I Nearly Lost All of My Data - <AUTHOR> https://kevq.uk/i-nearly-lost-all-of-my-data/ <comment><USER3> Hard to believe we are 129 comments into this and there are zero mentions of 'borg' in the comment threads ...

For those that don't know, borg is a backup utility[1] that has been called the "holy grail of backups"[2].

It takes your plaintext files and directories, chops them into gpg-encrypted chunks with encrypted, random filenames, and will upload (and maintain) them, with an efficient, changes-only update, to any SFTP/SSH capable server.

My understanding is that the reason people are using borg instead of duplicity is that duplicity forces you to re-upload your entire backup set every month or two or three, depending on how often you update ... and borg just lets you keep updating the remote copy forever.

[1] [http://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](http://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

[2] [https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail- backups/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/)

<comment><USER4> Let's also mention Vorta, an open source GUI for Borg to make it as easy to use as commercial backup tools. We just started translating into different languages. All input and PRs are welcome.

[https://github.com/borgbase/vorta/](https://github.com/borgbase/vorta/)

(I'm the original author, but Thomas, the current Borg maintainer is also very active.)

<comment><USER5> Any plans to have a Windows client of Vorta? [Edit: Saw it now: "Windows is currently not supported by Borg, but this may change in the future."]

<comment><USER4> Vorta can run on Windows (it's in Qt), but Borg can't (for now). They are working on it though.[1]

You could probably run it today using the Windows 10 Linux subsystem, but it's not fully tested and will need some small fixes. Maybe later this year.

If anyone is interested in working on this platform, just post at [1]. It's probably very doable.

1: [https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/936](https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/936)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best solution I found as an alternative to an off-site copy is to set up a USB drive and something like a Raspberry Pi in my car. When I pull into the garage, the house server senses it and syncs new data to it.

This can be supplemented further by having it auto sync to a computer in your office whenever you pull into work. Add in some monitoring so you can get a phone alert if any of the synced copies are more than a few days out of date, and you are almost golden.

<comment><USER7> Does the RaspberryPi have enough CPU for disk encryption?

<comment><USER8> I am trying to find cheaper device between NUC and Pi.

Lot fewer choices are available.

NUC is expensive. I wonder when will 8core ARM based NUC will arrive in the market.

No idea is NUC can be powered by Xiomi Mi 2i powerbank but a Raspberry Pi can be

Priorities:

1\. Gigabyte ethernet

2\. Small form factor NUC or smaller.

3\. 8+ cores

4\. Very low power consumption

<comment><USER9> You should give the Odroid HC2 (or HC1) a look ([https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc2-home-cloud- two/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc2-home-cloud-two/))

It's an 8 core ARM SBC, with 2GB Ram, Gigabit ethernet on one USB3 bus, and a SATA connector on another USB3 bus. It can fully saturate spinning rush, though it might have problems with SSD drives. In any case, it will fully saturate your GigE link with even a slow harddrive.

It runs a standard Linux kernel, with the "driver" for the hardware added, which is why it requires a special build. Latest kernel version is 4.18. There is also an OMV build for it.

Mine uses around 4-8W, depending on how much the harddrive is being used. I've got a couple of them running as backup targets (Arq, Borg, etc) with a 4TB WD Red and Btrfs, and they've been rock solid.

If you need hardware AES, you should probably be looking elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There really isn't a story here, Kev. You blew a power supply on your Synology. You even said it yourself: "maybe this is a problem with the enclosures and the disks are fine".

If you'd put your disks into a replacement Synology unit, you would have been back online - config, data, and all - within a few minutes.

<comment><USER11> This is the reason I upgraded our Synology with a self-built NAS with six disks, a low-power Atom CPU and a really really good PSU connected to a UPS unit for extra security. Never save money with your NAS power solution.

<comment><USER12> Which OS and file system did you choose?

I recently did similar with an old server and Freenas, but I am still not sure if I have a safe (enough) system overall. I chose RAIDZ2 with 4 4TB WD Red drives, ECC RAM, seems to be working well so far.

<comment><USER11> FreeNas with ZFS, RAIDZ2, 6 x 4TB WD Red, 16 GB ECC RAM.

System has been running a year now without any bigger maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Many years ago I watched someone stuff the DVDRW (remember them?) which contained all his stuff into a work PC's pioneer slot loader drive to get some music off it. We stood there and the drive went bzzt, clang, bzzt, clang then sped up way faster than it was supposed to go. This was followed by a large bang and bits of DVDRW coming flying out and then a crunching noise.

From this I learned about single points of failure.

Edit: also in the decade and a half since I learned that you should never trust a magic box, magic piece of software or magic container file system for backups. A plain file system you can just copy your shit back from is the closest thing to a guarantee. Also it's cheaper to curate your data carefully than end up with 4TiB of crap you're too scared to deal with on your hands.

<comment><USER14> > _A plain file system you can just copy your shit back from is the closest > thing to a guarantee._

These days, I'd suggest using a file system with some form of file checksum metadata. If one values the integrity of their data, bit rot is a thing.

<comment><USER13> Very true. alternatively SHA sum all your data per directory. That's easy enough to write scripts to validate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > What are the chances of both a 4 disk RAID failing AND a USB drive at the > same time?

Probably close to 100% if your house catches on fire.

<comment><USER16> Probably closer to 10%. House fires rarely completely destroy the house and cars are often somewhere else.

Wildfires for example often destroy homes, but generally allow most people to evacuate.

<comment><USER17> Their USB drive was plugged into their NAS. The probability (as they found out in TFA) is very high that a power surge will knock out most of their devices. A house fire wouldn't hesitate in destroying both. I think "close to 100%" is being too generous.

If you don't have 3 copies of your data (with at least 1 offsite) then your data doesn't really exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kudos to Synology for having a process to recover on a Linux box if the Synology box craps the bed. I was reading this story thinking "this is a good lesson on why you don't buy an expensive SAN, unless you can afford to buy two".

But, the other lesson is: Backups. Sounds like backups were shut off 6 months prior.

The other lesson is: Monitoring. Backups were going to the USB drive, but it that stopped working at some point. Unless you have some tested monitoring of your backups, you are likely to lose data.

Glad this story had a happy ending.

<comment><USER19> The nice thing about Synology storage stuff is that it's a nice GUI (seriously, they're about the only company I can think of that's doing appliance management right) on top of standard and battle-tested open source tools.

This was one of the reasons I was okay with paying their prices. Even if the device completely craps the bed, I'll be able to hook the drives containing absolutely normal LVM/btrfs volumes up to another machine and get my data out.

<comment><USER20> Btrfs is battle tested?

[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas)

We use a box with 2x2TB mirror zpools. It runs Nas4free off an 128GB SSD. Initially we wanted to use Freenas but ir needs 16GB of RAM, while Nas4free works fine with 8. It also does SMART monitoring sending emails when something is up.

<comment><USER21> FreeNAS works fine with 8GB RAM, especially with such little data

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These kinds of scenarios are why I built Relica [1]. It backs up to local disks, network drives, remote computers (on LAN or anywhere with a public IP address), your own cloud storage, or our own special formula we call the Relica Cloud: one upload, five independent cloud providers -- replicated in real-time.

And restores can use the open-source tool restic [2], so you don't have to be locked into Relica for accessing your data.

We're working on the ability to do byte-for-byte copies of a repository to other destinations to make data even harder to lose in these kinds of disaster scenarios, as well as a new UI to make it more pleasant and powerful.

Anyway, our goal is help make robust backup strategies like what this guy needs really, really painless, because I'm as paranoid as he should have been about losing data.

[1]: [https://relicabackup.com](https://relicabackup.com)

[2]: [https://github.com/restic/restic](https://github.com/restic/restic)

<comment><USER23> Can this also be used as a replacement for sync services such as Dropbox or SpiderOak ONE? In other words, can I sync accessible folders between computers in near-realtime, or is it only archival/backup storage?

<comment><USER22> No, Relica is not a sync service, because we do not want to sync your deletes -- we recommend using backup and sync together, because they serve two different functions.

Relica is archival software, but you can backup+archive your synced folders of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >I don't know what happened for sure, but I think it may have been a power surge that fried the boards on both the Synology and the USB, as they were plugged in to the same socket.

He didn't have a surge protector? Sweet Jesus. I don't plug my _backed-up_ PC into anything not surge protected.

<comment><USER25> Surge protection isn't a big thing in the UK these days. You can get arresters but it's really rare now to hear of computer damage as a result of mains spikes.

<comment><USER24> Yeah but don't you think having a raid array but not having a surge protector is missing the forest for the trees?

<comment><USER26> Power surges, brownouts etc. don't really exist in large parts of Europe. I also never unplugged my computer(s) in thunderstorms (some of which are on a USP, most of which were simply plugged into mains, no surge protector, no USP) and lost exactly zero computers to that.

One of the few things that actually routinely comes with real surge arresters (i.e. gas-discharge tubes, not the MOVs plastered all over the place) is anything connected to a telephone line, e.g. A/VDSL modems. On some old PBXs for analog lines these were even contained in field-replaceable modules.

