Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data • Hacker News Board

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#31

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

retrac wrote: post #28

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

I guess with text we sometimes use the term smut?

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#32

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

blueflow wrote: post #19

A few month ago i took a machine from a scrapyard. That machine fell into my eye because its PSU had a female C13 socket in addition to the male C14 one, which i took as indication for an AT (not ATX) machine. It turned out to be a pentium with ISA ports. I cleaned it, upon booting, i noticed the CMOS battery needed replacement. The CMOS was part of the dreaded Dallas 1287 RTC. Cutting it open and attaching another s…

I worked for an SMS provider at one point testing some new things (e.g. i8n). I had to buy dozens and dozens of old cell phone models from eBay. Nearly all of them had not been cleared. A very surprising percent of them had naked photos of the owners or their lovers on them.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#33

Post by bdowling » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

handrous wrote: post #4

Teenage-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.

One of the first erotic text adventures is literally named "Softporn Adventure". [0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_Adventure

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-o...

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#34

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

I worked for Peter Gabriel (musician). He was throwing out his old iBook, so I took it. It had all his files on it, and all his logins. I could still log into his AOL email account.

I erased everything, pointed the browser to https://www.worldsdumbestgame.com/ , wrapped an elastic band around it to hold the button down and put it in a cupboard for two years.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#35

Post by kmeisthax » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

Since we're sharing weird unwiped data stories, I'll tell mine:

I bought an old Dell PowerVault (rackmountable backup tape library) a few years ago. Upon taking out the drive that was already in there, I found that it still had a tape inside of it. I was able to dump the tape contents; it's files were all gzipped TAR streams. Inside those archives were assets and project files for... a ProtectMyID.com commercial.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#36

Post by chx » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

> We all have SSDs in our laptops now. These are hard to wipe

Not at all if you have an OPAL SSD which are quite common these days. These have a key which encrypts the data at rest and a user facing passphrase which decrypts this key. If you override the encrypting key, the rest of the data is gone unless you can break AES.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#37

Post by kmeisthax » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

handrous wrote: post #4

Teenage-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…

Meanwhile in English, "Yellow journalism" is an old-timey synonym for clickbait.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#38

Post by softcell » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #26

handrous wrote: post #4

Teenage-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…

> in the textbook's opinion the correct English vocabulary should have been "blue movie", "blue picture", "blue magazine", and "blue book"

That instantly brought to mind Soft Cell's song "Seedy Films". It has the line "Blue films flicker / Hands of a stranger / Getting to know you / And I'm getting to like you". It would be amusing if that is a reference that got immortalized in your textbook.

Good song btw ;)

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#39

Post by Nextgrid » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

chx wrote: post #36

> We all have SSDs in our laptops now. These are hard to wipe Not at all if you have an OPAL SSD which are quite common these days. These have a key which encrypts the data at rest and a user facing passphrase which decrypts this key. If you override the encrypting key, the rest of the data is gone unless you can break AES.

This assumes the SSD properly implements AES. I wouldn't trust it and prefer using OS-level full disk encryption.

Re: Retro collectors are uncovering hoards of old data

#40

Post by doublepg23 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #21

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.

I have two old, broken, hard drives with a piece of paper saying "have you backed up your data today?" on one. I think it was a joke I saw on r/DataHoaders.