English also has "erotica". Which is... porn which has some non-porn value? Semi-clothed porn? Most romance fiction is more to the clothed than unclothed end of the erotica spectrum, anyway. I wouldn't class most as porn. Though there sure are some pornographic books. I was surprised to learn how many synonyms for the genitalia there are.
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#29I once managed to rescue AlphaServer 255/233 from being parceled out by unknowing e-waste dealer. Spent a bit of time trying to connect everything, connected the serial terminal that came with it, flipped the power switch expecting empty machine... ... Lo and behold, I see it autobooting into heavily customized VMS 6.1 (first patch level that could boot on it), that turns out to be special Blockbuster Video version w…
I found a microfiche reader by a dumpster. Works great and came with one card showing the index of some historical church records from the 1700's. I ordered more cards on ebay and got what looks like the entire microfiche card set from an old TV repair shop in ohio. Loads of schematics, catalogs, and repair information. Lots of hand written notes on the envelopes and stuff too. I've got to upload some photos so Louis Rossmann has another historical data point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microform#Readers_and_printers
Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data
#30Teenage-me once found a DOS porn text adventure on a used 286 I bought from someone up the street, at a garage sale. This was shortly before dual-core processors hit the market as a common item, so the 286 was already ancient by then. Never found it anywhere else, but I later scrapped the thing without thinking to preserve any of the stuff on the disk, in part because I didn't yet realize this was rare software, and…
> a DOS porn text adventure It's not porn if it's text. It was interesting explaining the English vocabulary in a Chinese class that covered how to refer to porn. 黄色的电影 ["yellow movie"]: "dirty movie" 黄色的图片 ["yellow picture"]: "dirty picture" 黄色的杂志 ["yellow magazine"]: "dirty magazine" 黄色的书 ["yellow book"]: "romance novel" There's a double standard in English, where pornographic books can't actually be porn because w…
> It's not porn if it's text.
Actual English usage rather emphatically disagrees with you. [0]
> There's a double standard in English, where pornographic books can't actually be porn because women don't consume porn.
No, there’s not. But “romance novels” aren't that, though arguably an adjacent category (whereas “erotic fiction” is an overlapping, but not identical, category to “pornographic fiction”.)
But English does not hold that what woman consume is not porn (and, in fact, you’ll find extensive English language studies of how women consume what is uncontroversially porn.)
> The other interesting aspects of that lesson were that I wouldn't really have expected a module in a class formally offered through a Chinese university to focus on this topic, and that -- in the textbook's opinion -- the correct English vocabulary should have been "blue movie", "blue picture", "blue magazine", and "blue book".
“blue movie” is correct, if somewhat dated; the rest are, at best, never as widely used.
[0] e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pornographic_novels