Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible' Flash-memory designers may currently be focused solely on improving speed and endurance, but Facebook's director of capacity engineering and analysis wants something completely different from them. "The Facebook ask of the industry is make the worst flash possible," Facebook's Jason Taylor told his keynote audience at the …
"but I don't dare throw away, because I might need that data someday."
No need to worry, 1980's porn has evolved, today we have moving pictures........
PS : I have upgraded, replaced all of my drives, work and home, with SSDs. ( Well except for the the USB archive/backup attached to the NAS). I don't even remember the sound of the click, click, scratch, screech as data is being trawled from the anals of the highly defragged IDE 30 Mb "whopper" of a drive......
"At least the women back then looked like women."
No they all looked like failed Cybil Sheppards, too much make-up, big hair and half the vaseline budget went on covering the camera lens for soft-focus shots!
Now they don't even bother with all that guff, drug up a couple of 15 year-old runaways on Sunset Strip, get them to "act" in a hastily rented house, set up a Nikon D3/Canon 5D3 on a stready-cam shoulder mount and start shooting HD porn! (*)
(*) Note that I'm not an expert on shooting low-budget adult fare, regardless of the investigation I've done when I'm bored!
Many years ago, I went through all my old hard drives, user-created CDs and DVDs, SD cards, and USB flash drives, and basically just dumped their contents onto my (at the time) extremely large 1TB hard drive and then erased them and donated them to charity or threw them out, as appropriate.
After the most rudimentary de-duplication by hand (i.e., only copy my user folder from old hard drives, and try not to end up with 18 copies of my entire MP3 collection), the entire unorganized collection ended up being less than 200GB. The process required an adapter to mount a bare hard drive via USB ($20) and maybe 2 afternoons at most. I made a big directory called "backups" with a bunch of subdirectories called e.g. "White SanDisk 2008" and then just copied away.
The benefits are obviously less clutter, plus now I only have one main drive with all my data to secure/back up, plus I can search for documents from 15+ years ago in seconds, plus I'm not worried that if somebody breaks into my home they might find a loose unencrypted drive with valuable personal information. Highly recommended.
Because, just like magnetic media slowly loses it's magnetic polarisation due to the earths magnetic field,
flash-memory loses it's electrical charge over time.
Okay... it may take 10 to 20 years but still... the data may need to be read and re-written every 5 years or so...
You can say that about pretty much all user generated content on the web - Facebook just happens to be storing by far the most of it this write-only shite.
I'd describe the whole of Facebook itself as "very sad", but then I never saw the point of it when it first appeared, and still don't today.
"I'd describe the whole of Facebook itself as "very sad", but then I never saw the point of it when it first appeared, and still don't today."
Well aren't you the cool one for avoiding it. Here, let me get you started:
- No longer a need to stand and pose while 17 cameras are used so everyone gets a picture of an event
- No need to hope your mates will share pictures of events
- One update and everyone knows the plan, no need to call around, text around etc.
- If plans change everyone sees immediately and nobody is left out of the loop (except you, you're not on FB)
- I don't need to travel 10,000 miles a week or spend hundreds on phone bills to keep in touch with friends
- My photo album is enormous, and I know who is in the pics because they are all tagged, and I can contact them immediately when reminiscing over the photos
- After Uni everyone went separate ways and contact is easily lost. Facebook means I always have an up to date phone directory and email address
- FB groups have replaced Yahoo groups for communities and clubs. It's amazing the people you meet online when you share interests
- Sharing an interesting link with friends
I'm sure there are more, that was just off the top of my head a few things to help you see the point. Of course you're one of the cool kids so will now explain how you can do all of that but using email and ICQ chat in twice the time with half the friends...
Also worth noting that a friend of mine back home often gets left out of things because someone needs to remember to call or text him - everyone else just sees the broadcast and comes to the pub.
@Lusty - I'm old, very old - possibly enough to be your granddad but me and my mates use FB in that way - and its a damn sight easier to get every one to arrive at a damp field somewhere in Europe (either to climb a lump of rock or look at each other's cars) than any other method.
Sorry if I have now made it uncool for you as well.
Fashionable to hate Facebook, isn't it.
If you've tried it, genuinely don't like it, then fine, I respect that. But, there are about a billion of us (I guess you'd call us idiots) who do have a use for it.
If, however, you're just an old miser who likes to moan about everything, then fuck off back to the good old days of the 19th century, where women and the poor knew their place, England ruled the world, and the only content which was "user generated" was quite literally shit.
(Twitter, on the other hand, even I don't get...)
If you've tried it, genuinely don't like it, then fine
Yes I tried it, recently in fact (earlier this year) as I recalled a lot of friends that were raving about it way back in 2010, so I looked up their entries and guess what - not one of them has posted a single update since about 2011/2012.
I looked up about two dozen people and there's just tumble weed rolling through their pages.
I'm sure Facebook has its uses, and appeals to certain groups, but like the guy from Facebook said - "The majority of that data will probably be written once and read never" - which chimes with my personal experience, nobody (I know) is using it any more. They've all moved on, Facebook for them was just a fad.
(Twitter, on the other hand, even I don't get...)
I actually find Twitter quite useful, following people (not necessarily friends) that have interesting opinions or commentary. Although anyone posting more than half a dozen tweets a day will usually get the chop in no short order.
The Director of Capacity Engineering at the largest social site on the planet, a company which not just begs to have people constantly upload stuff but actually does everything it can to tie everything about you in a single location has just said that most of it is crap that no one will *ever* see or care about.
The takeaway from this for FB users should be "No one cares. Really, they don't."
Some content is temporary in nature.
E.g. two weeks ago I posted a picture of a burger with a note that says "and this joint have wi-fi". I knew that a friend of mine would be travelling the same way a week later and my picture gave him a feel for what kind of food to expect and what other services were available. And sure enough, a week later he made a stop at that location. I had also tested a shortcut which I told him about and he subsequently followed.
So a week ago my silly burger picture had value, but now it has become largely irrelevant and a year from now possibly just garbage. For all I know, the burger joint that opened in 2012 could be closed by the end of this year or they could radically change their menu or discontinue their offer of free wi-fi. The shortcut that was good this year might be terrible road work infested territory next summer. (in that area of the country they don't mess about -- they completely remove the asphalt leaving only large pebbles around that threaten to punch holes through your car)
In short: What has value today might be worthless next month. Someone might find my hamburger post (w/comments) worth a peek five years down the road, but I agree it is doubtful. Maybe I'll drive through there again some day and look at my posts from around that time to refresh my memory? Either way, why not store it in a sensible fashion?
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
