As it is, they went a thousand years without anyone knowing anything about them… now there’s exactly ONE person. And when he dies, we’ll go back to zero again.

I suppose they figured “Once somebody discovers our memory-recording technology, they’ll use it to store our memories in their archives the same way we put them in that probe.” Of course, it’s kind of ridiculous that alien technology would be so plug-and-play in the Star Trek universe, but that’s the kind of absurdity you just have to accept to enjoy the show.

Data as a fish out of water “inventor” making his money by playing poker…

I remember in the poker game scene, when Data stakes his badge (revealed to have a fair amount of gold in it) as a “family heirloom” and one of the other players offers “Give ya three dollars for it” I was thinking Three lousy bucks for that? until I remembered that, oh yeah, the guy’s offering three turn-of-the-century dollars in gold, which was actually quite generous; and Data with his perfect memory was going to card-shark that badge and all their money out of them anyway, so how much he initially got for it was rather irrelevant to him.