Update

data_hoarding.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Data hoarding means larger than normal focus on collecting data, often in bigger
 
 Here let be an advice to the good data hoarder.
 
-- As always: in general **minimize the [bad](bad.md), maximize the [good](good.md)**. Size, cost, [maintenance](maintenance.md), time, anxiety and other trouble are bad. Value of the data, its durability, independence, freedom etc. are good. **Know what and why you're doing it** -- you probably don't want to hoard famous Hollywood movies that you can pirate from 1000 sites at any time, there's no point in that, you want to save files so as to back them up, have them ready in case the Internet stops existing, save something that's likely to be censored and so on.
+- As always: in general **minimize the [bad](bad.md), maximize the [good](good.md)**. Size, cost, [maintenance](maintenance.md), time, anxiety and other trouble are bad. Value of the data, its durability, independence, freedom etc. are good. **Know what and why you're doing it** -- you probably don't want to hoard famous Hollywood movies that you can pirate from 1000 sites at any time, there's no point in that, you want to save files so as to back them up, have them ready in case the Internet stops existing, save something that's likely to be censored and so on. Basically imagine the difference between someone collecting useful objects and someone filling his house up to the roof with complete junk -- the same kind of thing's happening with data.
 - **Collect small data of high value**, maximize the value/size ratio: typically save a lot of text data, vector images are fine too, be more picky with bitmap images and things like video always have to be considered extremely well, curated and edited to shrink their size. **Keeping your collection as small as possible is the number one priority** as the size is what makes the difference between having a pocket USB stick that can be quickly and easily backed up on any file sharing website or a CD vs maintaining a [RAID](raid.md) of backups, consuming new CPUs and spending most of your hoarding time just keeping your collection alive.
 - **Hoard physical books** and similar oldschool data such as photos, vinyl records -- not only they often have advantages over electronic data, such as being storable without electricity and lasting longer, they are also usually of better quality and higher value. Internet data are full of junk and noise because it's a cheap medium -- a paper book on the other hand has to carefully choose what to include, i.e. it already did this part of the job for you.
 - **Use appropriate formats and quality**: if the value of the data is text, save it as txt (even if you found it in pdf), if it's a black and white scan, save it as black and white image (no need for RGB), if it's a diagram, find vector version of it and save that, if it's a meme whose entertaining value will be preserved even at half resolution, don't save it in 1080K resolution, save it at lowest acceptable quality etc. Use simple, common file formats that can be handled by free software, do NOT use proprietary formats or formats that are extremely complicated if you can at all avoid it. Go to great lengths to extract valuable data out of shitty formats: for example if you find a vlog video whose main value is in what's being said and not the video itself, rather find and store the video text transcript than the video itself (it takes much less space, can be searched, indexed, printed and backed up on paper, ...), or, as the next best thing, extract only audio and compress that so that it's just barely understandable.