Microsoft's project Silica: Is glass the future of long term storage?

unlocked.microsoft.com

35 points·joak··13 comments

Is this new? There's no dates on anything :/ Or is it from like 2019 when there was a lot of news coverage of the project

Seems like it's new. The video on the page is from two weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfEYd4NGQg

This reminds me of the glass record from Dr.Stone…

I guess this could be the CD-ROM of the future.

Is the format in which it is written into the glass also sustainable?

They will store it in Word format - in older one ".doc", not the ".docx"...

And every new iteration of the product will have a rewritten UI/UX.

How does gravitational drag affect the glass over time?

Obviously they'd look into this but, it's important if I were going to have confidence in such long term storage.

Do not drop it :-)

Don't worry. The only Microsoft product which doesn't suck is the Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner. /s

Microsoft shall stay with software. Even if their software products do not function as advertised, at least they have a monopoly.

Glass isn't an extremely viscous liquid, it doesn't flow over long periods of time. Old medieval windows are thicker at the bottom because glass making was not precise enough to make sufficiently flat pieces back then, and pieces to be installed were always installed thick end down.

Or more exactly the process was entirely different from how large panes are made starting from 1950s... They were essentially blown and flattened like other glass items. Where as now we float massive continuous sheets over molten tin, thus having uniform thickness...

They also seem to use the storage at an angle to reduce the drag from sitting.

Dupe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886616

Reply on news.ycombinator.com