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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

But it’s also very easy to lose all of them in a fire or flood. Different tradeoffs.

Problems with well-known solutions 100 years ago:

"Fireproof file rooms and cabinets in the 1920s were crucial for protecting business and government records during the rapid expansion of the industrial era. The era saw a massive shift from flammable wooden office furniture to robust, steel-based storage designed to resist both fire and water damage."

That's a Google AI summary - but I've been in a fair number of buildings with such rooms. Thick concrete walls, heavy steel fire doors, no other openings, nothing but steel file cabinets in 'em, sealed electric light fixtures that look like they belong in a powder magazine (where one spark could kill everyone) - it's really simple tech.

And "high ground" was a reliable flood protection tech several centuries before that.

Then add “earthquake” to the list, or “domestic terrorists or foreign country bombing the building”. Steelman the argument. The point isn’t “just fire and water specifically”, we’re not playing Pokémon.

We have several historic examples of records being lost in disasters, and way more recent than 100 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Cen...

It makes no difference that we could’ve prevented that with better building construction. We didn’t, and hindsight does not bring the records back. We should plan for the world we want but cannot ignore the world we have.

I’m not defending digital as always better or criticising physical. Like I said, different tradeoffs, meaning there are advantages and disadvantages to both, there’s no solution which is better in all situations.

I stuck to the threats you mentioned. Paper in a file room is more slightly more quake-resistant and bomb-resistant than digital. But slower to move to safety if the threat is large volcanic eruptions.

I am not saying that paper is magically perfect. Nor better in every situation. I am saying that paper is far easier (than digital) to do well for use cases like a national records collection. "Correctly" may include off-site backups - whether or not your threat model includes massive earthquakes, volcanoes, bombs, special forces, EMP weapons, biological agents, civil war, radioactive fallout, or enemy occupation. Or "Management wouldn't pay for a done-right facility".

As I noted in another comment, the largest downside to paper (within such use cases), is that it is far more difficult to get political support for old-fashioned stuff that just works, compared to anything that can be sold as cool/new/high-tech. Especially when the taxpayer-funded revenue streams from selling/installing/supporting the tech create incentives clearly contrary to the taxpaper's long-term interests.

> it’s easy to lose all of them in a fire or flood

Wouldn't a fire or flood affect everything? Both data stored on paper and hard disks?

The good news is you can keep offline, offsite digital copies, which is much more convenient than offsite paper copies.

I think what the comment meant was that it's harder for an individual to lose their paper documents compared to losing the electronic ones. It just shifts who's responsible for keeping them safe

This is a feature not a bug.

That depends entirely on what the records hold and who is interpreting the event.

Yes, who could ever care about German birth records from the 1700s in 1933?

Are you interest in arguing in good faith, or just being snarky on the internet? That doesn’t contradict the point in the slightest. In fact, it supports it. Or did you conveniently forget the book burnings?

Evil people use records in evil ways, righteous people use them in righteous ways.

Again, them being perishable being a feature or a bug depends entirely on what the records hold and who is interpreting the event.

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