DEFCON 19 Talk Transcript Captions

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So again thank you all so much for coming
to this, and for enjoying, I hope, DEFCON.
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"Excellent, yeah," says one guy!
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OK, so, the name of this talk is "Archive
Team: A distributed preservation of service
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Attack."
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A hilarious title meant to bring you in,
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and it worked, apparently.
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My name is Jason Scott, I am the mascot of
Archive Team,
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which is a rogue band of archivists, preservationists
and jerks
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dedicated to saving online, and in some cases
offline, history.
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And this project has been going on for a little
while,
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and I thought, well,
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maybe it's time to kind of make people understand
what we're up to here.
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So, before I get started though, I want to
dedicate this talk to Tim Recher,
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a very old friend of mine who unfortunately
passed on this year.
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It had been one of his dreams to bring his
family back to DEFCON,
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so they are here in the house tonight to enjoy
DEFCON.
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And I must say, you know, as time goes on,
I'm currently forty years old,
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you know you have experiences of losing friends
you didn't know you were going to keep around
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for such a short time,
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so it's always worthwhile, even though I'm
in a talk, to skip a talk,
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if there's a friend who you haven't seen in
awhile, spend maybe an extra four or five
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minutes with them
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to remember some things with them.
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It's just a benefit for that aspect of it.
Huh.
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Since we're all about saving websites let
me in fact talk about soy sauce.
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So, soy sauce...
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Soy sauce, as some of you might know, is basically
fermented soybeans, wheat,
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it's a process in which these things are brewed
just like beers,
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or other kinds of fermented dishes.
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There's an experience to it, there's an idea
behind it,
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it's a long process to learn, we've been doing
it for hundreds of years,
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but different groups have different approaches,
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and it's extremely important that the essence
of them are maintained.
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In fact this is part of the marketing of a
lot of beers and crafts and everything else
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that, you know,
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it's important that all the components stay
absolutely the same.
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This is the Yamasa Soy Company,
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a company that's been around for two hundred
and eight years, since the Edo period.
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They've had eight presidents,
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and they've been basically producing soy sauce
in their local town for all this time.
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And they are beloved enough that, for instance,
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here's a tourist who has just gone and taken
a beautiful drawing of this soy sauce factory
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to kind of show, you know,
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they've been around forever and they do this
kind of work.
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So they were hit by the tsunami.
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This is that same factory,
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and that's the creator the current ninth president
of this soy sauce company.
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He was given it by his father after the flood,
because his father felt he was too old to
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figure out what to do next -
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because what are you going to do about a company
in which everything is absolutely obliterated?
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Obliterated to the point, for instance,
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that this is the company safe from which he
was able to extract their incorporation papers
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from two centuries ago
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so he could prove that the company was still
around, and still existent.
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And again, I'm crediting Robert Gilhooly,
this is the man who walked around with it.
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Now bear in mind, when they got hit with the
tsunami,
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one of the first things that they discover,
or one of the first things that happened
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was that their head of sales ran to one of
the dams, to save the dam,
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and was killed by the ensuing rush of water.
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This man as well, this is the ninth president,
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was absolutely convinced his family have died
and that he'd lost his children
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because their house was just a few blocks
from this place.
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As it turned out his children had actually
been led up a hill by some teachers and elderly
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residents who were nearby,
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most of which then proceeded to die.
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So this was a family, this is a family businesses
that's just ensconced in tragedy right now.
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And, so this is him kind of standing on the
hill that he was able to run up to with all
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the employees who didn't die,
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overlooking their factory, losing this thing.
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So, what, what I want to explain, though,
is that this is a -
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you know, a person might say "Well, who cares,
it's a company,
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what does the company matter against human
lives?"
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Well, this is a company that was so entwined
in the identity of this town
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that even with a 70% death rate, people were
coming to this soy sauce company and giving
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them money,
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to say "When you make soy sauce again, I'll
wait for my soy sauce delivery."
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Because I want to be able to, you know, keep
this important thing around.
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Now in the process of making soy sauce there's
this whole process here,
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and one of the most important ones is the
adding of the moromi,
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the fermentation where they add specific yeast,
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the specific fermenting agent that will be
able to make more of the soy sauce,
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and it's got a specific flavor, and it's cooked
in a certain way.
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So one of the things that the president discovered
was that -
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and again, he's thirty-seven, right,
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and he's been saddled with this idea to rebuild
the company.
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So he looks for the barrels - there's about
thirty barrels that they keep this agent in.
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And he comes and he finds most of them completely
crushed.
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Gone, missing.
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He finds one or two that are intact, but to
his horror,
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he tells people "Okay, we're good, we've got
the moromi"
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but it turns out that too much sea water has
gotten in, and it has killed it. So there's
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none.
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So what ends up happening is, when everything
looks bleak,
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they recall an experiment that had happened
four months earlier, and what it was,
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there was a local marine biology laboratory
that was doing experimentation and asked for
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some of the moromi.
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So what they have done was asked for a small
segment,
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a barrel's worth or whatever, of moromi to
test with. They had given it to them.
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That lab had also been hit with the tsunami,
and had its first floor destroyed.
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But among the first floor was a one kilogram
bag of the moromi still in the plastic wrapping
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that they had never gotten around to.
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And from that small bit, this company is rebuilding
itself into this very beloved brand once again.
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This is the two new sales girls who were hired
by this company,
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that's their new digs while they're working
it out, and this is a piece of their old factory,
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and the girls saying, you know, "Thank you,
thank you for your patience. We will have
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your soy sauce soon."
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So why am I saying all this?
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Well, what I'm trying to say is that,
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first of all, backups are important!
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Multiple backups apparently even better!
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But even beyond that, this object, this yeast,
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was an emotional meaningful human item that
had relevance to a culture
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and a world that was, you know,
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basically something that people considered
part of their identity, really.
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Really, if you think about it.
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And, even though it's just an object, it's
got meaning that way.
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So, what I'm saying here is, that objects
that maintain memory, objects that are part
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of us,
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have relevance to us even after their initial
use may be initially gone.
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In other words you look at these items and
you say "I remember I was with this person"
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or "This proves that we were part of this"
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or, you know, "This is the proof that I invented
this first"
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or, more accurately, "This is a friend who
I have lost."
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"This is somebody who I can't speak to anymore,
but I have their work."
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And I think that that's something that can
sometimes be lost
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when I start to tell you about some websites,
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because one of the things people say is "Well,
who gives a crap?"
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These are really old websites, and I say these
websites are collections of memories that
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have been gathered up through people online.
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That is the driving heart and force of what
I'm talking about here.
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And there's a wide variety of old media I
might mention,
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and old websites and things that are currently
sustaining our memories magnetically, in forms
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that are kind of strange,
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and each year it becomes harder and harder
to extract them.
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But beyond that, they contain things that
their exterior may not really reveal.
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So for instance, you might have writings that
you might not remember doing,
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letters your family might have done, basically
stored on very very old media.
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Additionally, you get weird shit!
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For instance, this is eBay: the home game.
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This speaks to a lot of things because it
indicates that people thought that eBay...
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Well, first of all you have this belief that
someone thinks eBay is something you'd want
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to do at home with your family,
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uh... with "No money down!"