<comment><USER27> Can confirm, I think it's over ten years since my last power glitch. I don't think I've ever even seen a surge protector; UPS I've seen a couple of times at people who run servers at home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a common scenario, unfortunately. Synology RAID is nice. External USB on the same power circuit is not a good idea. Actually, I'd look at least into a surge protector. But it's quite possible to have those blow up and still fry your hardware.

I'd run some batteries in the basement and run my Synology (or similar) off of those. Additionally, the USB Backup of backups should be in the garage or the attic, if at all possible. Also, a nice cloud-backup solution that is capable of delta-uploads is a very good idea (cover against fire in the house, or any other "catastrophic" failure).

If you don't have DC experience or if you didn't do much hardware, it's common to over-focus on software. And to be fair, vice-versa :)

<comment><USER29> The issue is probably the Synology PSU and nothing else. This is the third Synology NAS breaking down with intact disks I hear about this month, and it seems to be quite a common issue.[0]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ly8zde3dE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ly8zde3dE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I had a similar experience with a relative's Seagate NAS.

Except the ext filesystem was unreadable because it used a different page size. Required some shenanigans in userland by thankfully I was able to recover the data. Seemed like a software fault on the box.

The chassis had to be destroyed to remove the drive and it was interesting to see the warranty explicitly mention the customer was allowed to do this to recover their data.

<comment><USER31> Have you written up the solution or do you have some link? I have that same problem currently but havent had time to look at it yet. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You need one copy somewhere else! What if there's a break-in or the roof leaks or whatever? My low-tech solution is two external drives, one of which is at my Mom's place and gets swapped every month or two.

<comment><USER33> This solution is great because of its simplicity. Keeping a second drive on your desk at work is also great if mom is too far away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Things that jumped out at me from this:

First, the USB external is probably OK except that its USB circuitry has taken a power hit. If it's a standard SATA drive inside that could probably be shucked and accessed. Counter: Some of these have drives that are no longer SATA but have a bunch of the USB connectivity built into the drive. At that point, you'd probably be looking at a few hundred $ of data recovery costs (yes, that little). Professional recovery of the RAID would be more expensive because pricing is often based on the number and capacity of the drives.

Second, RAID5? I know these were only 1TB drives, but be very wary of anything with only a single parity disk if you're looking at drives of 1TB or larger, particularly if they're sequentially-numbered drives from the same lot. With modern TB+ drives there's a not-insignificant chance of drive errors as you hammer the remaining drives to rebuild the array. If building one of these now, the price difference between a RAID5 of smaller disks and a RAID6 of larger ones is probably only a few dollars.

Third, if actually doing recovery the first thing you want to do is image the drives and work from the images. ddrescue is probably your simplest option there, but yes you're going to need a big chunk of drive space available.

<comment><USER35> The fears of parity raid disk error rates are greatly overblown - this post does a good job of summing up the problem:

[http://www.raidtips.com/raid5-ure.aspx](http://www.raidtips.com/raid5-ure.aspx)

A bit of annecdata: I've been running raid5 and raid6 for years without issues on 4 and 8TB drives, scrubs come back successful every month despite claimed error rates, the drive deaths I've had have been sudden whole drive failures or write failures to a large portion of the drive.

<comment><USER34> The linked article is working through some of the numbers on a pure math basis but the real world is messy in ways that article doesn't consider.

Most notably, if a drive has failed there's a reason for it and a lot of the possible reasons will be shared with other drives in the array. Was there a manufacturing issue and all of the drives are from the same lot (pretty common). Is the RAID in a hostile environment (heat, vibration, bad power, etc.)? Heck, is the RAID normally very lightly used and going to have heat problems if it's under full load for hours (days?) during a rebuild?

There are also factors like how the RAID controller is going to handle another read error - will it drop a second disk if the drive reports a failure? For that matter, if an array drops to "degraded" due to an error are you going to immediately replace the drive or are you going to write it off as a one-time fluke and let the array rebuild? Do you keep a pool of spare drives around that you'll drop the failed one into after testing? I've regularly seen an array drop a drive due to something transient, then rebuild onto it and not have any more problems for years.

Even with a 2-drive failure in a RAID5 you're unlikely to lose much data - almost everything is likely still there on the disks unless there've been catastrophic failures (e.g. an array of the _old_ "Deathstar" drives which were prone to head crashes). You just may need to do recovery which will generally mean imaging each of the drives and doing recovery based on working with those images instead of the original drives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Here is what I do to hedge the risk of electrical failure (raid+usb on the same circuit), fire (both copies in same structure), malicious compromise of my machine and theft:

\- My workstation has linux software raid-1 of 2x 6TiB drives (this provides robustness and uptime in case of single drive failures and ease of recovery).

\- Another machine in my garage doing incremental daily backup pulls over the network. It is setup as multiple discrete hard drives thus partitioning single drive failures (low cost, the garage is a separate building, the host machine is an arm board that actually turns off HD PSU when not backing up, so hard drives are fairly isolated from power spikes).

\- I make a monthly incremental backup (three sets) onto an external 6TB usb hard drive encrypted with luks. This drive spends 99% of it's life powered down in a cabinet at my office at work. It is protected against theft, fire, electrical spikes, etc... by my employer.

\- The is not a *ucking cloud anywhere in this picture. I can get access to my backups within ~1hr in worst case (round trip drive to office to pickup my drive).

You Kids need to learn how to take care of your shit - now get off my lawn!!

<comment><USER9> I use Arq Backup on my workstations, along with Resilio Sync.

The NAS holds all our media/documents/music/whatever, and where possible, this gets auto uploaded from workstations to the NAS, mostly through Resilio Sync, but also ChronoSync. A local Raspberry Pi (different building) acts as a node in the Resilio Sync setup, adding more redundancy.

The NAS backs up to a local USB drive nightly, as well as a remote (4km distance) Odroid HC2 with a WD Red drive. This device also runs Resilio Sync as a redundant node. All machines run Btrfs where possible, with smart monitoring, daily short smart tests, weekly long smart tests, monthly scrubs, and log monitoring emailed to my inbox every morning.

Finally i make yearly archive discs (100GB M-Disc) with the data from the past 12 months. I burn these in 2 copies, one is stored locally, the other is stored remotely. Along with these drives, i also maintain a couple of 4TB USB3 drives, which i freshen (nondestructive badblocks) yearly, and update. Again, one is stored locally, the other remotely with the M-discs.

Even with the above setup, there is a theoretical possibility of losing data, but as most data lives on both the NAS and the client machines, as well as a remote target, i would need to lose all 3 at the same time. The only irreplaceable data would be our family photos, and those are also stored on optical and magnetic media (spending 360/365 days powered off), adding at least a couple more layers of redundancy to the equation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Over Christmas, I backed up all my stuff to a 3TB external hard drive that I took with me when I visited my parents and intentionally left the drive on a shelf at their house.

This is what I call a poor man's offsite backup.

<comment><USER38> I assume you either told them what it is or are reasonably confident they won't throw away the random thing on their shelf that neither of them know about.

I've seen a few cold backup setups like this, but I would both worry about the significant gap in coverage between the drive you left at Christmas and next time you update your backups. And also the shelf life of mechanical hard drives not in operation is poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As the saying goes, nobody wants a backup. What they want is a restore.

<comment><USER40> Very good point. As I pointed out in another comment in this thread, I had my backup disks encrypted with a password safely stored on the disk that was being backed up. Backups were just fine, but the restore depended on that password. Fortunately I had access to it via another means, otherwise: no restore. Sobering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Something like that happened to me. I had several TB of data on a RAID10 array on an LSI MegaRAID controller. A nearby lightning strike took out the server. And the server manufacturer had gone out of business.

I had backups of the data itself. But I'd been doing lots of data massaging, and didn't have enough storage to keep copies of every step.

Anyway, so I bought a couple new servers. One to replace the dead one, to be setup with SQL Server. And a low-end one that would accept the controller from the old server. I just left the drives in their cage, and jury rigged power and data connections.

And it worked.

</comment><comment><USER42> Couple of observations.

First of all, given the price of storage, for backups, I don't think anything other than mirroring makes sense. Just get 2 big hard drives for your NAS and set them up for mirroring. In the event of a filmier, you can read directly.

Next, you don't have a full backup without offsite storage. Even if it wasn't a power surge, there could be flooding or fire at a single location.

Always remember the basic 3 2 1 rule!

<comment><USER38> Indeed. I'd rather have a bunch of RAID 1s around than a RAID 5 I have to worry about rebuilding. I sync my files to two different RAID 1 setups in two different cities. No hardware failure has ever been worrying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've always thought of a NAS as high speed local storage with a little redundancy in raid, but I'd never treat it as a backup solution. Only because then all my data is under one roof. Fire, earthquake, flood or other local event that's big enough and all my data is gone. I'm lazy so I haven't setup anything fancy but backblaze and dropbox do all my off site backup for me. It's very cheap. 10 years of backblaze would be cheaper than a NAS.

</comment><comment><USER44> Power problems can be both stealthy and deadly.

Years ago I had a desktop with a 4-disk RAID 5 where the SSDs failed in quick succession, it's common. I lost some data-- or rather recovered files manually I think from a failed RAID and cold backup, switched to spinning disks, but after a while the new disks started beeping and generating RAID errors.

