RIP obsolete tech

i burned a cd 2 weeks ago.
- Ok, boomer
  
  unneccessarily rude!
  They might be just genX.
  
  I don’t think burning CDs was much of a boomer activity.
  
  No boomers are the ones reading the CDs not writing them. Their kids are writting them.
- ... and you didn't know it was the last time
  
  Every time is the last one, at least for a while
  
  naw, we have a cd juke box at my work. pretty sure ill be burning them for the foreseeable future.
- Cd.....or DVD?
  
  cd, thats why i said cd.

I still burn CDs. This whole streaming thing won't last. Also, my back hurts...
- The real meta is to have a hard drive full of flac files and use tailscale to stream them wherever you are from your computer at home
  
  That's the dream. Currently debating what to do with a spare laptop and "make it a server" sounds ideal.
  
  I need to learn how to do this.
  
  Yeah well... Can you set the time on a VCR?
  
  Plexamp is also good for this

Burning one today just because of this post.
- lightscribe for old time's sake?
  
  — still use one of these from 2011.
  
  There where points in time where I had a lightscribe disk, and points in time where I had a lightscribe drive. But never both at the same time. I feel like this says something, but I dunno what.
  
  I went out of my way to buy a LightScribe drive for my 2008 build [C2D E8400, 4GB DDR2 800, AMD HD 4870, Vista Ultimate + Linspire], and I never even used the feature. Burned less than a dozen discs total as well.
  I feel like optical media died around that same time. Netflix introduced its streaming service, torrents entered the mainstream, Blu Ray flopped, and MP3 players replaced CD players (and then streaming replaced MP3 players shortly after). Didn't even bother with an optical drive in my 2014 build [i5-4670K, 16GB DDR3 1866, GTX 780, Win8.1 + Ubuntu]. Current build doesn't have one, either [7700X, 32GB DDR5 6000, 4090, Win11 + Arch]. Just been hanging onto the same drive since 2008, for the rare occasion that I actually need to burn a disc. At this point it's been over 5 years.

I burn Blu-rays once in a while. They work for backup.
- They don't last very long. About 5-10 years at most, and that's if you bought special archival burnable DVDs. If you depend on them for backups, you should check the integrity annually (always include a checksum like SHA256 with any backup archive).
  
  I have CDs that I burned in the 90s that still work fine. I’m assuming the blu-rays I burn now will probably last as long, which is decades longer than I need them to.
- ...you need so much specific equipment. You do realise that the day blue ray was announced we collectively gave up on physical data storage in the form of polished mineral disks right?
  
  So much equipment.
  First you have to buy the DVD writer and then you also have to get yourself blank DVDs.
  
  We definitely did not gave up on discs. They may no longer be mass consumer oriented. But bluray for backup, archiving and data transfer are still a thing. Nothing beats the bandwidth of a plane filled with hard drives. The media itself is not relevant, magnetic tape is still available and used to this day. The first time I held more than a terabyte in my hand was in a data tape cartridge. Consumer hard drives hadn't gotten there yet. Even today, new optical media is being researched. There are fascinating breakthroughs on laser engraved crystal storage.
  Anyways, I just wanted to remember that wasteful mass consumption media is not representative of humanity as a whole.
  
  I just use a USB Blu-ray burner. Similar to this one:
  https://a.co/d/0KIB1LJ
  
  Polished mineral? Like a silicon wafer? um??
- NOOOOO! You must use cheap AliExpress SSDs, because something something 1980's tech something something technological advancements must be pushed at all cost!
  
  Tape or bust (if you can afford it)
- I've never had a Blu-ray player and at this point I expect I never will.
- I use them all the time. If you plan to leave any data behind that even theoretically exists in 50 years, readable or not, optical media is your only option. Or Ardrive if you want to spend 1000x the amount and make it public. Or microfilm if you are a masochist. In case you plan on leaving any videos around for your grandchildren.

