RuffLandingsFeb 18
Ars Technica
Microsoft's new 10,000-year data storage medium: glass
Femtosecond lasers etch data into a very stable medium.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/microsofts-new-10000-year-data-storage-medium-glass/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Feb 18 at 7:03pmArsBot 🤖
Show threadPaulFeb 18
@arstechnica Hold on...a MSFT product that does not ship with Copilot...?
Show threadI am Jack's Found 404Feb 18

@plwt @arstechnica

Surprise, onedrive! 

Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Feb 18

@plwt @arstechnica

It’s a Microsoft Research project, not a product. There are a lot of challenges to turn it into a product (not least of which is that it requires very high quality optical glass, which makes it more expensive than alternative storage systems).

[ I didn’t work on this project, the team behind it was one floor down ]

Show threadPaulFeb 18

@david_chisnall @arstechnica I was tooting half in jest.

This is really awesome technology and even if it does not go anywhere, it is really valuable that people are working on projects like this.

Show threadNumber6 Feb 19

@plwt @arstechnica

But it does require a trained AI system to read the data. How likely is anyone 10,000 years from now to know exactly what is required?

Show threadI am Jack's Found 404Feb 18

@arstechnica

My opera singer friends would like a word

Show threadrobFeb 18
@arstechnica "very stable medium" sounds like Donald Trump's dead grandma.
Show threadUrzlFeb 18

@arstechnica Are they going to reserve it explicitly for cloud and AI providers?

They're aiming for a new dark ages where we don't have local storage or backup under our own control. It'll all be subject to their inspection and plagiarism.

Show threadMike SpoonerFeb 18
@arstechnica but you'll still need to maintain your subscription...
Show threadGrumpyDad 🇺🇦🇵🇸Feb 18
@arstechnica Wow! Now they have somewhere to store all that copilot slop.
Show threadkoorogiFeb 19

@arstechnica new?

Here's a 2019 Ars article about the exact same project from Microsoft.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/microsofts-project-silica-offers-robust-thousand-year-storage/

Microsoft’s Project Silica offers robust thousand-year storage

Project Silica extends storage reliability goals from "decades" to "centuries."

Ars Technica
Show thread@iveylineFeb 19
@arstechnica Intetesting.
Show threadNumber6 Feb 19

@arstechnica

I was thinking that in some #StarTrek original series they stored data in crystals. Maybe the crystals were actually etched glass.

Show threadNumber6 Feb 19

@arstechnica

It would be a shame if space aliens came here 10,000 years from now to understand our extinction, and all they could find was data from the Square Kilometer Array.