After much time and anxious guessing, I swapped the power supply and never had a problem since.

</comment><comment><USER45> I recently was also thinking about how to organize my data & backups. I still have not really decided. Esp about the software. I collected lots of options here: [https://github.com/albertz/wiki/blob/master/backup- software....](https://github.com/albertz/wiki/blob/master/backup-software.md)

At the moment, I really like Perkeep ([https://perkeep.org/](https://perkeep.org/)). But I'm not sure whether this is a solution for everything.

On the hardware side, I also have not really decided. I want to build up my own NAS (custom hardware, no preconfigured thing), which should be quiet (if it is not doing anything, i.e. most of the time), as it will be in my home. Another NAS maybe at my parents home. And then maybe some cloud storage.

<comment><USER46> Yes, I was also thinking about perkeep and giving it a spin. I was considering a RAID 1 array for redundancy.

Another thing I was considering was M-Disk[1], that can, supposedly, hold information for 1000 years. But I wonder what other people's experience with it is.

Alternatively, I understand normal Blu-Ray disks should be able to have data retention of about 40 years, and that sounds decent to me.

I was looking into Amazon glacier and/or google cold line, and the prices seem decent, but I do not like the fact that you have to pay monthly, even if a small sum, it's just one more thing to concern yourself with. I would like to prepay and know my stuff is up there for a couple of years.

Normal Dropbox/Google drive stuff is too expensive to store big amounts of data, so not worth it. Plus, you have a copy of it locally also, (at least in normal use cases)

Thinking about it, I think this would be a great idea for a startup. Cheap data storage for long term storage, with competitive prices, the ability to per-pay, user-side encryption and a simple UI that grandma can use to drop photos. It should be able to guarantee that the information you desire to will outlive you.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)

<comment><USER14> > _Thinking about it, I think this would be a great idea for a startup. Cheap > data storage for long term storage, with competitive prices, the ability to > per-pay, user-side encryption and a simple UI that grandma can use to drop > photos. It should be able to guarantee that the information you desire to > will outlive you._

As a consumer, I _wouldn 't_ trust a startup for such needs, because there's a likelihood that the startup would either raise prices, pivot to a different service offering, or shut down entirely.

Google Cloud Platform lets you make a manual prepayment [1], so that's an option worth considering. I know Google gets a lot of flak for shutting down consumer services, but I'm inclined to believe that they wouldn't shut down Nearline/Coldline without a significant amount of notice.

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/manual- payment](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/manual-payment)

<comment><USER46> > As a consumer, I wouldn't trust a startup for such needs, because there's a > likelihood that the startup would either raise prices, pivot to a different > service offering, or shut down entirely.

Fair enough. It's just that I think something in the field that can do these things would be filling a need. And all companies have to start _somewhere_

But I agree, getting a promise of long-term availability from a new company is a bit rich.

Thanks for the info about GCP - I looked mostly into AWS glacier and I know AWS did not have a prepay offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have looked and looked since 1998, tried rsync, RAIDs, striped drives, ATA over Ethernet, lvm, ZFS, all sorts of things.

What finally clicked for me, is [https://www.greyhole.net](https://www.greyhole.net)

It's like magic. Decide how much redundancy you want. Then just add drives to it. It balances files automatically across drives. You can have remote drives in the mix.

What it is not good at, is many small files. But for my use, media files and backups (tar archives) it's a breeze. And the files are stored as normal file on the drives it distributes too, so there is nothing complicated to dig into should disaster strike. (Not that it has happened to me.)

No affiliation, just finally in a Zen state of mind when it comes to my home NAS.

Next step - make sure all of that is backed up off site too, but that is another thing altogether...

<comment><USER48> It's a really tough sell for most people when you tell them they need to have at least two copies of their data if they care about it. The vast majority of people will rather "take their chances." Usually that means another $100-500 bucks for most people.

<comment><USER47> It was a tough sell for me too. After losing 6 years worth of photos, it was an easier sell!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I had all of my backups on a 2TB external drive, which worked great until the MFT got corrupted somehow. Suddenly all my eggs in one backup basket felt a bit silly. Fortunately I was able to recover all of it. I'm in the process of partitioning out a new backup system to avoid that in the future.

</comment><comment><USER50> After thinking about this kind of data apocalypse for a bit I realised that the portion of my data that is mission critical is actually really small.

Throwing it on multiple clouds with version history isn't an issue.

(I'd recommend an O365 sub + duplicati...in theory you can push like 5TB to MS cloud).

<comment><USER51> And here's your recurring reminder that all cloud storage services fingerprint your uploaded files looking for TOS violations. If you haven't encrypted your backups first you are at the will of the service you are using.

<comment><USER52> I use Arq to backup, and it's a lovely little program that isn't a resource hog, and handles the encryption. I use it to back everything up, a copy to a removable drive, a copy that gets updated every day online, and another once a month online on a seperate server. It seems to work well, and it really is painless,after the initial seeding.

<comment><USER53> Yip, I also use arq and love it. Everything backed up into my nas and Google drive. The only irritating thing is that there's no Linux client and I suspect my next laptop will be Linux based not a MacBook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Silly mistake I nearly made:

MacBook Pro in for repair incl. wiped disk. No problem, I have two external drives with regular TimeMachine backups, so go ahead.

Having received the laptop back, I plug in one of the disk drives and - oops, it's encrypted (with a good, safe, long password of random characters), which had previously been stored in the local login keychain, so that the disk drives have always just silently automatically mounted over the years, and I totally forgot that they were encrypted!

Fortunately, I had the password saved somewhere and access to it. Otherwise my backups would have been for nought (though of course they themselves had the disk password inside... well protected by itself.)

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it weird that I don't have GBs of my own personal files/data? I get if you have movies/tv shows or whatever, that's different. I just don't know what personal data you could possibly have that would amount to GBs...

<comment><USER55> As a parent you go through a period of time - when your kid is young - <USER2> you take photos and videos of EVERYTHING that they do. Its silly now that i look back. Certainly it is important to capture moments, but to over-document everything is silly...now i take minimal photos/videos, and just be present in the moment. Oh, and my data accumulation has precipitously gone down since i've mellowed out. But, yeah family photos/videos adds up like crazy.

<comment><USER56> I have 3 kids and still don't have more than a terabyte of data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I currently have way to much data lying around for any metered cloud storage to be economical, so I'm currently subscribing to both Backblaze and Crashplan for their unlimited storage backup plans.

Crashplan killed off their consumer plan a while ago, so I ended up moving to their business plan at double the price. In my case even at that price it was still worth it considering the amount of storage I'm using.

Anyone aware of other services offering unlimited storage for a single user? I know Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive all offer unlimited storage in their business plans, but they all require a certain number of users before the unlimited storage kicks in.

<comment><USER58> Your question - about data and transit volumes, and costs - would be answerable if you provided some actual numbers.

<comment><USER59> I'm not the poster, but I have local and remote backups of photographs.

When I shoot a model I will take 400-600 images in an hour, each about 25Mb in size. The shoot I had last weekend resulted in approximately 18Gb of RAW files, and output JPG files.

In total I have just under 3Tb of RAW, JPG, and other media files. (Sometimes I film shoots, or do some video-work at the same time.)

That kind of volume is not huge, but still painful to upload remotely. Its also at the cusp of the kind of data you can backup to a cheap SAN-box locally. I currently have two toy NAS devices each with 2x4Tb drives. If I want to bump my local capacity to 8Tb, or similar, it'll get quite expensive.

<comment><USER58> Okay, so if this is a professional gig, then off site backups are a must, and raid on site is also. But for a pro photographer I'd have expected disk costs to be a necessary expense. In Australia we have 10TB disks for AUD 450. Double up for redundancy and add on chassis, this isn't trivial $s, but equally it's presumably 'worth it'.

For my non-pro and far more modest collection of around 300GB of images, I keep copies on three local machines, and one remote (family member) with sync changes being able to be done over home grade ADSL. With your volumes you could do off site sync via usb disk easily enough for new large ingests, and propagate smaller changes over the wire. Having a friend or family in the same city is very convenient compared to trying to hunt down the best all you can eat deal du jour, with no need to handle the regular t&c changes those services suffer. Good reciprocal opportunities too, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> A surge from a lightning strike near my home travelled over the cable line to kill a network switch and the WAN port on a firewall. (Strangely, the cable modem was spared.)

Everything was on a decent UPS... but I'd completely forgotten the cable line.

<comment><USER61> Most of the UPSs and surge protectors I've seen for home use include coax, ethernet, and/or telephone protection, too, e.g., [https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Performance- Surg...](https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Performance- SurgeArrest-11-Outlet-with-Phone-Splitter-Coax-and-Ethernet- Protection-120V/P-P11VNT3)

<comment> matthew-wegner Lighting is pretty rough.

You _can_ completely air gap your network from the outside line by converting to fiber at some point (probably between your cable modem and your router, in a DOCSIS setup). Isn't foolproof, because lightning can induce current on your wires directly, but it'll help these kinds of scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> \- SSD + HDD in laptop, this latter for storage, because it actually tells me, if it's unhappy and about to die, unlike the m.2 ssd. The cost of this is to have an older laptop, in my case, a thinkpad x250.

