DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-05 07:18:35

I came across an update on a space mission which had me searching through old posts.

Some posters here go back many years, long before the newmars forums, before the ikonboards and way back in the early years of Mars fans, readers and followers of 'The Case for Mars' book in 1996 and the Mars Direct paper & proposals after the announced SEI program. I found some news today which made me dig up the old 'Maven' thread. The old Maven thread hasn't really been restored since the crash and may be lost.

The update on an old thread here it was a Mars mission to study upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind...sadly most of the Maven discussion was lost in 'The Big Crash'. However it got me thinking while newmars forums are mostly restored or getting restored most of the internet itself is dead links, deleted videos, crashed webpages, 404 errors. If you go to an online encyclopedia most of its references are dead, many wikipedia posts, its story and information from news links that it got its event or historical or factual information from are dead, many they have forgotten to archive. So the whole thing got me thinking about an event, of course with war you have the possibility of humans doing something stupid but it got me thinking what if our planet was hit by something, bigger than Mt Saint Helen's or Fukushima or Krakatoa, how much info would be lost, do governments and states and nations and counties even have the foresight to archive any of this stuff?

Hard drives are the most common type of storage medium probably the first thing ordinary people think of when coming up with solutions for storing a lot of data, USB Flash Drives are Mainly for Transfer Rather Than Storage, after a while most of them develop flaws overtime or crash, LTO tape the Linear Tape-Open is one picked by archive people, and that’s because it’s great for archiving hundreds of terabytes. Some people burn the files to video DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Burnable discs and other storage device as vulnerbale to strong magnetic field, a pulsar or EMP bomb would wipe out a lot of info on Earth, discs use unstable light-sensitive dyes, they need to be stored in a cool dry place and will probably not be readable decades and years to come. M-Disc is a bit like carving the bits in granite, and the company claims that they’ll last for 1,000 years. Cloud Storage is what new people want to hear but older types don't want to hear, Cloud on it’s own is not safe, you need to have multiple cloud backups, Cloud has struggles with large volumes of data. Solid state drives are best thought of as a cross between flash memory and traditional hard drives, format and flac and wav and mp3 and mpeg and mp4 are all things that could develop issues for example will jpeg always be around or will an NTFS filesystem still be readable 30 years from now? If it’s in only one place, it’s not backed up....and of course it would be dumb to allow some hostile nation to host back up for your important information. Of course you wouldn't need to print everything on big sheets of paper, papyrus or bamboo as ancient Egypt, Rome, China or Mesopotamia once did and chop down hundreds upon thousands of trees. You have mini micro CDs, with nano tech approaching you can etch stuff onto something as small as a Penny the United States 1 cent coin. Eventually the interwebs itself will die with or without a Mount Saint Helens or Fukushima. How many e-books and Ted-talks and online videos and internet novels will die and grandchildren will no longer see their family line and wedding photos? The Voyager Golden Records a type of time capsule "Hello from the children of Planet Earth" are two Phonograph Golden Records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft with sounds and images selected to portray life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. When the firsts colonists and explorers and towns people arrive on Mars we will want their life experiences recorded.

kbd512 · 2022-06-05 09:19:36

Everyone,

It so happens to be the case that the universe is very unkind to microelectronics used in computing, communications, and data storage. All microelectronics in their present form are not long-term stable / durable, due to molecular-level damage caused by powerful radiation storms created from supernova events. Supernova events continue happening all around us, and will never "go away", because the universe is in a constant state of change. Even though these changes happen on timescales well beyond a human lifetime, humanity has had microelectronic devices for a little less than a single generation- approximately 50 years starting from the early 1970s.

High radiation fields continuously degrades the micro-circuitry in the electronic devices themselves, as well as other forms of digital data storage such as solid state hard drives, magnetic hard drives, magnetic tapes, and various kinds of optical discs.

Awhile back, Tom invited a PhD-postdoc to post on this forum who was, and presumably still is, working on a more robust and secure computing infrastructure that uses commodity chip-based hardware for more secure computing (SRAM chips, in particular) and, hopefully, more durable devices. I recall being of the opinion that computers used on Mars to support critical functions such as life support and communications should use the characteristics of this more durable "way of computing" that Tom's acquaintance came up with. Strangely, at least to me at the time, he said we should look into using commodity chips with more radiation shielding. The problem, of course, would be the mass of the radiation shielding required.

