On reflection, I like it - it's weird. Old internet weird. Like someone with a couple hundred bucks and some time on their hands wants to do something they think is fun or funny... it feels human. I think we need more of this. Extra points for using a sketchy o365 form that looks like a scam.
I went to our pediatric ophthalmologist's office yesterday. There was another young person in the room, and our doctor asked if we mind if she's scribing.
When leaving I commented that I like that the doctor is using a human scribe and not an AI. Both of them were beaming.
Few weeks ago at a casual office gathering we were discussing given the choice do we hire an intern or get more AI credits. It was clear that hiring an intern is the right move for the industry, even if it results in an abandoned repo or two at the end of Summer. Especially now that AI shovel sellers have realized small teams are willing to spend on AI credits instead of $5000 a month on an intern, and are adjusting the prices accordingly.
All of these are more humane experiences we should not lose out on.
Felt the same way initially, but you are very much right that this feels like a throwback to a more playful time about twenty years ago. Put in a request for the OpenBSD src repository, which is too big to fit on a CD these days and I am looking forward to see if/how they square that circle. OpenBSD used to ship their code on CDs up until about ten years ago, so it is a bit of a fun throwback in that way as well.
> Put in a request for the OpenBSD src repository, which is too big to fit on a CD these days and I am looking forward to see if/how they square that circle.
From literally the first few sentences:
> If we can make you a CD, it may take a few weeks to reach you.
They just won’t send it to you. Also keep in mind that they say it has to be your repo - not sure how they’re verifying that but you probably won’t get it for that reason too.
Riddle me this, what was the cost to me in terms of trying? If I feel like treating this like the fun we used to have online, what is the point in sucking all the fun out of it by "going lawyer" on the conditions? If I get a CD (or even DVD), it will be a fun story to tell (like when I asked Schneier to write a true Schneier Fact as opposed to his signature when I ordered a signed copy of one of his books). If I get nothing, well, I guess my life is simply over at that point.
You speculated wondering how they’ll manage it, I gave you an answer. If that ruined the fun for you, you may want to rethink how you say things on message boards.
So many ways for splitting across multiple discs... git bundle, split tar files, etc.
Now if it came with a userfs layer that lets users disc jockey and use the repo without copying it first, with some smart mapping making disc swaps seldomly needed, then serious respect would be in order.
Really? A cause of our societal decline is requesting a CD for a repository that is too big to fit on it? Call me a naive optimist, but I would like to believe that whoever is reading the form results on GitHub's end is more than capable to make the call within a few seconds as to whether they also would find some joy in the challenge the size poses or just ignore it and move on with their day.
Fun joke at Sony's expense but it's going to spectacularly backfire when Microsoft inevitably announces that the next Xbox won't support physical discs.
It reminds me of Google proudly boasting their headphone jack when Apple removed theirs, then OnePlus proudly boasting their headphone jack when Google removed theirs.
Yeah, cause you all stop offering them within one upgrade cycle! I just checked my carrier, and the only phones they offer with jacks are the lowest end Motos and TCLs.
I used to hate phones without the headphone jacket too, even though my headphone lines always needed some detangling out of my pocket when I needed them. But then I tried a pair of Bluetooth earbuds (two earbuds connected with a plastic band to hang on your neck), and actually fell in love. No need to detangle lines, and when I don't listen to things I could just take down the earbuds but leave the plastic band on my neck. Not easy to lose, compared to the completely wireless earbuds. Batteries are in one or both ends of the plastic band, so one charge could last a long time. The only downside is it takes up more space than both wired headphones and wireless earbuds when you put it in a bag, because the plastic band is not that flexible. But that's a cost I am willing to pay.
The backfiring is baked in, if you think about it: This program is going to die in just a few days, while Sony is going to continue selling physical games for years.
Dont know about other places, but in my place, almost every xbox user I know already play all digitally now. Literally xbox is the first console platform to drop physical disc long before sony, though not officially stated.
> Supplies are limited, and the first 1,000 eligible submissions will receive one. Limit one per person. Availability may be limited by country or region.
This seems quite limited to be a real product, but also quite a lot for seemingly what’s just a joke to mock Sony for ceasing blu-ray production.
It’s worth mentioning that github does (did?) do some cool stuff with physical media archiving of code like the arctic project [1], but these CDs are burned, not pressed so they’ll only last around 10 years
There are fully automated disc burner bots. EPSON models take 100 discs at once and burn up to 30 discs per hour, so 1000 discs is just 10 magazine load/unloads or <1.5 days in machine time.
