4 ms·

I'm reminded of the opening line of the second Mistborn novel: > I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted. The digital wo

I'm reminded of the opening line of the second Mistborn novel: > I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted. The digital world feels increasingly dangerous and ephemeral. If I have something written with ink on paper I have certain guarantees: I know that it's accessible even if the power is completely out. I know that it won't randomly get deleted if my hard drive suddenly dies. I know that the only way someone can read its contents are if they get physical access to that piece of paper. I know that it's not being automatically scanned by a platform provider to comply with government surveillance laws. I know that any alteration to the document would require physical access to it and would most likely leave a visible trace. There are technologies that if applied would provide some or most of these guarantees and even provide increased safety, but I don't trust any existing SaaS providers to give me any of them out of the box, and the average person doesn't have the skill to string tools together to get them. And so here we are: in 2024, anything not printed on paper still cannot be fully trusted.

rvba 2y ago
I was recently looking at a 15 year old manual for an appliance. It had a sales recepit attached. Despite being put inside some papers, in a plastic case and then in a binder (kept in the closet)... the recepit just evaporated. The print is nearly invisible. Is that done on purpose?
- ars 2y ago
  It's thermal printing, they heat the paper to turn it black, but if you store it somewhere warm the chemical reaction can reverse.
- animex 2y ago
  Many of these thermal and carbon transfer receipt printers have poor ink/print life. I doubt it was done on purpose as most of these systems are sold by 3rd parties to retailers. I'm sure the issue has been raised but then they willing thought to themselves, yeah actually this benefits us, let's just "pretend to ignore" the issue. More modern retailers are offering receipt-email options which is the option I choose if available, that way I have a "permanent" record of the transaction. I recently did some old taxes from 7 years ago and this feature was invaluable as most online portals no longer offered the records.
- j_4 2y ago
  Not likely. It's just a technical limitation of thermal paper. That's the trade-off for cheap, tiny form factor, fast, and low maintenance printing.
- mrWiz 2y ago
  Receipts are commonly printed on thermal transfer spools to avoid the maintenance needed for printing with ink but this process is not as durable as using ink. Decide for yourself if this decision is made due to cost or a conspiracy.
- hansvm 2y ago
  The other answers mentioned _what_ happened. In terms of next steps: (1) Generally, receipts should be scanned (and perhaps re-printed, depending on your needs) for any sort of conservation effort. The heat from scanning (not in any modern tech, just as an FYI so you can decide for yourself) can cause the same degredation. It doesn't necessarily take a long time either. If you ever order a pizza where the driver tucked the receipt in the box you'll also notice that chunk of the receipt is illegible. (2) If it's partially visible in its current state, you can probably get away with increasing the contrast and applying a decent OCR to the result. You'll get some hallucinations, but if you fill in the most likely characters conforming to the grammar of a typical receipt you're likely to be in the right ballpark (if you need a particular warranty code or something you might have to manually try a few options for particularlly blurry letters). Pair that with a photo of the receipt in its current state for any distrusting shopkeeps.
- jakub_g 2y ago
  It usually disappears way faster than that, often ater a year or two. Could be useful to photocopy. However most of warranties those days are not really longer than this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- interludead 2y ago
  The fading of receipt is a common issue with thermal paper and I do not believe that it is done on purpose
callalex 2y ago
Flood and fire are only getting more and more common.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Yeah, but the prevention measures for loss due to those are well understood by every adult and easy to take into your own hands as either a business or a regular person. The prevention measures for digital catastrophes are not widely understood by those outside the industry and most people would have to outsource them to someone else without any way of knowing for sure that what they have set up will actually work if push comes to shove.
  - pjmorris 2y ago
    Arguably, the prevention measures for digital catastrophes are not widely understood by those INside the industry.
- panzagl 2y ago
  Cuneiform as a Service
  - procflora 2y ago
    GIVEN a customer is filing a complaint against a copper merchant THEN the text of the complaint is written to media with a read guarantee for minimum 4000 years
- chrisco255 2y ago
  Those two phenomenon are quite incompatible.
- amflare 2y ago
  Sure, but at least then your options are limited to existence or destruction, and you still have to have physical proximity to experience either. Digital represents a third form-factor, "malformed", and physical proximity is no longer needed either to corrupt data, destroy it, or steal it (two of these three not necessarily being obvious to the owner).
catlikesshrimp 2y ago
As stated before, convenience is a tradeoff with security. verbal is less secure than digital, which is less secure than paper, which is less secure than clay, etc. IMO Every important document must be first written and then scanned (or digitized) That includes medical records, sales receipts.
interludead 2y ago
But I still thing balance is important. Balancing the use of digital and physical documents can leverage the strengths of both
parpfish 2y ago
thats why i always print my airlines tickets instead of trusting eTickets on my phone
- jimt1234 2y ago
  Me too. Paper-printed tickets have an amazingly long battery life.
- sjf 2y ago
  Find me a printer that’s more reliable than a phone.
  - cibyr 2y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
  - Cerium 2y ago
    The reliability of the printer versus the phone is not at discussion. The reason to go with paper tickets is that they have significantly better availability and partition tolerance than phone based tickets. Using a paper ticket requires that the ticket be available at an exact future moment in time (when you board). The hassle of potentially using multiple unreliable printers ahead of time to prepare the paper ticket is an engineering trade off in providing a system with excellent time of use properties. In the event that your personal printer is not functioning, the airport has many publicly accessible printers for your ticket printing convenience.
  - epcoa 2y ago
    Still use the same Brother laser AIO purchased in 2007, a printer in 2006 and a Canon around the same time. They all work perfectly, only the rubber rollers on the double sided ADF had to be replaced. I don’t have any phones still working of that vintage. Not a perfect comparison but the argument is dumb because the item at issue is the printed product not the printer.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
Animats 2y ago
> I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted. IT needs more logging to write-once media. That's mandated for many financial businesses, but it's not widely seen elsewhere. With unchangeable logs, and the ability to re-establish databases from logs, there's a path to recovery. And no, that does not mean emulating WORM devices on erasable hard drives.
Terr_ 2y ago
I think some of it's a matter of workflow design, rather than any particular technology. In particular, synchronous systems which can't work unless every part is ready to operate, versus asynchronous ones where delays are part of the design and the goal is eventual rather than immediate consistency. The former are far more vulnerable to outages and interruptions.
somerandomqaguy 2y ago
>The digital world feels increasingly dangerous and ephemeral. If I have something written with ink on paper I have certain guarantees: Fair but paper comes with a significant drawback of poor discoverability. I've had to dig through old aerial survey photographs taken before digital photography, and combing through the indexes to find what I looking for was an adventure unto itself. Never would've been able to do it without help from the librarians, and there's only one archive where that information is stored. And digital format can be more readily altered, but it can also be more easily backed up or have redundancies. There's ways of managing digital's drawbacks, and ultimately I think we're probably better off having digital formats then just reverting to alternatives for the most part.
wildrhythms 2y ago
Just want to say I read the Mistborn series recently and it was excellent :)

