- Joined
- Apr 12, 2020
If we had to go without the Internet
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- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
Before the COVID hit the fan I would have said it's perfectly possible for people to recover from the Internet disappearing, but with the current prevalence of both online-everything and remarkable ineptitude coming to the surface the moment that online whateverthefuck stops working perfectly I think people have gotten WAY too used to the conveniences offered by the Internet and it'd be much harder to roll society-at-large back to an earlier stage of functionality.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Not only are WD and Seagate lowering the quality, they were doing so while not informing customers last year. They started using SMR(shingled magnetic recording) in high end drives without mentioning it. SMR is slower but makes increasing the storage capacity easier. This is fine in consumer grade drives. Not in stuff like WD Red.
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2020
I'd say a large portion of patches are to cover security holes (less prevalent to non existent in case of the internet collapsing), provide support for specific niche cases (compatibility with other apps or specific hardware), or just general updates to component software in case of a project with many components such as Debian and Freedombox. A lot of that wouldn't be quite as necessary if you were working with a WAN or airgapped machine, with a standardized hardware configuration such as the rpi, using specific software, with a more practical use case than our current relationship with tech. Even in a worst case scenario users could learn how to avoid interactions that cause trouble or performance degredation. On top of that, anybody stockpiling information into a digital bugout bag of sorts should absolutely be including reference manuals and learning materials for programming, hardware fabrication + repair, etc. Maintaining and improving on what we have to work with should be a foundational consideration, absolutely.
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2014
Perhaps there would be an Amazon Catalogue? Rural towns, at least in Canada, used to have Sears Catalogue counters where you'd place an order for an item and a truck would drop it off in a couple of weeks and then you'd pick it up or have it delivered.
I know DVD-R's and CD-R's have official shelf lives but I have CD-R's I burned around 20 years ago that still read just fine, not that I haven't backed up anything on CD-R worth saving.
Although both laptops I use have internal drives because they're both pushing a decade old, I do have an external Blu-Ray burner drive for hypothetical situations where I cannot order a new laptop with an internal drive. My preference is still for the internal drive, just because the external drive is slower, and I hope there's still a niche market for laptops that are thick enough to install internal optical drives in even if I can no longer buy laptops with optical drives pre-installed.
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2018
Here's one for those degenerates who can't live a day w/o their furry porn.
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- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
Disc rot seems to be mostly a meme in my experience. To hear some people talk, you'd think every CD would be a heap of dust by now, and every CD-RW would be a mist of subatomic particles.
Mechanical hard drives, on the other hand, I don't trust at all.
It would be hilarious in some sort of subversive anti-art way to make an old 1900s-style Sears-Roebuck catalogue, except based on Amazon's current selection of chinesium.
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2014
I don't deny that disk rot is a thing that happens but, aside from Laserdiscs, most optical disks I have that are no longer readable became that way due to physical damage (i.e. scratches, bending them, or accidentally crushing them with the wheels on my desk chair) with only a handful of disks that I know of succumbing to disk rot. For one of the DVDs I had that actually did get disk rot, it was evident that there was a manufacturing defect with the disk pretty early on due to a coffee ring-like ring around the rim.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
I find certain types of jewel case are best about protecting discs, better than slips/sleeves, but nothing is a perfect solution to that problem (that I know of)
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2014
For burnable disks, I now put them in a leather optical media binder with 4 disks per page where they're much safer than the old way I used to store them, just stacking them carelessly.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
All my important stuff is on M-Disc or BluRay. And I autisticly horded burners that supported lightscribe and M-Disc as my employer was filling dumpers with PC's the last few upgrade cycles.
The way you store your disc's is the biggest issue. UV light kills cheap CD and DVD roms. So does moisture. It gets between the plastic and the ink coating and lifts the coating off. I have discs I burned in the 2x days that where on COMPUSA brand crap that still work fine.
