It's hard to hold onto information. Paradoxically, it can also be hard to get rid of it. In this episode, we look at why long-term data preservation is a challenge, and the lengths people will go to in order to clear out digital information.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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The welcome to textile production from I heart, radio, the key there and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland diamond executive producer with I heart radio and how the tech are yet you know
It might be interesting to talk about how data can both be easy to lose and hard to lose its a paradox.
But really this is all about
the media upon which we stored data and how
media can pose various challenges. Now. First up, let's just talk about the concept of obsolescence.
So as our technology are language, our culture as all these things evolve, and we discover new ways to commit information to different types of media. We often leave the older methods
behind, for example, very few people are recording audio to wax cylinders today, for example, not thomas edison did it,
If you don't see, people doing it now, at least not outside of you know, historical demonstrations and that sort of thing at the days of
bring, involve magnetically onto strips of metal like we saw at the end,
nineteenth century- that's pretty far behind us too. Although magnetic tape is built on the same principle, but before we use tape, we used wire not that,
frequently, but it was one of those things that can pave the way toward magnetic take now.
Over time
all media will ultimately go obsolete either, because the stuff we recorded upon has worn out the actual physical stuff has broken
or because we lost the ability to retrieve information from that type of media.
and that inability to retrieve can range from the technical to just our.
Knowledge of how to do it. So, let's take a moment to consider something that is
far removed from modern technology. Unless you watch stargate, and that is hieroglyphs so thousands of years ago, the people of ancient egypt developed a writing system. That was
complicated, to say the least, so our latin alphabet, the one that we using in english, for example, has twenty six characters, write. Twenty six letters in the alphabet and hieroglyphs had hundreds of characters like a thousand or more now, some of the characters in ancient egypt represented basic phonemes the phonemes or sounds within a language right like she would be a phoneme or s
like these are basic, sounds but other characters in ancient egyptian hieroglyphs. They represented entire words, or at least parts of words, some represented syllables. So not necessarily parts of words like you would think, but us, but thus syllable that was common and ancient egypt.
but over the millennia, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs faded from egyptian culture,
There are a lot of reasons for this I mean the the star
well of writing down information changed from hieroglyphs to like demotic, writing and beyond up also you had folks, like you know europeans, like greeks and romans, who were invading Egypt and changing things and disrupting egyptian culture significantly.
By the time we got a few centuries it to the common era. Pretty much. No one knew how to read the hieroglyphs of ancient egypt. Anymore
so we had all this knowledge stored in various places and no way to retrieve that knowledge. It appeared as though we
had lost all of it or that we had due to some misconceptions completely misinterpreted that knowledge.
So by the time we got into the medieval era, there was this prevailing hypothesis that the egyptian hieroglyphs were symbolic,
in meaning, and by that I mean that the images of the egyptians used were thought of to be direct symbols of whatever the message was so
let's say you had images
a boat and a snake, then you might be led.
