[HN Gopher] Kepler's 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve ...
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       Kepler's 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern
       mystery
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2024-08-01 05:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | dylan604 wrote:
       | I'm constantly amazed at these historical records still exist.
       | Kepler's et al are one thing, but some of the much older from
       | China are also impressive that the information exists today and
       | is still somehow accessible. Now that everything is digital, will
       | they still be available in the future to the same extent that
       | these older analog records have been
        
         | efdee wrote:
         | I think that yes, they will. Generally these historical records
         | exist because some people went through the effort of preserving
         | them for all these years. I feel this effort is a lot lower
         | when your records are digital and infinitely duplicatable.
        
           | pleb_nz wrote:
           | But are digital records really more resilient to catastrophic
           | societal and global changes? Physical records don't need
           | anything to exist and be read and only time and simple
           | resources to duplicate compared with digital.
        
             | stouset wrote:
             | > Physical records don't need anything to exist and be read
             | 
             | Surely you're joking. Physical records are notoriously
             | fragile. They default to having a single copy and require
             | intentional effort to create and distribute duplicates.
             | They are frequently lost to fires, fading, physical decay,
             | and even just being misplaced for generations.
             | 
             | Digital records have their own issues, but implying with a
             | straight face that the default state of physical records is
             | persistence is a bridge too far.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | We have analog records from thousands of years ago, and
               | we still have the technology to use them. I have digital
               | formats from ~25 years ago that can no longer be read. I
               | think the longevity speaks for itself.
               | 
               | Water and fire are equally destructive to digital or
               | analog. Library of Congress has chosen analog vinyl for
               | long term storage over any digital format. I think you're
               | putting way too much faith in digital and totally
               | discounting analog.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Keeping a digital archive is much more expensive than an
           | analog one. In 1990s, if you saved something to floppy, is it
           | still accessible now? Oh, so a new format comes along, so you
           | spend more money to migrate data from old and busted to new
           | hotness format of today. Every time a new comes out? Every
           | other new flavor? What about bit rot so when you try to
           | migrate you've lost readability? Who is paying for all of
           | these format migrations? The ancient Chinese scroll that a
           | monk wrote noting a super novae from the first century is
           | still operational.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-02 23:00 UTC)