The year is 2245. The heirs finally locate a working, antique reader that can handle the ancient USB key, hoping to find great-great-grandpa’s crypto-wallet or the pin-code to a long-lost Maltese bank account.
Instead, they find a 4-bit, VGA-quality scan of Miss October.
An actual book stores more data than that and for longer. At that point, why not just etch the data onto a metal plate or something? 8K is only a few pages of text at 12pt. It could easily fit onto two sides of a small-ish metal plate, etched in 8pt or so, and it would last, potentially, for millennia.
I think the idea is to improve upon this tech so the capacity would become larger.
It’s FRAM, which has been around for ages. The problem is its prohibitive cost— hence the 8k.
This can be rewritten many, many, many times.
What’s the practical benefit of that? If the point is long-term storage, rewriting isn’t a priority (or possibly even a need). And this isn’t designed for capacity.
It’s so I can exchange fart jokes with my great great great great grandson via a magic USB port a la The Notebook, assuming that’s how it works, idk, never actually seen the movie.
Why even invent the car when horse so much faster?
You wouldn’t use a car to race in the Kentucky Derby
Maybe you wouldn’t
You’d make a bunch of jockeys mad
I absolutely would
So your 8KB of data will last forever, but what about the firmware required to access it running on flash?
In 200 years, AI will hack it for you, but you’ll need a dozen antique dongles to get from USB-Z to A.
As the old saying goes: What could a person need more than 8KB for?
I’m going to get one for my favicon.
What’s the favicon?
Then I said “I don’t know, what’s the favicon with you?”
The little icon you see next to a URL on desktops.
Nah I just wanted to see this guy’s favicon. I know what it is though.
Somewhat better than this useless USB thingy (from Temu?)
Summary by Andisearch
Researchers have developed a new quartz coin that can store 360TB of data for 14 billion years. This is a significant improvement from the previous quartz glass storage, which could only store data for 300 million years. The technique uses femtosecond laser pulses to write data in the 3D structure of quartz at the nanoscale. This makes it possible to store the whole of human history in a small coin-sized device. The storage system is also very durable, able to withstand high temperatures. This technology could potentially serve as a means of archiving important information for future generations or even extraterrestrial beings.
You mean my 2GB Kingston that I bought in 2007, that I rarely use anymore won’t last me 200 years? Damn…
Will the chip actually last that long though? I would have expected a ceramic package with gold plated leads, not a plastic SOP-8.
The other flash chip storing program code for the rp2040 will decay before then making the longevity marketing dumb
what about physical damage. or emp or something. I feel like that will be a problem well before 200 years.
Mold is actually the biggest concern with the most popular archival format LTO. EMPs aren’t that much of a concern. Bit flips and bit rot are your main concerns traditionally when using flash for archival storage. It’s recommended if you go the flash route to keep your array hot (ie powered on) and use a file system with data scrubbing capabilities such as ZFS.
Removed by mod
future firmware updates are expected to include encryption features
Just use GnuPG. SMH
FRAM module? Seriously?
That’s nothing. Fused quartz can last you billions of years.
