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Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

> digital native

Don't know what that is.

But I do know that saving everything is just piling up problems for your children. My Dad died 7 years ago, and left behind an astounding amount of data and programs on CD, VHS, hard drives etc. My two brothers, who were his executors (I was not doing well mentally at the time), looked at each other and said: "Shall we go through all this?", "No". And it went on a bonfire - probably breaking all sorts of local polution statutes.

Realistically, the amount of useful information you need to store can probably be put on to one USB stick, or less (is there anything less these days?).

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Since a few years, the question that pops in my head whenever I think about storing for long term are (i) always be dying (ii) it is not about me.

It is extremely liberating when your internal flowchart for an item reaches -- this can be thrown out without affecting anyone or me.

There is a solution between these extremes, which is:

Store all the data you want, but make a document stating clearly what is worth keeping after you pass on, and how to access it. Then just update the doc once a year.

IANAL, but this is standard advice a lawyer will give you when drafting a will/estate plan.

Interesting take. I did not think about the burden I'd leave behind.

TBH this is easily solved by documenting what matters/is valuable and what isn't. But yeah, good point. Truth be told, most of the stuff I've collected really only matters to me. Most bits and bytes can be destroyed as soon as I'll be gone :p

Frenchie here. Digital natives is a word we were always taught is en-US. Fun to read that you doesn't know it as a international user. Typical french startup bullshit ? This depict children born in 80s, 90s and supposedly comfortable with computer work and data as they were born amongst them.

As an en-US person, I can say confidently we do not use it in daily speech. I can intuit what it means, but I've never been taught it or been in a conversation where it was used in any way that stood out enough to create a memory.

It's pretty much a media thing here, too. I've never heard anyone use it in normal conversation.

The term "digital natives" has been around for many years.

I don't know the official definition of the term, but I've always thought it was someone born in 1995 or later, where they never lived in a world without online services like AOL, and later Google, Facebook, etc.... Where they never lived in a world that existed before the World Wide Web. Where they never lived in a world without being able to access data online through something at least as fast as a 56k baud modem. Where they never lived in a world without cellphones and portable home phones.

They may not have had all these things themselves, but they knew people who did.

And this future is also unevenly distributed, of course.

In Germany the term is used relatively often. At least in the circles I frequent.

Especially in the context of who the target audience is (in marketing, when thinking about UX and so on - the prototypical agency/consultants/client talk intermixed with a lot of BS and important sounding words).

So no idea if it is in general use here, though.

I dunno. I'm a native Brit (birth and language), and I haven't come across it before now. But I'm not a Web maniac.

This is HN, a safe space. We are all web maniacs. That's how we got here. Sure there are a few suits hanging around with ironic hoodies and smart looking eyewear but mostly just us nerds. You are among friends here, let your phreak flag fly (it is -p or --phreak BTW)

OP here.

I'm French speaking as well. It's indeed surprising; I thought this would be understood by everyone ;-)

It's also a fairly common term in Denmark ("digital indfødt").

We use it in Spain too.

Physical size (one USB stick) is an ineffective unit of data.

Pretty sure we can fit all the data you burnt in on one USB stick today.

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