I think that what you're looking at must be an allegorical story about snakes on a boat, possibly starring, samuel, l, jackson up, but no the symbols used, weren't meant to represent exactly what they looked like they represented
ments of a language. So, for example, if you want, I understand what I'm saying that our letter s looks kind of like a snake right, but it doesn't mean snake. When you see the letter S that doesn't mean snake, it could be the beginning of the word snake. Obviously that begins with us, but
mean anything. It represents the s sound, which is found in lots of words, not just snake, and
air gloves were similar, but no one had a document, the matched hieroglyphs to some other known language, so that someone could actually decipher the symbol. So it just seemed to be no all these icons that the meaning had been completely lost. But then
came napoleon bonaparte and his armies invaded egypt toward the end of the eighteenth century and in the process. The army's happened across something incredibly
important and it would later be called the rosetta stone. Now the razetta stone itself is a type of monument and there are curving on the monument that represent an official dynamic
decree. The carvings are in three different written languages, so at the base of the monument you have, the carving in ancient greek above that is demonic. That is an egyptian language that followed the hieroglyphs language
the top or hieroglyphs, and since all three carvings represented the same decree, this gave experts the opportunity to finally begin deciphering egyptian hieroglyphs
and so began. The long process of uncovering lost knowledge- and this was held by subsequent discoveries of similar decrees, so that we over time were able to understand what these these hieroglyphs actually stood. For. We understood that it was a written language that wasn't just purely
symbolic now my point and telling the story is that we have to remind ourselves that, while we have ways to record knowledge, it would be foolish for us to assume
anyway, that we use is permanent, because we ve got plenty of examples of knowledge being lost in the past, whether it's because people forgot how to access that now
or maybe the knowledge was based in folk lore and the people that were the stewards of that knowledge were wiped out or assimilated, and the knowledge was lost, or maybe the physical copies. If it was like a writ
language, maybe the physical copies, were lost and shot out to the late great library of Alexandria, which I should add, can a faded away, not just because the food
aspire set by Julius Caesar's forces, though that clearly was a catastrophic event.
but also there was a long period in which leaders were cracking down on scholars because well, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So a lot of knowledge has got to be absolutely deadly right, but anyway, let's skip ahead to the modern era. So even today we run
the risk of losing access to information, because we no longer make the stuff what please the media that we used in the old days- or at least in many cases, it is getting really tricky to track down the components that can retrieve data from those types of media. Right, you might be able to find old working equipment, they can access certain types of stuff that otherwise we
no longer can access, but it is rare that you're gonna find someone make a new version of that. It's not impossible
like we ve lost all ability to it's just that unless the,
It is a pressing financial benefit to creating that kind of stuff. No one's going to bother to do it because you know it it's expensive to produce older types of
of technologies and unless there is a financial incentive, no one's gonna do it MA am said to say so.
There is also the danger that the media we rely upon could wear out and deteriorate over time. So, for example, its consider celluloid or film cinematic film, degrades albert,
I am particularly if it's in a hot and moist environment,
you might have heard about some filmmakers, storing, prince of their movies or masters of their movies in old salt mines such as the one that's below hutchinson Kansas in the united states. These subterranean spaces maintain a constant temperature,
of around sixty eight fahrenheit or twenty celsius, and they have a low humidity somewhere between like forty to forty five percent humidity,
a course movies are not the only thing stored in those minds of that fact. We got the idea because
The story, the monument men who ended up finding lots of stolen art from various parts of Europe that the nazis had collected and stored in salt mines
We ended up kind of using the same idea, because it's a great way to preserve stuff, if you they, otherwise it's in danger of deterioration. Also, we
I acknowledge that, while a great way to preserve stuff there's a tragedy here, because we also removing it right from us, you know we're storing it and we're preserving it. But to what end. If, if you cant access it, then it doesn't really like there's a lot of questions, their philosophical questions. If you
the priceless work of art stored in assault mine and no one can go. There is the same as
not having it at all. Now, in the case of film, a lot of studios will actually use those master recordings.
When they want to do a re, mastered version of the film. They want to release it on, say, like blu ray or something, though, go to thee the original print that stored in salt mine and, though pull from
that but the others lots of other stuff. Besides just fell down there, anything that needs a controlled environment in order to stop or at least slowed deterioration. Now magnetic tape is another
orton storage method and we ve been using magnetic tape as storage since the mid twentieth century around nineteen, fifty one or so then again the basic principle behind it dates back to the late nineteenth century. That was when we were using magnetic wire, but whether its real to real take.