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But it also indicates that eBay had some sort
of cultural meaning to us in 2000 when this
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came out,
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that it was strong enough of a feeling to
feel that this is an experience that you should
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share elsewhere.
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That idea of getting completely fucked on
shipping costs.
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Very critical, right?
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All right.
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And again I'm keeping a lot of things myself
that are part of that,
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this for instance there are some very old
issues of 2600,
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I have three complete runs of 2600 magazine.
Actually, I've got a lot of stuff.
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If you don't know me, that's fine, that's
awesome,
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I don't have anything, I live a free life,
how about that,
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but if you actually know me then you know
about the shipping container,
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and you know about the various pieces of old
media that I'm sent,
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I'm sent lots of floppy disks, old tapes,
tape drives, you know,
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basically all sorts of collections of items
that are things that I transfer out.
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So I've been able to get my hands on some
very old things,
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and I and I constantly make myself available
for this because I believe that all of these
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old memories have meaning,
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and it's pretty easy with something like 2600.
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Very prominent, lots of copies, very easy.
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I'm to tell you that there's a hacker calendar
now from 2600, in case you want to support
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them,
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but the 2600 magazine is just one of just
many.
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But we also have these electronic artifacts.
Right?
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So, for some of you this has -
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can I just get a clap if this has any emotional
meaning to you whatsoever?
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And I DO do error correction for the person
going...
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that's cool.
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I'll just quickly go over what we're looking
at here.
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These are two different items.
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The first one is a "Netscape Now" button.
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This is a period of time when browsers were
just starting out,
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and you had a number of browsers, there were
about twenty or thirty,
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but there were a few that were trying to build
themselves up
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and one of the original investors in SGI went
out and scooped up all the creators of the
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Mosaic browser,
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started a new company and named it Netscape.
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And, as part of that, wanted to let you know
that if you want to see a really good site,
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and you want to watch it properly, you should
get Netscape right now.
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So there was a button that they produced,
that was animated, that said "Go to get Netscape
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right now
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so you can see my website the way it was meant
to be seen".
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And so, that's the Netscape Now button.
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Underneath that is the "Under Construction"
GIF.
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I'm not going to get into the "Gif" / "Jif"
argument right now!
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So, the "Under Construction" GIF is basically
a, uh, indicator that you're not finished
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with your website.
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Now obviously we in the future with our incredible
abilities,
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websites are actually never finished so it's
redundant!
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We've factored that thing out on both sides
of the equation.
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We're like, you know what "always building",
because if you're not always building
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it's now currently a period of shame, right.
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Lack of dynamism is a shameful trade of your
website, indication of your failure,
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and lack of interest, so you would not want
to say "Oh, I'm under construction",
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of course you're under construction.
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Alright? So, yeah, there's a very emotional
reaction to that,
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but I find there's even a bigger one to this.
Which is...
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This is a collection that I have of all of
the Netscape Now buttons!
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As you can see there's a whole variety of
stories being told here, because some of them
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indicate what...
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Uh, some of them are obviously made by hand,
some of them go for different versions,
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some of them re-jigger themselves, these are
all actually MD5 different.
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What I am discovering, for instance, here's
a little story you might not know,
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is for instance some of them you look at and
you say "Well, why is this different from
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the one next to it?"
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It is because they've removed the extra frames
to save some space.
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They took out a K or two, and that way they
got a little more space for their website.
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So the thing looks a little crappier, but
"Thank god I've got more space!"
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We don't think about things that way.
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Also somebody there seems to be really against
Netscape Now, so... screw you!
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Similarly on the "under construction" thing,
also a lot of emotional reaction.
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I got ten thousand of these things. And as
you can see,
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there's all variety of things put under construction,
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and I think what I'm trying to say is...
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And again, if you go to textfiles.com/underconstruction
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it says "This page is under construction",
and then puts all of them underneath.
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Which will crash some browsers!
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And then it says "if there's a problem, mail
me". That goes to one with mail me GIFs that
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DOES crash all browsers.
224
00:13:51,170 --> 00:13:55,510
So you can be a historian, and also be an
asshole!
225
00:13:55,510 --> 00:13:57,140
It works out, actually.
226
00:13:57,140 --> 00:13:59,550
So anyway, so what you have here is again
like I said,
227
00:13:59,550 --> 00:14:03,100
a wide variety of interesting cultural artifacts,
228
00:14:03,100 --> 00:14:07,920
and I've found the people who go to this just
automatically get a massive amount of reaction
229
00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:09,100
from it.
230
00:14:09,100 --> 00:14:14,890
Well what we're experiencing right now is
a bunch of websites that were started earlier,
231
00:14:14,890 --> 00:14:21,420
and "earlier" now could be anything from mid-1990s
up through to even maybe a year ago or further,
232
00:14:21,420 --> 00:14:26,720
where they reach a point where somebody decides
they're not going to stay up any more.
233
00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:31,670
And it's usually done with, like a post-it
note on the outside of a restaurant that's
234
00:14:31,670 --> 00:14:34,360
been shut down for health code violations.
235
00:14:34,360 --> 00:14:40,670
It is just simply something saying "By the
way, we're gone."
236
00:14:40,670 --> 00:14:47,670
Now, normally I would not care, right? I mean,
if you've created, you know, hatsforcats.com,
237
00:14:49,460 --> 00:14:51,890
and suddenly no-one wants to buy your cat
hats,
238
00:14:51,890 --> 00:14:53,840
and you say "Sorry, thank you for, you know,
239
00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:56,250
thank you for four months of wonderful business."
240
00:14:56,250 --> 00:14:58,900
And away you go, that's fine.
241
00:14:58,900 --> 00:15:03,200
But what we have right now from the mid-1990s
on to now is this whole period
242
00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:08,230
where we're taking user generated content
and a large amount of marketing is being made
243
00:15:08,230 --> 00:15:13,680
to make it as easy and quick and frictionless
to put as much of yourself online as quickly
244
00:15:13,680 --> 00:15:17,260
as possible into something...
245
00:15:17,260 --> 00:15:21,380
with a huge lack of any interest in telling
you what that something is.
246
00:15:21,380 --> 00:15:22,850
It's just there.
247
00:15:22,850 --> 00:15:27,340
You get an IT department, and you don't even
know how to reach it.
248
00:15:27,340 --> 00:15:30,810
What ends up happening is you get this, right:
AOL Hometown,
249
00:15:30,810 --> 00:15:36,210
which was a whole bunch of really interesting
websites from the early 1990s,
250
00:15:36,210 --> 00:15:41,900
and in 2008 they said "You know what, we're
out of here."
251
00:15:41,900 --> 00:15:44,260
And that was it. Hometown was gone.
252
00:15:44,260 --> 00:15:45,410
Same thing up there with Kickstart.
253
00:15:45,410 --> 00:15:49,620
You don't know what Kickstart is, I didn't
know what Kickstart is, but I like the button.
254
00:15:49,620 --> 00:15:55,790
The indication there is like "See this light
bulb? Going out."
255
00:15:55,790 --> 00:15:58,110
And then you get these kind of surreal shutdowns,
right,
256
00:15:58,110 --> 00:16:01,150
like Free Pro Hosting, which offers you more!
257
00:16:01,150 --> 00:16:04,330
And the next thing it says is "We're going
to be discontinuing our free hosting service
258
00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:06,130
at the end of the year."
