New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

What do you mean? You were out of sugar?

Hmm,.. seems a great way to add some petabytes to your coffee...

Well probably not as durable as the marketing blurb says

I mean we all have destroyed DNA, for example by cooking food. Ultraviolet radiation also is a problem. Essentially you'd get a storage medium which might hold its data for millions of years, but will quickly degrade when left out in the sun, or at temperatures higher than 40 degrees Celsius. It's also very susceptible to chemicals. Just about the only advantage is that you can make copies very easily. (even without a living being)

Junk DNA

So they're writing data via DNA using a heavily error corrected format. If preserved for a million years it would be readable, but unless someone knew the error correction format what you read would be gibberish.

Sort of like our so-called "junk DNA" - that almost certainly isn't "junk", but that fact likely won't stop alien conspiracy theorists from before long claiming our very DNA contains instructions to build a FTL communication device to call home to our "parents"...

"The 200MB archive was stored on a piece of DNA the size of a couple of grains of sugar."

That sounds a little bit too large, at least in terms of volume. Or do they mean length of (uncurled) DNA strand compared to diameter of sugar grain?

That's so cool

OK Go are as cool as they can be with their special videos.

Spreading information

If this is integrated with viruses, a tough class COULD become something to sneeze at!