Workers sets nor I ve just tapes. We have relied on this methodology to store all sorts of information from you know, compete
information to music in the case of like the cosette tapes of the eighties nineties or the of videotapes all sorts of info? We have committed have
magnetic tape and a lot of companies still rely on magnetic tape for long term storage and backups. Will you
Long term storage. Speaking relatively as we will see now some older forms, a magnetic tape, are largely obsolete because the devices we used to read the data from them are
of production. Do you might find a working device here there, but they can be pretty rare and being mechanical Annie
sure they will eventually require maintenance or they'll stop working and
when you're talking about this kind of stuff
you're talking about things that have parts that no one's making any more, so it becomes very challenging to keep doing good.
working order, because there's a limited supply of components you can use to make replacements when something breaks down on top
well that magnetic information itself can degrade over time or actually can degrade really quickly if it's in the presence of a strong magnetic field, which is why, as a kid, I was told never to bring a magnet close to a computer or computer desks, because you could actually corrupt information that stored on those those devices, because the magnet would realign the magnetic components that were
on. This plastic fell more in the case of a computer or a raid on a platter inside the hard disk right now
on average, if stored in decent conditions. Magnetic tape typically will retain data from anywhere between ten to twenty years would stored in prime conditions like in that salt mines, for example, you
it stretched to around thirty years so magnetic taken hold onto data for a while, but certainly not indefinitely it will
sooner or later degrade to a point where the fuck, the information be corrupted or irretrievable. Now, on a similar note-
it's floppy desks! So when I was a kid, our apple to E computer had a five and a quarter inch lobby disk drive of that. These were not the first love
desks there were older ones, there were larger ones, ibm created, eight inch, floppy disks, for example, and the disks
that I was familiar with back when I was using the apple to E, where these plastic envelopes and the envelopes were.
covering a disk of magnetic film on the inside the, and it was on this magnetic disk that you could save and retrieve
and I actually had to look this up- because I could not remember it myself, but the original five and a quarter inch flabby discs could all up to
ninety kilobytes of data, that's when they were first created, that's the last
just ninety kilobytes but overtime, yo engineers improved the technology. They increase the capacity of floppy disks
typically they did this by creating more precise, read, write heads, so they could store data in smaller physical sizes, which meant you could cram more of it onto the same size disk. They also figured out how to multi layered discs so that increased storage as well. I think neo, some disks
I have maxed out at around seven hundred and twenty kilobytes so significantly more than ninety, but still way less than what we use today. Now I'm going to talk more about floppy, disks and other forms of storage and why
all these different types have kind of a limited shelf life of one span or another. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
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Ok, we're back, and we were talking about floppy disks, my parents right novels answer my dad's first books, which were written in the early age
They were written on that old apple tv computer and he would save chapters of his books to floppy desk
each novel would take up several discs like our no around a dozen or so I can't
white. Remember I remember we had disk holders that would hold them
maybe three of his novels, because that's how many discs would be taken up just by the storing chapters onto them.
I'm not sure if he actually still owns those floppy desk
But I imagine that, even if he does, he doesn't have any way to check and see. If the data is still there or not, he would need an apple to e or an emulator to stimulate an apple to e on another machine plus he would have to have a floppy does dr connected to whatever computer he was using in order to try and read those disks and lobbied strives are not completely gone. They you can still find
them. They are increasingly rare. However, so it's easy to imagine that the day will come when anything stored on discs like that, like my dad's books, we'll just become lost, simply because no one makes the stuff capable of reading it any more and the stuff that already exists will eventually break down. And you know the the actual magnetic information on the disks will degree
over time to just like with magnetic tape the the eventually you you have some of those magnetic
particles move out of alignment. That's gonna corrupt, your data. I know I keep saying data,
data. I know I do that. I don't know why. I do that and I can predict when it happens it just as I apologize word, though, because I know it. Dr some of you, crazy and my apologies- that
it happens anyway? Those particles will move out of alignment. The information gets corrupted, sia switched information there, and then you can't retrieve it any more. So that can happen to even if you have a working computer system that could directly pull that information off the disk. Sometimes the information on the disk itself will become corrupt. Now we also have to keep in mind that media that we still use today cause hardly I mean people do still use floppy disks depending on the situation, but it's pretty rare, but even the stuff that we do use today. Eventually, that's going to become obsolete to just a few years ago. Compact discs were the go to for data storage, at least for personal computers, though
of enterprises would continue to rely on magnetic tape for more long term. Backups and compact discs are a type of optical storage, meaning that, rather than using magnetism to align tiny particles on a us physical surface,
we're using lasers, to write and to read from these discs. The information is stored in what are called pits and lands pits being designated pit in the surface and lands beings.