I still have a big stack of blank CDs and DVDs. I burned a DVD late last year. I don't think I've hit my last time yet. But maybe.
- No way crazyyyy this generalization didn't apply to SOMEONE on the internet. no wayyyyyy
  
  You know 4chan is back online, right?

Last time I saw this template it was "Someday your parent will carry you in their arm for the last time and neither of you will know it was the last time."
😭
- My grandfather made it a point to lift everyone until he couldn't get then off the ground anymore.

I still burn them sometimes for the car.
- The car you downloaded? Because YOU would totally download a car?
  
  I downloaded a dealership, and i don't know where to put it.
- I think that was the last CD I burned too, before I just started auxing in my phone with Spotify.
  Based on my phone and car-stereo timelines, I guess that means my last burn was probably in 2009 at the latest.

I loved DVD-RAM. I could just mount them in Linux and copy backups on it. They are even reusable, like you could just delete a super old backup and put a new one on it. I think I stopped using them, because of capacity.
- That sounds like slow-ass RAM.

I miss lightscribe
- I used to use the work lightscribe to burn my band's cds.
- I was just about to comment that the last time I did it, it was because I had some lightscribe disks that I wanted to try, but already had no use for anything on a CD.
- Wasn't that the label making thing? I think I had a laptop once that had that as a feature but it was literally never used
- I still have a lightscribe drive in my main PC. No lightscribe discs though.

I just burned one today, it was the easiest way to transfer a game to a Windows 95 notebook. 🫠
- Friggin Keener
  
  Why didn't you just zip drive it?
- Wait is that in the background supposed to be the tardis?

I didn't know it was the last time, and I don't know when exactly it was, but I do know what it was that I burnt:
A Linux install CD
- Haha same. Honestly I think that was the only reason I ever burned CDs.
  
  For a while, burning CDs was my way of keeping backup of stuff. I might still have a bunch of them stored somewhere and if I still had any way to read them I would be picking them up right now to see which ones still worked and if there was anything interesting in there.

I burned an audio CD just a few weeks ago. My car doesn't have Bluetooth audio, so I've kept going old school all along. I bought a few stacks of empty CD-R's and DVD-R's when the stores wanted to get rid of them.
I have zero streaming subscriptions and no intention of getting any. The number of films, games and music albums I've bought from flea markets and second hand stores during the past 10 years has to be in the hundreds. And not one has cost more than 3$.
Even my kids haven't complained about the lack of streaming, they seem perfectly happy using my physical media library.
- Whoa, you sound exactly like an improved version of me!
  Where do you get .wav files these days??
  
  I get them by ripping CD:s or digitizing vinyl albums.
  EDIT: Typo.
- Yep, don't give in to ease of streaming, that's how they win, and take it all from you. Everyone needs to own what they pay for.
  
  Yep. My brother has at least 4 streaming subscriptions that add up to closer to 100$ per month. I once asked him how much he actually uses them and his response was: "I don't know, many times a week! But it's nice to have them if I want to watch something!"
  To me the idea of basically throwing away more than 1000$ per year is simply horrifying.

Jokes on you, I still burn my acquired digital media to BluRay discs
Disk rot is like 25 years while an SSD still doesn't have that kind of shelf life
- Who are these mad men who are dumping stuff to SSDs and then sitting them on a shelf? Can't get my mind around it.
  
  You'd be surprised. And then they tell me disk rot makes BD not recommended.... meanwhile this happens after several decades and is exceedingly rare
- Right post there chief
- Doesn't it make more sense use harddisks?
  I mean, the ultimate long terms storage medium seems to be tape, but that stuff is very expensive, but outside that harddisks seem to have the best balance of accessibility and shelf life.

I don't burn CDs, I buy music on pre-owned CDs (Best Of albums, etc.) and rip them to my computer. Cheaper than some of the online music stores where you download the music files.
- You should checkout the public library.
  
  For music CDs? I dunno bout that (see comment above). I do borrow books a lot, if that counts.
- I’m curious. Why not just torrent?
  
