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How to save your online writing from disappearing forever

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How to save your online writing from disappearing forever

While the notion lingers that “the internet is forever,” it can also feel like it’s written on water. If you’re an internet-based creative, the company that publishes your writing or exhibits an online gallery of your work can suddenly fold (see: Gawker or Game Informer), migrate content management systems, or simply unpublish older work. In that case, the article you researched for a month, the story you carefully constructed, or the gallery of photos that you painstakingly put together could, in that moment, be forever unavailable. And if you’ve linked to your work in a blog or social network, that link has now become useless.

So what do you do? You can save a PDF of each of your works to a local drive, an online storage service, or to your preferred productivity app. You can create your own website to showcase your favorite works. You can use the paid tier of bookmarking services such as Pocket Premium or Raindrop Pro, which automatically save copies of the sites you bookmark. 

Or you can archive and / or exhibit your work using a service created for that purpose. These archiving services offer a place where you can exhibit some or all of your work to potential fans or employers, and even (for a price) automatically find and save your work for you. 

In this article, I’m going to concentrate on resources for writers and other text-based creatives. There are also resources out there for photographers and other visual artists, such as Flickr and 500px. We’ll cover those separately in the future.

The Wayback Machine can save copies of your online work — except when it can’t.
Screenshot: Internet Archive
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The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been archiving webpages since 1996, and if you’ve been putting your work online that long — or longer — there’s a good chance you can find it somewhere in the archive. However, not everything has been archived, and archived pages can be removed if the owners of the site request it.

You can request that a specific page be archived by using a browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, iOS, or Android). The extension saves the page to the archive, allowing you to access it later, even if the original disappears. However, since the publisher of the site can, as mentioned, ask that the archive be removed, you may want to use the Wayback Machine to find pages you may have missed and archive them using a safer method.

In addition, at the time this was written, it was possible that the Chrome extension could itself disappear — when I last looked, a notification on the download page read, “This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn’t follow best practices for Chrome extensions.” (Part, no doubt, of the change in Google’s extension specification.) There are other, if less handy, ways to save your work to the archive, detailed in a blog written in 2017.

The Wayback Machine is free to use, although you can donate if you choose.

Authory can track specific sites and automatically add your contributions.
Screenshot: Authory
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Authory is a long-standing app used by writers to preserve their writing. (Note: I’ve been using Authory for several years, ever since one of the publications I had written for decided to pull its archive off the internet and a colleague told me about the app.) Authory will automatically back up links to your material along with the actual text by scouring the online publications that you’ve specified; because it picks up anything you’ve written for those publications automatically, you don’t have to worry about losing any of your work. Authory also archives videos, podcasts, and individual social media posts or emails.

You can also use Authory as a portfolio to exhibit your content to others. By default, people who click on an article link in your portfolio are sent to the original source, but you can also choose to have them read it from the Authory backup — very useful if that source no longer exists.

Free plan: 10 items max, no auto-import

Paid plans: Standard plan ($15 / month or $144 / year) includes unlimited items, automated import of past and future items, searchable content, and more. Professional plan ($24 / month or $216 / year) adds custom domain support, Zapier app, and higher updates frequency.

Free trial: 14 days of Standard or Pro plan

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Journo Portfolio can create good-looking sites that list articles, videos, and other media.
Screenshot: Journo Portfolio

Despite the name, Journo Portfolio touts its ability to be used by almost any creative who wants to show off work, including visual artists such as photographers and videographers. The emphasis (as can be guessed from its name) is more on creating a portfolio site than archiving, although, if you subscribe to its Pro or Unlimited plan, it will automatically back up saved articles, create an archive of screenshots, and let you import older articles. 

And Journo Portfolio does offer a lot of resources for individualizing that portfolio: you can choose a theme for your homepage and, afterward, tweak that theme by adding blocks of content types, including images (with a gallery, if you so choose), quotes, maps, subscriptions, and a wide variety of other features. Its Unlimited plan even allows you to sell your art or other products from your site.

Free plan: A homepage with your name in the URL along with 10 portfolio items

Paid plans: Plus plan ($8 / month or $60 / year) offers a five-page site with 50 portfolio items. The Pro plan ($12 / month or $96 / year) adds the ability to store 1,000 portfolio items and do article backups as well as up to two collaborators, automatic article imports, and more. The Unlimited plan ($18 a month or $168 /year) gives you unlimited pages, portfolio items, collaborators, and more.