My thought process on these "simple computers" was that they would feature replaceable commodity hardware so that proper function was assured. If even that was not reliable enough, then my assertion was that we might want very primitive relay-based electromechanical computers that were repairable using hand tools, such that these simple devices, in comparison to modern microelectronics, could operate reliably for many years in high-radiation environments. The general unreliability of an electromechanical relay was less important, at least from my perspective, than the fact that it was easily and quickly repairable without complete replacement or the need for very sophisticated diagnostics equipment that could itself also be damaged from high-radiation fields. This is in contrast to the idea that we can or will create long-term durable microelectronics-based computers.

Basically, GCR-type radiation that would fuse logic gates in a modern microchip would have virtually no effect on an electromechanical relay. We wouldn't use such technology for recording home videos, because that would be grossly impractical, but we would use it to control life support functions at the Mars colony. Does a valve that controls water distribution between two tanks need a cell phone chip controlling it? I know that's how we'd do it here on Earth, but we also accept that if those electronics fail, we will replace them. Maybe that's still doable on Mars, but what if complete replacement of the electronics every few years or after every solar flare is not practical? How about an atmospheric CO2-level monitoring system? I don't think we can make a good case for betting our lives on something that we know is adversely affected by the radiation environment on Mars. I think it would be better to have a much simpler computer, even at the expense of some weight and therefore cost, that's still operable in 50 years by using routine maintenance to repair the electromechanical switches.

I think it's very possible that we've already exceeded our point of diminishing returns on some forms of computerization. I can see the value to the increasing sophistication of communications and electronic diagnostics devices such as cell phones or oscilloscopes and whatnot, but fail to see the purpose behind having so many microchips in toaster ovens or washing machines or motor vehicles, for example. One of the salesmen at the Cadillac dealership told me that there are around 400 microchips in my wife's Escalade. I understand why microchips control the engine, transmission, air bags, and radio, but that pretty much covers what I think should be controlled using microelectronics. The rest is ridiculously superfluous fluff that drastically increases cost for sake of having gadgets to entertain their engineers.

No matter how theoretically reliable these new electronics components are, objective reality says they're getting replaced with newer models every 2 to 5 years. There's nothing long-term-durable or sustainable about them. They may require zero adjustment over their operational service life, which is a great feature from the perspective of the manufacturer, but after that period of time they start to fail and there is no possibility of repair short of outright replacement. That is why we need to limit the application of sophisticated microelectronics to applications where they provide significant benefits. I've yet to hear a clear case for what major benefits are provided by putting microchips in car door handles. That seems more like an absurdly expensive gimmick to increase the cost of a vehicle and perhaps entertain the brains of the electrical engineers working at the company while providing no real value proposition to the customer. The same functionality that the Tesla door handles provide could be as-easily provided with a rather simple mechanical system that will out-live the batteries powering the car. Whereas said microchips cease to function if power is ever interrupted, the mechanical device still functions as a door handle, with or without electrical power. However, Tesla couldn't charge their customers $1,000 for a few pieces of plastic and steel that might be replaced once over 25 years or so.

The purpose of engineering should not be to entertain the engineers, or run up the repair bills charged to the customers, or to make a simple mechanical device like a door handle unrepairable without total replacement.

Void · 2022-06-05 10:59:05

I think I understand what you are saying. It is sort like building a house of cards and then producing geniuses who's skill is to lessen the amount of card it takes to build a house. This sort of thing fools the general public into giving honor and authority to those who will then put their house of cards at risk.

Here is fun with Neon: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/25/russia- … ustry.html

I fear that it is sort of an evolutionary cycle. Start robust, and then specialize, and then change renders you extinct. Not so brilliant after all, but you can never talk sense to the people who do it.

Done.

kbd512 · 2022-06-05 18:14:13

Void,

The issue relates to the longevity of the technology in operation. It's getting replaced every 2 to 5 years, whether it needs to be or not. It's pointless self-imposed entropy for sake of making things "different". As a consumer or as the manufacturer, why reduce your customer base this way?

