[HN Gopher] Microsoft nears glass storage breakthrough; could ma...
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       Microsoft nears glass storage breakthrough; could make ransomware
       attacks harder
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2023-12-19 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.techradar.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.techradar.com)
        
       | krger wrote:
       | They should call them Windows.
        
         | leshokunin wrote:
         | Underrated joke.
        
       | ksd482 wrote:
       | Ransomware attacks will become next to impossible because the
       | data will be stored in quartz glass by "...permanently changing
       | their physical structure". So this means that the data is written
       | permanently and cannot be modified, and thus, cannot be held for
       | ransom unless the physical hardware is held for ransom.
       | 
       | Anyone familiar with this, can you please explain how much data
       | can be stored per cubic centimeter? Not sure if this is a good
       | measure of data density, but since we are talking about crystal
       | and layer stacking I couldn't help but think of the physical size
       | in 3 dimensions.
        
       | VoidWhisperer wrote:
       | I'm a bit confused on how this could scale - if the way it works
       | makes permanent alterations to the glass (which the article
       | mentions and I presume would be the reason it is resistant to
       | ransomware), what does it do when data changes? Or this a write-
       | once, read-multiple-times solution?
       | 
       | Edit: After reading MSFT's official site on this, it is meant
       | more for extremely long term archival of data, and is intended to
       | be Write Once Read Many which makes much more sense now
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | WORM tech is ancient though so it's not as if it's a big
         | advancement against ransomware IMO.
        
       | kisonecat wrote:
       | Evokes the "isolinear chips" from Star Trek!
        
       | yummypaint wrote:
       | If the main selling point is that it's non-rewritable, it seems
       | like this could be accomplished with existing storage tech. For
       | example why not have a spinning rust disk with a physical
       | interlock switch to prevent writing? Then the disk could still be
       | manually wiped and reused. For important textual data, burning
       | DVDs should be totally sufficient.
        
       | V__ wrote:
       | From the article it seems to me, to be a backup solution only.
       | Kinda a replacement for tape, with the difference that it is
       | faster writing. What got my attention:
       | 
       | > The images are then sent to be processed and decoded, which
       | leans on machine learning model to convert analog signals to
       | digital data.
       | 
       | Looking at the paper [1] (section 3.2.):
       | 
       | > Machine learning models are able to better learn and account
       | for any noise properties inherent in the end-to-end write and
       | read processes including: inter-symbol interference between
       | adjacent voxels in the glass, scattered light from neighbouring
       | layers during readout, variability between optical components,
       | and more. By contrast, traditional signal processing techinques
       | require extensive understanding of all these characteristics and
       | careful (often hand-crafted) processing to remove their effects.
       | 
       | It feels weird to me, that they target "sensitive industries
       | including finance, scientific research and healthcare", but
       | decoding/reading the data is not really deterministic.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-
       | us/research/uploads/prod/2023/0...
        
         | great_psy wrote:
         | I don't think the reading method is a substitute for checksums
         | and so on.
         | 
         | You would still read the exact same data you write, even if
         | part of the process is not deterministic.
        
           | fmobus wrote:
           | That doesn't sound good in terms of future-proofing this
           | technology. If I want to read stuff 200 years from now, the
           | knowledge necessary for that process will be buried deep
           | inside some opaque ML blob.
        
       | jrflowers wrote:
       | This is fascinating. Imagine non-rewritable optical storage
       | media... it is like something out of a Foundation novel! Too bad
       | that that concept is so thoroughly untested, we may never know if
       | anything like that could gain wide adoption
        
         | akoboldfrying wrote:
         | >Imagine non-rewritable optical storage media...
         | 
         | Like a CD?
        
       | raphaelj wrote:
       | What are the advantages of this compared to cheap writable
       | optical disks (DVD, Blueray ...)?
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-19 23:02 UTC)