This is between pits that the re, ridable, actually kind, actually kind of use, foggy and clear sections that are very, very tiny. You wouldn't be able to see them with the naked eye. Now compact discs allows decree
more dense storage system. So we could put way more information on a single c d. Then we could was stuff like floppy discs now, unlike cassettes and lobbyists, optical discs are not affected by magnetism. So if you did bring a powerful magnet close to a bunch of floppy dust, sir cassette tape or anything that uses magnetic storage new would scramble the information on their because the powerful magnet would realign the magnetic particles that are on the tape, but optical discs don't have magnetic particle, so they would be immune to that kind of interference,
However, this does not mean that optical discs last forever, so the there are many layers on a compact disc, same thing with dvds and blue raised by the way. There are several layers involved and these layers can have chemical reactions in them, and those chemical reactions can cause those layers to degrade over time. So, like a city that stored in a very human and warm place late in peep, if people had stored there
it is their music cds inside their car in the summer and georgia. They might find that those cities don't last that long like they might last a few seasons, but eventually they degrade em. They wouldn't
If you're in a hot and humid environment, then a disc is going to degrade faster, not like instantaneously, but it will start to degrade faster than it would. If you stored it in a cooler.
dry place and that our layer on a cd, that's the clear layer, riots, protective and its clear so that a laser can go through it, but some
is that clear layer can start to run away and it can leave the reflective layer, that's underneath it exposed and with some cities that reflective layer is made up of a silver or sometimes a silver compound and silver when exposed to air will tarnish the tarnish silver won't reflect a laser properly, and so you start to get
errors when you're trying to read information off of that kind of cd. Now, not all cds were made that way right. So only some cities have this particular bronzy issue. The vector research group determined that the sea, these that really have this specific problem were all pressed and blackburn Lancashire england between the years nineteen, eighty, eight and ninety ninety three that's per
the darn specific now. The the issue here, though, is that there's really no way to give an average lifespan for a compact disk, because there's no such thing as an average compact discs that were there were so many different manufacturing and pressing processes and recording processes that different ones could last a different. You know theoretical maximum amount of time, so we can't really answer the question: how long on average will a cd last I've seen a lot of people suggest five to ten years, some people saying ten to twenty some people going as far as fifty. I think it really depends on the way the cd was made and what storage
selling its like. Is it in a house where its kept out of sunlight because you ve radiation can affect cities? Is it kept cool and dry? Then it's gonna last longer? Is it not handled a lot like if it's your favorite muse
CD and you handle little a then it's gonna degrade faster again, not in
dangerously, and I may not even be noticeable at first but eventually might get that things where it starts to skip on a certain track or a won't even play certain tracks. That will happen over time. It's a similar story for other optical formats, which include you, know, dvds and blu ray discs. These two have a limited lifespan, though that lifespan may stretch
as long as a century under ideal conditions in a century is a long time for a single person. Right I mean that's, that's a sea
Never get amount of time. However, if we step outside of humans lifespan- and we look at it from the perspective of the historical,
account. Then a hundred years is not long at all.
