I once wrote a DAM that wrote to LTO tapes just using tar. The tape was operated with forward/rewind commands from mt. Nobody needed access to the tapes until after I was no longer at the company. Apparently, they spent weeks trying to install various backup software to read the tapes, but none could. They eventually contacted me, but due to how much software they had tried to use the original computer it was attached to was no longer the OS. At that point, they asked 3rd party companies for help and eventually found someone with a drive attached to a Linux system. I was then able to walk them through how to read and extract data.
Tape storage can be an absolute nightmare. Most will do the writes, some will say they verify with a read, but few actually test with a full restore. Just because the software says it can read the tape to show you the listings does not mean it can read the files themselves. This was alluded to in TFA(TFV??) but been there done that on trying to read from a bum tape/bad write. It gets worse if you write in one tape drive and read from another also mentioned in TFV. Now I feel old just thinking about it all
Simran-B 6 minutes ago [-]
Another entertaining piece by the Lego Island guy!
My takeaway is that you should choose a passion project as your hobby and put in the time to learn and do whatever is necessary to achieve your goal on your own or together with similarly motivated people rather than relying on anyone external you have to pay - things go downhill fairly often and quickly it seems. Is any business a scam to some degree nowadays?
Committing ASCII-art of a scantily clad woman is quite the power move.
msgodel 1 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't mind coming into the office if we were allowed to behave like this again.
GEBBL 1 hours ago [-]
I feel this was an ‘of it’s time’ thing, but I am so glad we have moved on from this. I wouldn’t enjoy working in a workplace where this was acceptable.
msgodel 52 minutes ago [-]
The consequence is that the workplace is a sterile no mans land and you're better off remote.
Like I said: if being there were actually meaningful it might make sense to be there.
MyPasswordSucks 1 hours ago [-]
It's an ASCII art of a nude woman. So what? It just seems like such a busybody thing to get one's feathers ruffled over.
gortok 19 minutes ago [-]
How about ascii art of a male penis every time you opened your IDE?
The point isn’t what you (MyPasswordSucks) would find objectionable, the point is what the median would find objectionable in a professional setting. Luckily we’ve gotten away from the locker room behavior being the median and now the median is approaching good-manners behavior. This is one of the situations where the Overton window shifting makes us better as a species instead of worse.
sweezyjeezy 48 minutes ago [-]
It's teenager-ish, and the kind of thing that would make people uncomfortable if they saw it at our own workplaces. We can argue about whether companies 'should' punish people for stuff like this, but I can say for sure that I don't feel like I'm missing out on much here.
bayindirh 27 minutes ago [-]
I still design and add banners to my servers' MOTD to add a little fun to my day. No NSFW stuff, however.
msgodel 19 minutes ago [-]
Mine is a corporate style # rectangle but instead of legal crap it just says "msgodel's laptop/vps/robot/whatever\n Be Nice!"
bayindirh 15 minutes ago [-]
Mine are old BBS style banners, generally glorifying the hostname, and a small tagline for the server itself, related to its function.
A hypothetical DNS server might greet you with "All your zones belong to us!".
heavensteeth 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not surprised by the data recovery company story, it feels like I only hear bad things about that industry. I remember something similar happened with LinusTechTips.
A lot of work, but with success as reward!
Makes you wonder how easy or difficult it will be in 30 years to 'recover' data from today.
dehrmann 6 hours ago [-]
> Makes you wonder how easy or difficult it will be in 30 years to 'recover' data from today.
The challenges will be different. Flash loses its charge in 30 years, most disks are encrypted, and on-site physical backups are mostly a thing of the past. The source might survive in a cloud repo, but it'll either be tied up for legal reasons or deleted when the customer stops paying the bill. But storage is cheap and getting cheaper!
ljlolel 6 hours ago [-]
Easy. The “deleted” even overwritten data can leave ghosts even multiple layers deep (think of a clay tablet or painting with multiple inscriptions)
Encryption for 30 years ago? Trivially breakable with quantum
privatelypublic 23 minutes ago [-]
Not this tripe again.
The reality is, as soon as humanity figures out how to distinguish between two values (magnetic flux, voltage, pits/lands, etc) we use it to store more data, or move it faster.
The end.
mjg59 3 hours ago [-]
Shor's algorithm is primarily relevant to asymmetric cryptography, and disk encryption is pretty much universally symmetric. Quantum computers do nothing to break modern disk encryption.
rjst01 6 hours ago [-]
> Encryption for 30 years ago? Trivially breakable with quantum
I wouldn't be so sure - quantum computers aren't nearly as effective for symmetric algorithms as they are for pre-quantum asymmetric algorithms.
bbarnett 5 hours ago [-]
Regardless of the parent's statement, just normal compute in 30 years, plus general vulnerabilities and weaknesses discovered, will ensure that anything encrypted today is easily readable in the future.
I can't think of anything from 30 years ago that isn't just a joke today. The same will likely be true by 2050, quantum computing or not. I wonder how many people realise this?
Even if one disagrees with my certainty, I think people should still plan for the concept that there's a strong probability it will be so. Encryption is really not about preventing data exposure, but about delaying it.
Any other view regarding encryption means disappointment.
Dylan16807 4 hours ago [-]
> I can't think of anything from 30 years ago that isn't just a joke today.
AES is only 3 years shy of 30.
If you used MD5 as a keystream generator I believe that would still be secure and that's 33 years old.
3DES is still pretty secure, isn't it? That's 44 years old.
As for today's data, there's always risk into the future but we've gotten better as making secure algorithms over time and avoiding quantum attacks seems to mostly be a matter of doubling key length. I'd worry more about plain old leaks.
bbarnett 1 hours ago [-]
I'll concede your point re: current status of some encryption. However there are loads that were comprised.