Load fresh discs from magazine, put onto an internal disc drive, let a connected PC burn it, take out, print on it, and move it to a burned disc holder. All in one box. The networked model does it over LAN like a laser printer.
All the same, they don't need a thousand copies of one GitHub repo. They need a thousand different copies of various unrelated repos. Maybe some disc duplicators can handle that without constant user involvement, but all the ones I've worked with are designed around mass replication of one individual ISO.
Looks like target market of this type of duplicators is hospitals using it for exchanging medical images, where optical discs are still very common as disposable storage medium. I'm sure they don't print hundreds of identical chest X-ray images... This one really isn't bunch of DVD drives wired in parallel to a no-name ASIC, it's one drive stuffed in a microwave enclosure along with a robot to change out discs for it.
Some poor underage girl has been trafficked in the Philippines since she can remember, and it is the only life she will ever know. Roofing 14 hours a day sounds like a pretty sweet gig.
How do we know this is real? Most online form providers will host all forms on their own domain, so it could just be a great way to get some data harvesting going on the .microsoft gTLD.
Rather concerned that there's exactly two comments noticing this. I immediately was like "um, it's an Office 365 form, are people this gullible". EDIT: Fortunately a few more people getting it now.
This is entirely irrelevant. The problem is that anybody can make a Microsoft Form and there's no obvious indication that it's a form from Github without digging around.
The alternative is that someone managed to hijack the official GitHub social media accounts on X, TikTok, Instagram, and Threads to post this, and four hours later, no one from the official leadership has come out to call it out. I find that hard to believe. It's probably legit.
I also heavily doubt its a joke. Shipping a thousand CDs is a drop in the bucket for a company like this. The free marketing they get from this promotion more than makes up for any cost associated with doing so.
At the bottom: 'This content is created by the owner of the form. The data you submit will be sent to the form owner. Never give out your password.' It's very clearly just a Microsoft 365 form, and most likely it's just going to take your info and not send you a CD.
So a funny thing happened to me a while ago... I built my current PC, about 3 years ago (an AMD 7700X but whatever). At some point I wanted to check some old data DVDs I burned, maybe one year after I built the PC or something: basically to make sure everything on the data DVDs was safely backed up in other places...
So I dug out an old internal DVD reader/burner (still have a few of those) only to notice that: my PC tower didn't physically allow to insert an internal CD/DVD reader. I hadn't realized until then. At first I tried to push on the front panel, thinking maybe it was going to open entirely. So I went on IRC, in a good old famous channel, to vent a bit. And they told me it was a thing: new PC towers with a slot of a CD/DVD reader are really uncommon now.
I literally didn't notice until I actually tried, after a year or so, to put a reader in the PC.
Now of course I had plenty other options: using another tower, my server (a Xeon workstation) has got a CD/DVD reader, I could ghetto-mount the internal reader temporarily while letting the tower opened, etc.
But that's not the point: internal CD/DVD readers/burners kinda went away, silently, with some of us not even noticing that PC towers suddenly didn't even offer the physical possibility to install them.
Ever time I see one of these public forms hosted on a generic form platform, I wonder whether it’s legitimate or just a phishing attempt to collect personal information.
Yeah, 2010 CDs were still pretty visible. Not sure how many people still ordered them, but at least they were always distributed at events. Don't remember when it started to no longer fit on a CD.
Awesome! It is indeed a marvelous merchandize concept! An effortful work of ingenious ideas and great history... sealed in a iridescent CD and signed by a supportive holder of it on public...
Thank you, for an awesome, relatively ingenious idea to preserve the history and highlight its significance in a human history, the love for discoveries and cooperation...
In response to trends in the gaming industry, as of 1st April 2027 Domino's UK will cease production of physical pizzas and shift to production of digital pizzas only.
Consumers will be able to download our full range of delicious pizza codes and, using the power of the imagination, enjoy them in an entirely virtual sense.
So they are only going to "sell" 1000 physical discs before throwing in the towel and going back to all digital? Honestly this is worse than Sony. They should charge a fair price and continue to offer the service for people who don't have strong enough internet to checkout large repos.
I went shopping at Target today, and their remodeling underway has dedicated an entire display to vinyl 12" records. I know there is a popular retro thing, but this click-and-mortar dichotomy has gotten bonkers!
On reflection, I like it - it's weird. Old internet weird. Like someone with a couple hundred bucks and some time on their hands wants to do something they think is fun or funny... it feels human. I think we need more of this. Extra points for using a sketchy o365 form that looks like a scam.