[zucked]

>so we'll probably never see them digitized

That seems to run contradictory to the author's claim in the article and what I believe to be true about the internet archive. Can you elaborate?

[squigz]

I'm just guessing but it might have to do with the concerns raised by the first commenter in the reply by textfiles (Jason Scott) in that reddit thread

tl;dr seems to be they received a massive (71,000 tapes) archive that hasn't seen any activity or communication in 7 years.

If you read further in the thread, you'll also find other concerns about Jason's reliability

[textfiles]

Yeah, it's a nail-biter.

[squigz]

Well they do kind of seem like reasonable concerns, though I'm assuming/hoping there's more to the story.