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Free trial: A seven-day trial of the Plus plan on signup

Conifer is managed by a nonprofit arts organization and offers a robust free plan.
Screenshot: Conifer

Conifer, formerly called Webrecorder, is a web archiving service maintained by Rhizome, a nonprofit arts organization. This service works a little differently than Authory or Journo Portfolio, which archive screenshots or PDFs of your articles but can lose links and other interactive parts in the process. Instead, Conifer saves your pages as clickable “sessions” — including workable links — and organizes them into collections. According to Conifer, “viewers of a collection should be able to repeat any action during access that were performed during capture.” You can either keep your collection private or create a public listing of specific items from a collection in order to create a portfolio. 

Conifer feels like a work in progress. It’s not as simple to master as either Authory or Journo Portfolio, and it doesn’t provide any kind of automated saving, but its free plan makes it a viable alternative, especially because it lets you save as many items as you can fit in 5GB of space, while Authory’s and Journo Portfolio’s free plans limit you to just 10 items.

Free plan: 5GB of storage

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Paid plans: For $20 a month, you get 40GB of storage and the option to add more for $5 / month per 20GB. For an annual payment of $200, you get the same 40GB, along with the option to add the 20GB for $50 a year.

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Sony’s PlayStation disc factory is already being repurposed

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Sony’s PlayStation disc factory is already being repurposed

The video game disc is dead, and Sony’s been planning to kill it for some time, according to a report out of Austria. The man who leads Sony’s discmaking operations, Sony DADC president Dietmar Tanzer, told ORF Salzburg that the company’s Thalgau plant produces 600,000 discs every day, half of which are for PlayStation. But since it’ll only be making 10 percent of that volume in 2028, it’s planning to retrain all 300 employees to work on optical microlenses instead.

Thalgau isn’t just one of Sony’s disc plants. It’s where the disc-making division is headquartered, and appears to be its only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility. Sony made discs in the United States for decades, originally in Terre Haute, Indiana and later in New Jersey, but it closed the latter plant in 2011 and moved all manufacturing from Indiana to Thalgau in 2022. Today, the Indiana facility markets itself to automakers who need help packaging and assembling headlights and the like instead.

This transition didn’t happen overnight. A behind-the-scenes video from December 2024 shows that the Thalgau plant was already working on microlenses as of then:

Those lenses, too, are created using discs:

ORF Salzburg writes that Sony has now invested €30 million to manufacture these microlenses, and that mass production may begin “as early as next year.”

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Microlenses are theoretically used in all kinds of emerging applications where you might want to bend light, including headsets, but it appears that Sony may cater to automakers here, too. The head of Sony’s micro optics division gave ORF Salzburg the example of “a car turn signal that is projected onto asphalt.”

All of this is to say: Sony didn’t make this decision in a hurry, and it isn’t likely to change its mind despite the predictable backlash. It’s been winding down disc manufacturing for decades, and it’s ripping off one last band-aid with PlayStation.

According to Sony DADC’s website, it has produced over 26.4 billion discs to date — the vast majority, 23 billion of them, were made between 1983 and 2022 in Terre Haute, Indiana.

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Technology

New sodium-ion battery could reshape grid storage

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New sodium-ion battery could reshape grid storage

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A new sodium-ion battery from Chinese battery giant CATL could eventually affect something much closer to home: the power grid that keeps your lights on. CATL has introduced its TENER Sodium Energy Storage System. The company says it is the world’s first field-validated sodium-ion energy storage system ready for commercial use.

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Think big energy project, not phone upgrade. This battery is built for large storage sites that can support the grid. That kind of storage is getting more attention as electricity demand rises. AI data centers use a lot of power. Heat waves can strain local grids. Solar and wind power also need storage so electricity is available when people need it.

However, CATL has not announced a specific U.S. launch for this system. So, this is more about where grid storage may be headed than what your local utility will install tomorrow.

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CATL unveiled its TENER Sodium Energy Storage System in Munich as sodium-ion batteries move closer to commercial grid storage. (CATL)

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New sodium-ion battery targets grid storage

CATL just launched the TENER Sodium Energy Storage System in Munich, Germany. The company says cumulative shipments should reach 1 gigawatt-hour by the end of 2026. Deliveries in China are expected to start in September 2026. Global deliveries are scheduled to begin in June 2027.

That timeline shows sodium-ion batteries are moving closer to commercial use. The system is designed for stationary storage. In other words, it could help store electricity from solar farms, wind projects or other power sources for later use.

That becomes important when demand jumps during hot afternoons or renewable power drops later in the day.

Sodium-ion battery storage could ease lithium pressure

Most large battery storage projects today use lithium-based systems. Lithium works well, but supply chains can be tight. Prices can also move when demand climbs. CATL says sodium is more than 1,000 times more common than lithium. The company also says sodium is widely distributed around the world.

