antimidas

Finland present 🇫🇮

Homeburning can be surprisingly robust as a backup method, and as an option of physical media, but I'd still keep backups on an actual NAS as well. There's also a ton of variables that affect the lifetime of a burnt CD, like dyes used (cyanine - phthalocyanine - azo), lamination quality, storage and the burner used. Especially the quality and intensity of the build has a surprisingly strong effect, despite things being set in a standard – you can get a lot more storage life out of a CD burned using a quality 5.25" burner compared to a budget slim drive.

Also early discs based on cyanine had a notoriously short shelf life compared to the later archival quality discs, around 30 years or so in optimal conditions (and typically a lot less), so much of the stuff burnt in 90's and 00's has already began deteriorating. More recent quality discs can last over a century if stored properly, but the older ones can't.

DVDs can also often have issues with delamination, meaning that especially the outer rim of the disc can start exhibiting bit rot quite early if you're using low quality media. I've noticed even new discs having signs of early delamination between the two disc halves (DVDs have the data layer in between two acrylic discs, unlike CDs which have it on the backside directly under the reflective coating). I've also experienced a lot of issues when burning multilayer DVDs that might affect how long they last in storage, so for actual backups I'd prefer using a single layer disc instead.

But as per reasons for still using discs – they're an unparalleled cold storage solution. With proper care you can actually leave them be for decades and be sure the data is still readable, unlike with SSDs which will lose their data when unpowered for a long period of time. Tape is a good option, but not really viable for consumers – also tape needs more active upkeep, since you typically have to copy over the old data to new media every 20-30 years or so (promised life in archival is 30 years, after which it might not be possible to get new drives for reading the tapes). Optical is also king when you need to transfer data into air-gapped environments, since with optical media it's relatively easy to audit that what's burned to the disc is unalterable. There's a reason why I still keep a full install set of Debian handy.

Life, or in this case nature finds a way

(link for if the image doesn't federate)

Cray (the company) often had interesting designs that probably ended up influencing a lot of sci-fi. CDC (control data corporation) had interesting designs as well, prior to that, and Cray (the person) worked there before founding his own company.

One other supercomputer line with iconic looks is Connection Machines which are IMO some of the coolest looking computers ever made.

Yep, I think it's from Helsinki market square – and not sure if this needs to be said but not taken by me 😅

Yep, I also think the French in general don't really appreciate Finnish coffee culture, if their presidents reaction is anything to go by. Still one of my favourite pictures.

Not sure if that's a thing in France, but alternatively to plant milk for lactose intolerant

• Lactose-free milk (there are versions with lactose removed instead of broken down, that aren't sweet and taste basically the same as normal milk)
• Lactase enzyme taken together with the coffee, to break lactose down

I don't really see plant milk as the lactose-intolerant variant, but a vegan option, but that might just be due to the fact Finland has lactose-free milk available as an option basically everywhere as milk is such an important part of the coffee culture.

Yep, and truth be told if I had the option of paying 90 € for an actual physical copy without microtransactions, DLC instead of having all content in the game from launch, no online access required and no copy protection on the disc, I'd gladly pay that. 100 € even, if it's a particularly good game.

But I have zero trust in that being the case with the increased prices, it's just going to be the same thing we now have, more expensively.

In Helsinki they have a specific emergency vehicle for clearing tram tracks. It's especially busy during winter as snow takes away some space from the parking and cars tend to start taking space away from the trams.

Article is in Finnish but hopefully automatic translation can get enough across.

https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000005983508.html

CEOs: Finally using software is like talking to an intellectual equal

Most likely not, we're already having trouble with adblue (basically just urea) freezing, especially in the northern parts. There was recently some piece of news where a repair shop in Lapland was up to their neck in repair orders for emissions control systems due to frozen adblue liquid.

Practically all washer fluid sold in Finland uses some alcohol as the deicer, typically just your normal denatured ethanol. I'd also think having urea in the washer fluid would wreak absolute havoc on some parts that get exposed to it – I'm under the impression that it's quite nasty stuff for many different materials.

I could say precisely the same about standard pencils – you have to constantly be sharpening it if you want properly dense handwriting. Mechanical with .2 or .3 and you don't even have to rotate it to get a sharp edge.