259
00:16:06,130 --> 00:16:08,900
And look at that smiling girl! "Guess what,
we're closed!"
260
00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:10,570
"We're out of business!"
261
00:16:10,570 --> 00:16:16,120
So, hey, welcome to Free Pro Hosting where
nothing is now free.
262
00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:17,930
That is a tough, tough sell.
263
00:16:17,930 --> 00:16:20,110
"What are you called?"
264
00:16:20,110 --> 00:16:21,200
"Free cars."
265
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:23,380
"What do you sell?"
266
00:16:23,380 --> 00:16:23,930
"Cars."
267
00:16:23,930 --> 00:16:24,470
"Free?"
268
00:16:24,470 --> 00:16:25,020
"No."
269
00:16:25,020 --> 00:16:27,280
"No, Bob Free, pleased to meet you."
270
00:16:27,280 --> 00:16:31,230
Yeah.
271
00:16:31,230 --> 00:16:36,730
So we started Archive Team. OK?
272
00:16:36,730 --> 00:16:40,300
ArchiveTeam.org. We are gonna rescue your
shit.
273
00:16:40,300 --> 00:16:41,740
We are the A-Team.
274
00:16:41,740 --> 00:16:47,180
We are the team that will come in, and we
will rescue things that need to be rescued.
275
00:16:47,180 --> 00:16:50,510
Help the helpless, go after the site, sight
the sightless.
276
00:16:50,510 --> 00:16:54,550
We're going to go after places that look like
they're being shut down.
277
00:16:54,550 --> 00:16:59,400
And we download them, and then we figure out
what to do next.
278
00:16:59,400 --> 00:17:03,490
We know, you know, so much in history, if
you go ahead and look at a lot of things,
279
00:17:03,490 --> 00:17:09,279
how we have it with housing and things, that
you know, basically, uh...when,
280
00:17:09,279 --> 00:17:13,899
when you evict somebody from a home, it is
a huge-ass painful process that sucks. Right?
281
00:17:13,899 --> 00:17:17,199
Yes, right there, you're looking outside,
you can see in the window,
282
00:17:17,199 --> 00:17:20,039
you're the landlord, you can see them fucking
up your apartment.
283
00:17:20,039 --> 00:17:21,899
You're like "I'm gonna get rid of them.
284
00:17:21,899 --> 00:17:25,019
It's going to take six weeks. But I'm going
to get rid of them."
285
00:17:25,019 --> 00:17:27,769
And you have to apply in front of a judge,
286
00:17:27,769 --> 00:17:31,220
you have to show things, and you have to do
all these things.
287
00:17:31,220 --> 00:17:33,450
Well with web hosting, we don't have to do
any of that.
288
00:17:33,450 --> 00:17:34,840
And some people think that's beautiful,
289
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:41,269
and, yes, the wild west was fucking awesome
until you died of dysentery.
290
00:17:41,269 --> 00:17:44,200
And I'm saying that it's 2011, and this is
DEFCON.
291
00:17:44,200 --> 00:17:48,590
This is one of these places which goes, like,
"By the way, this idea is stupid, we don't
292
00:17:48,590 --> 00:17:49,429
do this anymore",
293
00:17:49,429 --> 00:17:54,980
well the idea of completely, uh...
294
00:17:54,980 --> 00:18:01,980
uncontrolled, non-transparent hosting of user
content really needs to come to an end.
295
00:18:02,570 --> 00:18:08,409
But until then, we're duping stuff because
the conversation otherwise ends.
296
00:18:08,409 --> 00:18:11,539
Like if you go to AOL Hometown now, and go,
like, "I need my old stuff"
297
00:18:11,539 --> 00:18:13,700
they go "That's a shame.
298
00:18:13,700 --> 00:18:16,059
That you still need it. Are you sure you need
it?
299
00:18:16,059 --> 00:18:20,149
Would you like to buy a new account with more
space?"
300
00:18:20,149 --> 00:18:21,070
Because right now it's OK.
301
00:18:21,070 --> 00:18:26,519
So Archive Team set out on its mission, and
we've started to download things.
302
00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:29,009
We've been having a great old time.
303
00:18:29,009 --> 00:18:31,710
And then GeoCities went down.
304
00:18:31,710 --> 00:18:36,190
So, we were like, people came to us and they
were like, "Hey, Archive Team.
305
00:18:36,190 --> 00:18:38,950
GeoCities? You gonna download it?"
306
00:18:38,950 --> 00:18:40,749
How many people here know GeoCities?
307
00:18:40,749 --> 00:18:41,350
Ah, right!
308
00:18:41,350 --> 00:18:48,350
See, they don't want to make noise and call
attention to themselves.
309
00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:52,049
The thing about GeoCities, and I think GeoCities
falls into this right now, right,
310
00:18:52,049 --> 00:18:56,879
GeoCities is the moromi. GeoCities is this
place that started in 1994 as Beverly Hills
311
00:18:56,879 --> 00:18:57,620
Internet.
312
00:18:57,620 --> 00:19:01,080
Got turned into this very strange hosting
company, gets bought by AOL -
313
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:04,749
not AOL -- by Yahoo for an enormous amount
of cash.
314
00:19:04,749 --> 00:19:10,100
I mean an astounding amount of cash, billions
of dollars, to become hosting.
315
00:19:10,100 --> 00:19:16,789
Now at the time of its purchase by Yahoo,
it is the second or third, depending on the
316
00:19:16,789 --> 00:19:17,179
month,
317
00:19:17,179 --> 00:19:24,179
most-browsed site on the internet. This is
the most popular of popular sites. It is huge.
318
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:29,259
And one day, one day, they announced they
were shutting it down -
319
00:19:29,259 --> 00:19:32,129
oh, but I don't mean they really ANNOUNCED
they were shutting it down.
320
00:19:32,129 --> 00:19:37,450
I meant that buried in one of the help files,
which somebody brought to our attention,
321
00:19:37,450 --> 00:19:40,620
it said "I'm having trouble getting this done",
and the answer was
322
00:19:40,620 --> 00:19:46,779
"Yes, because of the shutdown that functionality
is currently not here."
323
00:19:46,779 --> 00:19:52,799
That was it! We're like "Wow, that is burying
the fucking lead!"
324
00:19:52,799 --> 00:19:58,940
And what they did was, they were shutting
down "sometime in the summer"
325
00:19:58,940 --> 00:20:01,730
And then all of this site was going to go
down.
326
00:20:01,730 --> 00:20:05,840
Bear in mind that when GeoCities finally went
down it was the 218th most browsed site on
327
00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:07,049
the net.
328
00:20:07,049 --> 00:20:08,570
It'd only gone down a little bit.
329
00:20:08,570 --> 00:20:10,929
Yahoo made no attempt to get rid of it, you
know,
330
00:20:10,929 --> 00:20:13,139
they didn't try to sell it off or anything
like that,
331
00:20:13,139 --> 00:20:16,850
they just simply said "OK, let's turn this
off. Hooray for us."
332
00:20:16,850 --> 00:20:22,570
Now granted, you'll go look at one of the
sites that was on there...
333
00:20:22,570 --> 00:20:26,840
And you'll be like "Well, of course. Of course."
I mean look at this, then, this is the Rogue
334
00:20:26,840 --> 00:20:27,389
Cowboy.
