4 ms·
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 shi
by djha-skin 3y ago
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 navigate the pilots in the air using paper to make sure they knew how to do it in case the computers failed and the power turned off.
* Paper cannot be hacked. In the article, Russian intelligence and MI5 were mentioned, as well as paper prescriptions. Of all highly secure mediums, paper is the most convenient.
* Paper is just handy. I use it right now to print out knitting patterns and write notes on them. I don't have to find some app to annotate the pattern I can just write directly on the paper. For what it is, paper is the default because it is so fully featured.
- dredmorbius 3y agoPaper 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-russia-bugged-an-american-embassys-typewriters 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=16246432> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965969> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998774>
- ddejohn 3y agoAbsolutely fascinating. I found a link in one of the linked discussions which is quite a bit more in depth than the ieee article, for those interested: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/ https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoThe 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.