\- synced to home server, which, at this point, is a thinkpad x201 on an ultrabase with 2 disks - it has built-in ups, called a battery

\- all of this synced to off-site rented server in Germany

\- irreplacable photos are on blu-ray on yearly archives

This covers lost laptop, burglary, house fire/flood, etc. To avoid problems with lost ssh keys, I have a few users on that rented server which can log in with a password, in case of emergency.

<comment><USER63> Synced how?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> My current approach.

Personal media archive, Windows 10 Pro, Storage Space with Parity across 4 HDD in a sata jbod. This is a purely software RAID. Moving the drives (or part of them) to another Windows 10 system allows for seamless recovery.

This archive, as well as all personal computers use Backblaze for offsite backup (including versioning). Versioning is important in case malware/accidents/buggy software. I don't consider any backup plan complete without this and being off-site (fire/theft)

For my business servers I use Tarsnap. (Off-site and versioning, 45 days)

Edit: Oh and everything is on UPS

</comment><comment><USER65> RAID is not for data protection. It's for availability.

</comment><comment><USER66> Data Storage is dirt cheap. Buy a 6tb for $100 every few months and throw important folders onto it. Place old ones at relatives homes for offsite.

Never worry about this again.

<comment><USER67> 6TB drives are about £150 at the bottom end, average maybe £180. That's c. $200-240. £600 a year on back up hardware is pretty hefty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> My first thought is "why don't you keep a backup?" I really don't know what the moral of this story is beyond "don't keep one copy of all your data, especially in the same physical location."

Online storage is cheap. Bandwidth is cheap. There's a multitude of solutions in the comments if a consumer solution like Dropbox or Google Drive isn't good enough for you.

<comment><USER56> > Bandwidth is cheap.

Most ISPs in the US now have a 1TB datacap and charge ridiculous rates for overages.

<comment><USER68> Are you really pushing 1TB/mo, though? That would be a full quarter of OP's lifetime of data. And in those cases where you are, could you not afford business class internet for a bit of a premium?

<comment><USER69> It's on top of your other bandwidth usage though. Family of 4 with Netflix/YouTube/Twitch can accumulate quite a bit. Still, using an online service at least for an important subset is a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Sounds like a UPS with the standard protections is going to be somewhere in your future... Just not somewhere a cleaning lady can touch it.

<comment><USER71> Most UPSs don't provide much more protection than a power strip. They have a cheap "surge" protector, if you look it's often just running the tower through a ferrite ring.

Generally the input it directly connected to the output, through the ferrite ring. Only in cases of a power outage does a relay trigger and switch to the batteries. But that doesn't prevent a surge from going through the UPS.

You can hear the relay trigger when you disconnect it from the wall power, the latency is high enough to allow plenty of damage.

There do exist UPSs without this problem, but they are more expensive, heavier, generate more heat, and consume more power. Look for double conversion UPSs that in the normal state go from AC -> DC -> AC.

Kinda weird that while computers are 100% DC, they are fed with 100% AC. I was pleasantly surprised that pretty much all ham radio stuff is DC fed. MUCH easier to do UPSs, solar, wind, or have multiple pieces of equipment share the same power supply. Imagine racks with a big power supply on top (and getting rid of all the AC -> DC conversion heat). I've actually seen these, but they were unfortunately cost prohibitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> There isn't really a good excuse not to have an offsite backup, especially when services like back blaze are $5 a month.

Also ... RAID is not a backup.

<comment><USER73> Backblaze is great. But their desktop backup solution for $5/month is not available beyond Windows and MacOS. Their B2 storage is via duplicity, but that quickly exceeds $5/month with typical storage cases.

<comment><USER72> Fair point. It would be great if Backblaze supported Linux with a desktop client.

So I guess the options would be desktop backup on the various computers that feed the current NAS solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> No matter what your backup tech is, if you have it all in a single location, you don't truly have a reliable backup.

</comment><comment><USER75> Synology allows syncing of your NAS to a similar Synoogy NAS on another location (Cloud station server). That's what I am doing. This doesn't prevent issues with data corruption, but prevents these kind of issues where you 'complete' NAS fails due to a possible surge.

</comment><comment><USER76> The failure modes I consider most probable at my home are a whole-house power surge, and a loss of structure (fire, natural disaster). With a 1 Gbps (synchronous) FTTH connection, and a Backblaze subscription, that's about all the peace of mind I need!

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm surprised it's not mentioned here but a lot of the Synology nas's have had power supply issues in addition to the prior Intel Atom issues. I swapped out four units twice each (1815+'s) and swore off their hardware permanently.

<comment><USER78> To be fair, at least with the Intel Atom C2000-series problem, I find it difficult to blame them. We had a network edge device from another vendor die due to the C2000 defect. I figure the best the vendor can do in that case is offer to replace/fix it, which the vendor in question did. Did Synology offer to fix their C2000 devices?

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I use tarsnap for off-site backups. It has a reasonable price, even for some GB of data

<comment><USER79> Forgot the link:

[https://tarsnap.com](https://tarsnap.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Pretty happy with my solution. Keeps me safe from floods, ransomware, and losing google drive access:

\- originals: 2TB google drive + 50GB icloud

\- backup #1 (autosync from drive/icloud): 4TB internal drive

\- backup #2 (cold storage): 4TB external drive

<comment><USER81> How often do you do the incremental backups on backup drive #2?

Some degree of cold storage would have reduced the OP's stress level when restoring their NAS mind you.

<comment><USER80> maybe every 2-3 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> That's part of the reason I keep my personal data backed up two two sets of NAS. In addition, it's mapped as a Dropbox drive on one of them.

From my families perspective it's just one drive, but it's replicated everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER83> Me too, because I was storing it on IPFS. IPFS had a minor bug and I've lost all the references to the data.

You know, the data is still there, I just don't know what hashes correspond to each objects.

</comment><comment><USER84> I use Synology cloud software to backup to both Google Photos and Backblaze. Way faster than Glacier, and costs me <$5 month (haven't reached 1TB yet).

</comment><comment><USER85> After watching Steve from Gamers Nexus talk about their second Synology NAS failure in a single quarter, I instantly figured that OP was using a Synology product. Their stuff must be bad if I'm making that association.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ly8zde3dE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ly8zde3dE)

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone knows an open source Backup Client that runs on Windows and that support SFTP?

</comment><comment><USER86> Bitter lesson learned: Invest couple of dollars in a surge protector.

</comment><comment><USER87> Coincidental timing for this article! I just wrote in my own blog yesterday about the level of importance I had placed upon the data I had stored on my PC [0]. (TLDR - Data I thought was unimportant ended up actually being the opposite right after I lost my external drive).

[0] - [http://devan.blaze.com.au/blog/2019/1/20/the-folly-of- unimpo...](http://devan.blaze.com.au/blog/2019/1/20/the-folly-of-unimportant- data)

</comment><comment><USER88> 4 disk RAID what? 4 disk RAID 1 or RAID 10 or... It'd make a difference.

<comment><USER17> The article mentions that it's RAID 5:

> My Synology has 4 x 1TB disks in a RAID 5

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> TL;DR: a power surge killed my PSU and maybe my motherboard, causing me to freak out and btw I don't have any cold storage.

I'll bet this guy did not have a surge protector in front of his Synology PSU.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've been working with computers for so long that total failure is not a probability, it's a certainty. Last year, in fact, my desktop burst into flames. I've had smoke come out of desktops several times before, but that was the first flamer.

</comment><comment><USER90> The best thing i found to enforce backup discipline on myself is to regularly migrate between machines- who are regularly offline for more then 4 hours.

You will have mostly current backups of your projectdata and workdata on all those machines you migrate from and towards.

The problem theire then becomes destructive automation. You must avoid automating syncs with half-corrupted or full-corrupted instances of your work environment.

Also backups. Always backups.

</comment><comment><USER91> He doesnt confirm that the drives are faulty, and it isnt clear that they are, as the data is accessible while maybe some partition or boot data was scrambled but repairable

The NAS should also have a warranty of some kind or the controller could be repaired for cheap

He was never in any data peril, so just fix that and then add an offsite backup to the mix

</comment><comment><USER92> M Discs brother, they are cleared to last 1000+ years. Long after most people's cloud backups have turned to dust, my most treasured data will endure due to my use of these discs (which may well be unreadable from a hardware standpoint in 3019. But shit, hope they keep the schematics around.

</comment><comment><USER93> Inspired by this post, I decided to document my backup strategy and shortcomings here: [https://natalian.org/2019/01/20/Data_I_would_not_like_to_los...](https://natalian.org/2019/01/20/Data_I_would_not_like_to_lose/)

tl;dr I'm trusting Apple.

</comment><comment><USER94> Z ... F ... S.

And at least Raid-Z. Raid-5 and Raid-6 are now at probability of failure levels that your rebuild is likely to throw an error.

<comment><USER95> ZFS is great, but won't help if there's a power surge that fries all the disks at once. To prevent that you'll want to store snapshots remotely somewhere.

