# Summary of #hplusroadmap IRC Discussion (April 16, 2016)

* FourFire inquired about experiences with "minimally illegal Nootropics," though this discussion thread didn't develop further in the log.

* A paper from VPRI was shared (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2015004_cuneiform.pdf) discussing the challenge of running today's software decades or centuries into the future.

* The VPRI paper proposes building a "base machine" that a competent programmer could implement in an afternoon, which would then bootstrap more complex systems to run legacy software.

* Participants debated alternative approaches to long-term software preservation, including storing source code in plaintext and minimizing use of hard-to-port features.

* User xentrac shared their comments on the VPRI paper (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512892) and suggested that the implementation time could be reduced from "an afternoon" to "two hours."

* The ArchiveTeam Warrior virtual machine was discussed as a practical tool for digital preservation, with superkuh noting it takes only about 2 minutes to download, set up, and begin spidering content for archival.