#Data Archival

[piqtescue]

so basically all of my timeline data in google- every step ive taken with every phone ive had since 2016, is going to be deleted as they migrate away from the web version.... big fuck you to Google. Huge, huge fuck you

ive got the JSON backup obviously, but fuck if I know or even want to implement that into a map-based environment- this literally makes me want to fucking piss on their entire business

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[anthropological-apropos]

I have had no reason to post anything here before, but now is the time.

There is currently a concerted effort by four of our largest publishing companies in the US and backed by many other smaller publishing companies to prevent the lending of archived media. https://help.archive.org/help/why-are-so-many-books-listed-as-borrow-unavailable-at-the-internet-archive/

An attack on archival certainly sets up precedent for further legal assaults on our already struggling library system. If this is of concern to you, please contact your representatives and make it be known.

[ukgk]

午後のこ～だ with 偽春菜さくらとも呼ばれるひと (archived via a floppy disk in my personal collection, an SSTP add-on for an old MPEG encoder freeware by MarineCat)

[thedbahub]

A DBA's Checklist for Decommissioning a SQL Server

As a DBA, one of the more stressful tasks that occasionally lands on your plate is having to decommission a SQL Server. Maybe the hardware is being retired, or databases are being consolidated onto fewer servers. Whatever the reason, it’s a delicate process that requires careful planning and execution to avoid data loss or business disruption. I still remember the first time I had to…

[ao3demographicssurvey2024]

The AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 was an unofficial demographics survey of 16,131 AO3 users conducted in January 2024. We have just finished posting our initial results, so here is just a taste of the graphs and data you can check out now over on AO3!

We will be continuing to work on this project in the New Year, so please make sure you follow this blog or subscribe to the project on AO3 to keep up to date.

A full list of the survey questions with links to the relevant data is below the cut!

Demographics

How old are you?

Do you identify as LGBTQ+ in any form?

What is your gender identity?

Do you identify as any of the following? (LGBTQ+ related identities)

What is your sexual orientation?

What is your romantic orientation?

What is your race?

Is English your native language?

Which geographic region best describes your current place of residence?

Which religious or spiritual tradition(s) do you believe?

Do you experience the following? (Disability, Neurodivergence, and Health Conditions)

Usage of AO3

Which of the following AO3 activities have you done in the last twelve months?

How frequently do you use the following methods to find works on AO3?

In a typical week, how long do you spend on AO3 or reading downloaded AO3 works?

When did you begin using AO3, with or without an account?

When did you create your first AO3 account?

What languages do you use for reading and posting on AO3?

Works You Post On AO3

Which of the following types of works do you post on AO3? (Media)

Of the works you post on AO3, how often do you post works with the following ratings?

Of the works you post on AO3, how often do you post works focused on the following types of relationships?

Of the works you post on AO3, how often do you post works in the following genres/tags?

Of the works you post on AO3, how often do you post the following types of works? (Format & Miscellaneous)

Works You Consume On AO3

Which of the following types of works do you consume on AO3? (Media)

How much do you enjoy works with the following ratings on AO3?

How much do you enjoy works focused on the following types of relationships on AO3?

How much do you enjoy works in the following genres/tags on AO3?

How much do you enjoy the following types of works on AO3? (Format & Miscellaneous)

Fandom Beyond AO3

Which of the following types of fanworks have you consumed in the last year?

Which of the following types of fandom activity have you done in the last year?

Which of the following websites or apps do you currently use for fandom activities at least once a month?

Which of the following websites or apps have you previously used for fandom activities, but no longer regularly use?

When did you first begin participating in fandom?

How many fandoms have you considered yourself a part of in the last five years?

Which of the following types of media do you participate in fandoms for?

[fruitfulchaos]

GO BURN CD'S. GO FILL PHYSICAL DISCS. PIRATE EVERYTHING. DOWNLOAD BOOKS, MUSIC, GAMES, SHOWS, FILMS. SAVE SNAPSHOTS ON WAYBACK. FUCK THE MEDIA COMPANIES. STREAMING ISN'T FOREVER. PURCHASE ISN'T OWNERSHIP. FORGE THE OWNERSHIP WITH YOUR OWN HANDS. MAKE MEDIA YOUR BITCH. STAY VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.

[silvermoon424]

This is your daily reminder to archive your favorite fandom stuff!!!

I've been a voracious archivist/data hoarder ever since I first got access to a computer, and it's paid off more times than I can count. Just the other day I came across a PDF copy of an analysis post for one of my fandoms. The post was made on an old forum and is the most detailed and interesting analysis of a particular story element I've ever seen. Back in like 2012 I saved the post as a PDF, because even then I saved everything I liked.

Anyway, flash forward to 2025 and I decided to see if the URL included in the document was still live. I wasn't very surprised to see that the forum is long dead. However, even the Wayback Machine had no record of this thread. If I hadn't saved a copy of it way back when, I would have never, ever been able to read this analysis again!