How do you tell which will fall, and which will succeed in 30 years?
All this said, I just think proper mental framing helps. Considering the value of encrypted data, in 30 years, if it is broken.
In many cases... who cares. In others, it could be unpleasant.
retrac 1 hours ago [-]
> I can't think of anything from 30 years ago that isn't just a joke today
The gold standard 30 years ago was PGP. RSA 1024 or 2048 for key exchange. IDEA symmetric cipher.
This combination is, as far as I am aware, still practically cryptographically secure. Though maybe not in another 10 or 20 years. (RSA 1024 is not that far from brute forcing with classical machines.)
charcircuit 4 hours ago [-]
>normal compute
You are underestimating the exponential possibilities of keys.
>plus general vulnerabilities and weaknesses discovered, will ensure that anything encrypted today is easily readable in the future.
You can't just assume that there is always going to be new vulnerabilities that cause it to be broken. It ignores that people have improved at designing secure cryptography over time.
bbarnett 1 hours ago [-]
From a security perspective, I argue ypu must assume precisely that.
An example being, destroying sensitive backup media upon its retirement, regardless of data encryption.
jetbalsa 4 hours ago [-]
Has this been proven for flash storage? Once a flash charge is depleted its gone forever, its not like magnetic storage of old.
Cthulhu_ 5 hours ago [-]
Hard, but it depends on backup / duplication strategies; this is why e.g. the internet archive is so important, and I hope there are multiple parties doing the same thing for redundancy.
CSMastermind 8 hours ago [-]
Absolutely heroic effort. And that data recovery company should go out of business.
chii 6 hours ago [-]
It is named and shamed in the comments of that video somewhere.
Data recovery companies ought to have the integrity to just say no to a job, if they cannot do it risk free. Trying and failing with the risk of damaging the original data could be very costly to the customer, even if they don't charge money - the customer's lost data could be priceless.
Tape storage can be an absolute nightmare. Most will do the writes, some will say they verify with a read, but few actually test with a full restore. Just because the software says it can read the tape to show you the listings does not mean it can read the files themselves. This was alluded to in TFA(TFV??) but been there done that on trying to read from a bum tape/bad write. It gets worse if you write in one tape drive and read from another also mentioned in TFV. Now I feel old just thinking about it all
My takeaway is that you should choose a passion project as your hobby and put in the time to learn and do whatever is necessary to achieve your goal on your own or together with similarly motivated people rather than relying on anyone external you have to pay - things go downhill fairly often and quickly it seems. Is any business a scam to some degree nowadays?
I enjoyed skimming through this: https://github.com/HighwayFrogs/frogger2-vss/blob/main/teamS...
Like I said: if being there were actually meaningful it might make sense to be there.
The point isn’t what you (MyPasswordSucks) would find objectionable, the point is what the median would find objectionable in a professional setting. Luckily we’ve gotten away from the locker room behavior being the median and now the median is approaching good-manners behavior. This is one of the situations where the Overton window shifting makes us better as a species instead of worse.
A hypothetical DNS server might greet you with "All your zones belong to us!".
The long road to recover Frogger 2 source from tape drives - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061574 - May 2023 (213 comments)
The challenges will be different. Flash loses its charge in 30 years, most disks are encrypted, and on-site physical backups are mostly a thing of the past. The source might survive in a cloud repo, but it'll either be tied up for legal reasons or deleted when the customer stops paying the bill. But storage is cheap and getting cheaper!
Encryption for 30 years ago? Trivially breakable with quantum
The reality is, as soon as humanity figures out how to distinguish between two values (magnetic flux, voltage, pits/lands, etc) we use it to store more data, or move it faster.
The end.
I wouldn't be so sure - quantum computers aren't nearly as effective for symmetric algorithms as they are for pre-quantum asymmetric algorithms.
I can't think of anything from 30 years ago that isn't just a joke today. The same will likely be true by 2050, quantum computing or not. I wonder how many people realise this?
Even if one disagrees with my certainty, I think people should still plan for the concept that there's a strong probability it will be so. Encryption is really not about preventing data exposure, but about delaying it.
Any other view regarding encryption means disappointment.
AES is only 3 years shy of 30.
If you used MD5 as a keystream generator I believe that would still be secure and that's 33 years old.
3DES is still pretty secure, isn't it? That's 44 years old.
As for today's data, there's always risk into the future but we've gotten better as making secure algorithms over time and avoiding quantum attacks seems to mostly be a matter of doubling key length. I'd worry more about plain old leaks.
How do you tell which will fall, and which will succeed in 30 years?
All this said, I just think proper mental framing helps. Considering the value of encrypted data, in 30 years, if it is broken.
In many cases... who cares. In others, it could be unpleasant.
The gold standard 30 years ago was PGP. RSA 1024 or 2048 for key exchange. IDEA symmetric cipher.
This combination is, as far as I am aware, still practically cryptographically secure. Though maybe not in another 10 or 20 years. (RSA 1024 is not that far from brute forcing with classical machines.)
You are underestimating the exponential possibilities of keys.
>plus general vulnerabilities and weaknesses discovered, will ensure that anything encrypted today is easily readable in the future.
You can't just assume that there is always going to be new vulnerabilities that cause it to be broken. It ignores that people have improved at designing secure cryptography over time.
An example being, destroying sensitive backup media upon its retirement, regardless of data encryption.
Data recovery companies ought to have the integrity to just say no to a job, if they cannot do it risk free. Trying and failing with the risk of damaging the original data could be very costly to the customer, even if they don't charge money - the customer's lost data could be priceless.
https://github.com/Kneesnap/onstream-data-recovery/blob/main...