Microsoft develops ultra durable glass plates that can store several TBs of data for 10000 years::Project Silica’s coaster-size glass plates can store unaltered data for thousands of years, creating sustainable storage for the world
Of all the stuff I’ve seen in sci fi movies and tv shows, I really didn’t think the computer chips on glowing transparent plates was gonna become reality. What a crazy world this is.
Here, put this weird glowing crystal into the Heart of Gold’s navicom, it contains the location of the long lost planet of Magrathea.
Whoops, sorry, that was my Lincoln Park discography
Four score and seven years ago, in the end it doesn’t even matter
Ahhh Lincoln Park.
The cover band mixing President Abraham Lincolns greatest escapades with the nuwave metal of 2000’s Linkin Park. Featuring the Bed Intruder dude.
I tried so hard, and got so far. But in the end, I still got assassinated.
I was gonna go for, “In the head, I was still assassinated.”
Lincoln Park’s greatest Hit?
oh no, not again!
- A house plant probably
Star Trek predicts another future technology; the isolinear chip.
Add: And the chips used on the original series were opaque, but roughly the same size.
The opacity is probably storage density.
I bet people in the 80’s said stuff like this when music started coming out on digital rainbow mirrors (CDs).
Nope! The futuristic aspect was that they didn’t jam.
“No more cassette players eating my $8 album!? I LOVE LIVING IN THE FUTURE!”
That was more the reaction to Sony mini-discs. Video players using large laser discs had been around for a while.
Mini-discs still feel futuristic for some reason.
I agree, but can’t figure out why. Maybe because it wasn’t wildly adopted?
Every time I watch Johnny Mnemonic and he snaps in that laser disc I think “so cool”… :)
Sony paid a pretty penny for us to think that I bet.
Keanu Reeves also stored his malware on MDs in The Matrix. Most cyberpunk guy alive (also in Cyberpunk 2077).
Optical communications, optical computers, optical storage.
I hope it’ll be like those communicators in the expanse, those things look fun.
I want a glass computer that is on a manipulator strapped to my back that way it can float free and I can use both hands, then push a button to have it collapse back along the backside of my ribs.
Archeologist in 1000 years: "this glass has some interesting etching, must have had some religious significance.
Turns out to be the lewd anthropomorphic creatures glass plate
fertility ritual
Furrility Rituals.*
Maretility Rituals
Just petabytes of porn
“There is only the true religion of the Void, these heretic artifacts must be destroyed”
“Aliens”
Some of the same technology was actually also used to create windows.
You can have my upvote, but I’m not happy about it
I’m pretty happy about it.
Logs into the SilicaArk long term storage system for the first time.
“Welcome Andy, would you like to use the optimistic theme or the pessimistic theme?”
Chooses optimistic. Types in command to show storage capacity.
“The glass is half full.”
Woooow
They’re called isolinear chips.
Is that from Star Trek?
Yup
I have pendrives that look almost like that.
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I can see it, but I have no idea how to post images in comments.
I can see it.
Didn’t someone make a holographic cube some ten or so years ago with the same promises.
I never get excited by this stuff. If I see it in Best Buy, then I’ll believe it.
Many people have made such devices I think. There’s probably a guy somewhere with a shelf full of them.
Yeah, also writing 10 GB of data to rolls of sticky tape in the late 90s. It can be done, but it’s not practical.
Awesome. So Microsoft, does this mean I’ll finally get access to the other 3TB of OneDrive storage that I pay for on my family plan? Or do I still have to create random accounts that would simulate other family members in order to use it?
Sure, if you don’t mind storing stuff and then never reading them again.
To be fair, I have a lot of stuff I am storing that I have no realistic reason to ever need or want to read again as it is.
This plan it built under the assumption that more people will be using one drive. The value of scrapped data isn’t just quantity, but number of people.
Cats: Challenge accepted.
10,000 TB of cat pics.
OMG :-(
That’s a lot of start menu ads and telemetry code!
The goddamn telemetry code!!! Is ancient!! That’s why it’s so huge and slow
This is also the 10,000th time I’ve heard about this so there is that…
I almost literally yawned reading the title. “Journalists” regurgitating things they don’t understand and hyping them everytime like it’s the breakthrough of the century. I feel it waters down actual breakthroughs and makes people immune or at least apathetic to these stories because it’s the same thing over and over.
Ah, but did you know
THEY DID SURGERY ON A GRAPE
It’s working!
Was it minority report or the matrix that showed humans storing data on glass?
Either way, this is pretty cool.
Star Trek also has this.
I think the blade runner sequel had something like this too.
in The Expanse their ships are somehow powered/controlled by a shelf of things that look like this
I think you’re thinking of Star Wars. Like episode 2 or something.
In 2001, HAL is disconnected through glass like components.
I don’t remember this anywhere in the matrix
It seems like it would make for a great replacement for Tape Backups that are currently used for long term storage. They are easy to write to but hard to read from and restore. It’ll probably be a great technology to put backups on especially if it lasts as long as they say. The challenge will probably come in with the specialized reading and writing laser / microscopes being expensive.
According to the article, they’re using their AI cloud service to decode the data, so it’s also likely so computationally expensive to decode that it won’t be practical. Seems more like a gimmick to woo investors that won’t actually ever see real world use, at least not any time soon. I suppose you could make the argument that you can back up data on it now, and hope reading it becomes more practical later, but then it’s more of a supplement to tape backup, rather than a replacement.
using their AI cloud service to decode the data
The hell does that even mean? Is it a model that convinces people it’s decrypting data while taking guesses based on the training set?
There is certainly an element of this being PR for Microsoft. But it is worth considering that a huge amount of computing is done in large data centers.
I think this fact could easily jump-start the use of a technology such as this. If it starts out where every large to mid-sized data center has a reader and writer shared among their thousands of customers it certainly would make it more viable.
I would guess the AI service is MS’s way of trying to make sure they control the technology. Hopefully, it eventually can get replaced by a local AI model rather than MS’s proprietary AI.
I remember when they told us a CD would last for hundreds of years LOL
Is this what Hal 9000’s memories were stored on?
So… all the from Star Gate glass stuff might be quite accurate?
Don’t forget Isolinear Chips.
Aren’t isolinear chips rewritable though
They were, but odds are a future generation of glass storage will be too. CDs started off as a hard WORM ROM, but eventually a rewriting process was developed. I just checked, CDs are from 1982, and CD-RW were introduced in 1997, so I would likely expect about the same turnaround of ~15 years from when these are released to the public.