I mean imagine for a moment if you had no access to any information that was recorded before nineteen twenty
because all the media that we had used to record info on had fallen
or was on our otherwise unusable or inaccessible that nothing. But
nineteen, twenty two would be knowable. Apart from what people wrote about those times post, nineteen, twenty two thou be crazy. Right
But that's the kind of situation were in when we start looking at digital information or a lot about. We look like hard drives hard drives and solid state drives. You know the stuff: that's in your computer systems, you're smartphones, that kind of thing. What what do they have learnt a lot? How long will information last in those? Well, they stored information in different ways. Hard disk drives have one or more platters in them, and each platter has a magnetic coating on it upon which information can be stored. So just like cassettes and floppy discs and other magnetic storage methods, hard disk drives can be affected by a powerful magnetic fields because they to store. For me,
and magnetically lee hard drives have moving parts, so the platters spin quite quite quickly, in fact, and an actual waiter mechanical arm with a red right, cortical head on it. This is the best
either can read the magnetic part.
calls that are stored on a platter or it can actually exert a magnetic field that aligns the particles when you're writing information on the
the latter. It moves across the platter and answers to retrieve or right information to the disk itself. Em
cause. We're talking about moving parts here, stuff can and does where down over time and use if it gets a lot of use, it wears out more quickly, also means that use
be gentle when you're moving anything that happens to have a hard disk drive inside of it, because a good whack can damage the delicate parts. If you,
that actuator arm out of alignment. That's a big problem! It's it's going to be impossible to read or write stuff reliably too, that hard disk drive now hard drives. Dont tend the last very long because of those mechanical parts, I've seen estimates of the life span for hard disk drives lasting somewhere between three too
it may be six and a half years, seven years, some give it a little bit longer some a little bit shorter. Of course, a hard disk drive can last longer than a decade, but that's you know. If we're looking at typical use and we're looking at the average lifespan of hard distress, we tend to fall in that three
He turned seven year range, so near mileage may vary. They may depend upon
how you use your hard drive and this the setting the turin, so
They will eventually breakdown also, even if they dont breakdown sooner or later, really later that magnetic
information will start to move out of alignment just naturally, and so, even if you were to preserve a hard disk, drive perfectly and come back to it in a century, chances are a lot of. The information would no longer be accessible because the actual magnetic particles would no longer be in the proper alignment. Solid state drives
or information in a totally different way from hard disk drives. So, instead of aligning magnetic particles and ss deed stores, information through flash memory similar to usb sticks and other types of laughter,
these drives store information using nand flash, that's in a n and
and in turn, is composed of what are called floating gate transistors, and all of this gets super technical, but less just kind of imagine it this way.
Floating gate can be either charged, which means it's a zero or it could be non charged, which means it's a one.
sir. It gives a little bit confusing because we often think of binary with zero being off and one being on, but
case- zero means that there is a charge in a cell, and one means there is no charge in that sell and drive is made up of a grid of these cells.
So usb flash drives and ssds are non volatile memory. That means that they retain information even if they are not receiving power right. So, if you were to turn off your computer and it has an ssd drive in it, you didn't just wipe out everything that was stored on that ssd. It remains there, however, if an ssd goes without power for an extended period, so we're talking like five to ten years here it can experience. What is called bit rot, that is, some of those charged gates might lose their
march, without access to power and over time they information degrades. So s as these are not immune to deterioration either. Now, given enough time, the information on those will be,
erupted as well, without any other external forces being applied to the ssds. Well, what about cloud storage because that's changed everything right. I mean there's so much of the information,
we use day to day that isn't even stored on our our native device at all, or is that what is stored on our native devices? A temporary representation of that file? The actual file lives in the cloud
Well, assuming that the company that's providing these storage remains strong data stored in the cloud tends to be pretty darn resilient, and that's because, in order to provide a reputable cloud, storage service or really
me cloud service, companies have to ensure redundancy. Now. They're just means that
any information that stored to the clouds system, has to be stored on multiple machines, because remember cloud just means someone else's computer. That's really what the cloud is when you're.
during stuff in the cloud, it's not jack, just floating around in the internet, its being stored on servers that our
part of some massive data server farm that are
owned by some, even more massive company, like amazon or microsoft or google,
now the reason why these companies,
or the information on multiple machines,
that should a single machine holding information, mouth
genes or our no goes on fire or something there are.
backups on other machines, so the customer ideally never even notices that there's any problem. There's no interruption of service.
