There is an actual legal principle of laws simply going out of date, even if they don’t explicitly have a sunset date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desuetude

It’s more common in the UK, where you have 1200 year old laws banning wearing of sandles on Thursdays, but it pops up in other Common Law countries, too, including the US.

Right.

As an example, Klipper (for running 3d printers) can update its configuration file directly when doing certain automatic calibration processes. The z-offset for between a BLtouch bed sensor and the head, for example. If you were to save it, you might end up with something like this:

[bltouch]
z_offset: 3.020
...
#*# <---------------------- SAVE_CONFIG ---------------------->
#*# DO NOT EDIT THIS BLOCK OR BELOW. The contents are auto-generated.
#*#
[bltouch]
z_offset: 2.950

Thus overriding the value that had been set before, but now you have two entries for the same thing. (IIRC, Klipper does comment out the original value, as well.)

What I’d want is an interface where you can modify in place without these silly save blocks. For example:

let conf = get_config()
conf.set( 'bltouch.z_offset', 2.950 )
conf.add_comment_after( 'bltouch.z_offset', 'Automatically generated' )
conf.save_config()

Since we’re declaratively telling the library what to modify, it can maintain the AST of the original with whitespace and comments. Only the new value changes when it’s written out again, with a comment for that specific line.

Binary config formats, like the Windows Registry, almost have to use an interface like this. It’s their one advantage over text file configs, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re just too lazy to bother.

Is a very good idea providing much needed fixes to the JSON spec, but isn’t really what I’m getting at. Handling automatic updates in place is a software issue, and could be done on the older spec.

If anything, we need to double down on freight. Get all the long haul trucks off the highways that we can.

You keep doing this thing where you presume I don’t know about some issue

Maybe because you way overestimate the reliability of old drives. Yes, 10 year old drives can work. Doesn’t mean you should trust them with anything other than getting the data off of it.

I’ll wait for a good legal breakdown to come to firm conclusions, but it sounds like SCOTUS found a way to make a ruling that drags Trump’s trials out even more. They have to separate the acts that have immunity from the ones that don’t.

Magnetic platters absolutely do break down from sitting around. Bearings and other mechanics can also go bad. For those things, a professional recovery operation could still get the data if you’re willing to pay, but the drive itself should be thrown out.

Edit: keep in mind that with bit rot, the drive may superficially function just fine. Your data may even be 99% correct. That 1%, however, could cause unrecoverable problems, such as videos that glitch in the middle.

Benefit society, or go to support a pharmaceutical company that will in some way benefit society in exchange for making a few people rich?

No ethical consumption working conditions under capitalism.

Jail the current executives and hand over the company to the workers. This works best if there’s a robust union in the company already. Boeing sorta kinda does, but it’s been hurt by decades of union busting efforts.

I wouldn’t trust it that way, no. They might last decades. They also might not. It’s a gamble on any single drive, or even a few mirrored drives.

File system also matters. Modern ZFS has error checking that can handle some level of bit rot. Older formats generally don’t.

If it’s over 7 years or so, I want to get the data off of there.

- as opposed to +

WELCOME TO THE RABBIT HOLE

I upgraded my datahoarding server to a pair of 18TB hard drives on ZFS with mirroring a little while back. It’ll be several years before I need to upgrade again, but I expect that when I do, SSDs will be cheap enough to go that route.

Already have a 10Gbps fiber connection to that server, so the hard drives are the bottleneck.

Commercially pressed discs don’t last forever, but longer than burnable discs. IIRC, they used to say 50 years for CDs, but in practice, it was a lot less. More like 20 or 30 if you store and handle them nicely. Easily less than 10 if you don’t.

Hard drives go bad over time; I don’t like trusting spinning platters much over 7 years. They can be OK, but they can suddenly stop working whenever.

SSDs are about the same as spinning platters.

What I’d like for a configuration language is a parser that can handle in-place editing while maintaining whitespace, comments, etc. That way, automatic updates don’t clobber stuff the user put there, or (alternatively) have sections of ### AUTOMATIC GENERATION DO NOT CHANGE###.

You need a parser that handles changes on its own while maintaining an internal representation. Something like XML DOM (though not necessarily that exact API). There’s a handful out there, but they’re not widespread, and not on every language.

I saw it at the range a few times. Worst was when someone had their scope set way too low, and it was causing them to hit the concrete roof. Let off three shots, wasn’t even on paper, and then the next one keyholed. Hold up here, let’s twist this knob and try again.

Also, people should start with small doses and work their way up.

In fact, there’s a lot of research and care people should do beforehand. Mushrooms can be a wonderful experience, but can also be a traumatic one. Learning about them ahead of time goes a long way.

Then you have to explain how her bum was like a mountain goat, and ain’t nobody want to do that.

I’m not sure where you’re getting that Nintendo sells at a loss. They don’t have amazing margins on hardware, but they don’t like selling at a loss. IIRC, commodity prices and a price drop meant the GameCube was briefly sold at a loss, but it wasn’t long, and it wasn’t by much.

Whatever else you can say about Nintendo, they are really good at managing manufacturing costs.

There’s a little wiggle track burned into PSX discs that’s impossible to duplicate with burners, and it won’t boot up unless it sees that. There’s workarounds that eventually came out, but console copy protection doesn’t have to last forever. It only has to last most of its primary life until the next gen comes out, and PSX managed that.