  Tbh I don't know. I torrented lots of stuff as a kid (including music on Soulseek), but now I feel like paying for stuff. I know, weird. I suppose when I do buy music on the internet I want to support the artists. Paying for used CDs is just whatever, they're cheap.

Unless I die tomorrow, you're wrong.

I do the opposite now. I buy discs cheap from bin stores, rip them onto my desktop and then upload to my home library for more affordable 'streaming'.

If we include DVDs I probably put a Linux distro iso on one in 2010 or 2011. CDs? Maybe a CD I made for a road trip on 2009 or 2010.

I thought that I burned my last cd a long time ago until my uni required me to hand in my thesis on a cd.
Buying a 4-pack of CDs (with cases) was more expensive than buying a 128gb sd card.

We should go back to doing it, physical media is where it's at.
- Physical media yes, CDs or DVDs no. Most discs I burned are probably unreadable by now. I remember my favorite artist explaining how he probably had to stop making music because it just wasn't financially viable. So I decided to buy all his albums (I had all the albums in mp3 format for years). Its about 10 years later, all the CDs are lost or destroyed (most in my car). I still have a NAS with the original mp3s I downloaded 20 years ago.
  
  Yeah, I burned 100s of music cds as well about 20 years ago, and stored them in those books with slots. They weren't stored in a car, but still about a quart of them doesn't play anymore, and I am sure it won't be long before none of them will. All my store bought cds of the same age or older still works fine though.
  Homeburning is not a good physical media alternative.
- minidiscs are a good sweet spot if youre looking for something physical. theyre not too big so you can fit a few discs in your pockets. the player itself can easily fit in your pants pocket as well. any minidisc player that has ~~webMD~~ netMD support will let you add or remove tracks using a web browser. theres the LP mode that lets you fit more music on a disc
  
  I would legitimately switch back to one of my old MD players in an heartbeat if I had access to a decent software to load music on. Those little wired remotes with LCD screens were when technology peaked, IMO.
  Any recommendations for an alternative to SonicStage (or whatever Sony’s proprietary crapola from back in the day was called)?

Joke's on you. I have multiple spindles of blank optical media I use regularly. I am not putting a ODE on my Saturn unless I absolutely have to.

I still use them (in M-DISC blu-ray form) for encrypted backups.
- Damn, them discs are expensive.
  
  Yeah, but worth it for important backups since they take a long time to degrade!

Remember me Nero Express, good memories, awesome name for a CD burner.
My brother recently found 15 year old CDs with family photos and they still work.
It's funny how video game media often degrades quickly due to use, but well-packaged and lightly used discs can last for many years. Maybe still a great solution for data that doesn't need to be accessed constantly.
- Except disc rot is a thing.
  
  It's why I've gone through all of my old media and transferred them to my media PC. But I have to admit it's more satisfying when it's in the form of physical media, when it's all computer files I hardly ever look at them.
- As a kid I always thought that Nero is a stupid name for a program because in Finnish nero means genius. To be honest I still think that it's a stupid name.

I'm going to go burn one for the last time just to subvert this meme.

I microwaved a few from 2008 last month. They smell of cancer if you do that though.

CDs are too small, so yeah. DVDs on the other hand? Optical disks are the only practical media that is EMP-proof. After the apocalypse, I'll still have all my coding projects, thank you very much.
- They do degrade naturally, so I hope you are redoing this every decade or so
- CDs and DVDs are the same size? (/s)
- Youll have all your coding projects, but nothing to read them with.

Work with medical data in Germany and you'll burn CDs every day, probably for the next 50 years.
- Yeah, I have a CD with some x rays lying around here somewhere.
  Although the MRT images I got done recently were accessed via QR code (+password) on an online portal, so yay progress.
- Little known fact, German doctors love to make cd's for every procedure. The most famous of these as shown by German medical data is Heinrich's Proctology Polka Mega Mix.