The Internet Archive is sadly not infallible, especially when it comes to things like forum threads. You can do your part by manually saving things to the Wayback Machine, but I also recommend keeping your own archives. Aside from just saving pages as PDFs, I highly recommend a browser extension called SingleFile that lets you archive pages as HTML files.

[amusementofaprincess]

The worst part is I would 100% love the job with O.I.A.R. in The Magnus Protocol.

I enjoy monotonous data entry and the creepy factor would keep it interesting.

Seriously. I would take that job in a heart beat

[frownyalfred]

How are you live what's happening with ao3 and the AI? Does it discourage you in any way from publishing your stories?

Great question. I haven't archive locked my stories and don't plan to. That's a personal decision I've made for myself and my own content, and that doesn't mean I don't wholeheartedly support my fellow authors who do so. But I'm of the (again personal) opinion that my works already have been scraped, and will continue to be scraped in some capacity. As have all of my texposts on here.

I appreciate the work the OTW is doing to take down data on other sites where it has been scraped. I think that's absolutely the right course of action. But personally, I am under no illusions that by archive-locking my fics, I am 100% preventing the scraping/sharing/AI use of my content. And at this point, even when we first learned of that big "scrape" a while back, it was too late.

My goal is to make my content as widely available for readers as possible, which comes with drawbacks. Archive-locking fics came with a significant reduction in hits/comments/kudos for some authors, and I decided that was a risk I personally did not want to take. Especially when, again, I was of the belief that many of my fics had already been scraped/were vulnerable to being scraped before we learned about these mass-scraping incidents.

Additionally, I'm quite certain people have been feeding my fics into AI processors, ChatGPT, etc, for a while now. It's not something I have control over, and people will continue to do it even when they know it's wrong. Even with ao3 accounts.

I don't own my fanfiction content, I can't make money off of it, and I don't want to. This would be a very different conversation if I did. Truthfully, my only hope is that by continuing to write a/b/o, and large amounts of it, I can "spike" whatever dataset is using my fics. That thought brings me joy, even if it's a little silly and far-fetched with these better algorithms.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Circa early 1993 behind the scenes photos from the filming of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

[bealzebubbb]

thinking about how jon was literally set up to blunder, being thrown into a job position everyone knew he wasn’t qualified for, so he had to scramble to prove his worth to everyone including himself, being dragged into supernatural experiences where he takes the blame for any of it happening when it was all so far out of his control. he had a target on his back since he was a child. everyone he cares about either died or left or wants him dead. except martin. and that one thing, that one special relationship where jon is loved and he can love back, they are thrown into an apocalyptic hellscape that jon can only blame himself for, and rather than reveling in this newfound love, they have to use it as a crutch to even muster the willpower to keep going. i’m gonna vomit

[taravangians-storming-balls]

Wind and Truth Opinion Survey

u/jofwu on reddit put together a pretty comprehensive opinion survey on what people thought about different aspects of wind and truth, so thought I'd share for more reach/opinions outside of reddit. link above is to the original post, and you can see the results after taking the survey.

Wind and Truth Survey Link

[omen-archive]

Happy birthday to us!

The Omen Archive celebrated its first anniversary last week*! We began tracking Campaign 3 data at the start of 2024, but went live on April 11.

Since then, we've posted data for 39 episodes and tracked over 4,000 d20 rolls. We've added pages for 42 PCs and shared data in 34 different categories…

...a number that will be climbing past 50 in the coming days (!). Stay tuned for Campaign 3 At A Glance, featuring campaign roundup data like top damage dealers, top spells cast, episode with the most KOs, and total time passed, as well as debuting tons of new categories like Sendings, Druidcrafts, wood carvings, Wild Shapes, and every single time Ashton said "fuck."

Thank you all for the great year, and we're looking forward to everything still to come! 🎲

(*We missed posting on our actual anniversary because some of our archivists were at the Chicago live show, trying to figure out how the hell to log data for [REDACTED]. It’s a fun one!)

[sainz100]

via this 2017 article covering Daniel's thoughts on routines & coaching & more ahead of the 2017 Singapore GP

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

my family: wow you are really interested in this series. You've also read an impressive amount of books by the same author in one year.

me, pointing to the coppermind: I need you to understand that I could be less normal about this. Stormlight has been going on for 14 years, the cosmere for about 20, and I am very new. There's a whole thing about this. I don't have to go through and mine books for information because others have already done that. I could be so much worse.

my family (with the attitude of the "sure jan" gif) ... sure.

me: I could be collecting data. I could be organizing the epitaphs in order by page numbers and making timelines but others have already done that for me. I still might do it. but I don't have to. I am a casual reader in comparison to other cosmere fans.

my family: .... hmm.