We're already to the point that there are so many different models and so many different parts in a car that computers are required to track the parts inventory and no human can simply "look at the thing" and tell if a part is missing or out-of-adjustment.

YouTuber "SuperFast Matt", who used to work for Tesla, said they went through 4 to 5 different generations of door handles for the same model of car. It's great that they were able to iteratively improve the door handle design, but not so great that they spent thousands of hours of engineering time designing their own "special" car door handles, to the point that a replacement is now a $1,000 part that you can't buy from anyone but Tesla, and that your car doesn't function as a car without usable door handles.

Ford was doing the same idiotic thing with engine accessories 50+ years ago. There were a bewildering array of mounts, bolts, and related installation hardware, all so that the engineers could create meaningless variations on the same basic theme. It increased costs and repair time, but did little else to materially improve the design. Do you really need 5 different and non-interchangeable water pump housings or alternator mounting brackets for the same model engine, despite the fact that the engine, with whatever accessories, would still fit inside the engine bay of whatever vehicle came with that engine?

I assert that you don't. Such practices are wrong-headed "job security" / "make work" projects for engineers who are costing the company and ultimately the consumer a bunch of money to create something that shouldn't exist. Elon Musk himself talked about this when it came to their Starship design. He said they literally had to question whether or not some engineering intern inexplicably "created" a part or design requirement that nobody left inside the company could articulate the purpose behind having.

This sort of insanity produces $1,000 door handles and $600 toilet seats- basically, "things that should not exist". If rich people want Gold-plated toilet seats, then they can pay for that, but the general public shouldn't be forking over tax money for $600 toilet seats, nor should they be paying $1,000 for electronic door handles. Similarly, I can't think of a particularly good reason for "autopilot" software for a mass-produced motor vehicle. If you refuse to pay attention while driving, then have someone drive for you or don't drive if you lack the skills to do so. If money is no object, and it never is so long as someone else is being forced to pay for it, then you can achieve anything with infinite money. Therein lies the problem. There is not infinite time and money to devote to worthwhile projects, but there are more than a few projects of dubious ultimate utility that are also very costly to pursue.

If I was going to blow mad money on "nice-to-have" electronic gadgets, it would be a heads-up display so good that there's never a reason to look inside the vehicle while driving, a FLIR system that can "see" other humans and vehicles through rain / fog / snow, and perhaps audible alarms when you exceed the speed limit or are approaching another object at excessive speed. Those design features would all cost plenty of money and employ plenty of engineers to develop them, but the end result would be improved driver situational awareness. In contrast, after many years and untold billions of dollars spent, these autopilot software programs are still not ready for prime time, and are routinely abused by drivers who should be paying attention to the road ahead of them but aren't, often with disastrous consequences.

Void · 2022-06-05 19:24:39

I don't often harmonize with your thinking, it is not that I don't like your thinking, I just don't seem to have much to offer.

But I will try again.

Are we wanting to think "Model-T"?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjb4photo … 936887603/
Quote:

Henry Ford's Model T
The car that revolutionized the world of mobility for the common man. Some 15 million sold over the period of 1908 - 1927. The photos are arranged from the oldest years progressing to 1927. A few evening light photos are at the end of the album.

I would ask the reader to put aside the "Man-Bad!" mantra for a bit. That was from another era, and indeed lots of men worked dirty harsh jobs. Women did some very not pleasing work as well. But this post is not about that.

I think I see kbd512's point in relation to our future which for now does not look so pretty. There may be a robots and infinite wealth up ahead a ways, but there are people who might like to be able to drop down a bit, as perhaps they cannot be expected to afford so much if our near term future is as wounded as it looks like it might become.

I suppose a tiny house can be better than no house at all. Then perhaps a car should be made available that is just plain, redundant across the years and perfected as to not require features that can be so costly.

Maybe I got closer this time?

