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People who can't give up paper

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161–168 of 168 posts

Re: People who can't give up paper

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I personally think it takes a decent chunk of hubris to believe that the likely out-of-date chart that you haven't picked up and actually used in years is going to help you and not impact your airplane control while you find the correct chart and then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 properl…

Yes, you would have to be familiar with the charts, “training” etc.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#162
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How Gen A does it; cloud drive shared to your kids.

Right, which will go away as soon as cloudservice discontinues that feature or the company disappears. That is far from a long-term solution.

I don't disagree.

What is the alternative? Locking them up on a disk that can't be accessed cross-platform? Self-hosting doesn't solve the "if you're hit by the bus" problem unless the next generation of your family is well-versed in technology.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#163
Advantages of paper: 1. To increase size, use bigger sheet 2. To see two pages side by side, just put them side by side 3. To zoom in, bring closer, with no side effects 4. Mix and match all kinds of paper to make a book, no compatibility issues 5. Use pen/pencil for both text and diagrams

Re: People who can't give up paper

#164
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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

tell me you don't know how doing backups work without telling me your don't know how doing backups work

Re: People who can't give up paper

#165

There is more than simply preferential reasons to keep paper around. Some of them were touched on by the article: * Paper does not run out of battery. On a ship where you need to be able to navigate whether or not the computer fails, this is a feature. My brother-in-law tells a story of when he was an air traffic controller in the military. Every so often they told them they had to turn off their computers and naviga…

Paper is difficult to hack. Typewriters, however, are a different story, and the Soviets managed to bug IBM Selectrics during the Cold War: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-crazy-story-of-how-soviet-russ... > Several related HN discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16246432 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965969 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998774 >

The book mentions that at one point when they were investigating the chimney, the US operatives discovered a tunnel that extended past the embassy grounds. A team was doing a harrowing journey down the tunnel, uncertain of when they'd hit Soviet territory, and they got their sights on some Soviet operatives at the other end of the tunnel. Shortly after that the tunnel was mysteriously rendered inoperable by some sort of cave-in.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#166
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> I can guarantee with total certainty that github & cloudprovider & your external drives will not exist in 200 years. Probably not even in 50. tell me you don't know how doing backups work without telling me your don't know how doing backups work

Unfortunately you are underestimating the difficulty of making digital files available and readable in 200 years by several orders of magnitude.

A few backups isn't going to cut it. It's an immensely difficult problem.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#167
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which will go away as soon as cloudservice discontinues that feature or the company disappears. That is far from a long-term solution.

I don't disagree. What is the alternative? Locking them up on a disk that can't be accessed cross-platform? Self-hosting doesn't solve the "if you're hit by the bus" problem unless the next generation of your family is well-versed in technology.

The alternative is in the title of this topic.

For things that you truly want to preserve for generations, have them printed out to good quality paper.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems…

> you can't access it on the go You can to the same extent that you can access a smart phone on the go. You just have to remember to bring it with you. Given how often I "forget" my smart phone at home, the "access anywhere" isn't a huge selling feature for most things to me. While I do use web-based email, I tend to prefer things like paper tickets for events and paper receipts because I actually find them to be mor…

That seems like a personal problem.
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