335
00:20:27,389 --> 00:20:30,409
"Hey y'all, military couple, been here for
a while."
336
00:20:30,409 --> 00:20:35,009
I'm reading this for you because you cannot
possibly see it over the bucking bronco background.
337
00:20:35,009 --> 00:20:42,009
Also, I want to point out that there's a little
gold item there and it says "HTML Writers
338
00:20:42,649 --> 00:20:44,869
Guild."
339
00:20:44,869 --> 00:20:51,309
Another thing that's kind of gone by the wayside
is HTML guilds. Now it's just stock options.
340
00:20:51,309 --> 00:20:55,049
And the thing is, you know, you look at a
site like that and you're like
341
00:20:55,049 --> 00:20:56,509
"Well this is... these guys are awful!"
342
00:20:56,509 --> 00:21:01,169
and I want to point out something I've really
come to understand, which is how do we do
343
00:21:01,169 --> 00:21:03,289
this - how do we get rid of all of something?
344
00:21:03,289 --> 00:21:07,840
In fact, how do we destroy cultures, how do
we destroy lives, how do we do this?
345
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:12,059
And the answer is: disenfranchise, demean,
delete.
346
00:21:12,059 --> 00:21:15,499
Disenfranchise: remove their ability to have
any control over something.
347
00:21:15,499 --> 00:21:19,700
Like I said, with FaceBook, good luck calling
them up to get something fixed.
348
00:21:19,700 --> 00:21:23,240
Good luck calling them up because something's
not working like you expect.
349
00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:25,980
Go ahead and tell me that doesn't cost any
money, and I get what I pay for, fine,
350
00:21:25,980 --> 00:21:28,059
but I'm telling you that's what the case is.
351
00:21:28,059 --> 00:21:31,090
Second, demean: tell people that this thing
is useless.
352
00:21:31,090 --> 00:21:35,539
Look at this thing, it's ugly, by our design
standards this thing fails our test.
353
00:21:35,539 --> 00:21:39,809
We the board of Vogue, we've decided that
this thing is not to our liking.
354
00:21:39,809 --> 00:21:41,220
And then, delete.
355
00:21:41,220 --> 00:21:44,720
Then say "Who gives a shit about these people?
These are nothing. Whatever."
356
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:48,419
But we have to realize that for these people,
this presentation,
357
00:21:48,419 --> 00:21:55,419
this website may be the widest audience that
this genetic line has ever reached.
358
00:21:56,139 --> 00:22:00,490
And you can't turn away from that kind of
power, even if that was never your hope.
359
00:22:00,490 --> 00:22:06,539
Printing a color photocopy was $1.50 a page
at this time.
360
00:22:06,539 --> 00:22:11,419
To be able to do full color, occasionally
with musical background, websites,
361
00:22:11,419 --> 00:22:13,730
that would have all the things you wanted
to say?
362
00:22:13,730 --> 00:22:17,909
And it's interesting what people pull, for
instance.
363
00:22:17,909 --> 00:22:19,669
Welcome to space!
364
00:22:19,669 --> 00:22:24,129
Now it's interesting that the projector really
gets rid of the beauty of the star field.
365
00:22:24,129 --> 00:22:29,350
I feel like it's not really there. But bear
in mind there's a beautiful star field there.
366
00:22:29,350 --> 00:22:34,019
It's not animated, but it's something that's
there and this person obviously likes space.
367
00:22:34,019 --> 00:22:36,200
And there were areas in GeoCities for you
to store,
368
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:41,999
based on Hollywood space, gay queer, western,
and so on.
369
00:22:41,999 --> 00:22:46,720
And you were able to declare what your kind
of interests were and go down there.
370
00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:50,740
So, this particular person was in Area 51,
the space thing.
371
00:22:50,740 --> 00:22:54,159
And there's a part in there called personal
experiences which I just love,
372
00:22:54,159 --> 00:22:56,860
because you read it and their personal experiences
are like
373
00:22:56,860 --> 00:23:03,649
"Was watching television. Felt outside of
myself for twelve minutes.
374
00:23:03,649 --> 00:23:04,600
Continued watching television."
375
00:23:04,600 --> 00:23:09,429
Yeah. OK, great, hilarious,
376
00:23:09,429 --> 00:23:12,570
but also this person wanted to kind of express
this,
377
00:23:12,570 --> 00:23:15,690
and obviously this leads to interesting conspiracy
theorists and the paranormal network, and
378
00:23:15,690 --> 00:23:17,409
all of that.
379
00:23:17,409 --> 00:23:19,690
Let's go with this one.
380
00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:26,690
Welcome. Patrick Joel Mielke, born on April
16th, 1981, entered heaven April 17th, 1983.
381
00:23:28,950 --> 00:23:33,600
Page lovingly dedicated to Patrick Joel, child
of God, uh...
382
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:35,409
loaned to us for a very short time.
383
00:23:35,409 --> 00:23:38,929
It's a celebration of his life and the love
and joy he so enriched his lives with."
384
00:23:38,929 --> 00:23:43,320
Now this is a woman, and this is I think what's
sometimes not noticed here,
385
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:50,059
the child died in 1983. This website was created
in 1996.
386
00:23:50,059 --> 00:23:53,899
This is a woman who has enough pain at that
time that when she sees GeoCities,
387
00:23:53,899 --> 00:23:56,440
where other people say "I'm gonna talk about
watching TV"
388
00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:01,590
and "I'm gonna talk about my bucking bronco
background and join the HTML Writers Guild",
389
00:24:01,590 --> 00:24:05,269
here's somebody who's saying "No, the world
needs to know about my baby.
390
00:24:05,269 --> 00:24:07,690
I want to let everyone know how much I loved
him."
391
00:24:07,690 --> 00:24:12,879
And she has pages after pages in the ten megabyte
space, about how much her baby meant to her.
392
00:24:12,879 --> 00:24:17,309
So here's a case -- and by the way of course
there was a web ring,
393
00:24:17,309 --> 00:24:22,409
you know what a web ring was, of, uh, what
was it...
394
00:24:22,409 --> 00:24:23,779
It's an Angels web ring,
395
00:24:23,779 --> 00:24:25,970
so it's a bunch of parents who lost children
who are under two,
396
00:24:25,970 --> 00:24:31,629
to talk about, you know, they touched an angel
for short period of time.
397
00:24:31,629 --> 00:24:38,629
This is real stuff. This is as real to save
as anything else, I think. So, dig on it.
398
00:24:49,299 --> 00:24:52,899
Gets better the longer you look at it.
399
00:24:52,899 --> 00:24:59,899
So, Jason, a question that now some of you
who've never heard of before now will ask,
400
00:25:01,029 --> 00:25:03,210
"What the fuck is up with that, Jason?"
401
00:25:03,210 --> 00:25:05,869
It's a general question I get about everything.
402
00:25:05,869 --> 00:25:10,519
Alright, here's the deal. He's an Under Construction
GIF.
403
00:25:10,519 --> 00:25:14,100
And he got wrapped up in the trawl, basically
I went through a bunch of GeoCities stuff
404
00:25:14,100 --> 00:25:17,249
and found a bunch of Under Construction GIFs,
and he was one of them.
405
00:25:17,249 --> 00:25:24,249
And I was like "What the hell is that? What's
the fucking story about Bulgy McFish-Hat guy?"
