Backing Up

 Censorship on the Internet continues to increase and to tighten and come down on us with a vengeance.  Particularly, YouTube videos have become incredibly unstable, resulting in this blog being full of missing links. I was surprised to find recently that a Bryan Tew video had disappeared. He has been out there forever. Wherever possible and if time permits, if you have information vital to public understanding, it is important to back it up on the spot, preferably in multiple places, so it cannot be made to conveniently disappear, either through hacking attempts or censorship. Utilize the cloud, optical discs, hard drives, special software for download. Put duplicate posts in alternative venues. Whatever you need to do to preserve presentations and information and increase security.

   Having lost quite a bit of information due to a hard drive crash recently, I did a little research into the most long lasting methods of preserving digital information. The cloud is relatively stable because it relies on professional massive backups, but is vulnerable to being shut down if the service should end or if you skip payments. It had to be invented because hard drives are notoriously vulnerable to crash. Optical media like DVDs, CDs and blue ray discs are more stable than hard drives. It is claimed they have data retention of 100 years or more. I have well preserved CDs from the year 2000 which are perfectly intact. They have no moving parts. There are special optical discs made which have superior archival qualities. It is claimed M-Discs can last a thousand years. Regular hard drives are more reliable in raid arrays, but that is relatively expensive. Solid state hard drives (SSDs) last longer than conventional HDDs and are dropping in price. They still fail after about 10 years maximum. Flash drives are cheap and resemble mini SSDs.   About M-Discs  

    It would be nice if we could decrease our dependency on YouTube and its unpredictable censorship. I am studying alternative outlets. Thus far I have compiled the following list which I am making available at this link:  Alternatives to YouTube   It is a work in progress. One problem is that access to an audience will be more limited. Shortcomings of hosting video on your own web server: https://www.wp101.com/10-reasons-why-you-should-never-host-your-own-videos/