There’s a ton of “cloud operating systems” out there, which basically are really fancy websites that try to look and feel like an operating system. There’s obviously a ton of skill and artistry involved in making these, but I always ignore them because they’re not really operating systems. And let’s be honest here – how many people are interested in booting their PC, loading their operating system, logging in, starting their browser, and logging into a website to see a JavaScript desktop that’s slower and more cumbersome than what they are already using to power their browser anyway?
Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t have any interesting ideas or other aspects worth talking about. Take OS Yamato for instance; yes, it’s one of those cloud operating systems, this time aimed at your mobile device, but it has something interesting that stood out to me. The system is partly ephemeral, and objects that haven’t been altered or opened in a year will simply be deleted from the system.
Each data object (note, photo, contact…) includes a lastOpenedAt timestamp. After 330 days, it shows a [wilting flower] icon — a sign of digital wilting. After 365 days, it’s automatically deleted.
↫ OS Yamato GitHub page
The project definitely sounds more like an art installation than something anybody is supposed to seriously use in their day-to-day lives, and seems to ask the question: just how important are all those digital scraps you collect over the years, really? If you haven’t bothered to open something in a year, is it really worth saving? For instance, from the moment I started my translation career in 2011 up until I quit in 2024, I saved every single translation I ever made, neatly organized in folders, properly backed up to multiple locations. I still have this archive, still make sure it’s safe, but I never actually use it for anything, never open a single one of the files, I honestly don’t even really care that much about it.
So why am I still wasting so much energy in keeping it around?
That seems to be the question OS Yamato poses, and there’s something to be said for being less anal about which digital scraps we keep around, and why. It hasn’t convinced me – yet – to delete my translation archive or perform any other pruning, but it did plant a seed.
I’m guilty of this as well; I have a 1TB USB mechanical hard drive with what I consider my “cannot ever delete” files saved to it, and it in turn is backed up monthly to another mechanical hard drive that stays powered off and stored in my fire safe. Ironically, the most important files on the drive are generally the most recent ones; I have some stuff on there going back to the mid 2000s that has absolutely no meaning or use anymore whatsoever (college documents, personal budget spreadsheets, backups of websites I made for people that have been abandoned by them for a decade or more, etc.), but I find I have to force myself to delete that detritus when it’s time to make more room. I know, I could just buy a bigger backup drive, but then I’d never delete anything and I would continue saving every single file I create until I die.
I’m sure my need to keep all my digital items forever is tied to my pack-rat tendencies with physical items; I have dozens of old computers ranging from the 80s up to this year in vintage, and I have a really hard time letting any of them go. In this era of retrocomputing interest — and I am a blueblood member of the cult — it makes a little bit of sense to hang on to those 80s and 90s machines, but anything from the mid 2000s up to the mid 2010s is honestly just garbage at this point. Yet I can’t seem to get rid of them.
Microsoft implemented this feature on the desktop as part of KB5063878. But, it’s buggy. It’s a bit aggressive and doesn’t work on every SSD type yet.
History is precious (especially in this political climate) and drive space is cheap. I’m happy to keep everything.
rainbowsocks,
You must have heard about the Trump admin’s interference with the Smithsonian, erasing the capital riots, pressure them to remove slavery exhibits, etc. It was alarming enough for the administration to go through a massive information cull on government websites, but to actually pressure external institutions to rewrite history is a serious acceleration towards authoritarianism. People are loosing their visas over free speech. Police forces are being taken over. As all this has been happening they’ve been pushing unprecedented gerrymandering, shutting down voting booths in poor districts, voiding voter registrations, etc. It’s very dark times for democracy. One hopes there can be a return to normalcy, but it may be naive when the only other party of significance, the Democrats, are weaker than ever.
In terms of our backups, I’m not sure that most of us will have the “right kinds of information” backed up for historical record keeping. The internet archive is probably more historically valuable than our own personal data. There probably should be a decentralized P2P version of the internet archive in case someone tries to take them out as well.
Yes, I’ve been following all that, and struggling not to lose hope. I know people who are directly affected. It’s all incredibly bleak.
As far as personal information being “the right kind”, well. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Anne Frank’s diary is read to this day, and she was just a random Jewish kid. Of course I would hope not to wind up dying in a concentration camp as she did – we all would hope not to – but I’m part of a couple demographics that Stephen Miller would very much like to murder, and if I do come to a bad end, I’d like for future historians to at least know a bit about me. Even the cringe stuff.
That’s crazy
I have document dating 1998 that I’ll never delete.
My decades of digital photos and scans stay with me until Im gone from this Earth.
Add me to the list of people for whom this sounds like an absolute nightmare. I have all of my files going back over 25 years now. There are files I’m sure I haven’t looked at in 20 years, but they’re _mine_ and I *want them*. As has been said, storage is cheap. I have multiple copies of everything in multiple physical locations. If I could have three georedundant backups of my house, I would. I would gladly download a (backup of my) car.
I was just thinking this morning, before seeing this article, about how special my digital collection is. Everything else in life decays. All of my physical objects are constantly dying or deteriorating. But not my files. I can have confidence that the file on my remote copy is identical to my local copy, and I can restore it from either if something happens. It’s the closest thing to perfection I can have on this earth. Why would I give that up?
To add to Thom’s example as well, my dad has scans of all kinds of teaching materials he was given by the teacher he replaced and my dad hasn’t taught in several years! But you know what? It gives him comfort that he still has those scans. Maybe they’ll never get utilized again, all those old overhead slides and handouts, but my dad feels better since we successfully recovered them from an old backup hard drive he had. There’s no need to delete your old translations, Thom. They’re a testament to your work and life.
I still like to read chat logs I saved from 20+ years with friends I’ve lost touch with. Disk space is not so expensive that old files need to be evaporated continuously.
I really don’t know why is this so relevant, how do these things get to osnews? The interface is pathetic so as the concept, appart from being broken and incomplete. I’ve seen a lot of really good web apps simulating a OS desktop that this just looks like a bad joke, you have to register also to use this? Use what? What’s the service they offer? Who backs up the information you could upload to this? Seriously, people at redaction should put some really serious effort to avoid crap like this if this page is about quality news.
napard,
I agree few of us would really want to use something like this, and I wouldn’t call it “news” either. However I kind of like hearing about unique operating systems because they’re unique. Only covering what’s popular and covered everywhere else gets boring and repetitive. It’s in the same class as temple-os, which isn’t something any of us want to use, but it’s interesting because it’s so different. Most of our lives revolve around inuxmacoswindows™ but I for one don’t mind articles about odd and off the wall operating systems. It can make for interesting conversation, like in this case: deleting data or retaining it until we die.
I’m studying for a master’s degree in public history. My professors and classmates and I have bemoaned the disappearance of sources that must have once existed. The idea of automatically deleting old documents is terrifying, It’s good that this is just an experiment.
Funny thing: the oldest stuff I come back is containend within one of my blogs…