<comment><USER48> To prevent that you'll want to s̶t̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶n̶a̶p̶s̶h̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.̶ use a surge protector

<comment><USER6> Don't forget to replace your surge protector on an annual basis (or more frequently if you have really dirty power). Also, you can have a nasty fault in your PSU that fries everything also (If anyone knows of a surge protector that sits between the power supply and the motherboard, I'd really like to get one).

<comment><USER96> > (If anyone knows of a surge protector that sits between the power supply and > the motherboard, I'd really like to get one)

I think the best you can do is just get a top-quality power supply. SeaSonic will sell you a ridiculously overengineered box with a 12-year warranty for $160; it's guaranteed to have a longer useful lifetime than any other component in your computer, probably even including the case itself.

<comment><USER48> Just use a surge protector literally right next to your PSU.

Cheap whole house surge protectors are pretty much useless. It will work for a few times, but the MOVs will degrade and fail pretty quickly. Every time a big inductive load switches on or off its going to cause a voltage spike that is going to trip the MOVs. or the MOV's Trip voltage is so high (to avoid quick degration) that they really don't provide any protect. Really a good whole house protector needs to use SADs (Silicone Avalance Diodes) or a passive LC filter. Transtector, Thor Systems (SADs) or Pricewheeler (LC Filter). These protectors can take many more surge hits than the ones you listed above. Why whole house Surge protectors don't work.[https://zerosurge.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/USTech.pdfE...](https://zerosurge.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/USTech.pdfEven) with a whole house protector it still would be a good idea to use point of use surge protectors. Since the surge has to reach the Whole House protector before it can be clamped. Surges can reach your electrical devices faster than a whole house protector can clamp. It only takes a few nanoseconds to destroy a microchip. For instance say you have a vacuum cleaner plugged into the same circuit your computer is connected to. the vacuum cleaner jams, causing a surge that will hit your computer (since it closer) than the whole house proetector is (down in your basement).

Source: comment section on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PqO0aQaGDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PqO0aQaGDY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> I just don't understand rolling your own backup drives in 2018 unless you're up to something nefarious. I rest peacefully knowing my data will never be lost by Dropbox, and the immediate backup means I don't have to mess with slow, periodic all-at-once backups.

<comment><USER98> It's much cheaper to build your own than to use cloud storage esecially a secondary storage service like Dropbox. Even blackblaze B2 is $60/TB/year vs you can buy an 8TB HDD on Ebay for ~$200 and if the drive lasts 5 years that works out to be $5/TB/year and adding one or two redudent drives is still much cheaper.

<comment><USER17> How do you deal with the off-site problem? That's why most people use cloud services -- as an off-site backup that they don't need to manage themselves. Yeah, you could just put everything on an 8TB hard-drive from eBay (not sure that's a great idea for important data) and stick it on a shelf -- but the chance that drive will be alive and not have bit-rotted by the time you need the data is smaller than most people would be comfortable with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> If you have 4TB of data saved at home you are a hoarder. Why do you have that much stuff. I don't have any data at home that I would miss very much if I lost it.

<comment><USER43> Family photos and videos can take up a lot of space. Also it sounds like the authors work is backed up to this NAS as well.

I wouldn't have that much to backup but some do, depending on their hobbies and work.

<comment><USER99> Photos, videos... Yeah I used to save that stuff. I realized I never looked at it again. So I just stopped. I literally don't worry about losing data at home. Work is different of course.

<comment><USER43> I think for some this might be the case but there are some photos people hold dear. Wedding photos, children growing up and other major life events. Each to their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I see some terrible backup strategies here.

1\. Backups should not be on a single drive. 2\. Backups without checksums will result in corruption. 3\. Offsite is a must. 4\. Unencrypted off site backup means someone already copied your data. 5\. Encrypted offsite backups should have forward secrecy. So different keys for each file and keys file gets backed up encrypted.

My backup strategy: File server runs zfs raidz with Daily/weekly/monthly snapshots on disk.

Snapshots get copied to 2 external drives, zfs mirrored.

Files get encrypted and uploaded to backblaze using my custom software. Nothing fancy, just standard authenticated encryption (chacha20poly-poly1306) but with per file key management and argon2.

<comment><USER101> _> Encrypted offsite backups should have forward secrecy. So different keys for each file and keys file gets backed up encrypted._

Any references on PFS for backups? Was there no existing OSS backup solution that implements PFS?

<comment><USER100> Most encrypted backup solutions are really bad with protecting keys. Fixed ivs are ok for one file. Not ok for possibly millions of small files. Basically exposed your private key along with your backup.

<comment><USER101> How do you manage millions of keys, if you have millions of small files to be backed up? Would it be ok to have something between 1:all and 1:1?

<comment><USER100> Sqlite.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best, free (or cheap) blog service for coders? - <AUTHOR> My needs: Easy-to-use, nice-looking, formats code well. Free is best, but cheap is good, too. Syntax highlighting would be a real plus.
Tried: Wordpress, Weebly, Slvrback, Wix, Squarespace (too expensive).
Looked briefly at blogger, but defaults were so ugly it scared me away. <comment><USER2> I've been using Jekyll with GitHub Pages. I'm not a Web developer so it took me a while to customize a template to my needs. Pros of using Jekyll is 1\. You get complete control over your blog 2\. You blog like you are coding 3\. Tons of free templates to choose from 4\. Free hosting with the ability to use your own custom domain

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I may end up doing that, but I code for work and I code for fun and I blog about coding so I would really like to have something that 'just works'.

I should probably just upgrade to the pro version of Wordpress. It's just that $100/year seems like a lot for a blog nobody reads ;)

<comment><USER3> I also use Jekyll/GH-pages, and it really 'just works'. Usually the only thing I spent time on was cosmetics, but even out of the box it doesn't look bad, plus there are (as mentioned before) lots of free templates.

I know a lot of people use Medium as well, but I'm not sure how it handles syntax highlighting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the record, i was pretty happy with Wordpress, but needed the ability to make the font for code smaller, and that requires a paid account.</comment>


The Silurian Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record <comment><USER2> I don't have time to read the entire article right now, but after skimming it, it seems to focus on what we might find but not on what's not there.

Focusing on Earth right now, if human civilization were to go extinct in the near future, whatever comes after us will have a much harder time getting to an industrial civilization (or maybe any civilization) because we have used up a lot of non-renewable resources that aren't ever coming back. Namely, things like abundant and easily accessible coal and oil. There's also things surface metal deposits (tin, copper, iron, etc) which are essential for making those first steps. Granted, we, as a civilization, have placed a lot of metal on the surface but it's scattered all over and I have no idea how much of it will be usable by the roach-people that come millions of years after us with no prior knowledge.

Still, all of that aside, the fact that we have coal today strikes me as a pretty convincing argument that there was no industrial civilization before us. It doesn't rule it out entirely, of course. I can imagine an industrial civilization without coal or oil, but I do have to stretch my imagination farther.

<comment><USER3> On geological time-scales (tens of millions of years) fossil fuels will be replenished. In fact the paper presents a speculative, putative mechanism by which an industrial civilisation may inadvertently help _provide_ these resources for future civilisations:

> [...] the prior industrial activity would have actually given rise to the > potential for future industry via their own demise.

See page "148", mid-way through the second column for details. (It's a shame that Fermat's Library doesn't provide an interface for deep-linking parts of the article.)

On a time-scale of thousands of years to (probably) single-digit millions of years, you're almost certainly right, though.

<comment><USER4> Mmm. Maybe. There is a plausible theory [0] that our coal deposits came from the era between when plants learned to produce lignin but bacteria didn't know how to break it down.

Given that lignin eating bacteria are now quite common, it is unlikely coal seams will form of the same quantity and quality.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation)

<comment><USER5> I Think there is some confusion between coal formation rate and coal formation volume. My understanding is that more coal has been formed since the cretaceous than during the cretaceous.

Figure 1 in the link below provides a good demonstration of north american coal formation over time.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unpopular opinion(?): Fermat's Library makes the experience of reading papers worse. This and many other linked papers I see there seem interesting, but I'm not interested reading in the marginalia, or logging in, or signing up for their mailing list to receive a paper every week.

What I would like to do is download the PDF and read it on my iPad, or even print it out. But if that's possible, I haven't been able to find the link or button to do it.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international- journa...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of- astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an- industrial-civilization-in-the-geological- record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That article is full of interesting factoids. My favorite:

> What might distinguish naturally occurring biomarkers from synthetics might > be the chirality of the molecules. Most total synthesis pathways do not > discriminate between D- and L-chirality, while biological processes are > almost exclusively monochiral

</comment><comment><USER9> The article mentions ocean anoxic events as possible markers of civilizations that ended in disaster. But the opposite might be even more fascinating to ponder.

What if there was a civilization ~2 billion years ago that thrived in the oxygen-poor environment, who accidentally unleashed cyanobacteria upon the world? Kinda like how we're recklessly dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but on a much grander scale. Life would have had to re-evolve from the unicellular stage, and all evidence of the oxygen-dumping civilization would have been erased by geological forces by now.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article refers to an interesting paradox:

>>> However, the longer a civilization lasts, the moresustainable its practices would need to have become in order tosurvive

<comment><USER11> This might explain "Fermi's paradox".

