2025 Optical Media Durability Update

Seven years ago I posted Optical Media Durability and discovered:

Surprisingly, I'm getting good data from CD-Rs more than 14 years old, and from DVD-Rs nearly 12 years old. Your mileage may vary.

Here are the subsequent annual updates:

• 2019
• 2020
• 2021
• 2022
• 2023
• 2024

It is time once again for the mind-numbing process of feeding 45 disks through the readers to verify their checksums, and yet again this year every single MD5 was successfully verified. Below the fold, the details.

The Drugs Are Taking Hold

cyclonebill CC-BY-SA

In The Selling Of AI I compared the market strategy behind the AI bubble to the drug-dealer's algorithm, "the first one's free". As the drugs take hold of an addict, three things happen:

• Their price rises.
• The addict needs bigger doses for the same effect.
• Their deleterious effects kick in.

As expected, this what is happening to AI. Follow me below the fold for the details.