406
00:25:30,149 --> 00:25:36,820
so I go look it up, and it's this guy in the
Hollywood Hills section, and he is gay,
407
00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:43,820
and he has a page that he talks about his
dream guy. Uh, it's from 1998.
408
00:25:44,529 --> 00:25:49,299
And he talks about what he wants in a man,
what he will do with the man, where they'll
409
00:25:49,299 --> 00:25:49,580
go,
410
00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:54,679
the places he'll do, the dreams he'll live,
it's from basically, like I said, 1998,
411
00:25:54,679 --> 00:25:57,399
and at the bottom it says "This is always
under construction."
412
00:25:57,399 --> 00:26:01,259
And there is this guy at the bottom.
413
00:26:01,259 --> 00:26:08,259
In 2005, it's updated. And it says "No need
to keep looking. I've found him."
414
00:26:11,950 --> 00:26:18,950
And it's just a story that turned out, even
with the bulge, to be pretty heartwarming.
415
00:26:21,749 --> 00:26:27,239
All of this buried in the little tiny graphics
interchange format.
416
00:26:27,239 --> 00:26:29,090
Which I believe just got out of copyright.
417
00:26:29,090 --> 00:26:32,649
Oh, I'm sorry, patent.
418
00:26:32,649 --> 00:26:38,230
OK. So when they closed it, right, Yahoo just
decide to do this twerpy frigging goddamn
419
00:26:38,230 --> 00:26:39,309
thing.
420
00:26:39,309 --> 00:26:43,879
This to me is the embodiment of the problem.
"Why did GeoCities close?"
421
00:26:43,879 --> 00:26:47,539
which by the way should really be said in
like kind of a scream with a rending of documents,
422
00:26:47,539 --> 00:26:50,989
because that's usually when you "Why did GeoCities
close???!!!?!?"
423
00:26:50,989 --> 00:26:55,119
"We have decided to focus on helping our customers
explore and build relationships online in
424
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:57,619
other ways."
425
00:26:57,619 --> 00:27:00,989
That's like shooting somebody and saying "I
have plans for your car."
426
00:27:00,989 --> 00:27:05,970
All right.
427
00:27:05,970 --> 00:27:11,860
It's this sort of corporate douchebaggery
that ensures that I will never work within
428
00:27:11,860 --> 00:27:14,269
a corporate environment again.
429
00:27:14,269 --> 00:27:21,220
I don't know, that's my visceral reaction,
what do you think?
430
00:27:21,220 --> 00:27:28,220
So that's what Archive Team said, so we said
"You know what, Let's download it."
431
00:27:28,989 --> 00:27:32,720
So... Downloading was very interesting.
432
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,100
Downloading GeoCities was somewhat complicated.
433
00:27:35,100 --> 00:27:40,279
It took us about a hundred people to download
over the course of about six months.
434
00:27:40,279 --> 00:27:44,259
We had no idea when the shutdown date was,
right, so we just went at it.
435
00:27:44,259 --> 00:27:47,940
Now it turns out that GeoCities had a very
interesting thing.
436
00:27:47,940 --> 00:27:50,940
You got a gigabyte of bandwidth a month.
437
00:27:50,940 --> 00:27:57,940
But! Only about twelve megabytes of it could
come out every hour.
438
00:27:58,820 --> 00:28:01,989
Bait and switch.
439
00:28:01,989 --> 00:28:08,350
So we would try to do it, it would go "Sorry.
Error. 999 error. Content limit has been reached."
440
00:28:08,350 --> 00:28:10,929
It didn't take long, by putting our heads
together,
441
00:28:10,929 --> 00:28:14,830
by having all these assembled people on our
IRC channel to have someone go,
442
00:28:14,830 --> 00:28:17,659
"Do you think they're locking out Google?"
443
00:28:17,659 --> 00:28:20,980
So we go look, and, nope, they're not locking
out Google.
444
00:28:20,980 --> 00:28:26,830
So we changed all of our user-agents to "Not
The GoogleBot".
445
00:28:26,830 --> 00:28:30,220
Free!
446
00:28:30,220 --> 00:28:35,220
At that point, we aimed a couple people at
them, we had a hundred virtual machines that
447
00:28:35,220 --> 00:28:36,639
downloaded basically all of the -
448
00:28:36,639 --> 00:28:40,739
GeoCities has an old neighborhood and the
old neighborhood system
449
00:28:40,739 --> 00:28:46,749
which basically would be GeoCities slash WestHollywood
slash...
450
00:28:46,749 --> 00:28:51,460
you know, Hills slash 2252. These are all
pre-1999.
451
00:28:51,460 --> 00:28:58,460
When Yahoo got their nutsack on it, they just
reapplied it across to the Yahoo section.
452
00:28:58,489 --> 00:29:05,489
So basically what they did was our you could
be "GeoCities.com/~toolbag" and be whatever.
453
00:29:06,970 --> 00:29:10,789
So it was going to be harder to find them.
But, man, we sent people after them,
454
00:29:10,789 --> 00:29:13,690
and we did, and we downloaded as much as we
could,
455
00:29:13,690 --> 00:29:19,779
which turned out to be a little bit over a
terabyte, of GeoCities.
456
00:29:19,779 --> 00:29:26,779
So, then what do you do? Well, first, bear
in mind that this is GeoCities in 1999.
457
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,690
This was a 9 terabyte array of theirs.
458
00:29:31,690 --> 00:29:35,039
Just to give you an idea of just how pathetic
it is now, when people are like
459
00:29:35,039 --> 00:29:36,980
"Oh God, what are you going to do, where are
you going to keep all that?"
460
00:29:36,980 --> 00:29:40,249
I can make a stack of nine terabytes right
now that are barely functional.
461
00:29:40,249 --> 00:29:45,200
We have to keep in mind that this is a whole
cage at Exodus dedicated to GeoCities.
462
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,940
So we ended up with it, and we're sitting
on it
463
00:29:48,940 --> 00:29:51,809
and then GeoCities went down and it was the
usual like "Who cares?"
464
00:29:51,809 --> 00:29:57,129
and I put up those animated GIFs by basically
going through this terabyte of data,
465
00:29:57,129 --> 00:30:02,070
and coming up with a collection of interesting
GIFs.
466
00:30:02,070 --> 00:30:05,629
But then a year went by, and I thought, you
know, we've got to get attention.
467
00:30:05,629 --> 00:30:10,940
We've got to remind people that GeoCities
went down for no fucking reason.
468
00:30:10,940 --> 00:30:17,940
So we did what anyone would do, we torrented
it.
469
00:30:21,029 --> 00:30:25,489
So we put ourselves up on The Pirate Bay,
we have a 641GB - because it compressed well
470
00:30:25,489 --> 00:30:26,399
- torrent,
471
00:30:26,399 --> 00:30:32,840
with 7,854 files that were basically 7zs,
and we put that sucker up. And we torrented
472
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:33,139
it.
473
00:30:33,139 --> 00:30:35,669
We were until recently, I think it's changed,
474
00:30:35,669 --> 00:30:40,359
but we were until recently the second largest
torrent that ever appeared.
475
00:30:40,359 --> 00:30:44,999
The number one was high-definition versions
of all of the World Cup games.