It seems like all the models of extraterrestrial life being visible rest on the assumption that this life would be the product of the equivalent our present rate of growth continuing and quickly reaching cosmic scales. If that's basically impossible and intelligent life that survives is living sustainably, then we wouldn't have star-enfolding Dyson spheres and similar things that are detectable at cosmic distances.

<comment><USER11> Or, another possibility is that the sustainability of continuous short-term exponential growth varies from location to location but it's not going to be infinitely sustainable anywhere. Thus we might see blips but we won't see a "colonized galaxy".

IE, the societies that keep up exponential growth to a cosmic scale probably still won't have solved the problem of indefinite exponential growth. We know the ways that, on Earth, the increase in human knowledge and productive produces unintended consequences with significant chances of destroying us. We don't yet know similar mechanism in space but it seems quite plausible these would exist. Dyson spheres aren't even gravitationally stable (see Larry Niven's Ring World series).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if you might find evidence in near-earth orbits.

Would a geosynchronous satellite stay in place after 400 m.y.a? Or a descent stage of a moon lander, perforated by impacts, from a Troodon?

<comment><USER12> The worst part of this, the realization that the K-T boundary was the fallout of a nuclear exchange.

<comment><USER13> We are pretty sure KT was caused by a giant asteroid. Maybe the space Silurians redirected it into Earth? (Not serious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The question would probably hinge on whether they were given to building cyclopean architecture. If the Egyptians were just content to build mudbrick cities, rather than erecting pyramids, colossal stone statues, stelae, obelisks, and the like, they would be much harder to detect.

<comment><USER15> On geological timescales, that makes no odds. Nothing built of stone will survive natural weathering over millions of years. Mountains don't survive it.

Concrete won't survive it either, even modern reinforced concrete (actually, our modern reinforced concrete won't last as long as the concrete the Romans used, and their concrete might actually outlive lots of ours).

<comment><USER16> Pyramids made of gold then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious about the change in metal availability. From the paper

"The Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM)" ... "Additionally, many metal abundances (including V,Zn, Mo, Cr) spiked during the event "

How does metal availability increase like this?

Obviously, our industry will increase metal availability, because we spend lots of time and energy digging through other geological layers and dragging all their metal deposits into ours. But how could this happen naturally?

<comment><USER17> On a global, semi-uniform scale? Not sure. But locally, maybe intense vulcanism? The Siberian Traps[1] were bringing up material from below ground on a scale that's kind of hard to fathom.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps)

<comment><USER15> that makes sense, though that was a 2-million-year event, so maybe something smaller ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Check [http://geopolymer.org](http://geopolymer.org) About a concrete technology that probably existed worldwide.

Because a lot of these structures are very old and some are even under water, I think that they likely existed during the ice-age. Later cultures like the Incas build on top of these huge structures.

<comment><USER19> Interesting, but the Prof Joseph Davidovits sounds like he is on the fringe of theories with respect to these stones.

Paper via wikipedia: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5408/0022-1368-40.1.2...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5408/0022-1368-40.1.25?journalCode=ujge19)

> _It is not easy to give a geological education to a brilliant and determined > chemist._

Savage

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you enjoy thinking about epic timescales I recommend Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future' fairly outdated, heavy going, but unique.

</comment><comment><USER21> _If_ there is anything more to UFOs than just mass hysteria and wishful thinking, then I've always thought it much more likely that they are from a previous industrial civilization here on earth than being extraterrestrial - the PETM from 56 million years ago would be a good candidate for their home time.

</comment><comment><USER22> >If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era,what traces would it have left

What about space based traces? Abandoned spacecrafts, which can easily remain preserved millions of years.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis)

"The Silurian hypothesis is a thought experiment[1] which assesses modern science's ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization, perhaps several million years ago. In a 2018 paper, Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, and Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute, imagined an advanced civilization before humans and pondered whether it would "be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record".[2]"

The geological record is an interesting possibility -- but a better question might be:

"If you wanted to preserve the record of an advanced civilization across super long periods of time -- how would you do it?"

I've thought about this question long and hard.

Stone buildings seem to last no more than 10,000 years, and by the time they are discovered, they have usually been ransacked by grave-robbers and treasure-hunters:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_known_surviving...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_known_surviving_buildings)

Satellites would fall out of orbit by that time, and I don't know any piece of high-technology that has had an uptime of more than maybe 20 years... the more complex something is -- the more prone to failure it becomes.

A USB Drive from an advanced civilization in our past -- just wouldn't make it through to today...

So here's my idea:

Why not put the knowledge of an advanced civilization, into the DNA of some plants? 98% of DNA is unused, aka, non-coding DNA, aka, "Junk DNA":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- coding_DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA)

So... why not put it there?

But... there's a problem! DNA is going to shift around a bit over time, so we're going to need to account for that! (We'd accomplish this by replicating the same information over and over at least several times).

So with all of that in mind -- here is my top candidate as one potential carrier of that information:

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/10/scienceshot- biggest-...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/10/scienceshot-biggest- genome-ever)

The Flowering Plant: Paris Japonica

Why?

Its DNA apparently contains 130 billion base pairs... that's a lot of room for information, and replication of that information!

Maybe there's something in there, or then again, maybe I'm a crackpot!

History will tell! <g>

But, that would be my top candidate for where that information might be, if it exists anywhere at all...

<comment><USER24> I'd build something that's impossible to miss, and hard to destroy. A stone henge on the moon maybe.

<comment><USER25> Or just a moon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A fascinating read!</comment>


LeanLaunchLab is Bringing Lean Startup to the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/22/leanlaunchlab-is-bringing-lean-startup-tools-to-enterprise/

<comment><USER2> It's funny how none of these articles mention <http://www.leancanvas.com/> which was already released and in use when LLL was announced on stage at Startup Lessons Learned last year. See for example <http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/running-lean-canvas>

Even earlier was Rob Fitzpatrick's implementation at www.thestartuptoolkit.com (since discontinued but see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774856> for some comments)

Enterprise product management is a very different problem from startup product management, but the underlying paradigm from Osterwald's "Business Model Generation" was developed for enterprise use so it may be a better fit.</comment>


Why Does the International Space Station Have That Shape? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/why-does-the-international-space-station-have-such-a-we-1692193163 <comment><USER2> I was hoping to see the famous story of path dependency that traces the dimensions of shuttles back through the history of rail gauges back to Roman chariots and the width of two horses [http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html](http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html)

<comment><USER3> Famous, but full of "fudged" facts that make that version of the story more interesting. Snopes has a full drill down.

[http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp](http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp)

<comment><USER4> I was hoping to see the snopes link as a rebuttal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The video at the end of the article is absolutely fascinating.

Also, it's the first time I hear that rejecting heat is a big deal in space. If anything, I would have assumed that heating the station would have been a problem, rather than keeping it cold.

<comment><USER6> Most people assume that, and most sci-fi reinforces that opinion. But a generic Thermos is a vacuum flask.

Space is an incredible insulator. The only way to cool things is to radiate heat.

<comment><USER7> The sci-fi game series Mass Effect had a good explaination for this, and tied it in with the notion of ships having recognizable "signatures":

[http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Ships_and_Vehicles#St...](http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Ships_and_Vehicles#Starships:_Heat_Management)

<comment><USER8> It also works similarly in Eve Online, btw.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, whenever corp-mates would ask why there are brightly lit "windows" on their ships I would point out that they were actually heat dissipation panels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One factor in the shape of the station that's not commonly known is actually aerodynamics. The ISS is in a rather low orbit (mostly to make getting there easier) so aerodynamic drag is a noticeable (if small) force.

The station is thus laid out kind of "flat" to present a reasonably compact frontal area. (This also helps with orbital debris encounters.) The solar array positioning does commonly conflict with the aerodynamics, but minimizing that is one of the factors in their positioning software.

The fore/aft view is not very popular, because it doesn't look as impressive, but here's one: [http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/06/ISS_Ba...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/06/ISS_Backdropped_by_Space_and_Earth.jpg)

That's the orientation the ISS travels in--i.e., what "stationary" air sees as it zooms past.

<comment><USER10> It's also the reason for Night Glider Mode: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Glider_mode)

Laying the panels 'flat' with regards to the orbit saves significant amounts of fuel. There's also a mode where they do the same during the day if there's a critical shortage of fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm wondering about rotation and trajectory. Do they have engines on the craft to maintain its trajectory? But then if they thrust from one module, given all modules aren't aligned with each other, that implies thurst creates a rotation of the craft, so do they have two engines for each dimension?

Same question for solar panels: Do they let them rotate so at odd times they're exactly flat in the plane of the sun and receiving 0% energy, or do they rotate other modules of the spacecraft so that the solar panels are always at the sun?

<comment><USER12> I know NASa had a competition running for the public to see if anyone could find a more optimum way of rotating the solar arrays on the station to improve power.

They detailed some crazy restrictions like how the panels have to be heated evenly so the thermal expansion does not rip them apart.

ahh heres a link: [http://www.topcoder.com/iss/challenge- details/](http://www.topcoder.com/iss/challenge-details/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found it surprising how much of this I knew from my hours spent playing Kerbal Space Program!

