Jason Scott's Weblog
So this is what my job is and that’s pretty goddamned great. I am currently in a project to gather up scanned copies of every computer magazine or newsletter that has gone out of print. That’s what I’ve mostly been up to, and that’s where I am. As of this writing, I have put up […]
I posted a new weblog entry over at the Internet Archive weblog, combining two stories. The first is that a Cray hard drive was magnetically recorded and people are invited to download this magnetic image to analyze. Help find the operating system and the software! The second is that a new Hackerspaces book has come […]
I asked for the nicest presentation space at DEFCON, I got a nice rented tux, and I steeled myself up to give my all onstage. And it paid off! May I proudly present my DEFCON 19 talk: Archive Team: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack. Here’s the full talk on YouTube: And here’s the full […]
There’s good and bad in the Star Trek franchise, but certainly The Next Generation had some mighty subtle portrayals buried in among the episodes, especially as things got a bunch of seasons in. One that has always struck me, personally, is a short scene in the beginning of an episode called The Chase, where the […]
We had a little discussion on one of my mailing lists about the origin of the phrase “LOL”, which has a couple claimed fathers – but I thought I’d throw this into the mix. Reprinted from The Annals of Hygiene, Volume 6, published by the Pennsylvania State Board of Health. Official date of publication: 1891. […]
I don’t know if it’s entirely public knowledge, and obviously it’s not like the concerts hand out programs with the full staff listing or anything, but for the past few years I’ve been the person who edits the videos that play in the background of MC Frontalot’s concerts, specifically the PAX events but usually anywhere […]
Let’s get the numbers out of the way immediately before they’re misreported. Archive Team rescued, roughly, 20 percent of all the profiles on Friendster. This took us many months and reflects the sheer mass of Friendster’s data, well into the 70-80 terabyte range, behind custom software, and which they summarily deleted from their user accounts. […]
On the post I did about Floppy Disks, that’s gotten a lot of attention in its own right, there was a comment the weblog software marked as suspicious, and possible spam. The content itself was rather innocuous and in theme: I will always keep a few floppies and a 3.5 inch drive. Can’t install older […]
Hello Jason, I read your blog now since a long time and you’ve also open for me a new (old) world again and I love your project, which is a kind of your personal life-work (and also for us too). But for me – and maybe for other readers of your blog – is the […]
I have done my first weblog posting on the Internet Archive Weblog: Scanning a Braille Playboy. I could probably count on half of one hand the amount of group weblogs I’ve posted on, and I can count on one finger the amount of time any institution or company I’ve ever worked for has let me […]