476
00:30:44,999 --> 00:30:51,320
So, nice counterpoint, huh? World Cup games,
GeoCities.
477
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:55,379
Because we knew, right, that by warezing GeoCities,
478
00:30:55,379 --> 00:30:58,690
this would bring this massive amount of embarrassment
back, and it did.
479
00:30:58,690 --> 00:31:02,799
We got all these great interviews and I'd
put up this thing saying "Yahoo found a way--"
480
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:04,019
I was quoted by Time for this -
481
00:31:04,019 --> 00:31:09,460
"Yahoo found the way to destroy the most amount
of history in the shortest amount of time."
482
00:31:09,460 --> 00:31:11,960
Alright, excellent.
483
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:16,559
Then Yahoo Video announced it was going down.
484
00:31:16,559 --> 00:31:17,460
We got that!
485
00:31:17,460 --> 00:31:24,379
Well we were helped, of course because, Yahoo
Video sucks. But it was 10 terabytes.
486
00:31:24,379 --> 00:31:27,499
We just downloaded all of the video. Everything,
all of it.
487
00:31:27,499 --> 00:31:29,970
Luckily they used numeric IDs, very easy to
go through.
488
00:31:29,970 --> 00:31:34,179
We ended up downloading it, we're in the process
of getting it all back up again somewhere.
489
00:31:34,179 --> 00:31:37,080
And yes a lot of it is spam, some of it is
really terrible.
490
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:40,259
It seems to be really popular with people
in countries that are not America,
491
00:31:40,259 --> 00:31:44,080
who were using it as a way that have stuff
that needed bandwidth that they didn't have
492
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:44,690
to pay for,
493
00:31:44,690 --> 00:31:48,659
where the bandwidth was expensive. But we've
got this thing,
494
00:31:48,659 --> 00:31:50,659
and we were able to, you know, basically do
this
495
00:31:50,659 --> 00:31:54,979
through the gift of volunteers who all work
together very hard.
496
00:31:54,979 --> 00:31:58,840
These are all the things that Yahoo! has shut
down in the last four years.
497
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,460
Just so you understand. Yahoo briefcase, where
you were able to store 10 megs,
498
00:32:02,460 --> 00:32:06,559
whenever you wanted, and get it from anywhere
via FTP.
499
00:32:06,559 --> 00:32:12,239
They shut down. Why? No spare USB drive?
500
00:32:12,239 --> 00:32:13,460
Content Mash, some of these you won't know.
501
00:32:13,460 --> 00:32:18,450
Yahoo Pets was funded by Purina for a five
year contract
502
00:32:18,450 --> 00:32:24,190
and on the day that the contract ran out they
shut it down and redirected it to Yahoo Women.
503
00:32:24,190 --> 00:32:26,700
I don't know why, but they did.
504
00:32:26,700 --> 00:32:28,929
But it was a case of there was this secret
contract,
505
00:32:28,929 --> 00:32:30,649
and when I say they shut down, I mean with
no warning.
506
00:32:30,649 --> 00:32:32,259
One day it was there, one day it was gone.
507
00:32:32,259 --> 00:32:36,570
It had pet pictures, it had forums in it,
everything, gone. Totally gone.
508
00:32:36,570 --> 00:32:40,769
So in other words I'm saying Yahoo blows,
OK? It is a fucking clown car.
509
00:32:40,769 --> 00:32:47,769
I wouldn't trust them with like a backup of
my nutsack, because these guys...
510
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,950
This is a case where a company went speculatively
into user generated content
511
00:32:52,950 --> 00:32:56,109
and when they decided it wasn't worth it any
more, they got out of it.
512
00:32:56,109 --> 00:32:59,609
Like getting into a library and deciding "Oh,
library business isn't working for us" and
513
00:32:59,609 --> 00:33:01,119
burning it to the ground. OK?
514
00:33:01,119 --> 00:33:06,600
And I've got people, I've got people who come
to me and say "Yahoo was great to work at"
515
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:06,850
-
516
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:12,190
yeah, everywhere is great to work at if you're
working for an arsonist company, it's awesome!
517
00:33:12,190 --> 00:33:16,729
"We were trying to change the world", well,
you sorta did. Awesome.
518
00:33:16,729 --> 00:33:22,340
Now you're using Bing as your search engine
and you suck.
519
00:33:22,340 --> 00:33:25,019
Friendster went down this year.
520
00:33:25,019 --> 00:33:27,759
Friendster we only got 12 million of the 112
million accounts
521
00:33:27,759 --> 00:33:33,899
because it turns out that digital cameras
really came into prominence in 2005,
522
00:33:33,899 --> 00:33:38,899
but we basically got most of the larger earlier
sites from it,
523
00:33:38,899 --> 00:33:42,399
a lot of people, you know it's funny 'cause
if you talk to people about Friendster,
524
00:33:42,399 --> 00:33:45,619
they know Friendster, they're like "Yeah I
remember that, it was like a social network,
525
00:33:45,619 --> 00:33:49,279
I think I was on it" and we feel that like
collecting this material -
526
00:33:49,279 --> 00:33:50,960
and believe me it was a javascript nightmare,
527
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,659
we had to write customized scripts to go through
the javascript, negotiate it,
528
00:33:54,659 --> 00:34:00,749
we all had to create accounts on Friendster
which was still allowed, up to its death.
529
00:34:00,749 --> 00:34:05,759
And all of us were like "Hobbies? Downloading
Friendster."
530
00:34:05,759 --> 00:34:08,369
With some really funny giving the finger profile.
531
00:34:08,369 --> 00:34:11,010
"I'm downloading Friendster, that's why I'm
here, what are you up to?
532
00:34:11,010 --> 00:34:16,260
Oh, you like cats, that's great."
533
00:34:16,260 --> 00:34:18,230
Not everyone likes what we're doing.
534
00:34:18,230 --> 00:34:21,409
This is Lulu Poetry - poetry.com.
535
00:34:21,409 --> 00:34:27,329
This was exciting. They gave everyone two
weeks to get off. Fourteen million poems.
536
00:34:27,329 --> 00:34:28,659
And as you can see their suggestion was
537
00:34:28,659 --> 00:34:34,359
"Well, be sure to copy and paste your poems
before we go down." So you can always remember
538
00:34:34,359 --> 00:34:36,240
them.
539
00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:41,240
"We're unable to save any customer information
or poetry."
540
00:34:41,240 --> 00:34:44,559
Actually you don't hear that line a whole
lot, do you?
541
00:34:44,559 --> 00:34:48,720
"I'm sorry, your poetry is unavailable."
542
00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:53,039
So we were like, okay, well we can do this.
So we did.
543
00:34:53,039 --> 00:34:57,380
Within a short time we start getting banned.
Locked out.
544
00:34:57,380 --> 00:35:00,619
So we switch IPs. They block out more.
545
00:35:00,619 --> 00:35:03,609
We have someone switch IPs, and we watch as
an entire range is blocked out.
546
00:35:03,609 --> 00:35:07,510
We realized that there is a person or persons
there, stopping us.
547
00:35:07,510 --> 00:35:14,510
So we switch to S3. We switched to Amazon
instances and we start doing it that way.
548
00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:18,660
And they run out of ways to block us out.
549
00:35:18,660 --> 00:35:25,010
They threaten one of my members, who is in
Australia, and fifteen,
550
00:35:25,010 --> 00:35:29,609
with legal whatever, and I'm trying to explain
to him that a cease and desist is not a lawsuit.