I have an older mirror of wikipedia. I have stuff like /k/'s "murdercube" burned to BR. I have a few different versions of Encarta and Britannica(*). I use HTTrack to make offline copies of web1.0 sites before they vanish and burn them to disc. Lots of technical data and service manuals that where put on the internet have been lost to time as hosts shut down. I youtube-dl important videos. I always save PDF's even if I find 1 line useful. Always save drivers and software I use. Really important things like the service manuals to tools and equipment I depend on I print and bind. I love my duplex laser printer.
And for books I have a full set of World Book encyclopedia from the 1949 and 1989. Old technical and educational books are normally dirt cheap to free at tag sales or Abebooks. I have full sets of FSM's for my cars and truck.
(*) There might be copies here https://archive.org/details/cd-roms
When I see people mention packet radio as an internet replacement I often wonder if they understand how slow AX.25 over 1200 & 300 baud half duplex really is. During the peak of it's popularity the text of this post might have taken a few minutes to get through a busy digipeater. Its very cool tech (I still play on Network105 with a real TNC) but it capabilities are basically limited to passing(store and forward) ASCII text messages only. Digitpeating anything interactive or in real time is pure torture. Especially when there is more then 1 user. Timeshare+half duplex on every hop
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- Joined
- Jan 31, 2018
this is a possibility that i've considered and yet another one that i haven't bothered to prepare for
you can download and mirror wikipedia if you want, if you're lucky it might even come with thousands of vandalized pages
you can download and mirror wikipedia if you want, if you're lucky it might even come with thousands of vandalized pages
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2019
What's the better HDD company that's not Seagate or Western Digital? I know Toshiba and some other companies make Hard Drives, what's the better company than for anyone who has expierence with those drives?
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
Toshiba seems to always do good on the blackblaze reports. Blackblaze is a data center that makes public their hard drive reports.
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2013
Those offline viewers look interesting, might be worth checking out.
This kiwi-themed reader even has content slices that cut it down to just the sciences, which probably gets you close to "Best Of Wikipedia".
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2019
That all depends on how they are stored and how much use they have taken. My laser disc collection is still good after 35 years of use. My lead Zepplin Laser disc and Star trek Animated version are as pristine as I have purchased them.
Also smart people make master copies of what they use and abuse the shit out of them.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2013
If an EMP destroyed the internet, then like OP said, tech goes back several decades. We'll make it, but a lot of folks will die either from the chaos that insues or relying on tech to keep em alive.
If its like that one South Park episode were the internet just stops working, I'll be fine. I've got a ton of media, physical and digital to keep me occupied for a long time. Assuming power doesn't go out as well.
If its like that one South Park episode were the internet just stops working, I'll be fine. I've got a ton of media, physical and digital to keep me occupied for a long time. Assuming power doesn't go out as well.
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2013
I've taken the question to go one of three ways:
- If the internet goes out, but everything else stays the same, including full access to computers, then there'd be nothing to worry about with the right preparation. This is the best-case scenario since it's only laser-guided to one thing. It'd get boring, but we'd manage regardless
- If the internet goes out and we lose access to most computer systems, then it'd be like the 80s or 90s- a simpler, somewhat more inconvenient time, but also livable. This is one we should avoid, but not the end of the world either if it happens.
- If the internet goes down, but so does literally everything else (power grids and whatnot) then all but the dedicated survivalist or third world poor person would be screwed with governments upheaved; riots and looting all over the world; and at least half or more of the population dying trying to survive. This is the worst-case scenario and sadly, also the most realistic since we've relied too much on the internet and similar systems instead of relying and improving upon older ones and actually preparing for when disasters -- be it from space, manmade or inflicted by mother nature herself -- actually happen.
personally, I wouldn't mind if the first two were the result, as I just see my computer as a glorified tv/radio with art programs and a web browser. It's the third one I'd be worried about, but also an outcome I assume wasn't going through OP's head when making this thread.