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-06-05 19:31:43)

SpaceNut · 2022-06-05 20:28:31

As much as some what cars others are opting for the e-bikes to do a majority of travels. Many of the poor or homeless are the ones which are using them the most.

kbd512 · 2022-06-05 21:37:23

Void,

No, the goal is not to "re-create" the Ford Model T. The goal is to devote microchips to applications that truly require microchips, such as engine and transmission control modules or electric motor control modules. A door handle doesn't need to contain any microchips, merely because "it seemed super-cool" to someone who will never have to diagnose or repair (replace) or pay for a faulty electronic door handle. There were clearly a number of better uses for available microchips. This is a problem not specific to Tesla. It's an industry-wide phenomenon related to engineers being allowed to run amok without adult supervision.

I can see the utility (curb appeal) behind a $1,000 Gold-plated door handle installed in a Rolls-Royce (to the very limited market that those vehicles are produced for). I cannot see the utility in an electronic / motorized plastic door handle for your average vehicle buyer, that also costs $1,000 to replace. This is an aftermarket-type feature that an automotive gadget enthusiast might retrofit into their favorite car, similar to the neon lights that I see some of the kids put underneath their vehicles ("because it looks cool").

When purchasing power falls due to runaway inflation caused by Democrats running our economy into the ground, these are the kinds of superfluous "features" that you quickly eliminate so that you continue to have a customer base who can afford to purchase your product. If you're really savvy, then you never allow the engineers to put nonsense like that in a car to begin with (and fire engineers who persist in running up costs, if need be), because you're a business man / business woman who is in the business of selling cars to the general car-buying public who need to use cars to get to work. Those customers do not need "cool electronic gadgets" of dubious general utility. Again, I only used the Tesla door handle example because it's so flagrant, with respect to violating good engineering practices. I view LED-equipped hub caps / lug nuts the same way. It's a stylistic design gimmick that costs a bunch of money to implement but doesn't make the car a "better car".

The cost differential between a Chevy Tahoe ($60,000) and GMC Yukon ($80,000) and Cadillac Escalade ($110,000) is massive, but the value proposition is not. They have the same frame, chassis, engine, transmission, rear differential, and share pretty much every other major component except for exterior lights, body panels, wheel hubs, entertainment electronics, interior materials, and branding emblems. Other than that, they're functionally identical vehicles with functionally identical capabilities as large SUVs. The point is that the sky's the limit on superfluous yet expensive contrivances that don't make a vehicle functionally better than the next. Affordable car payments matter, fuel economy matters, and the ultimate durability of the vehicle matters. If the manufacturer makes their meaningless minor variation "so special" (read "expensive") that most people can't afford to buy it, or it's so overburdened with electronic gadgetry that the microchip manufacturers can't meet demand, then you have sales slumps that cost the manufacturer vastly more money than the added features or gadgetry was ever worth to begin with.

And yes, on that note a smaller house is infinitely better than no house at all. The increasing unaffordability of homes and vehicles for the vast majority of potential home and vehicle buyers is not a virtue. All of this goes right back to the "broken window fallacy". If we run up the cost of each vehicle, then we make more on each sale. True enough, but you also sell far fewer homes and vehicles doing stuff like that, and no matter the illusory "value to your shareholders" over the next quarter, if you successfully bankrupt the company by taking that silliness too far, then the value to your shareholders eventually drops to zero over time. That process may only take a few years, or it might take decades, but there's no other possible outcome when that is the mentality of the people working for the company.

Does the fact that the average age of vehicles registered in the US has gone up every year for over 10 years (and counting) not tell you that something is seriously wrong?

IHS-Markit-U.S.-Light-Vehicle-Average-Age-2021.jpg

The customer is telling the manufacturers that the value proposition is so weak that they're not buying what's being sold to them, either because it's become unaffordable or because they don't see any compelling value to having the latest and greatest electronic gadgets. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-02 04:25:41