551
00:35:29,609 --> 00:35:33,220
He's fifteen years old, he's in Australia,
552
00:35:33,220 --> 00:35:40,220
he's probably not going to be flown to America
for downloading poetry without a license.
553
00:35:44,039 --> 00:35:47,210
Interpol is not going to get in on this shit.
554
00:35:47,210 --> 00:35:49,970
But, you know, whatever, make the kid nervous,
555
00:35:49,970 --> 00:35:51,369
but basically they were like, "No, no, you
don't understand,
556
00:35:51,369 --> 00:35:55,559
we're actually going to be bought out, so
this will survive, so we know what you're
557
00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:56,349
doing, it's OK"
558
00:35:56,349 --> 00:36:01,220
and I was like, "It's great you said that
- fuck you!" and just kept going at it.
559
00:36:01,220 --> 00:36:07,470
So it turned out, as far as we can determine,
they were on one shared server in some space,
560
00:36:07,470 --> 00:36:10,770
that's what their problem was, we were essentially,
like I said,
561
00:36:10,770 --> 00:36:12,809
doing a distributed preservation of service
attack.
562
00:36:12,809 --> 00:36:18,670
We took these guys out. We were taking them
out, making a duplicate of them.
563
00:36:18,670 --> 00:36:21,780
So we got lots of millions and millions of
poems, which we're holding on to,
564
00:36:21,780 --> 00:36:26,450
because they did go down, by the way at 12.01
of the day they announced they were going
565
00:36:26,450 --> 00:36:26,700
down.
566
00:36:26,589 --> 00:36:28,640
I could tell that there was like one guy,
567
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:32,170
we were watching cases on a couple of nights
where we would actually watch the blocking
568
00:36:32,170 --> 00:36:32,950
slow down,
569
00:36:32,950 --> 00:36:36,180
because we figured out people got tired and
went home.
570
00:36:36,180 --> 00:36:42,569
So by three in the morning our Australia guys
are like "Oh wow, free and clear!"
571
00:36:42,569 --> 00:36:46,760
And so, let me tell you nothing is greater
than when you give somebody a goal
572
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:51,799
that has blanketed on it some sort of moral
righteousness.
573
00:36:51,799 --> 00:36:55,000
It does lead to some awesome shit, and fire.
574
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:59,740
Anyway, so basically they, you know, they
might come back, they might not.
575
00:36:59,740 --> 00:37:05,000
So sometimes you've got to be a little rough.
We try not to be.
576
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,430
So Google Video announced it was going down.
577
00:37:08,430 --> 00:37:14,450
Now we were scared. Because Google Videos
is huge.
578
00:37:14,450 --> 00:37:17,329
So we did it anyway. We started downloading,
579
00:37:17,329 --> 00:37:21,480
we were at somewhere like the ninth or tenth
terabyte.
580
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:26,150
Downloading GeoCities, we had a distributed
system that would download from these things,
581
00:37:26,150 --> 00:37:29,119
and we were like "Yup, gonna save it, what
an embarrassment.
582
00:37:29,119 --> 00:37:32,500
Google Video, what an embarrassment, what
YouTube, why don't you just transfer stuff
583
00:37:32,500 --> 00:37:33,549
to YouTube.
584
00:37:33,549 --> 00:37:36,030
What the hell's wrong with you? Why are we
doing this?
585
00:37:36,030 --> 00:37:38,289
What's wrong with you, Yahoo?" -
586
00:37:38,289 --> 00:37:40,970
Uh, sorry, Yahoo 2: Google! -
587
00:37:40,970 --> 00:37:44,690
And basically, a week or two in, they give
us an update.
588
00:37:44,690 --> 00:37:46,670
And the update says "OK, we're not going down.
589
00:37:46,670 --> 00:37:50,960
We're going to add a 'Migrate to YouTube'
button, we're going to do what we need to
590
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:52,710
do."
591
00:37:52,710 --> 00:37:55,630
So basically, what they-
592
00:37:55,630 --> 00:37:59,220
what I found out later is that internally
in Google they went
593
00:37:59,220 --> 00:38:05,000
"Look what Archive Team is saying, this is
really embarrassing. We have to stop this."
594
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:10,460
And so they went "Yeah, got it", so they went,
basically, "Okay, we give up."
595
00:38:10,460 --> 00:38:13,650
And so we won. One of the few times we won.
596
00:38:13,650 --> 00:38:14,559
It's nice to win.
597
00:38:14,559 --> 00:38:18,039
So what's this? Guy with nine track tapes.
598
00:38:18,039 --> 00:38:25,039
Guy's got Usenet. That is Usenet from 1981
to 1991, all right.
599
00:38:28,380 --> 00:38:32,140
So here's what happened. So basically, this
stuff is what became Dejan,
600
00:38:32,140 --> 00:38:37,049
went into the Google purchase of Deja News,
which then became Google Groups,
601
00:38:37,049 --> 00:38:39,289
and Google then proceed to ruin it.
602
00:38:39,289 --> 00:38:43,470
Okay, if you know anything about Usenet, they
ruined it. Unequivocally.
603
00:38:43,470 --> 00:38:45,210
And we made a very important discovery.
604
00:38:45,210 --> 00:38:49,210
A lot of people are starting to think of Google
as some sort of archive or library.
605
00:38:49,210 --> 00:38:51,599
That they're storing all this data, they're
running ads,
606
00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:53,010
they're really storing all this data.
607
00:38:53,010 --> 00:39:00,010
But Google is a library or an archive in the
same way that a supermarket is a food museum.
608
00:39:00,260 --> 00:39:02,950
These guys are basically gonna do whatever
they gotta do.
609
00:39:02,950 --> 00:39:07,260
So we took it, we took back, we found the
original archives that Google had taken,
610
00:39:07,260 --> 00:39:10,250
we put them up on Archive.org. The UTZOO tapes.
611
00:39:10,250 --> 00:39:13,299
And people are doing with them - an Archive
Team member did this.
612
00:39:13,299 --> 00:39:16,250
Not really associated with us, but did it
and is part of us.
613
00:39:16,250 --> 00:39:22,210
Olduse.net. He is doing a real time posting
of Usenet with a thirty-year lag.
614
00:39:22,210 --> 00:39:25,720
So you can go on, connect with the newsreader,
and go experience what it was like.
615
00:39:25,720 --> 00:39:27,880
This particular one says "Perhaps you're not
aware of it,
616
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:29,950
but a new Star Trek movie is in the making
this summer.
617
00:39:29,950 --> 00:39:32,190
While that is all well and good, there is
a problem with it.
618
00:39:32,190 --> 00:39:35,430
It seems that Leonard Nimoy will no longer
be available for the role of Spock
619
00:39:35,430 --> 00:39:37,319
and thus they're killing him off.
620
00:39:37,319 --> 00:39:41,700
Loyal Trekkies here have taken great offense
to this, as well they should!
621
00:39:41,700 --> 00:39:44,579
There are better ways to remove the necessity
of having the character present."
622
00:39:44,579 --> 00:39:47,510
And anyway, so that's good.
623
00:39:47,510 --> 00:39:50,069
And then we never saw Leonard Nimoy again.
