[EN] When Bits Rot - with C McKean, L Talboom, A Page-Mitchell episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 8, 2026 · 49 MIN

[EN] When Bits Rot - with C McKean, L Talboom, A Page-Mitchell

from Code for Thought · host Peter Schmidt

English Edition: floppy disks, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, SSD drives - no matter what you choose to store your data on - ultimately they all decay. With my guests Callum McKean, Leontien Talboom and Adrian Page-Mitchell, we're going to talk about what kinds of data we find on old drives, why we want to get them in the first place, and what can go wrong with the storage media. To all of you who love all things retro - we'll be talking about floppy disks a bit. Links:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A PDF A formathttps://www.ibm.com/history/floppy-disk history of floppy diskshttps://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=2140 The BBC Domesday projecthttps://domesday.computinghistory.org.uk/https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/ The excellent Centre of Computing History in Cambridge, UKhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4849567/ stability of DVDs and CDshttps://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec5/ how environmental conditions affect optical drivesConference announcementshttps://rse.swiss/swiss_rse_day Swiss RSE Day, 31 August 2026https://www.researchsoft.org/irsc/ International Research Software Conference 7-8 September 2026, Sheffield, UKhttps://rsecon26.society-rse.org/ UK RSE Conference (the 10th anniversary) in Sheffield, UK 9-11 September 2026https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2026/ 9 June 2026, Tromsoe, Norwayhttps://events.hifis.net/event/3249/overview deRSE Collaborations workshop in Goettingen, Germany 23-25 Septemberhttps://us-rse.org/usrse26/ US RSE Conference, 19-21 October 2026, San Jose, CA, USAGet in touchThank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:Email mailto:[email protected] RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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English Edition: floppy disks, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, SSD drives - no matter what you choose to store your data on - ultimately they all decay. With my guests Callum McKean, Leontien Talboom and Adrian Page-Mitchell, we're going to talk about what kinds of data we find on old drives, why we want to get them in the first place, and what can go wrong with the storage media. To all of you who love all things retro - we'll be talking about floppy disks a bit. Links: https://en.wikipedia.or...

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[EN] When Bits Rot - with C McKean, L Talboom, A Page-Mitchell

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