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure the shape is only weird to those who haven't pondered the economics of designing something to withstand the near-vacuum of low earth orbit.

<comment><USER15> Which, incidentally, is probably the majority of the people, ~everyone~. Explaining the question quite well in my opinion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As with many other questions regarding space exploration, it seems almost intuitive and obvious after playing KSP.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Few dozen hours spent in that game will teach you more about space than... pretty much anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure if the budget was there, NASA would worry about aesthetics.

<comment><USER18> That's how to tell if a technology is complete.

When computers started they were beige boxes, now they are decorated and colorful - so we know they are done.

People worry about how phones look, so those are done.

The first smart watches were functional, now they worry more about aesthetics, but none are actually on the market. So that technology is not done, but is getting close.

Cars have been all about aesthetics for decades now.

Etc, etc.

(Don't assume "complete" means they don't improve them, it just means any further changes are minor, and mostly unimportant.)

Airplanes for example seem like they are done - but they are not sold on looks, so they are not actually done. (Maybe a little bit on the inside?)

<comment><USER19> Disagree strongly. Computers are way uglier now than they were in the 90s (beige boxes).

There is an arc in every art. It starts with the bare bone essentials, exposing the spirit and greatness. Then it becomes popular and amasses cruft until its unbearably overloaded and ugly. Then it gets stripped back to its original form, regaining its glory. And then we repeat.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I started noticing 5 years ago that laptops started getting really... I don't know, tacky? Not to mention the dozens of stickers that no one thinks to peel off.

Also, anything marketed towards gamers tends to look like it has enough pieces and glow so much that it might be mistaken for a nuclear reactor.

<comment><USER21> Depends on the manufacturer, of course. Apple's laptop visual design over the last decade or so has been basically conservative, but you can really see the improvement from the original MacBook Pro from 2006:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/MacBook_P...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/MacBook_Pro_situated_on_a_wooden_table.jpg)

to the unibody one in 2008:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Unibody_M...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Unibody_MacBook_Pro.jpg)

Today's MacBook Pros look quite similar to that one (aside from being much thinner), but the light has been dropped, the power button has moved to the keyboard, and the "MacBook Pro" branding below the screen has been removed, resulting in a slightly cleaner look.

The new MacBook is a more dramatic change: it will bring the branding back, offer three metal colors, and cram the keyboard into the body in a way that looks slightly awkward to me, but has the obvious advantage of minimizing the physical size of the device. Time will tell how well its design holds up.

[http://images.apple.com/v/macbook/b/overview/images/overview...](http://images.apple.com/v/macbook/b/overview/images/overview_keyboard_on_medium_2x.jpg)

(No stickers, of course!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are solar array almost like a film? I thought they sort of folded but in the animation they look like they can almost roll them up (I know it's just an animation, but it left me wondering).

<comment><USER23> Here's a great look at one set, that was damaged:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/STS120Sol...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/STS120SolarPanel.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain what "pluming" means?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing it refers to the problem when docking the shuttle or other spacecraft of making sure that thruster exhaust is never directed towards the station itself. I remember seeing a video that showed the shuttle approaching the station on a nautilus-shell sort of trajectory, so that thruster fire was always directed out and away from the station.

Apart from the obvious danger of impact from ice and other debris from thrusters, unburnt hydrazine is nasty stuff- you don't want to deposit any on the station, only to have an astronaut on EVA scrape some off by accident and bring it back inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Who called it ugly? I think its looking awesome.

</comment><comment><USER26> First thing that popped into my head was "This might be an article about why we don't have a Rotating Wheel space station" (mostly cost and ability to transport the necessary parts into orbit, and some other technical details).

The article itself explains the layout of the ISS nicely though.

I'd still like to see the construction of a rotating wheel station some day ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> A little bit of me would like to see that animation at the end with RTS like stats changing with regards to resource capacity,use and the cost going up.

I see they added a solar array whilst for a period closing the one on top of the station. I wonder if they had to make do for a period or the new array was much improved it didn't matter much.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looking forward to the day when you can just deploy an army of mini robots that 3d print their way along building the hull as they go.

<comment><USER28> You'd need to bring the metal up before anyway, in that case. It doesn't really solve the major problem.

It would be easier to build them on earth still.

<comment><USER29> Oh, but it does. Parts and components usually aren't very space-efficient, specially when shipped together with other parts. Look at any toolbox, there is a lot of wasted empty space.

Instead, you'd ship a lump of whatever material is required by your printer, and manufacture whatever is needed, on demand.

It's more compact and more versatile, what's not to like? Weight is at a premium when you are talking about payloads, but so is space.

<comment><USER30> You could also, in theory, use the non-fuel part of the rocket stage that brought you up for building material. Some people have actually proposed using empty fuel tanks for living space but this would be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Other issue is de-orbiting and module replacement. Monolitic station would be very dangerous and maintenance nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER32> I always kinda wonder how much wiggle it has. I mean, like, if you bounce off a wall, how much does the thing vibrate?

<comment><USER33> This is actually a straightforward question to answer, I think:

By conservation of momentum, the center of gravity of the entire ISS + astronaut system needs to stay on the same path before and after your wall bounce. So, the momentum change for the ISS is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the momentum change for the astronaut, and the velocity change will be the velocity change for the astronaut times astronaut mass/ISS mass

Getting actual numbers to plug in left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER34> That doesn't tell you whether you will start the station oscillating in some mode of vibration. For that you'd need a model of the stiffness and structure of the station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The author makes a point about cooling the station through the use of radiators.

How do radiators work in the vacuum of space?

<comment><USER25> Thermal radiation is an order of magnitude less efficient than other forms of heat transfer, but it gets the job done. It helps that you're radiating to the dead of space, which is near absolute zero (efficiency is dependent on the black-body temperature of what you're radiating "to").

That's the why the radiators have to be so huge, and are kept out of direct sunlight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I always wondered why real-life space stations don't seem to have the sleek exteriors, pleasing or even consistent patterns, but seem to have a bunch of irregularities, and ugly-looking metal structures of different shades of beige protruding from the hull. How do you explain that?

<comment><USER9> The reason to have sleek exteriors or to look cool is because you need be aerodynamic (because you're in the air) or need to look cool (because you're in a movie, or you're a consumer good).

Being neither in much air nor in a movie nor a consumer good, real spacecraft don't bother with expensive, constrictive, and (more importantly) heavy exterior shells. Instead, form follows function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't know, I like the shape. It's actually kinda symmetrical, so it's great!

<comment><USER38> There was a portion of time where there were 2 solar arrays on one side, and one on the other.

That was annoying...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's remarkably close the Space Station Freedom design from 1987, nearly 30 years ago.

[http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spaeedom.htm](http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spaeedom.htm)

<comment><USER40> This is not surprising. ISS and Freedom are closely related and subject to the same engineering constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm not following the rejection of heat, can someone explain that to me? I thought it was cold out there and heat had to be generated?

<comment><USER42> Heat is transferred via 3 mechanisms:

1) Convection, i.e.: the mixing of bits of 'hot' material and 'cold' material such as the material itself mixes through. Think blowing an air conditioner in a room.

2) Conduction, i.e.: the flow of heat energy through matter that is touching. The matter itself doesn't mix, but the heat energy can transfer. Think putting your hand on a hot plate.

3) Radiation, i.e.: the energy turning into electromagnetic radiation and beaming through the vacuum of space until it strikes something. Think sunlight.

1 and 2 are out, as there's no matter (air, etc.) around the ISS for it to convect or conduct with. Thus, all heat must be radiated. The above list ranks them in order of efficiency, so heat rejection is in fact very difficult.

<comment><USER43> mmh... interesting problem. I wonder if satelites could just put the heat in some not-more-needed stuff, gas or something and simply shoot or launch this stuff to the space.

Yes I'm inventing the "farting satellite" :-).

Another possibility could be to put "hair" (short metallic spikes) about lets say the 50% of the surfaces of the satellite. Several possible goals could be achieved with this idea, creating lots of dynamic shadows around the surface, protecting the real surface from small impacts (some bend spikes is better that having a hole in your roof, and maybe even to provide support to the ocassional human intervention out (you could substitute the spikes by a matrix of handles easy to grasp).

Just some crazy ideas. If you need to loose heat look at how birds and mammals do this task with movile hairs and feathers.

<comment><USER44> > I wonder if satelites could just put the heat in some not-more-needed stuff, > gas or something and simply shoot or launch this stuff to the space.

The astronauts actually did that on the moon! Their spacesuits used sublimation of water ice for cooling.

Your limitation is coolant mass. The useful life of satellites is often linked to the amount of propellant they have left; you'd have the same problem with your proposed cooling system.

<comment><USER43> Wow, you need ice to take a walk in the cold moon? this is one of those smart tricks that we, common people, never, ever will suspect :-)

okay so... so the goal is to be able to cool quickly our station in case of emergency. We had running out of coolant gasses and so and we have "unlimited" access to the materials in the space: "nothing" and sun radiation.

I wonder if there is a way to reduce the vibration of heated atoms with electricity, magnetic fields or whatever electronics can do?

