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Unlike in previous decades, no physical record exists these days for much of the digital material we own.
As if any of it is worth keeping.
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Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Considering the quality of news generated by all sides of the political spectrum, we should probably destroy it all. I would be very ashamed to let our descendants witness what we considered "news". 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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You're assuming that millennials and their kids will be able to read. 
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Good point. I suppose somebody will create a text-to-emoji translator at some point.
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dandy72 wrote: I suppose somebody will create a text-to-emoji translator at some point.
The future is now. 
Latest Article - Code Review - What You Can Learn From a Single Line of Code
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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If that's the future, I wanna go back.
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Hmmm... You have a point. Maybe they will get Alexa to read it for them?
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Well when AI takes over it's going to look at all that social media crap and [rightfully] decide it's worthless and erase it all.
Soon realising that's a loosing battle it'll wipe out the source of the crap (people)
Having no use for anything biological it'll sterilize the planet of all life: tree's, forests, panda's, polar bears, whales and wide mouth frogs included.
Thereupon AI will discover laziness and recreate humans (or similar) to do all the work, it just wouldn't be right to expect the masters of the planet to polish it's own knobs would it?
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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Methinks thou credit AI with too much intelligence!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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As others have said, most of it isn't worth keeping anyway.
The key is moving the data from one media type to another every couple of years to ensure it's all still readable. Personally, I've been moving stuff off of CDs/DVDs to hard drives as big fat hard drives are now cheaper than blank discs.
What I found interesting during this transfer exercise is that older CDs seemed to be of better quality; I have some stuff that had been burned on CD in 1996 that was read back without a hitch. Other discs that were 15 years newer had to be retried multiple times on multiple drives due to read errors - some drives, it seems, are more sensitive than others. I remember when CDs came out, manufacturers were claiming these could be trusted for 100 years. Right.
These are now all part of my regular backup rotation. I'm not too worried yet about JPG or MP4 file formats suddenly becoming unsupported overnight. If support eventually drops in favor of something else, it should be trivial to convert from one format to another in batches.
But I definitely wouldn't trust my only copy of any data to the likes of Dropbox or, heaven forbid, Facebook.
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As the demand for optical discs has waned, so has the quality. Back in the 00's I would go through cases of Taiyo Yuden discs on a monthly basis as we had a near perfect record with them. They no longer are in the market as a manufacturer.
(Magnetic) Tape seems to be the thing that large data farms are backing up to... maybe that is why there is such a shortage of the media for everyone else.... Backing up everyone's worthless facebook posts and stupid images. There are more photos taken now per minute than the entire 19th century
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I'd make the argument that the quality of blank optical discs had started going downhill long before the demand for them started to drop.
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Would the world come to a stop if we don't have youtube,google search,facebook,instagram,watsapp ?
Would the world come to a stop if there was not television ?
Would the world come to a stop if there was not mobile communication ?
Would the world come to a stop if there was no IBM,Lenovo,Microsoft,Linux ?
Would the world come to a stop if there was no power ?
Would the world come to a stop if the sun went black ?
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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No, no, no, no, no (but human lives will suddenly be vastly different), yes.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Please get rid of meter maids first and see how it goes.
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Nonsense.
A lot of the material from that era exists only on betamax-video's, and CD's may have a little bit more shelflife than those. They're not "lost", they're converted and exist on a harddisk. Anything valueable has a backup.
We have already entered the age of unlimited bullshit, where "scientist" no longer guarantees science.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Isn't it a bigger "problem" that people don't care about the past?
Well, that is nothing new. Elders have been complaining about youngsters ignoring the old tales, the old knowledge, the old ways, for ages - probably since the dawn of day. We'll just have to accept that they will repeat our mistakes.
As a mature+ person, you essentially have two alternatives: Either turn into a grumpy old man (or woman), spending the rest of your life bitching about young people, or saying: To heck with it - it is their own responsibility to create their own world, just like we did ourselves when we were young.
I have chosen the second approach. For example: In my childhood, we had hours of Super8 movies from vacations and celebrations, we had albums with hundreds of photos, we knew lots of stories told about our ancestors. I tried to keep up that tradition, spending hundreds of hours creating memories, mostly as well edited video movies. But those involved give me a shrug: What would I need a video for? I was there, I remember how it was! Or: I can see the video at your place if you insist, but I don't need a copy of my own.
So I stopped editing videos about ten years ago. I stopped writing long letters to friends fifteen years ago: When a three page letter is answered by an 80 char text message to my mobile, I realize that I am wasting my time. I try to remember which stories I have told to whom: 'You told that last summer' is a typical remark, and I must explain 'I was telling this to Peter, not to you, and he hasn't heard it before!' before I am allowed to continue.
No more than two hundred years ago, for common man, most activities were not at all dependent on written records: You didn't learn farming, or hunting, or fishing, or knitting, or bread baking from a book. Your money was that in your pocket (or treasure chest), not a written down figure in a bank account.
Written-down records (as text, images or whatever) as The Basis for our culture is essentially a Western world 20th century artifact. Obviously, if it turns out not to be so for the 21st century, we will end up like any non-Western, non-20th-century culture. That will be different from today, of course, but maybe not that much different. I think that we already has proven that we can do well without all those old stories and memories, without everyone fluent in reading, but with the repeating of a lot of yesterday's mistakes and reinventing the wheel.
Grandparents will probably continue being sources of old stories for another generation. But it already is just entertainment, pastime - not in any way significant, important or necessary for young people.
Such is life, and it is getting sucher and sucher every year...
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Sounds like a load of cack to me.
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Actually it is cack. The cacao plant has a pretty wide distribution, [^] , it isnt even native to the Cote d'Ivoire, so the article is clearly just more alarmist global warming crap.
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At the moment much of the USA appears to experience the start of the next ice age! 
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As usual - cherry pick the data for your absurd state of denial.
There Probably Won't Be A “Mini Ice Age” In 15 Years | IFLScience[^]
Considering that the researcher is a mathematician/Astronomer/Astrophysicist, perhaps you could have realized she's not considering the conditions on Earth at all. That, however, would interfere with your donkey-chasing-a-carrot view towards whatever agrees with your fancifulness version of reality.
You should also learn something about the differences between "THE THREE C's"
Coincidence
Correlation
Cause and Effect
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: There Probably Won't Be A “Mini Ice Age” In 15 Years | IFLScience[^]
Gosh, you do google quick dont you! 
So you agree that the article I linked to was 80% media hype and 20% science? And thus you do agree with my criticism of it, and that your statement that I 'cherry picked' something was in hast and will now be retracted?
It does help to read and understand someones post before jumping in you know.
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