rvba 2y ago

I was recently looking at a 15 year old manual for an appliance. It had a sales recepit attached. Despite being put inside some papers, in a plastic case and then in a binder (kept in the closet)... the recepit just evaporated. The print is nearly invisible. Is that done on purpose?

ars 2y ago
It's thermal printing, they heat the paper to turn it black, but if you store it somewhere warm the chemical reaction can reverse.
animex 2y ago
Many of these thermal and carbon transfer receipt printers have poor ink/print life. I doubt it was done on purpose as most of these systems are sold by 3rd parties to retailers. I'm sure the issue has been raised but then they willing thought to themselves, yeah actually this benefits us, let's just "pretend to ignore" the issue. More modern retailers are offering receipt-email options which is the option I choose if available, that way I have a "permanent" record of the transaction. I recently did some old taxes from 7 years ago and this feature was invaluable as most online portals no longer offered the records.
j_4 2y ago
Not likely. It's just a technical limitation of thermal paper. That's the trade-off for cheap, tiny form factor, fast, and low maintenance printing.
mrWiz 2y ago
Receipts are commonly printed on thermal transfer spools to avoid the maintenance needed for printing with ink but this process is not as durable as using ink. Decide for yourself if this decision is made due to cost or a conspiracy.
hansvm 2y ago
The other answers mentioned _what_ happened. In terms of next steps: (1) Generally, receipts should be scanned (and perhaps re-printed, depending on your needs) for any sort of conservation effort. The heat from scanning (not in any modern tech, just as an FYI so you can decide for yourself) can cause the same degredation. It doesn't necessarily take a long time either. If you ever order a pizza where the driver tucked the receipt in the box you'll also notice that chunk of the receipt is illegible. (2) If it's partially visible in its current state, you can probably get away with increasing the contrast and applying a decent OCR to the result. You'll get some hallucinations, but if you fill in the most likely characters conforming to the grammar of a typical receipt you're likely to be in the right ballpark (if you need a particular warranty code or something you might have to manually try a few options for particularlly blurry letters). Pair that with a photo of the receipt in its current state for any distrusting shopkeeps.
jakub_g 2y ago
It usually disappears way faster than that, often ater a year or two. Could be useful to photocopy. However most of warranties those days are not really longer than this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
interludead 2y ago
The fading of receipt is a common issue with thermal paper and I do not believe that it is done on purpose

callalex 2y ago

Flood and fire are only getting more and more common.

