People who can't give up paper • Hacker News Board

Re: People who can't give up paper

#91

Post by dogman144 » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

didntcheck wrote: post #87

dogman144 wrote: post #43

Really dislike the “give up” terminology and related digital nudging in group/out group. Just like I can’t give up: - paperless billing bc I’d like ironclad proof I’ve paid my mortgage off and have experienced plenty of database failures - driving without an insurance black box plugged into my car for a few % off my insurance - cash because it saves the small business a few % points and I’ve (/s) never seen a POS cra…

The notion that paper letters are more authentic than digital has always confused me. If you can forge a realistic-looking PDF, you can also print it. On the other hand, an email still on Gmail's servers with headers showing its authenticated origin, or a document held in escrow by Docusign, seems like far more rigorous evidence in a hypothetical court dispute. And I'd have my bank statements as corroborating evidenc…

The use case I’m referring to has:

- a paper letter with an audit trail through the postal system

- a printed out email to include headers that has the customer service rep +1’ing a total loan payment went through

- etc

It’s not an everyday thing but it seems like lunacy to rely on essentially a servicenow queue for any important state change that relies on corporate trust of your actions that took away a revenue stream for them.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#92

Post by jjav » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

FalconSensei wrote: post #5

dzonga wrote: post #3

I support paper notebooks compared to the e-forms. I can bet a notes written today in a paper notebook - would be accessible 200+ years from now. compared to notes written in some notebook app. whether inaccessibility is due to data damage, lost passwords etc. whereas with a notebook as long as it's not damaged by fire. it should be good. also invest in waterproof paper notebooks i.e stone-paper.

> I can bet a notes written today in a paper notebook - would be accessible 200+ years from now. compared to notes written in some notebook app I think it's the opposite, at least if you use obsidian or just md files. With paper notes, they can get lost more easily, there are no backups. In many countries, termites are a real problem (tell that to my damaged comic books and magic cards). If you use md files (which ar…

> git/cloud/external drive backups, you are unlikely to lose them

I can guarantee with total certainty that github & cloudprovider & your external drives will not exist in 200 years. Probably not even in 50.

If you want to leave anything at all (photos, documents) for your grandchildren to see, how would you do it?

Re: People who can't give up paper

#93

Post by jjav » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #35

agumonkey wrote: post #24

for everybody still on physical medium (be it paper, board, whatever), did you try to leverage digital tools thinking it would allow wider expressiveness, faster iteration, more precision and yet came back to paper ? if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise…

> if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise.. that cost might be actually beneficial for your brain way of working) There is some of that. But pen and paper has other benefits that are hard to match: - Pen & Paper works even if there is a service disruption…

To add:

The manufacturer of the pen or paper can't remove your access to using them because they decided to chance licensing.

Said manufacturers can't force push an update that suddenly makes your old writing unusable.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#94

Post by jjav » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #23

People have been trained to fetishize "new" technology and dump on "old" technology. Frankly put: new is not always better. A technology is just a technology, and "new" technologies almost always introduce regressions along with whatever benefits the they bring. For instance: paper documents are generally more robust/reliable (as a practical matter), easily attached to physical items, and easier to annotate than any…

> new is not always better

This is something I eternally argue with so many people. I can't understand this blind assumption that something made more recently is better just because.

Better is better. Something new may or may not be better, need to evaluate. Way too often new means a regression on functionality, which is worse.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#95

Post by eternityforest » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 10:09 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #80

eternityforest wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think paper probably really does have value for mental retention, but digital is so convenient it's easy to totally forget paper is a thing. Paper is easier to annotate, but if you didn't grow up with lots of paper, you don't notice, because annotating isn't something you think about, you mostly think in terms of quoting and leaving a comment. The medium shapes your thinking, and the stuff that's hard to do on pape…

> Paper is easier to annotate, but if you didn't grow up with lots of paper, you don't notice, because annotating isn't something you think about, you mostly think in terms of quoting and leaving a comment. In other words, people can be fine with worse because they don't know better. One of the things that should be a deep embarrassment to the technology industry is its failure to replicate some of the strengths of p…

I think you pretty much have it spot on. Digital is the like another dialect of language that people think in.

The paradigm is "I can very, very, easily make this set of marks, and I'm gonna build my process around them" rather than "I can make any mark I want and I'll spend the time to figure out exactly what marks and what process to use".

It's incredibly easy and convenient, since it's all a prepackaged process with really only one medium, linear text, that only needs a tiny fraction of the skill... but we probably are losing something in the process.

I never got into paper or handwriting, and gave up on drawing pretty quick after discovering how much harder it is than I expected, so I never really felt anything missing from paper when moving to digital, but thinking more about it, I definitely do think the tech shapes my thoughts pretty heavily, ideas that are hard to express with current tech rarely occur to me, if I'm designing something physical I'll probably be thinking in the 2.5D way that you do with CAD without really understanding 3D structures, etc.