Is there a physicist in the house?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ditto for the Mirs and Tiangongs. They only had 2 to 6 sausages. The ISS is more of a Swiss army knife.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting article. It's amazing how humans manage to engineer and build such complex systems.</comment>


Tech Companies Protest Against Stacked Odds to Save Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://net.xyz/2017/07/12/tech-companies-protest-in-a-losing-battle-to-save-net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> FCC's whole point that net neutrality is stifling the progress of internet because cable companies are not able to make sufficient investments to augment the speed is flawed. Cable companies are open to compete with internet companies by building their products and services on top their own distribution network. It is simple forward integration and since they have tried and failed to do so , now they want artificially created disproportionate advantage to help them compete.

</comment><comment><USER3> FCC has already received more than 6 million comments. Ignoring the voice of millions of citizens just shows what real motivations of Trump backed Ajit Pai is and whose interest they truly serve. And the worst part is they are doing all of this in the name of 'Restoring Internet's Freedom'

</comment><comment><USER4> What is AT&T's stand really on net neutrality. They were the ones who started this whole thing and now they have come to forefront to join the protests. Old school cable companies are just hypocrites who are adept at creating artificial moats to justify their lack of innovativeness

</comment><comment><USER5> Already posted comment on FCC website supporting net neutrality and urge other people to do so as well.</comment>


Create Beautiful Gantt Charts - <AUTHOR> https://www.gantt.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

Why did we create gantt.io?

A good design is a mirror of the quality of your work. When you present a project to a coworker or a client, the planning is one of the most crucial elements. Compared to all other Gantt tools on the market, Gantt.io is by far the most versatile tool when it comes to the design aspects. Each and every element can be customized, but we did put a lot of effort in a very effective and efficient user interface to turbo-charge your Gantt creation process and generate beautiful Gantts in a couple of minutes. Alone or in online- collaboration with your colleagues and friends.

One more thing ... we also invented the time travel wheel! Every action is saved and you can go back at any moment and restore or create a new Gantt with a fork.

Try it - it's fun and intuitive! And don't hesitate to ask us any questions - we are more than happy to answer your requests.</comment>


Seeking partner for game development - <AUTHOR> http://meatbrick.com

<comment><USER2> I have a Tetris too :) <http://frank-duffner.de/noTWebApp_tetris.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks fairly well done. I prefer the random bag method of piece generation. Also, the movement of falling pieces is a little touchy--sideways movement can sometimes generate a double movement and sometimes no movement. However, if you play around with the game on meatbrick.com a bit longer, you'll see there is more to it than a Tetris clone.

<comment><USER2> Yes - played a bit more now. Funny idea. Number 3 touched my heart. I don't know waht random bag is - I suppose it assures that certain tiles appear after a certain time?

The touchy movement appears when you repeatedly hit a movement key instead of just holding the key down. I optimized for holding key down to have a fluid movement (no delay at the start of movement like i.e. in your Tetris). But it seems everybody is so used to this flash bug(?) that they keep hitting the buttons :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a genius way to make a pitch to hire someone, and a great twist on Tetris, but it takes a long time to get to the whole pitch. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> dude, please change the color scheme on your site, i got a headache trying to read it. white on black doesn't work. try #F6F6F6 on #333 if you must have a dark background.

good luck with finding a partner. have you heard of kongregate? might want to check them out if you haven't...

<comment><AUTHOR> Kongregate fundamentally isn't in game development--it's simply another form of distributing UGC. I'd rather be in the business of creating great games.

Thanks for the comment on the color scheme. I've altered it slightly to be less headache-inducing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> contact me! AIM: cellis5078 or cameronellis dot ellis at gmail dot you know what. I'm currently in the process of getting a team (its tough). Or, check out kongregate like someone else said.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not working on OS X + FF</comment>


Time.windows.com wrong every first Monday in April (2017, 2018, 2019) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/roiji/status/980577456397537280 <comment><USER2> April Fools Day? European "Spring Forward" time-zone change? An actual bug?</comment>


Sarah Lacy launches PandoDaily (with former Techcrunch writers) - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/ <comment><USER3> _I've also raised a bunch of cash from some of the people I respect most in the industry. This includes: Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Chris Dixon, Saul Klein, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Jordan and Matt Cohler, all investing as individuals. Also investing are a handful of seed funds including the CrunchFund, Greylock Discovery Fund, Accel's Seed Fund, Menlo Ventures Talent Fund, Lerer Ventures, SV Angels and Ooga Labs._

Is the coverage of any startup funded by these folks off the table? Seems like objectivity will be questioned from the start.

<comment><USER4> You're correct. And we will question it, rightfully so.

The days of these people being "independent" media and bloggers are over. They may have been at one point, but these are cash generating vehicles, designed to promote product. And, really, I don't blame them.

But let's be realistic. She started what appears to be a blog. Why is there a laundry list of the who's-who of SV investing in it?

<comment><USER5> Why is it a bad thing? I think any site doing startup coverage needs to publish the list of its investors as a disclaimer.

<comment><USER6> It's not the publishing of the list that the commenter's questioning, but the fact that they've invested in it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand this trend of leaving RSS icons/buttons out on technical blogs. Yes, I know <http://pandodaily.com/feed/> is there, but don't make it an ordeal to subscribe to you.

<comment><USER8> Can you name a single RSS service nowadays that doesn't auto-find the RSS feeds for you? Google Reader, and Netvibes, and Bloglines have all had auto- discovery for many years. (When I wrote a history of RSS back in 2006, most of the services I mention already had auto-discovery: [http://www.category4.com/2006/10/24/rss-has-been-damage- by-i...](http://www.category4.com/2006/10/24/rss-has-been-damage-by-in- fighting-among-those-who-have-developed-it/) ).

I think sites like PandoDaily.com make the reasonable assumption that you can just paste "<http://pandodaily.com/> into your service, and your service will find the feed. I just tried this with my Netvibes account and it worked perfectly.

<comment><USER7> There are two issues at hand:

1) Convenience.

2) Conversion rate (from visitor to subscriber).

Not having an RSS icon makes it less convenient for the user and "out of sight, out of mind" guarantees you less subscribers as well.

Why less convenient? Well, consider your workflow:

1) Double click in the URL address bar.

2) Copy.

3) Type in or click on your RSS reader bookmark (e.g., Google Reader).

4) Log in if you haven't already.

5) Click "Add Feed".

6) Paste the URL.

7) Click OK.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with it. Just that I find an RSS icon less cumbersome.

If you are a technical blogger, not having an RSS icon means shooting yourself in the foot and providing a disservice to your readers (particularly now that some browsers have stopped autodiscovering feeds and presenting you with their icon in the bar).

<comment><USER9> Counterpoint: users who don't know/care about RSS will no longer be confused when clicking a prominent icon. RSS has awful UX.

RSS usage is small and the usability is bad, don't expect this trend to change. If you still use RSS, use a browser that integrates it or a plug-in to do the same. Even better than an icon on the site.

<comment><USER7> > users who don't know/care about RSS will no longer be confused when clicking > a prominent icon

Pandodaily is a site about startups. Their audience definitely knows about RSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Like Sarah (and the 'valley way') or not, she's really good at what she does - well written long-form pieces with some sort of historical perspective. She's been around the block a few times and whether you agree with her or not, she almost always makes a compelling case for her point of view.

I know that it's kinda common on here to be negative first, but I am glad that somebody like her is throwing their hat in the ring for 'my' attention. Short, sensationalist pieces are great for quick reading, but I welcome an experienced journalist's pen for what I love - startups.

Let the flaming begin.

</comment><comment><USER11> What do the investors get out of this if Sarah is never going to sell it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dividends? That would be a novel concept.

<comment><USER11> Only if the dividends are going to return 10-100x over the lifetime of the investment.

<comment><USER9> Dividend paying investments can still be sold, so the dividends themselves don't have to return 10x.

<comment><USER11> But doesn't that bring us back to the issue of who would buy those investments off the original investors if there is never going to be a liquidation event?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lets just hope that whatever tool they use to write stories for this site actually includes a spell check. Or maybe they will do grammar checks on their articles finally.

I cannot recall a TC article I have read that didn't have any errors.

<comment><USER9> Even better would be an editorial flow. Unless you want mistakes, writers should not be allowed to post on the site directly.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, but I dont think TC writers know the definition of those words.

Remember - they are "evangelists" "bloggers" and "technologists" not journalists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feels more like a Tumblr than a professional news site when you first stumble onto the home page. But if you visit from a tablet, the reflowed design is clean and easy to read. Unfortunately, the article page design with a vertical line down the left margin implies every article is a long quote, so back to feeling like a reblog.

</comment><comment><USER14> How much space will be dedicated to fawning over Mark Zuckerberg?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it pronounced pander-daily?

</comment><comment><USER16> When I see "I do not want to sell this company" in bold - that means to me - <USER2> _really_ want to sell this company asap.

Do we really need another site covering startups?

<comment><USER17> >Do we really need another site covering startups?

Yes.

Nobody covers startups in the aspirational way TC used to do. TC of old made you want to do a startup. TC of now/RRW/AllThingD etc, tell you about startups. just like any news site.

<comment><USER18> Personally, I think Arrington do have it's problems but I would not suggest the other writers to leave over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They misspelled 'PanderDaily'.</comment>