Archiving

Signatures

Apr 17, 2022 Anticryptography Archiving Signatures

Signatures Image from Kurtis Garbutt. Putting data out in the environment allows everyone to access it. The problem is that it allows any one to alter and recreate that data in their own vision. Sometimes that is great, other times it is disastrous. I love the idea of someone using public data to make something, but I …

Backups

Jan 1, 2022 Archiving Lifecycle Media Storage

Like flossing, backups are something we should do all the time, but for many it is often overlooked for spans of time. Partly because it is a lot of work. Partly because it has been a moving target over time. Backups The basic idea is to take a snapshot of either your whole system or the parts that are important to you …

A modest word

Nov 7, 2021 Archiving Encoding Storage

Cover image from Wikipedia. Word sizes We have a range of word sizes with computers. If you have used a wide range of machines you may have even seen bytes with more or less than 8 bits. We have standardized on 8 bits in a byte in the last 40 decades. Characters can be 8, 16, 32 or a variable number of bytes depending …

Bits for life

Oct 17, 2021 Archiving Storage

How long can a bit live? This question is both nonsensical and serious at the same time. The base concept of a bit says it doesn’t have a life time so much as it encodes a hint at the probability distribution. In real life though we use those bits to encode almost everything today. Looking around my house I can …

Ransomware

Jun 11, 2021 Storage Cybersecurity Ransomware Archiving

[cover image comes from Wikipedia] It’s all about the backups Ransomware is all over the news right now. It has gone from a harassment for payment in cryptocurrency to shutting down medical care and crippling supplies of food and fuel. These attacks are hitting all of us and have become a real problem, but the …

Immortality drive?

Nov 29, 2020 media anticryptography archiving storage

I really don’t like the feeds on social media. I joined Twitter purely for this blog and it is rare that anything there is more than noise to me. That’s why I did not install the app on my phone and I only check it with relation to this blog (which is not really worth it either). Last night I checked for …

Archive format

Oct 31, 2020 Archiving File-format

This isn’t a new problem. If you are going to archive something successfully you need a format that will be accessible for years to come. This is a fundamental concept of anticryptography. It goes way back also. The library of Alexandria was an immense effort that was made possible by a simple format, ink on …

Carving in stone

Oct 18, 2020 archiving media

I originally posted a version of this in the summer of 2016. I’m reposting it with some minor edits. A classic way to make something permanent is to carve it in stone. So much so we hold it in our language with phrases like “It isn’t written in stone yet.” Using a chisel and hammer the shapes …

Code is data

Oct 16, 2020 Programming Archiving

It used to run… I have seen a number of reports in the media about the aging of source code recently and it has had me thinking. If you can’t run code, whatever relies on it’s execution dies with the code. Sure there is always the option of rewriting the code in a more modern language, but that …