I still see blank CDs and DVDs for sale sometimes. Makes me wonder who is out there using them.
- People who still own a PS1/PS2 having a blast on their jailbroken consoles
- On work we accumulate a wealth of pesonal notes, forms, links, articles etc. We are strictly forbidden to use USB-Sticks, but the DVD-Burner are still working...
  My last DVD was a Knoppix though, just for the fun of it.
  
  We used to do that in industrial automation. If you make any changes to the PLC / HMI / SCADA software, burn a DVD with what you changed and leave it next to the rack. No danger of bringing in viruses on a USB stick (the whole system was air-gapped) and you'd still have a backup available.
  
  ooh knoppix!, my first intro to linux
- People keeping old ass industrial equipment alive. I had to buy some CD-Rs recently because it was the only way to get files on or off an ancient Win95 machine that had no network or USB ports. The machinery it interacts with costs a million dollars, so replacing it is no small thing.
- In some secure facilities it's basically the only way to transfer data. USB drives aren't allowed and there's no direct peer to peer networking either.
- I buy them, and floppy disks too.

CDs are geat, still burn them all the time. I have a Jellyfin server that hosts my digital music collection, but sometimes I may be going on a long drive without internet and CDs are unmatched for that. No battery, no internet requirement, and hold hundreds of hours of music in a a small book in my backseat.
- We're the same, you and I!
- I have an old android phone running lineage and I host a hotspot if I want it to have data, it's amazing how well Android Auto works without Internet access compared to having data though.

I did know. It was 2 years ago when me and my neighbour pranked our neighborhood grandma by burning shitty music and leaving the CD in the mail.

Cheap difraction gratings though, indispensable

I have a CD player in my 2004 car and I burn CDs regularly.
- I have a 2005 car, but I don't burn CDs. I plug my phone into a cassette adapter.

Burning cds of my punk band to sell
Encountering the first bunch of “I don’t own a cd player” people.
Cracking the music biz during the collapse of it was a bad idea.
- All a part of corpos plan to make it so you can never own anything ever again. Subscriptions only. Drink a verification can to skip song.

I remember the day I burned my last CD. The fire department paid me a visit.
- Haha thanks dad

What's burning a cd?
- The act of ‘burning’ an optic disc was to write data onto a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray. It was called that because a laser would literally burn the information into the disc.
  
  Thanks grandpa🙏
- Fuck the irony of a child calling themselves the grammar police.
  The internet is a lie and I take no one seriously.
  
  Bro, I'm an adult male

Mdisks are a viable offline long term backup solution, and cheaper to get started with than tape drives.

I felt scammed for a split second recently because I bought a new laptop and it had no optical drives...
- the scam you bought was windows
- I remember buying a laptop with a blue-ray drive. That was at least 10 years ago, and I never used it, other than holding Call of Duty (the OG) for half a year, then I put it back in its box, and that was the last time I held a CD as well (maybe a DVD? Potato / Tomato).
  Good riddance, as SSDs were up and coming, which sped up USB drives as well. (yes, yes... They still have a use, just not for me, at all).

I doubt it. Although, I imagine I may have recorded over my last tape.

I was hoping for it tho.

High school kid: Burned a what?

I burned a few last week

I’m gonna burn a bunch of music to cd this week just because I can. Might even archive some movies.

Bullshit. Just two weeks ago I burned an audio CD as a gift for someone who enjoys listening in their car or on their player in the bathroom. Not everything needs to be always online streaming or has the ability to read SD cards or USB sticks.
Burning a FLAC and hearing on a HiFi system with nice cable headphones sounds so much better than a garbled compressed audio stream that gets recompressed to be send over Bluetooth.

I'm not dead yet and have a Blu-ray burner and some blanks.

I still burn blu ray M-discs

I literally have to do this for work so unless I lose this job it's gonna be another decade

I have a whole cake of 100 blank DVDs unopened from 10 years ago. Been looking for a reason for them. Maybe make a post apocalyptic art piece.
- You could cut them into throwing stars. Or maybe take them to the nearest disc golf course.

