I lived thru the hype around all computers will meltdown at millenial midnight because they can’t 2000.
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Just in case you are unaware, all those things can still be digitized, and you can get prints of the pics as well!
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Oh, yes. We did that. :) it was the stuff on old drives and Zip disks, or defunct hosting services that is a challenge.
So, much of my stuff is digitized, but it’s not all easily accessible from its media or was lost in hosting services that got sold and dismantled .
I was glad we had old prints to work from; so much easier.
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Look, there’s a lot of fearmongering (and formation of juicy news headlines) over the risk of massive solar flares and coronal mass ejections. It’s the stuff of some good movie plots and worldbuilding, but it is probably not going to be end of the world by any means.
A few years ago, I was given a little behind-the-scenes tour at an enterprise built around an enormous database. They performed regular backups to tape which were shipped away to a secure facility in a secret location. Those tapes are not going to be affected significantly. Nor will your hard drives be affected. That company would be back up and running within 1 week if something happened to its servers.
Additionally server rooms for major data centres are frequently built to include a Faraday shield/cage as part of the design. Here is an industry leaflet advertising one such design.There are different grades of Faraday shields, and it is possible to build ones capable of protecting against major events.
The bigger risks appear to be electronic infrastructure itself, since really long wires function as antennae. But, for data at least, much of that transmission is now fibre-optic, which changes the risk landscape. A “bad” solar flare will probably cause longer-term inter-continental internet disruptions, but probably not long term irretrievable data loss nor the collapse of society.
So unless neutrinos can mutate, a single solar flare probably isn’t heralding the apocalypse.
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Cape Town is dependent on undersea cables for internet access. They get damaged by fishing trawlers, or seabed movement. Our internet limps along the alternate cables, till the broken one can be mended. Now there are also satellite communications options.
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Me too. It was the only time I have stayed up until midnight on new years eve. I already knew that nothing had happened in NZ and Australia, but I just wanted to be sure!
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I like the Internet Archive - for example, it can be used to store files or save websites (“Wayback machine”).
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Funny thing about that Wayback Machine – it sometimes gives me different versions of the same website depending on when I search.
People tend to forget/not know that the system didn’t “meltdown” because of maintenance crews (like the one I was part of) or retired programmers did overtime to update/upgrade and salvage.
Happily “we” won! :-D
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The hype fuelled clickbait and conspiracy theories. A bit silly to suddenly notice that 1999 turns to 2000 - and expect that computers will, gasp, shock, horror - not cope 'cos no one thunk about that yet.
Thank you for keeping the wheels turning.
It’s a while ago, but we didn’t start work in December 1999, we started a couple of years ahead to get all those time critical programs and electronic devices updated or replaced. The old electronics had limited memory space so the first 2 digits of the year were not programmed in up to about 3-4 years from 2000, expecting that electronic equipment was replaced quite often …
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Agreed, as I recall there was discussion and action well before 1999 to address the truncated year (99, rather than 1999) in numerous computer programs.
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You can find a calendar with all versions of an archived website, for example:
I disagree. The Y2K hysteria was based on people assuming that this wasn’t being done – or not timely enough; the ones who didn’t buy into the panic were the ones who were aware of this.
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68 posts were split to a new topic: Taxonomy changes and preferences vis a vis long-term iNat data use
:-D Media will want something spectacular to write about, that is after all what sells them :-D
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