During an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, a whistleblower made shocking allegations regarding a DOGE security breach at the National Labor Relations Board.
“around ten gigabytes of data are, quote, the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias worth if someone printed these files as hard copy documents.”
One one hand I hate dumb comparisons like that, on the other hand it’s really important for people to understand how little storage actual information, i.e. text/numbers, requires. The whole Bible is less than 5 megabytes - each and every picture you snap on your phone fits it twice! Google’s daily dose of your personal user surveillance is probably just a few kilobytes, and is gone around the world and back while your video is still loading. In an internet dominated by high throughput video streaming people need to understand how little storage is required to get perfect data sets. 10GB just might fit all social security records of all US citizens (excl. media of course).
That comparison is way off. Plain text works out to about 677,000 pages per gigabyte and regular printer paper is alot 0.1 mm thick, so 10 GB of data - 6.7 million pages - would make a stack of paper two thirds of a kilometre high.
Even if we’re talking image files of scanned text, you’re in the neighborhood of 15,000 pages per gigabyte which is probably in the neighborhood of an encyclopedia set, making 10 GB roughly equal to ten encyclopedia sets…
Yes, this is happening. Meanwhile also this is happening: US office that counters foreign disinformation is being eliminated, say officials - a coincidence?
Aside:
One one hand I hate dumb comparisons like that, on the other hand it’s really important for people to understand how little storage actual information, i.e. text/numbers, requires. The whole Bible is less than 5 megabytes - each and every picture you snap on your phone fits it twice! Google’s daily dose of your personal user surveillance is probably just a few kilobytes, and is gone around the world and back while your video is still loading. In an internet dominated by high throughput video streaming people need to understand how little storage is required to get perfect data sets. 10GB just might fit all social security records of all US citizens (excl. media of course).
That comparison is way off. Plain text works out to about 677,000 pages per gigabyte and regular printer paper is alot 0.1 mm thick, so 10 GB of data - 6.7 million pages - would make a stack of paper two thirds of a kilometre high.
Even if we’re talking image files of scanned text, you’re in the neighborhood of 15,000 pages per gigabyte which is probably in the neighborhood of an encyclopedia set, making 10 GB roughly equal to ten encyclopedia sets…