That could make sodium-ion batteries attractive for grid storage. These batteries do not need to be tiny enough for a phone or light enough for an electric car.

CATL isn’t saying sodium will replace lithium overnight. Instead, the company says sodium and lithium could work together in future energy storage systems.

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For you, the larger point is choice. More battery options could help energy companies reduce their dependence on a single material.

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CATL says the battery fits existing systems

One of CATL’s bigger claims is that TENER Sodium can fit into existing lithium iron phosphate energy storage platforms. CATL says the system shares the same physical footprint as LFP systems. That could help developers avoid changing enclosures, redesigning projects or repeating certification steps.

The system delivers more than 30 megawatt-hours of rated capacity. CATL says each module weighs about 42 metric tons, or about 46 U.S. tons. The company says only 34 units are needed for a 1-gigawatt-hour storage site. The modular design also supports flexible storage durations of 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours. That gives developers more room to tailor projects based on local power needs.

Sodium-ion battery design can handle tough conditions

The TENER Sodium system is built for large energy projects, not home use, with modules designed to store power for the grid. (CATL)

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Battery storage has to work in places that get brutally hot or freezing cold. CATL says TENER Sodium is designed for better extreme-temperature performance, enhanced safety and lower operating costs. The company also says its battery management system gives the sodium-ion system an additional 20 percent safety margin compared with lithium-ion batteries.

The system also uses a top-discharge airflow design that CATL says reduces heat generation by nearly 30 percent compared with conventional systems. CATL says auxiliary power consumption drops from the industry average of 2 percent to 1 percent.

That could be useful for large grid storage projects, especially in places where heat, storms or heavy power demand can strain local systems. CATL also says TENER Sodium operates at only 65 decibels, which is 10 decibels lower than conventional systems. That could help address local concerns when battery storage sites are built closer to where power is needed.

Sodium-ion battery shipments signal commercial momentum

CATL says TENER Sodium has reached full commercial maturity across technology, production capacity and supply chain readiness. The company says it has worked on sodium-ion battery research and development since 2016. CATL also says it has invested about $1.4 billion, depending on exchange rates, over the past decade.

CATL has expanded sodium-ion production lines at its Fuding base in China. The company says that adds 40 gigawatt-hours of annual capacity. Another planned base in Jining, Shandong, could support 160 gigawatt-hours of sodium-ion battery production capacity. CATL also says it signed a three-year, 60-gigawatt-hour sodium-ion energy storage order with HyperStrong in April 2026. The company described it as the world’s largest sodium-ion commercial contract.

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Those numbers show CATL is treating sodium-ion storage as a serious commercial product. That said, U.S. adoption is a separate question. American utilities, regulators and developers would still need to weigh cost, performance, supply chain risk and security concerns.

What this means to you

This sodium-ion battery system may never be something you buy directly. However, the technology behind it could still affect how electricity gets stored and delivered. If sodium-ion storage proves reliable, it could give energy companies another way to support the grid. That may become more important as AI data centers increase electricity demand.

Better storage can help utilities use power more efficiently. It can also help balance supply when demand rises quickly. Still, there are limits. A new battery chemistry will not fix old transmission lines, slow permitting or local grid bottlenecks by itself.

The real takeaway is that sodium-ion batteries could become part of the grid storage mix. They are not a magic fix, but they could help energy companies build more flexible storage projects.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

CATL’s new sodium-ion battery may sound like a faraway energy story, especially since there is no announced U.S. rollout yet. Still, it is important because the grid is under growing pressure from AI data centers, extreme weather and the need to store more renewable power. What stands out is the use of sodium, which CATL says is far more common than lithium. If this technology proves reliable in major energy projects, it could give utilities another way to store power and keep the grid steadier when demand spikes.

Would you be comfortable with Chinese-made battery systems supporting part of the U.S. electric grid if they helped make power more reliable? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.

CATL says sodium is far more common than lithium, which could give energy companies another storage option as electricity demand rises. (CATL)

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Tesla driver faces manslaughter charges over Texas crash that killed a woman inside her home

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Tesla driver faces manslaughter charges over Texas crash that killed a woman inside her home

On the video, I saw BUTLER’s Tesla continue to increase in speed, and saw the amount of pressure being applied to the accelerator pedal also increase in speed. In about six (6) seconds, the accelerator pedal was pressed all the way down to 100%, “pedal to the metal,” and the vehicle reached a speed of 73 miles per hour, more than double the speed limit on that residential street. The Tesla continued straight towards the middle of the cul-de-sac, struck the curb of the complainant’s driveway, and went airborne towards the front of the home… I noted that the brake pedal was never pressed in the final minute before the crash.”

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