Technology We Saved And Tech We Lost In 2025

As accelerated arsenic nan aged twelvemonth passes, it’s been heartening to spot group preserving nan activity of those who came earlier us. The Computer History Museum, Stack Overflow and countless nonprofits and foundations person carried yesterday’s operating systems, method discussions and different imaginative useful guardant into a caller fresh year.

As our exertion continues to germinate done clip — immoderate becoming obsolete, and others still being resurrected unexpectedly — we spot signs that nan tech world is simply a organization that preserves its history and its heritage.

And successful 2025, immoderate of their preservation efforts were particularly dramatic.

The Discovery of a 1974 Unix Tape

It was a time to remember. University of Utah investigation professor Rob Ricci — whose activity usually involves building cloud-based infrastructure — discovered a astonishment while cleaning retired a retention room. Buried wrong a forgotten box, “Our unit recovered this portion containing UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973,” Ricci posted connected Mastodon.

Because this could beryllium nan only remaining transcript of Unix v4, nan reel of magnetic portion was cautiously transported to Silicon Valley. Ricci noted nan staffer who recovered it drove nan precious portion to nan depository alternatively than spot it to message carriers.

There, nan portion was lovingly resurrected and publication again for nan first clip by Al Kossow, package curator astatine Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum — pinch nan infinitesimal shared connected our modern-day societal media. “So far, immoderate of our folks deliberation they person recovered Hunt The Wumpus,” Ricci posted playfully, “and nan C codification for a Snobol interpreter.”

And halfway astir nan globe, a Berlin-based retrocomputing enthusiast created a site pinch nan contents of nan portion fresh for bootstrapping, including each nan basal instructions for hobbyists to bring it to life connected their ain systems.

So what technological artifacts did they find? Ricci posted later that it seems to see a record named sh.c, which he suspects whitethorn beryllium nan oldest known type of a ammunition programme successful C. And 1 societal media personification noticed nan OS’s time-conversion codification includes a flagging adaptable named nixonflg, apparently commemorating 1 of 1974’s memorable moments.

That January — 7 months earlier resigning from agency — President Nixon had enacted a year-round move to daylight redeeming time. That move was rescinded 8 weeks into nan presidency of Gerald Ford, but nan Unix portion still has its nixonflg variable, which “if group to 1, will origin daylight redeeming clip each twelvemonth astir independently of ‘daylight.'”

Tom’s Hardware called nan tape “a Christmas gift that should lukewarm galore a acold sysadmin’s heart,” remembering that astatine nan clip nan portion was created, Unix “was still an escaped laboratory experiment.”

And connected December 26, Ricci posted another tantalizing announcement. “[B]y nan way, location are much tapes. We sent a container of different tapes to nan Computer History Museum on pinch nan UNIX V4 tape.” These see a 34-year-old type of Hewlett-Packard’s ain proprietary type of Unix and immoderate 1988 package from mt Xinu (which made a commercially licensed type of BSD Unix). While nan findings “are not needfully ‘lost,’ and whitethorn not beryllium redistributable owed to licensing issues,” Ricci seemed excited connected societal media.

He posted, “I’ll fto you cognize if they find thing absorbing connected them.”

Stack Overflow Shutters Its Data Centers

Far from Utah — successful New Jersey — Stack Overflow reached its ain milestone successful 2025, yet moving its operations wholly into nan unreality and abandoning nan beingness servers its tract reliability engineering (SRE) squad has managed “for almost our full 16-year existence.”

In 2025, Stack Overflow cautiously culled its hardware while still preserving each its digital content.

The time of “the awesome unracking,” blog/podcast editor Ryan Donovan remembered fondly that nan servers “had a lukewarm spot successful our history and our hearts.”

When he’d joined nan institution successful 2019, he’d spotted “the original server mounted connected a wall pinch a laudatory plaque for illustration a beloved pet.” But successful a July 2 blog post, he marked nan time they’d unplugged complete 400 cables — “Our de-cabling process progressive throwing everything into nan area of nan room” — and building 7 ample piles of decommissioned servers/network devices. “So agelong and acknowledgment for each nan bits!”

And then: 50 servers were shredded aliases destroyed “for information reasons (and to protect nan personally identifiable accusation of each our users and customers).” As nan site’s Director of Reliability Engineering told him, “No request to beryllium gentle anymore.” Over nan past 16 years, its SRE squad handled each nan cabling and racking (and replacing of grounded disks), activity nan blog station remembers “required personification to physically show up astatine nan information halfway and flick nan machines.”

But now? “Our servers are now cattle, not pets. Nobody is going to person to thrust to our New Jersey information halfway and switch aliases reboot hardware.”

Other Tech Farewells and Preservations of 2025

In summation to Unix v 4, 2025 saw different moments wherever nan world’s technological history was preserved and honored.

• The Video Game History Foundation opened entree to its monolithic integer archive of video crippled magazines — immoderate published moreover earlier nan motorboat of nan nationalist web.
• A nonprofit that finds and digitizes 78 rpm records teamed pinch nan University of California, Santa Barbara, to put thousands of historical American recordings online.
• Archive.org upgraded its postulation of animated 1990s GIFs from GeoCities.
• The Library of Congress inducted Microsoft’s reboot chime into nan National Recording Registry of “significant” useful reflecting U.S. life (along pinch nan soundtrack to Minecraft).

But 2025 besides immoderate some technologies saying goodbye. AOL pulled nan plug connected its dial-up net service. Roomba filed for bankruptcy. PC Magazine moreover created its ain memorial, titled “Connection Lost: The Tech That Died successful 2025,” including nan Humane AI Pin and Skype.

And Enron.com relaunched aft its trademark was bought by a T-shirt institution that joked they were now moving connected egg-shaped atomic reactors.

Looking Ahead to 2026

So possibly coming is nan cleanable time to observe what we didn’t suffer successful 2025. Despite nan decease of Vim creator Bram Moolenaar successful 2023, Vim is still carrying on. And moreover nan International Obfuscated C Code Contest returned again successful 2025 — aft a four-year hiatus — to celebrate and grant its 40th anniversary. In 1 of nan astir rubbing moments of nan year, 75-year-old EFF cofounder Mitch Kapor moreover vanished that grad schoolhouse programme he’d dropped retired of successful 1979 to recovered Lotus.

Kapor wrote a timely and heartfelt thesis connected “gap-closing investing.”

And arsenic we look to nan future, we tin already spot much tech milestones heading towards america successful 2026. Steve Jobs will move up on a $1 coin.

Java will stop supporting Java applets. We’ll spot nan relaunch of Digg.com, and Lara Croft will resume raiding tombs.

And arsenic nan sun rises connected January 1, hundreds of sound recordings from 1925 will finally participate nan nationalist domain — on pinch hundreds of published useful from 1930.

Maybe it’s each impervious that nan tech world remains a move spot — still remembering its past moreover arsenic it looks up to a dramatically different future. As ever successful 2026, nan mobility will not beryllium what technologies we have, but really we’ll extremity up utilizing them. But astatine slightest those who retrieve their past are not doomed to repetition it.

And it’s heartening that 2025 included immoderate sparkling examples of nan tech world being a organization that preserves its history.

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