lolinder 2y ago
Yeah, but the prevention measures for loss due to those are well understood by every adult and easy to take into your own hands as either a business or a regular person. The prevention measures for digital catastrophes are not widely understood by those outside the industry and most people would have to outsource them to someone else without any way of knowing for sure that what they have set up will actually work if push comes to shove.
- pjmorris 2y ago
  Arguably, the prevention measures for digital catastrophes are not widely understood by those INside the industry.
panzagl 2y ago
Cuneiform as a Service
- procflora 2y ago
  GIVEN a customer is filing a complaint against a copper merchant THEN the text of the complaint is written to media with a read guarantee for minimum 4000 years
chrisco255 2y ago
Those two phenomenon are quite incompatible.
amflare 2y ago
Sure, but at least then your options are limited to existence or destruction, and you still have to have physical proximity to experience either. Digital represents a third form-factor, "malformed", and physical proximity is no longer needed either to corrupt data, destroy it, or steal it (two of these three not necessarily being obvious to the owner).

catlikesshrimp 2y ago

As stated before, convenience is a tradeoff with security. verbal is less secure than digital, which is less secure than paper, which is less secure than clay, etc. IMO Every important document must be first written and then scanned (or digitized) That includes medical records, sales receipts.

interludead 2y ago

But I still thing balance is important. Balancing the use of digital and physical documents can leverage the strengths of both

parpfish 2y ago

thats why i always print my airlines tickets instead of trusting eTickets on my phone

jimt1234 2y ago
Me too. Paper-printed tickets have an amazingly long battery life.
sjf 2y ago
Find me a printer that’s more reliable than a phone.
- cibyr 2y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
- Cerium 2y ago
  The reliability of the printer versus the phone is not at discussion. The reason to go with paper tickets is that they have significantly better availability and partition tolerance than phone based tickets. Using a paper ticket requires that the ticket be available at an exact future moment in time (when you board). The hassle of potentially using multiple unreliable printers ahead of time to prepare the paper ticket is an engineering trade off in providing a system with excellent time of use properties. In the event that your personal printer is not functioning, the airport has many publicly accessible printers for your ticket printing convenience.
- epcoa 2y ago
  Still use the same Brother laser AIO purchased in 2007, a printer in 2006 and a Canon around the same time. They all work perfectly, only the rubber rollers on the double sided ADF had to be replaced. I don’t have any phones still working of that vintage. Not a perfect comparison but the argument is dumb because the item at issue is the printed product not the printer.
- Terr_ 2y ago

Animats 2y ago

> I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted. IT needs more logging to write-once media. That's mandated for many financial businesses, but it's not widely seen elsewhere. With unchangeable logs, and the ability to re-establish databases from logs, there's a path to recovery. And no, that does not mean emulating WORM devices on erasable hard drives.

Terr_ 2y ago

I think some of it's a matter of workflow design, rather than any particular technology. In particular, synchronous systems which can't work unless every part is ready to operate, versus asynchronous ones where delays are part of the design and the goal is eventual rather than immediate consistency. The former are far more vulnerable to outages and interruptions.

somerandomqaguy 2y ago

>The digital world feels increasingly dangerous and ephemeral. If I have something written with ink on paper I have certain guarantees: Fair but paper comes with a significant drawback of poor discoverability. I've had to dig through old aerial survey photographs taken before digital photography, and combing through the indexes to find what I looking for was an adventure unto itself. Never would've been able to do it without help from the librarians, and there's only one archive where that information is stored. And digital format can be more readily altered, but it can also be more easily backed up or have redundancies. There's ways of managing digital's drawbacks, and ultimately I think we're probably better off having digital formats then just reverting to alternatives for the most part.

wildrhythms 2y ago

Just want to say I read the Mistborn series recently and it was excellent :)