• xia@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 hours ago

    This must unironically be the first “big data”, where it is cheaper to move the computation than the data.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      Made in 1936 and Kafka died in 1924. He would probably have died in a concentration camp if he lived to see this. Nazis did not give special treatment to Jewish writers, for example Josef Čapek (✝ approx. 14 April 1945 Bergen-Belsen). Still, there must have been other bizarre filing systems in his era, a multi-story vertical conveyor belt of filing cabinets is used in some town halls to this day.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Nazis did not give special treatment to Jewish writers, for example Josef Čapek

        They kind of did. The Nazis started out by hunting down and imprisoning or killing academics. If you were smart and educated, and not well connected inside the Nazi party, then you were enemy number one at the start of their takeover.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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          3 minutes ago

          Yeah, that kind of special treatment, absolutely. But once in a concentration camp, they’d be just another subject with a number, albeit likely a lower one.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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    9 hours ago

    Scientists in 1985: “This data can now all fit on a computer thanks to CDs. Get a few of them pressed at Gramozávody Loděnice every year and keep the index plus updates on a HDD or tape.”

    Scientists in 1990: “With CD-R, you don’t have to pay a fortune to have a few copies of the database pressed every year. You don’t need the magnetic storage buffer either, updates can be written on the disks.”

    Scientists in 2000: “Screw CDs. Many-gigabyte HDDs are decently cheap. You can store full scans rather than transcripts.”

    Scientists in 2010: “You can afford terabytes in SSDs now, and keep a few copies off-site for backup, all in a cloud solution with access from anywhere with less latency than the HDDs.”

    Central Social Insurance Institute Card File in Prague-Smíchov in 2013:
    Gonna pretend I didn't hear that

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      13 hours ago

      Don’t see an easy way of walking around those counterweights as it looks pretty tight or you get smacked in the chin as he suddenly rockets up

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        8 hours ago

        Watch on YouTube
        Here’s a video of them in action - you can see the Nazis tried to create popular high-budget movies despite the war costs. They weren’t very fast even back in the day and now that they are only used for historical records, they probably go even slower. I’m pretty sure their usage is very restricted and still they likely needed an exception from the European equivalent of OSHA.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    15 hours ago

    What Futurama level bureaucrat do I need to be to get assigned this post?

    • motor_spirit@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I’m sitting here wondering what modern safety programs would find wrong with the processes involved here. Looks amazing though.

      • xpinchx@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        The obvious one is an enclosure or latches door to prevent accidental falls. They might be wearing fall protection that we can’t see but I doubt it.

        There’s a good chance nobody ever fell from one of these but those regulations exist for a reason.

        Maybe less obvious is fail-safes for any elevator system so if the brakes fail it doesn’t freefall into the ground.

  • ironsoap@lemmy.one
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    14 hours ago

    “The offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague, Czechoslovakia with the largest vertical letter file in the world. Consisting of cabinets arranged from floor to ceiling tiers covering over 4000 square feet containing over 3000 drawers 10 feet long. It has electric operated elevator desks which rise, fall and move left or right at the push of a button. to stop just before drawer desired. The drawers also open and close electronically. Thus work which formerly taxed 400 workers is now done by 20 with a minimum of effort.

    Source