I tried to get into paper notetaking for quite a while(but found the level of attention to each letter needed to be kind of exhausting) and I tried to learn art drawing, but I never really paid much attention to or thought about the idea of trying to get into any kind of sketching or diagramming on paper, it's not as heavily talked about as text notetaking, perhaps I should try as an experiment.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#96

Post by eternityforest » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #90

eternityforest wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know how to use a map and compass? I don't think I could outside a city. Everyone talks about the physical maps, but the bigger issue is without the skill the map is useless, and if you've always had a phone, the true terror of being lost and alone might not enter your mind till you're there. I guess I'm lucky that I often forget my charger and wind up having no clue where I am and trying to get back by a…

I do not know anyone serious about the outdoors that does not know how to use a map and compass. Extremely straightforward to learn. I hike with a Garmin foretrex, I route plan and land nav when out there with a map. The garmin sanity checks me once in a while. There is a significant amount of bad stuff that can go very wrong, to start, just bc your Garmin’s altimeter and calibration is bugging out while you mindless…

Everyone serious about the outdoors probably does, but lots of more casual people don't. I'm assuming that's how a lot people get lost, because the casual people suddenly decide to try something out of their skill level without knowing it's out of their skill level, because GPS has always hidden their lack of skill.

I don't think just buying a map and compass is a guarantee, for the casual people who don't know what they're doing, and the military has entire navigation classes, seems like it's a real nontrivial skill that you have to actually learn.

Definitely a good idea to learn, but GPS makes it easy to not know how much you don't know.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#97

Post by backtoyoujim » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 10:49 PM UTC

Honestly, I didn't know that I was being asked to do so.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#98

Post by histriosum » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 10:52 PM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #88

histriosum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three independent electronic devices (two tablets and a phone) running different operating systems would need to fail. And for this to then become an emergency, I would need to be in IMC, also have my onboard installed GPS fail, along with all installed radio equipment. Short of an EMP event or wildly bad decision making on my part, the risk of this is vanishingly small.

That is usually the response! From another angle, there’s a lot of hubris in refusing to carry analog backups that are a meaninglessly small addition to a packing list vs their risk benefits… which is the only ultimate job for a pilot. It takes one oversight to not charge a phone, or it gets cold in the cockpit and battery drops, suddenly you’re down to two systems, risk jumps, odds one fails… Military pilots still f…

Military pilots are trained to fly in areas where electronic warfare is commonplace. That's not a risk that needs to be in my risk matrix as a GA pilot.

I personally think it takes a decent chunk of hubris to believe that the likely out-of-date chart that you haven't picked up and actually used in years is going to help you and not impact your airplane control while you find the correct chart and then fold it properly. If we're talking VFR sectionals, I'd need to carry four charts to cover my state -- three, just to cover the area in which I typically fly. Good ole Michigan -- we lost the sectional lottery.

I treat my electronics as required equipment, just like you would apparently treat your sectionals as required equipment. I check their battery level before every flight. If they aren't charged, I don't fly. If I don't have a way to charge them in flight, I don't fly (particularly if IMC is in any way a possibility). If one of them fails during a flight, I seriously consider whether it's safe to continue the flight as planned.

I see paper charts providing a tiny amount of risk mitigation, which is easily outmatched by treating the electronics as an important checklist item and making sure to carry enough redundancy for the mission.

You know who also doesn't carry paper charts anymore? Part 121 airlines. They take risk mitigation pretty seriously.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#99

Post by araes » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 10:52 PM UTC

galdosdi wrote: post #60

the_snooze wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper just works . Whether it's for notes, menus, or voting, paper has a lot of really desirable properties: it's cheap, easily understood, minimal room for external dependencies or BS. The moment you introduce software and internet connectivity is the moment you invite fragility and inscrutability.

The security properties are also really really different, and really intuitive, and quite strong too: if you have physical possession you have total access, otherwise none at all. With a computing device, only if you are certain there is no wifi/bluetooth/cellular/etc hardware inside the device, can you have a similar trust. And the days are rapidly coming when there's no such thing as a device without such hardware,…

ChangeLog - Paper - Sept 2023

Good news everyone, Paper supports MSPen 2.3.4.5.3.2...., GPen 1.10.1.0.11 "Lumpsucker", iPen 4.2.0 (8 new colors!), and the AmaWEbLumberPen (AWELP)

We're happy to report we've solved the issue of Paper randomly vanishing from your house, and reappearing on your roof.

Security exploits with D4r|Minor issues with Paper flickering (and in a limited user group causing epilepsy seizures and incontinence) have been mitigated.

We're aware of Paper occasionally causing i#Desk models to collapse, and working to close the loop.

We're also happy to report we've been sold to ShredderCo.! Congratulations to the team for going the extra mile, and we expect a bright future in their exciting and challenging area of business.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/16hqcly/good_news_ev...

Re: People who can't give up paper

#100

Post by Avshalom » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 11:11 PM UTC

Paper is enormous and extremely high resolution. Even a shitty printer has a higher dpi than almost any screen and you can do get an almost arbitrarily large print at that dpi instead of constantly losing density.

that's why we all keep using it for maps.