The New Normal: The Coming Tsunami of Fakery
How the Dead Internet Theory is fast becoming reality thanks to zero, marginal-cost content generated at infinite scale

https://grandy.substack.com/p/the-new-n … ng-tsunami

Here are some case studies (treat the numbers with healthy skepticism, these figures are impossible to determine reliably):
Elon Musk estimates that 20% of Twitter users are bots. The authors of this paper suggest 14% as an upper bound.
Supposedly 10% — or around 95m — of accounts on Instagram are bot/spam accounts.
In a study of the first impeachment of Donald Trump (same paper as linked above), bots made up 1% of active users, but posted 31% of the tweets.
Some 42% of Amazon reviews are fake. Amazon are suing Facebook for ‘failing to tackle fake review factories’
TikTok is not immune either. Bots are artificially inflating popularity of accounts and posting videos that are essentially adverts. Here’s a comprehensive guide to buying bots on TikTok.
According to this article, “over 80 percent of NFTs minted for free on OpenSea are fake, plagiarised or spam”.
The thing is, once an account is setup, it’s trivial to computationally post new content and interact with platform participants. And that can artificially distort the discussion.
Remember Cambridge Analytica? The affair proved that it’s possible to manipulate people on a mass scale by the content they consume (in this specific case, as political advertisements).
But that content was all created by humans. And humans are slow to create.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-10-20 12:46:29

Microsoft’s futuristic ‘Project Silica’ stores data on glass plates for 10,000 years

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2108839 … -data.html

kbd512 · 2023-10-20 14:31:48

Combined with Microsoft's AIM technology, Project Silica is the exact kind of computing tech we need for Mars. The data processing medium is light, the devices that process and store the data either need to be entirely mechanical or laser-based, as Project Silica is, such that no reasonable amount of solar or interstellar radiation will erase the data, and the use of electricity must be limited to powering electric motors. Any long-term viable life support control and monitoring system needs to incorporate this sort of technology, if it must be computer-controlled.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-03-02 07:18:00

better than VHS, Cassettes and vinyl LP records

Moon Landing's Payloads Include Archive of Human Knowledge, Lunar Data Center Test, NFTs
https://medium.com/arch-mission-foundat … f424ebe4f2

The Wikipedia. The entire English Wikipedia containing over 6 million articles on every branch of knowledge.
Project Gutenberg. Portions of Project Gutenberg's library of over 70,000 free eBooks containing some of our most treasured literature.
The Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project archive of over 7,000 human languages and The Panlex datasets.
Selections from the Internet Archive's collections of books and important documents and data sets.
The SETI Institute's Earthling Project, featuring a musical compilation of 10,000 vocal submissions representing humanity united
The Arch Lunar Art Archive containing a collection of works from global contemporary and digital artists in 2022, recorded as NFTs.
David Copperfield's Magic Secrets — the secrets to all his greatest illusions — including how he will make the Moon disappear in the near future.
The Arch Mission Primer — which teaches a million concepts with images and words in 5 languages.
The Arch Mission Private Library — containing millions of pages as well as books, documents and articles on every subject, including a broad range of fiction and non-fiction, textbooks, periodicals, audio recordings, videos, historical documents, software sourcecode, data sets, and more.
The Arch Mission Vaults — private collections, including collections from our advisors and partners, and a collection of important texts and images from all the world's religions including the great religions and indigenous religions from around the world, collections of books, photos, and a collection of music by leading recording artists, and much more content that may be revealed in the future

tahanson43206 · 2024-03-02 07:32:38

For Mars_B4_Moon re #11

Thanks for finding and postings the news of the data backup that is now safely stored on the Moon!

I would like to see this backup replicated in every home at some point.

We (humans) could start by insuring a copy is available in every library.

The data compression technology is impressive.

I ** hope ** there is an ability to read all this data back.

If anyone in the forum has time (or just runs across something) please investigate further and report here.

(th)

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#1 2022-06-05 07:18:35

DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#2 2022-06-05 09:19:36

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#3 2022-06-05 10:59:05

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#4 2022-06-05 18:14:13

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#5 2022-06-05 19:24:39

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#6 2022-06-05 20:28:31

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#7 2022-06-05 21:37:23

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#8 2022-09-02 04:25:41

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#9 2023-10-20 12:46:29

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#10 2023-10-20 14:31:48

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#11 2024-03-02 07:18:00

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

#12 2024-03-02 07:32:38

Re: DeadWeb. Print everything in physical Archive AKA internet is dying?

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