Interesting Links for 08-05-2017

[andrewducker]

Nigel Farage says Theresa May is winning because she has stolen all his policies

(tags: UKIP Conservatives uk politics europe )

Iceland drills three miles into volcanoes to produce clean energy

(tags: iceland volcano renewables )

The Lost Picture Show: Hollywood Archivists Can’t Outpace Obsolescence

There would seem to be an opening for an archive company which _will_ support their technology for more than a couple of years. Because they know what "archival" means.
(tags: movies tv Technology history )

Tips For Not Condemning Millions Of Americans To Sickness And Death

didn't The Onion used to be satire?
(tags: politics usa healthcare )

Actual words my coworkers have said to me, a woman in tech

The woman who shared this with me said that she'd heard nearly all of these personally.
(tags: women technology sexism )

Mass Extinction And The Structure Of The Milky Way

tl;dr - when we're inside a spiral arm (60% of the time) there are a lot more comets and gamma bursters nearby.
(tags: space life death earth )

Huge relief after only 11 million people vote for a fascist

(tags: fascism voting satire europe )

Strength Through Unity - is America becoming a fascist state?

(tags: fascism usa comic )

Comments

[miramon]

Tape drives degrade, plastic goes brittle, rubber pickup wheels just turn to dust, springs lose their tension. I've seen old LTO drives where the read heads were covered in magnetic oxide from the tapes (and the oxide then gets onto the pickup wheel and ruins the tension so the tape doesn't read properly and you're risking it being chewed up). You can only buy old kit on eBay for so long before it's useless. Anything with moving parts is a disaster waiting to happen.

[calimac]

Yes, but I did specify "keep in working order," not "buy some old ones on eBay." These aren't casual hobbyists, but large corporations with whole staffs of technical departments.

[miramon]

And I also am talking about large corporations. I've worked on projects where IBM was buying old kit on eBay to keep a couple of ancient servers running. The tape drive I referred to belonged to a major hospital (who, incidentally, were running a 20-year old VMS system that was a lot less trouble than the tape drive but was still the cause of an 8-day outage). You just can't replace the guts of a tape drive unless you have access to the original manufacturer's technical department and spares.

[calimac]

No, you're not talking about a large corporation. You're talking about a hospital that called in IBM for help with a failing system, instead of having them keep it in working order all along.