dejected_warp_core @ dejected_warp_core @lemmy.world

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1,186

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2 yr. ago

Estimate for CD lifespans was in the 100 year range, but the only way to really put that to the test is to try them in 100 years.

FWIW, I have some CDs that are pushing 40+ years at this point. They work fine, scratches and all.

In my experience, CDRs and other record-able media can't handle a single summer in a hot car. Mistakes were made. If you have your hands on anything like that, I agree: focus there first for your data hoarding activities.

I completely understand the sentiment here, but I have to respectfully disagree with part of your argument.

The internet itself is this fundamentally ephemeral, thing. Our relationship to it, as a medium, has persisted for decades at this point and may continue to do so for a long time. At the same time, it lives and dies by the whims of corporations and millions of other users, and so its trajectory is largely beyond the control of any one individual. It's like this by design: properties like distributed control, flexible routing, easy duplication/destruction of data, give it resilience but also make it temporary. This also makes it a volatile place to keep things permanently, which is a real problem for a lot of different mediums.

With that in mind, there exists a lot of media today that has no non-digital equivalent. So, having a local data cache you control - DVD, BluRay, forvever moving data between online services, even a personal NAS - is the only hedge you can get for the net's volatility. And even then, that medium has a service life.

So I don't think it's a shame, per se, that things are like this now. Rather, it always has been. It's never been easier to consume (and pirate) media online, but the underlying rules have not changed.

Can confirm: HFCS makes everything taste awful and I feel awful afterwards. It also doesn't satisfy my hunger/thirst the way cane sugar does, which is very concerning.

I only ever buy CocaCola (on special occasions) when it's imported from Mexico, since that's still made with cane sugar. This is nuts since it 1) costs more 2) is an American company whose product is being shipped back to us 3) is a superior product but has to be made elsewhere for "reasons."

margarine is absolutely fine

It's hydrogenated cooking oil; trans-fats. It is absolutely not good to eat regularly.

Apparently that's no longer true. Thanks fellow lemmings for setting the record straight.

That said, I do appreciate it for it's long shelf life and availability when better foods are expensive or unavailable.

To me, aspartame tastes plastic-y and reminds me of how hot asphalt smells. It has more of a chemical taste than a sweet one. Toothpaste gets a pass only because of all the mint that masks it.

Sucralose (Splenda) can taste rather like aspirin in the right concentration. Again, it's "sweet" in a way but isn't quite right.

Oh, we're on the same page there. I'm complaining about that too. Things are shifting from "make the environment easier for some people" to "painstakingly chisel out an expert mode like you're escaping from Shawshank." and I do not like it.

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of “cool toys” and “security” virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

From my exposure to supporting said folks with PC related problems, its easy to see the reality here. Phones provide a streamlined experience with zero frills. They don't want super flexible computing devices, they want appliances. More to the point, the level of care and maintenance needed to have a top-shelf PC experience is time and effort most people would rather not expend. Doing this right was inconvenient to begin with, and left the field wide open for anything that would be easier.

Thanks. I knew I was in for a wild ride when a co-worker quoted MIB:

The company keeps us on Centaurian time, standard thirty-seven hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it... or you'll have a psychotic episode.

Management was very accommodating in making the switch back to 2nd shift. I noped outta there and went on to much greener pastures soon thereafter.

That's a valid question. Unfortunately, it's difficult to quantify.

The state of browsers in general has been a moving target since NCSA Mosiac; about around 1993 or so. So the last three decades has been a ceaseless grind of new features, security enhancements, performance enhancements, and so on. And this feature set is absolutely monstrous in scale, as it includes backwards compatibility to most of those features (if not all of) back to that beginning over 30 years ago. So, work on any browser is by definition perennial, and it only ever gets more complex.

For Firefox, well, just take a look at their bug tracker. It's broken down by component, but each link on this page is its own fresh hell of things to do, many of which are barely a year old: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox

I would also argue that the only other software projects that compare to a web browser in terms of sheer scale, compatibility, and longevity, are things like the Linux Kernel or maybe the entire Microsoft Office suite. IMO, software in this class is a lot of work to keep going, no matter how you slice it.

The kind of customer you interface with at 1AM is absolutely NOT going to take "we can't solve this now; I'll make sure a supervisor or manager contacts you during the day" as an answer. You typically get quite the earful for something 1st or 2nd shift never has to worry about. After this happens a few times, it more or less eradicates any perks of working this shift.

Don't forget that night shift customer-facing jobs also have to deal with the night creatures that are said customers.

Things get real weird from 11PM-3AM. These people didn't need IT support, they needed a psychiatric counseling hotline.

For me, my body literally couldn't take the constant "biological darkness" (no UV). After three weeks, I experienced moderate dysphoria, anhedonia, and could no longer achieve restful sleep. Perhaps more-so than the average person, I am a slave to my circadian rhythms and absolutely depend on a normal clock to function.

It's one of the classic blunders. Right up there with starting a land war in Asia.

brief visual and non-intrusive room inspections daily [...] Rooms with a privacy sign will be included as part of the inspection process

The contradictions in this phrasing are giving me a headache.

Also: this is DEF CON. The first mistake was telling them you were coming.

Wait, you didn't use his leg. You didn't need it?!

Naw, I just thought it would be funny.

Oh. That's a good one.

Native headphone jack on laptop. The power supply noise is just awful for everything, except it's the native and approximate era-appropriate sound for late 1990's low bitrate MP3 files.

You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.

Not disagreeing, but "may" is the operative word here. But it's always worthwhile to support your favorite artist when and where you can. :)

Here's the rub: It's possible to have way more lossless resolution than 44khz/16bit (CD audio) with FLAC, but that depends on what the artist is going to ship. And don't forget that your playback device also matters - not everything has a DAC that natively supports higher resolution audio, forcing some loss to perform playback.

Please keep doing this.

What's delightful is that their whole... (waves hands frantically) thing¹, takes all the most crucial tools off the table. Imagine this safety sign posted at the RNC:

Absolutely NO:

• compromising
• back-tracking
• changing your mind
• making mistakes
• wrong opinions

\ All one can do from there is lie while doing one of those things anyway. At a certain point people are going to take notice, which just makes it worse.

¹ - Machismo? Rampant authoritarianism? Sociopathic narcissism? I can't keep up.

Wish Version Iron Man

Oh that's good.

I also like: Rebate Rockefeller.