No delay their information is still on. Quitting quote the cloud when really it's on multiple machines, so the
important because most of these data server farm places
they're using really cheap components like lots of them by their inexpensive, and it's not just off the shelf, inexpensive components, two's store all this information or to run processing
That's what allows them to have this kind of redundancy because they're not spending ridiculous amount.
Money to get state of the art machines and there they don't need that they just need machines that are,
he was more or less reliable and, more importantly, inexpensive, so that you can have lots of them said you have backup. So, in the background, these companies,
and replace broken or damage systems with newer once taken migrate, copies of information
the new machines or existing machines keep things going smoothly and the customers never notice an issue. Now there is a caviar there, which I will get to act. We come back from this break
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Does it get more fun behind the wheel of the nissan z, the sports car built to deliver the most thrilling dr ever get more action from the nissan rope that can take on any terrain with a twist of a dial if more adventure.
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I think, api wise four percent annual percentage yield and the first fifteen thousand dollars with qualifying transactions and e statements in point, one percent of remaining balance non qualified a pure his point: zero one percent of all balances hey. This is jason alexander for visible wireless that you may associate me with a few important phrases like yada, yada, yada, meaning the details, and I dunno some people might think to just
What was over that, but not me when I saw a wireless company recently say they didn't have any of that yadda yadda stuff, didn't have any details. I had a feeling something was off because there's only
details and they matter, and you deserve to know what you're signing up for yadda yadda
Why? I'm in a pot gas that for a different wireless company, visible on the
isabel plan get one line of wireless on verizon's five g network for twenty five dollars a month every month. That's it there's! No activation fees, no need for a family plan
just unlimited data, talk text and hot spot, but twenty five dollars a month, all taxes and fees included. There's no surprises like some of those
so. If you more interested in knowing the details, then pretending they don't exist, learn more about.
Visible wireless, invisible data management practices at visible that come additional terms, apply
on the heart of the game, we're talking with some of the most successful families and sports to learn what really making them tech from staying healthy to. Fostering strong family box will hear from athletes such as curve warner and what lessons are being passed.
down to a new generation of athletes. There is a level when we play that we feel were invincible. You feel like it's not going to happen to you, but then any time
does whether it's? U suffering in injury or teammate suffering a traumatic injury. That's what stops you in your tracks and it makes you go. Ok, we're not invincible and it becomes more personal. It's a part of the process to have to work
through those things. You know and understand the risks that go into it
and understand the rewards of love for the sport. Listen to hard at the gate. Every third,
they on the eye heart, radio, app apple podcast or wherever you get your projects,
So before the break, I alluded to a caviar about having these. Indeed
Lee resilient data storage systems using
cloud and that, as I said at the beginning, assuming the company providing the storage remains strong. So we have to remember that much of clouds
job, there is resting in these few big companies and they are
really big and thus pretty resilient to change into going out of business, but they're not immune to it.
Even companies like amazon, microsoft and google have their vulnerabilities and, in fact, were seeing increased pressure.
her from around the world to break some of these companies up because they are so dominant in their respective spaces, so
odds of these companies going out of business are really really low, but they're not zero, or at least it
zero, that they won't be split up and that, ultimately, that could lead to the discontinuation of services. In some areas,
So we have to remember that the access to this information remains dependent upon these various companies staying in business and being capable of providing that service. So it's never a guarantee. So even the stuff that saved in the cloud
isn't necessarily permanent. It's probably
probably in better shape than say something that saved on a magnet or magnetized tape that you keep in
you're neo dine, magnet room. It's gonna be better than that, but it's not bullet proof
there are several other methods for storing information as well, including some that are in a fairly new. But the point remains our ability to.
