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by RandomLensman22 hours ago |
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upvoteby b3lvedere22 hours ago|
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Rotting, sweaty human hands and fire to name a few.
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upvoteby alt22722 hours ago|
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Pretty sure fire is a risk to servers as well.
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upvoteby e28eta21 hours ago|
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Servers make it easier to keep & maintain duplicate data in separate locations, which’ll be unlikely to be affected by the same fire.
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upvoteby alt2273 hours ago|
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Yeah, so does photocopying. The threats you are listing are identical to physical model.
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upvoteby red-iron-pine19 hours ago|
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only in that location.

mirror that DB onto a server on the other side of the country, or continent, etc.

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upvoteby alt2273 hours ago|
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Photocopy your documents and send them to another location, same threats same resiliance.
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upvoteby cbg022 hours ago|
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Nothing, this is why they have both.
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upvoteby Tangurena217 hours ago|
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It isn't fast enough for mortgage backed securities. Each transfer of ownership of the mortgage requires a separate transfer fee paid to the registry.

Moving from a paper registry at each county clerk (in the US) was a part of the 2008 financial meltdown.

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upvoteby dizhn22 hours ago|
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I am pretty sure they have that too.
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upvoteby RandomLensman22 hours ago|
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So which one is the ground truth if there is a difference between them?
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upvoteby foarteistescu22 hours ago|
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The paper rules supreme in Romanian bureaucracy.
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upvoteby Narishma21 hours ago|
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As it should.
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upvoteby drdrey22 hours ago|
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fires? floods? documents getting lost/misplaced/stolen/destroyed?
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upvoteby RandomLensman22 hours ago|
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Seems to be rather sturdy in my experience. Would we even be able to read an electronic record after 100 or 200 years of storage? Old piece of paper is quite accessible.
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upvoteby alok-g12 hours ago|
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Documents getting lost/misplaced/stolen/destroyed is common in some places (owing to corruption or what). "Local in scope" but rampant. Digitization has been a panacea as there is more control over the records, but now more prone to hacking.
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upvoteby AndroTux22 hours ago|
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> Old piece of paper is quite accessible

If stored properly.

So are digital copies, though. If stored properly.

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upvoteby RandomLensman22 hours ago|
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You need a machine (hardware and software) to read digital copies, not just the digital copies.
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upvoteby AndroTux19 hours ago|
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And you need to know how to read to read paper copies. Same thing, essentially. Anyone speaking hieroglyphics fluently? Point is, if you take care of your archive and make sure it remains accessible, it doesn't really matter whether it's digital or analog.
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upvoteby RandomLensman19 hours ago|
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Not at all the same thing - what equipment do you need to read hieroglyphs on top of understanding the language (which goes for digital, too)? If you have the paper and understand the language, that's it. We already can see that accessing old digital data isn't necessarily easy if it wasn't always kept on/converted to current media and formats (will we keep that up for millenia)?

And both storage can be broken, needing reconstruction.

If I were to give you a 70y old book in English vs some 70y tape with data on - which one is easier to read?

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upvoteby AndroTux14 hours ago|
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For the third time: IF you take care of the data, it’s fine in both cases. If you neglect your beloved book for 70 years and store it under a bridge, it’s going to be completely useless as well. The key part is the taking care of your medium.
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upvoteby RandomLensman7 hours ago|
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The taking care of the book for 70y does not involve recreating the book over and over again to keep it readable or keeping a reading machine in working condition (or be able to recreate it). It's an entirely different level of care.

If the medium isn't destroyed, it is directly readable if it's a book, but not necessarily so in digital because hardware and software is needed - just taking care of the original medium isn't enough in digital over centuries.

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upvoteby wongarsu22 hours ago|
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There have been plenty of instances of paper-based land registries being wiped out. It's just usually a very local problem because paper lends itself more to decentralized storage
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upvoteby RandomLensman22 hours ago|
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Yes, so quite limited in scope. We have no experience with storing and keeping accessible electronic records for hundreds of years, though, but we know already that accessing old storage media and formats isn't necessarily easy.
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upvoteby tredre319 hours ago|
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So far accessing old storage media from 50+ years ago hasn't really been a problem. Reading old tapes and punch cards/tapes or even early hard drives is something that a single motivated hobbyist can achieve in a few weeks or months with a microcontroller and patience.

But it's more difficult to imagine that 1000 years from now someone will be able to read from a PCI-E NVME drive if the specs get lost along the way (ignoring for a moment that flash storage most likely won't retain data that long).

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upvoteby RandomLensman19 hours ago|
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I would not call needing weeks or months not a problem (assuming you also get the potentially proprietary software to understand the data recovered). Also, early hard drives weigh 100s of kilograms, so just physically handling them is difficult.

Totally agree on accessing NVME example.

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upvoteby alt22722 hours ago|
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Seems like fires and floods would also affect servers too.
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