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0 pointsnradov9y ago0 comments

It might have been reasonable to maintain backup paper workflows years ago when those paper workflows already existed and institutions were just starting to offer digital alternatives. But new institutions and workflows have arisen that never had paper alternatives in the first place. And it's unreasonable to expect institutions to build and test paper alternatives just as a backup. No one's going to pay for that, regardless of potential consequences.

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pdkl959y ago

I agree that new institutions that never had pre-internet systems are a harder problem.

> it's unreasonable to expect institutions to build and test paper alternatives just as a backup.

Some type of backup is necessary for anything critically important. From my previous [2]:

    In sum, as a matter of policy everything that is officially
    categorized as a critical infrastructure must conclusively
    show how it can operate in the absence of the Internet.

Depending on a single source for mission critical features has been popular since at least the dot com era. Maybe some people can live with the risk that e.g. Twitter can shut their business down at any time by banning their API key, but some institutions need to be reliable. In the past, this need for reliability lead to the agreement where Intel licensed AMD to second-source[3] the 8086 and other parts.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source

int_19h9y ago

Some type of backup is undeniably useful, but why does it have to be paper? The problem with paper vs electronic is that they're largely incompatible, requiring manual labor for interoperability. A backup system should be as drop-in as possible, so for digital systems, it should be another digital system.

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