Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
ChatGPT recommends "The Administrators" by Alasdair Gray, a book that does not exist. Bad ChatGPT
US NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on Ukraine's territorial concessions: "No big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven't been fought for or earned on the battlefield." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1954531864921723174
By the US NATO ambassador's logic, if I
1. Break and enter your house. 2. Kill you 3. Rape and then kill your wife 4. sell your daughter off to some pal of Epstein's who advertises her on the web...
I also get to keep your house, car, and the rest of your possessions?
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
ChatGPT recommends "The Administrators" by Alasdair Gray, a book that does not exist. Bad ChatGPT
Microsoft recommends "The Bridge" (Banks) or "Lanark" (Gray again). I'd go for "The Bridge", tbh.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
I am wondering if it was me. I don’t recall it.
Check your underpants. If the label says "Iain (M) Banks" it was you. If it says "Alisdair Gray", then seek professional help immediately. If it says "DavidL", than just relax and reality will restore itself momentarily, after some brief visions of an unapproachable woman and a large mechanical metaphor for something Scottish.
Data decarbonisation is very much a thing and was starting to become a big part of my trade when I retired. The environmental costs of storing terabytes of information on servers which need to not only be permanently powered but often kept at specific levels of heat and humidity is huge. It's also worth pointing out a lot of this accumulated infornation will a) probably never be accessed and b) isn't governed by proper rules of retention allowing for deletion.
In the old days, a bank or law firm would store two million boxes of paperwork and printouts down a salt mine in Cheshire where the environmental conditions are perfect for long term shortage but unfortunately even these tended to suffer from that I used to call the KGB syndrome where every file was stamped "to be preserved forever".
Permanent preservation of historical records is or should be the responsibility of the network of record offices across the country but even they are short of space and there will be another influx of such records following local government reorganisation (will nobody think of the record managers?).
As a famous exchange from the 1960s had it - "We want information - you won't get it - by hook or by crook, we will". If we of course deleted all tweets from 12 months back, we'd lose half the fun of sites like this.
If every man, woman and child in the land deleted a gig of photos it would save 50 million GB or about £500,000 worth of spinning rust and no water.
ETA pointless anecdata – my first school holiday job was moving a solicitor's archived files around in a lock-up garage.
@DavidL recommended to me, some years ago, what turned out to be a memorable SF novel set in a Glaswegian solicitors' (the old kind) where part of the plot revolved around just the sort of filing system such solicitors had (and part on the quirks of Scots Law on real estate).
The only two authors that spring to mind are Iain (M) Banks or Ken MacLeod. Perplexity.ai can't help. Any ideas?
ChatGPT recommends "The Administrators" by Alasdair Gray, a book that does not exist. Bad ChatGPT
Microsoft recommends "The Bridge" (Banks) or "Lanark" (Gray again). I'd go for "The Bridge", tbh.
Nah, it was a really weird book about a version of the railway bridge that had hundreds of people living on it and different parts of the personality of the same person giving you different perspectives. No solicitors I recall and relatively little as interesting as filing.
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