Ask HN: What alternatives to floppy disks exist?
Nowadays, the best thing that would come close to floppy disks are SD cards and usb sticks. And even though both sd cards and usbsticks are becoming cheaper every day, they're still nowhere near as cheap as floppy disks. And I can't think of anyone who would be hoarding hundreds of USB sticks, just to give them away never to be seen again. Additionally, and more obviously, floppy disks can no longer keep up with modern technology: they don't allow to store much information at all (roughly 2MB is less than peanuts nowadays. Most of my PDF documents are twice the size), and hardly anyone I know of even has a floppy disk drive anymore.
Of course I know about CDroms -- but the thing about CDs is, they require a CDburner, and the process requires a while. Certainly not as much as it used to, but this factor persists. Also, unless you use CDRW, the data is permanently stored onto it, and if you no longer need it, it just becomes a pice of worthless, non-resuable plastic.
So what alternatives are there, alternatives that don't involve cloud sharing? What hardware-based mediums do we have that allows sharing data in a cheap, disposable way, that doesn't require me to store data on the internet?
What is there to expect in the future?
13 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 40.0 ms ] threadI honestly do not remember how much floppy disks used to cost; it's been... probably over a decade since I bought one. But $1.26 seems pretty reasonable for such a use.
I foresee the day we can buy $1 flash drives at the local dollar store. Relative to inflation.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3MII96/
Not exactly cheap, if you ask me. Not exactly super-expensive either, of course, but definitely not cheap. And I think the reasons the price for floppy disks doesn't seem to go down is because only certain people still use floppy disks, i.e., the need for floppy disks is nearly non-existant.
eBay, Alibaba, or contacting the wholesale division of any of the stores you get searching "bulk flash drive" on Google would be a better idea. They start around $2.50/drive retail with your logo custom printed, so you can do much better wholesale.
If you really don't want the information (even encrypted) to travel over networks you don't control, then you probably can afford SD cards or USB sticks or more esoteric special constructions.
Can you elaborate on why you feel a need for such physical media?
Maybe it's not perceived the same way in the USA, but in Europe, most people who use cloud-services find it increasingly difficult to trust american cloud-services, thanks to the NSA. Hence why I'm looking for alternative ways to share sensitive information, programs, documents, you name it.
There's of course also owncloud, which is nice enough, but let's just assume that some may not even have access to the internet in the first place.
So, with respect to the point you made (make no mistake, it's a very good point), I say that there are scenarios that justify need for physical mediums to share data.
That said, I agree that sensitive or not, we really shouldn't be sharing everything over only a handful of communication channels (typically home & work broadband connection + mobile phone data connection). It makes surveillance all too easy.
This is where I think smart people could make a difference. When I want to share data with someone in the same location as me we should really be talking P2P only. It wouldn't allow NSA & co to get the same full picture as easy as they can now with central data hubs and only a few communication channels.
I guess you could say I'm merely planning for the future. Not that I wish that I'd ever actually have to go about sharing data via physical mediums, but I wouldn't exactly bet on it.