What Can We Learn From University of Kyoto Losing 77 TB of Research Data?

This week's episode is about an incident that happened at the University of Kyoto, Japan, where they lost 77 TB of research data forever. What can we learn from what happened to them? First we discuss the concept of "we can't afford backup," that seems to be prevalent in a lot of universities and research institutions. We then ask and answer the question of whether or not it is every OK to not backup data, along with whose responsibility is it? We pause the recording for what appears at first to be a spam call, but you'll have to listen to hear that. We talk about what happened there, including a letter from HPE apologizing for what happened. Kudos to HPE for that. We also discuss a story from my very first week on the job in 1993; it's not pretty.