Hold on to knowledge, depends upon
media. We use
and the machinery we used to access that media and if we do not consistently move information to new storage method
We run the risk of losing the older information and I'll come back to that at the very end, but let's switch gears for a second, because sometimes we want
get rid of information. Sometimes we need to wipe some storage.
Maybe we need to make room for something new anyone whose had a gaming pc. You probably at some point.
I said alright. Well, I gotta uninstall a couple of these titles so that I can install the newest game. I want to play- or maybe we
just get rid of something we no longer need or use, or maybe we need to get rid of something because we don't want someone else to see it. For example,
say that you've upgraded to a brand new computer, and you want to
tell your old computer or you gonna, donated to like a school or something.
You just want to recycle it. We'll chances are before you.
that you're going to want to wipe that computer clear of information. First, if there's anything personal on that computer, you probably don't want it falling into someone else's hands.
Like listen, you get some financial or medical information that was stored somewhere on that machine.
You definitely want to get that wiped off before new handed over to someone else.
Well, what happens when you delete data
well, if you're, using a computer and your moving files to the recycle bin.
That is actually mean that the files are gone, even emptying the recycle bin.
doesn't necessarily mean the files are gone.
What it means is that the computer has
essentially designated the respective parts on the storage system, holding those files as being available for new information, so,
it's like the markers that would designate that as being a file or gone, but the file itself. The information other filed self is still there
but then, when it's time for you to save new information to your computer, some of them
new information might be over written on top of the older files that you quote unquote deleted. So over time,
You will slowly eradicate the information of that deleted file as your computer rights new information to those segments, but it's not instantaneous
and the important thing to remember is that deleting a file doesn't mean the file is gone. It's not enough to just delete a fight
Many operating systems include options to let you permanently delete files, and this option typically just
involves overriding the selected deleted files with information usually garbage.
That doesn't actually mean anything. The original follows gone as replaced with gibberish, but let's say you have to be absolutely certain that
no one- will ever retrieve information from your hard drive. Maybe this can
her held crucial financial information for an important company
or maybe it held. Medical
monsieur for lots of people and say like a hospital and it's time for you to downgrade the system and get rid of it,
you're gonna really want to make sure that that machine is wiped clear. So,
and you might want to engage in
What I would like to think of, as the nuclear option is called the gutmann method as a peter.
Men and call on blood came up with this process in the nineties.
It involves overriding- a disk drive with gibberish. Thirty. Five times using,
print patterns, including some that are not patterns but random masses.
There's no pattern at all. It's just a random overwrite pass, follow
by a whole bunch of patterned overwrites fell by
or random basis, and this is
because, even with your standard, gibberish overwrite, it can still be possible for a determine person with the right tools to retrieve at least some information off of a hard drive. This is because of that magnetic storage were talking about the the hard disk drive era here. So really tell you
looking for faint traces of magnetic imprints. There could suggest what the original draft,
saved on that hard disk drive was even
by overwriting. Those faint traces might remain so this was gutmann way
I just obliterating any trace of what was there originally. So you really gotta go to extremes, or at least you used to because gutman and plum were really concerned about that magnetic issue. These days
Most experts suggest that the Gutmann method is really overkill, especially if you're using a solid state drive and that after three passes near usually
pretty reliable shape and you don't have to worry about someone getting access to your information. There also
several software packages on the market that can go through the process of deleting files permanently, usually using some form of multi pass. Overwrite patterns multi pass meaning going over the entire storage, DR, not like lulu Dallas, multi bass, sometimes both go to even further extremes, such as using powerful magnets to destroy your magnetic storage that happen.
where the hell you jerk they'll, be part of the process, as some will even use traders to destroy my hard disk platters in such, so that not only
of the files been thoroughly deleted and overwritten, but the physical media itself has been physically destroy
That's probably overkill for most of us, unless you
by a three number designation like double, oh nine or something, but it really
Interesting to me that information can simultaneously be challenging to preserve and difficult to get rid of, but we also talking about different timescales here right, it's not apples app.
