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A comment on Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months. Parent comment

Re:Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months by diafygi on Friday June 01, 2018 @04:14PM (#17209703)
In the talk, there's a parallel drawn between the nuclear industry 60 years ago and big data now, where the nuclear was originally touted as a miracle cure for everything, then disasters happened, then it never really got over the stigma despite its huge potential.

Society decided, for now, the upsides aren't worth the downsides.

Oil is another parallel where society is currently just at the point where we are starting to not value the upsides over the downsides.

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Re:Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months by Scooty on Friday June 01, 2018 @05:47PM (#17210698)
Seems like oil and nuclear energy are different because both can be replaced with alternative sources of energy. What are the alternative sources of user data?
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Re:Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months by tankerslay on Saturday June 02, 2018 @01:59AM (#17212981)
Paper records, human memory....

Comparing growth in data storage versus energy usage per capita is interesting.

Even if you look back to the founding of the U.S., the change in energy use per person is actually only a few fold, definitely less than an order of magnitude.

Harder to compare quantity of data storage but the change would seem much larger. How much data is there, per U.S. person?

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Re:Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months by r00fus on Saturday June 02, 2018 @07:46PM (#17217055)
Why is data a requirement to keep?

Currently has value with externalized downsides.

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