There are plenty of people who never did that at all.
- ✋

June 13th, 2022. 7:13pm. If that's the last one I burn, I will at least know when. It was Windows XP Media Center 2005, for my fleamarket Dell Demension E510. Well, more accurately, an E310 with a E510 motherboard.
- I'm about to drop a supermicro Xeon board plus an E3-1275 and 32G of ECC ram into the guts of this old Optiplex 790 mini tower I have. (i3 2100, so a generation newer, and a Xeon instead of an i3)
  I plan to eventually get a better case but for now this is fine. Right now it's running Plex media server on FreeBSD on bare metal, but I'm planning to swap to proxmox once I get the new board installed.
  Unfortunately that won't be for another week. While the board will be here today, it is a little more power hungry than the old system, and I'm already pushing the OEM 375W PSU with 5 drives (SATA SSD and 4 7200rpm SAS drives) so I also have a PSU coming. But that is not expected until middle of next week.
  
  Oh, that sounds like a fun project! Going to post it to Lemmy when you're done? I'm not familiar with proxmox. I see it's based on Debian, is it basically an os specifically for running vm instances or something?
  I like the look of that generation Optiplex. My current main PC is a slightly upgraded XPS 8930, which is IMO one of the ugliest Dell cases. And the airflow has been a terrible challenge. But since it's not a standard board, I can't just pop it in a better case. And there's no way im buying a new mobo for an LGA 1151. So, I'm stuck until I build something new.

A relative lately wanted me to burn an Audio CD on their Windows 10 PC. I had little to no idea how to do it, since last time I did that was on Windows XP.
- It's easy, you just have to sign up for Microsoft's CD burning app for $6.99/month. Make sure to have your credit card, social security number, and birth certificate handy when you setup your account. You just have to watch a short advertisement before burning each CD.
  
  Just don't use the free version...
  "But I would walk five hun- THIS TRACK WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY MICROSOFT WINDOWS 11. NOW WITH AI CO-PILOT ASSISTANCE TO GET YOUR WORK DONE QUICKER THAN EVER BEFORE -dred miles, and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who NEED ANSWERS FAST? BING IS NOW BETTER THAN EVER WITH BUILT IN AI FUNCTIONALITY. TRY IT OUT TODAY walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door."
- Download ImgBurn or CD Burner XP
  
  Nero or bust

I laugh when people think cds are old. They're still the best form of digital physical media. Now I prefer analog media of course, but convenience and portability of digital is nice.
- Compact Disc Digital Audio is difficult to improve upon in terms of quality. For day to day listening I'll either use mp3 or FLAC but especially as the streaming services enshittify I'll take my media on CD, thanks.
  Both of my cars have CD players, I probably ought to burn some discs to listen to. I often drive in silence these days.
- It depends, I believe actual tape keeps data usable way longer than CDs.
  
  I mean, most likely any pirated ZX Spectrum software on old audio cassettes will work.
  
  That's so cool. I do a lot with audio tape (mostly 1/4" 7.5ips and 15ips), but never data tape.

Never burned a CD in my life. And now I never will, just to spite you
- Zoomer

i sure was fucking hoping it was though

Occasionally break out the burner, it’s just very rare. Plus these days it’s a portable little usb drive.

I was just thinking "I need to burn some music CDs for when I travel", just in case.
I went on a car trip earlier this year, but forgot my bluetooth to aux adapter. I tried to buy one while I was on the road, but places were sold out, didn't carry them, or they only sold them via online orders.
As luck would have it, I still had some old CDs I'd burned 20ish years ago sitting in my glove compartment! I honestly did not expect them to work because they'd likely spent at least the last decade+ in that glove compartment, enduring extremes of heat and cold. They were scratched to hell and back and I had always heard that they degrade and become unreadable after a certain amount of time, even under ideal storage conditions.
Luckily for me, though, they mostly worked. I think there were a couple of songs on one disc that skipped a bunch, and everything else played fine. I rediscovered a few great songs from my youth that I'd not heard in so long that I'd practically forgotten about them.

I'm baffled at how many people here still burn cds.....