624
00:39:50,069 --> 00:39:54,740
So you can connect to this thing and be able
to use it right now. That's living history.
625
00:39:54,740 --> 00:39:58,640
Telehack.com, I don't have time to go into
it. Telehack.com.
626
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:04,730
OK, it looks like a command line, it is an
entire world. Years of command-line history
627
00:40:04,730 --> 00:40:05,369
at that site.
628
00:40:05,369 --> 00:40:09,960
Spend a little time on it, get an account,
it's unbelievable. All resuscitated from old
629
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:10,579
archives.
630
00:40:10,579 --> 00:40:14,099
And I don't mind being made fun of, all of
this whole thing.
631
00:40:14,099 --> 00:40:18,490
This is the stuff for my teammates who make
fun of me, we believe in lots of great, crazy
632
00:40:18,490 --> 00:40:20,559
humor.
633
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:24,799
So where else do we go from here? Well, we've
got a group called wikiteam.
634
00:40:24,799 --> 00:40:28,130
They've written a thing from the outside,
downloads tons and tons of wikis
635
00:40:28,130 --> 00:40:30,720
and we'll grab it and then we've been putting
them up.
636
00:40:30,720 --> 00:40:34,359
So we've got wikiteam, if your wiki is like
dying, we're gonna grab it,
637
00:40:34,359 --> 00:40:37,549
and we make the tools available so you can
grab any wiki from anywhere else.
638
00:40:37,549 --> 00:40:41,920
URL Team, because URL shortening was a fucking
awful idea.
639
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,460
URL shortening is like DNS retarded.
640
00:40:44,460 --> 00:40:50,059
You're gonna let some third party generally
decide what everything you do directs to.
641
00:40:50,059 --> 00:40:51,200
You are stupid.
642
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,400
I understand use of URL shorteners on a per-site
basis,
643
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,690
making a Flickr, that's fl.kr, whatever, that
makes sense,
644
00:40:57,690 --> 00:41:01,270
but this is awful because if these things
go down now anyone looking at the history,
645
00:41:01,270 --> 00:41:03,500
it's like people are talking cryptographic
code.
646
00:41:03,500 --> 00:41:07,079
"Here's this awesome site... thing you can't
figure out."
647
00:41:07,079 --> 00:41:10,579
So we have been taking them on, this group
over here
648
00:41:10,579 --> 00:41:14,400
has been basically taking all these old URL
shorteners and turning them into archives
649
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,250
that we then torrent.
650
00:41:16,250 --> 00:41:23,130
So, I also want to point out, this is Chronomex,
Jeroenz0r, Soultcer, Swebb, Underscor, not
651
00:41:23,130 --> 00:41:24,230
me.
652
00:41:24,230 --> 00:41:28,400
This is not just a Jason Scott project. These
guys, I just, I'm planning a fire,
653
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,559
but these guys are going somewhere with it
and they don't always need me, that's very
654
00:41:31,559 --> 00:41:32,779
important.
655
00:41:32,779 --> 00:41:34,869
What else? What's left to save?
656
00:41:34,869 --> 00:41:38,289
I don't know if many of you know Len Sassaman.
657
00:41:38,289 --> 00:41:40,119
He was a wonderful cryptographer,
658
00:41:40,119 --> 00:41:44,700
wonderful human being who took his own life
just a very short period of time ago.
659
00:41:44,700 --> 00:41:50,329
His wake was just last week, actually, and
he was a big presenter at DEFCON.
660
00:41:50,329 --> 00:41:52,640
If you start going through the archives, you
will find him there,
661
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:56,299
he's a brilliant person who left a lot of
friends and a lot of memories.
662
00:41:56,299 --> 00:42:02,660
He's a wonderful guy, and his widow said to
me "Can you archive him?"
663
00:42:02,660 --> 00:42:06,839
So I started a project called "Away From Keyboard".
This is on Archive.org.
664
00:42:06,839 --> 00:42:11,329
And what we're doing is we are collecting
artifacts from various people who have passed
665
00:42:11,329 --> 00:42:12,119
on
666
00:42:12,119 --> 00:42:17,960
to turn them into collections of files that
at least we can get some piece of these people
667
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:18,700
who are gone,
668
00:42:18,700 --> 00:42:21,589
and we can remember them and be able to build
from them.
669
00:42:21,589 --> 00:42:23,599
So it doesn't always have to be about websites,
670
00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:26,029
it doesn't always have to be discs that I'm
trying to save here.
671
00:42:26,029 --> 00:42:28,500
It's everything, and I think that's just critical.
672
00:42:28,500 --> 00:42:31,779
What did we learn here?
673
00:42:31,779 --> 00:42:33,470
We learned I'm really loud.
674
00:42:33,470 --> 00:42:39,000
We learned a lot of profanity, but hopefully
you'll look at a web site that's going down,
675
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:40,829
into something that's dying, and you'll say
to yourself
676
00:42:40,829 --> 00:42:45,799
"Okay, that's not just a piece of crap, that's
something that's meaningful to people.
677
00:42:45,799 --> 00:42:47,690
That's something that matters to people."
678
00:42:47,690 --> 00:42:51,950
And I hope that that, you know, piece, sticks
with you, if nothing else I did.
679
00:42:51,950 --> 00:42:53,279
So my final question for you is,
680
00:42:53,279 --> 00:42:55,339
"OK, is anyone here from Archive Team?"
681
00:42:55,339 --> 00:42:58,599
No, fuck you. You are all in Archive Team.
682
00:42:58,599 --> 00:43:02,400
I officially deputize you. You are allowed
to be in Archive Team.
683
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:05,309
Go where you need to, keep backups, store
them somewhere,
684
00:43:05,309 --> 00:43:08,480
throw them over to someplace you don't remember,
give me copies later,
685
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,289
or give my successor copies later, about these
things,
686
00:43:11,289 --> 00:43:14,650
because it turns out what you walk in is history,
687
00:43:14,650 --> 00:43:17,589
because the hardest part of history is to
be there when it happens.
688
00:43:17,589 --> 00:43:19,490
That's the hardest part of any historian's
job.
689
00:43:19,490 --> 00:43:23,289
And by being what you are right now doing,
is you are in companies, you are with people,
690
00:43:23,289 --> 00:43:26,190
you are visiting things, and you are with
history.
691
00:43:26,190 --> 00:43:27,900
So please, save it for the future
692
00:43:27,900 --> 00:43:33,900
because the future will wonder why the fuck
we all thought Under Construction GIFs were
693
00:43:33,900 --> 00:43:38,760
so important.
694
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,650
Sometimes I put that as my user profile when
I'm downloading a site.
695
00:43:42,650 --> 00:43:46,920
It hits the message, doesn't it?
696
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,069
I'm just saying, if you take your site down,
I'll see you there.
697
00:43:51,069 --> 00:43:58,069
Jason Scott, Archive Team. Thank you for coming.
698
00:43:59,980 --> 00:44:02,740
And please, one more bit.
699
00:44:02,740 --> 00:44:06,609
Dedicated to Tim Recher who unfortunately
died before really giving a big presentation
700
00:44:06,609 --> 00:44:07,329
here,
701
00:44:07,329 --> 00:44:11,880
so I'm just proud to say, my secret co-presenter
Tim Recher.
702
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:13,490
Thank you so much.