For preservation, we're really concerned about the long haul. How can we keep information accessible
even as the way we generate, store and retrieve information changes.
How can we ensure that
future generations will have access to the information that's at our disposal today. There are so many offshoots of this as well, for example, the desired to preserve old in
mason is what drove the creators of the multi arcade machine, emulator software or mean to do what they do. They want to cry.
a way to preserve code that otherwise could fade into obscurity, because
These old arcade machines were physically coded onto chips. There were part of these arcade cabinets and
over time more of those cabinets end up being destroyed
aid or they become inoperable, and so this was an attempt to create a system that would preserve that code to make it
pliable, not necessarily for people to play, but again, to preserve the code itself? Otherwise, it would be lost
and ass, for destroying information will that tends to be for short term requirements right? If there's nothing, that's threatening us or are information. Well, we could just play the waiting game depending on how we ve stored the info
in the first place, because sooner or later, the medium that the information is on will deteriorate or it'll go obsolete and no one will be able to get the
information anyway, including you. So if
don't if you're, not in a rush, you could just wait and the information will eventually no longer be accessible now related to these concepts by the way is the challenge of figuring out how to future proof messaging so that people far into the future will understand what those messages mean, let's think back
the egyptian example? Without the rosetta stone, we would have no way of knowing what the hieroglyphs me not for sure. We could have a lot of hypotheses
but we wouldn't be able to really test them. Improve that are hypothesis is accurate. So, let's take an example: let's take the problem of nuclear waste from nuclear power facilities, so some nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years and we have to store it
to put it someplace, where it's out of the way and safe, and it also means that any warnings that we put up at nuclear waste storage facilities really needs to be easy
if our future generations to interpret even if they have lost all other records of what that site is so the signage needs to convey this
places dangerous, but then, as that hieroglyphs example showed us. This is easy,
said than done. We might do something that to us seems completely obvious
but there's no way of knowing that people ten thousand years from now will still understand it. There are experts who work hard to create,
phonography and messaging that someone unfamiliar with our current alphabet in language and symbols might understand so for a really awesome treatment of this,
topic. I highly recommend a classic episode of ninety nine percent
visible a phenomenal shows you never listened to it. You definitely need to it is. It is one of the best podcast I've ever listened to
but this particular one comes from way back when it was like two thousand and fourteen when it published, and it is titled ten thousand years- really a great great episode. You should check that out. It's an incredible treatment of the child
how do you convey information to people that you you there's no way for us to know anything about them?
Keeping in mind like we're talking ten thousand years, because nuclear waste can stay dangerous, that long you go back ten thousand years
and you certainly think, while we are creating a message that would be readable. Ten thousand years from now, that is gonna be super challenging to do.
So yeah storing data retrieving data destroying
it. All these things have their own challenges, and obstacles in front of them is important for us to think about, because it's also important for us to take steps to preserve them.
When we can their other great examples we can use one I would point out, is that all.
The people, particularly in my generation, we used stuff like facebook, to become kind of the storage centre for photographs. Right, like I, have hundreds of photos stored on facebook, but then I decide to peace out of facebook, so I need
to download my facebook information, because otherwise I was going to lose access to all those pictures that I had stored and it was just a
the thing I had taken for granted that I would always be on facebook,
would always have access to those images, and now I dont- and so yes
its again an example of things that we have to keep in mind when we choose a storage method is that we should also occasionally
give ways to migrate information to a new storage method, to make certain that we don't lose. What came before, nor I hope you enjoyed this episode about the
paradoxical nature of information in the digital age. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech stuff, please reach out to me. The best way to do that.
on twitter. The handle for the show is tat stuff, each as w and I'll talk to you again released
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Transcript generated on 2023-12-12.