It's all about jokes, funny pics...

(Translation from anekdotov.net)

I just watched my cat walk across my laptop's keyboard. Now nothing is working, all my keyboard shortcuts are gone, apps would not launch. So I caught the cat, and had him walk across my laptop's keyboard, only in the the opposite direction. Now everything works fine.
 
os_as_shoes.png
 
I've been using paper-based backups for ssh- and gpg-keys for over 15 years... nothing beats the resilience of (laminated) paper in a safe or safe deposit. USB-sticks die within short timeframes and need regular backups, so they are pretty much useless for long-term backups. floppy disks would be a viable option, but hardware has become scarce to non-existent.
Paper with text-based backups (or QR-code if you must - but I prefer human-readable variants), which have some error-correction/resilience and possibly encryption are pretty much the most reliable long-term backup solution - FOR SMALL AMOUNTS OF DATA that is, of course...
 
sko said:
FOR SMALL AMOUNTS OF DATA that is, of course...
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Of course. I wasn't joking about scanner codes, which includes most of such small amounts of data stored on paper - but the idea to e.g. save several M such as a mp3 or even more.

About the long term storage of paper I was careful anyway. Most of our homeprinter ink colors wear out in a few years, so b&w, only. Besides your mentioned lamination you also need to chose acid free paper, so not the cheapest one. In my earlier computer days I printed thousands of handbook pages. Within ~15 years they all became brown, friably, and since the ink also became more kind of a pale grey (matrix printers ink ribbon (we're talking long term storage, which means looking back time periods like back to those); jet inks became kind of brownish, while lasers seem to keep their black pretty much) I wonder if the contrast was still good enough get anything useful scanned from them again, if they were not printed too small... :-/

I rather rely on backing up on common storage devices. Having enough redundancies, and exchange the drives from time to time, makes me not only feel pretty save against hardware failure, but also save against technical obsolence. I still have data that was once stored on IDE HDDs. And I once needed to dump my perfectly working HP scanner into the garbage, because simply the driver was not continued anymore.
So, if you need to store the according software savely, you could directly save the data that way.
But, of course, I agree, for keys and maybe passwords, this could be an additional, reasonable redundancy BU - but I find it a bit nerdy niche, which may also be seen as I only envy you 😁
 
Just to be clear: those paper backups are only *additional* backups of those most-important 'keys to the castle'. They are also in 'traditional' (encrypted) backups in various tiers and also go to tarsnap.
They all have been printed with laser printers and on high dpi settings. The oldest ones are ~15 years by now and still in pristine condition - the keys on those sheets have been phased out and replaced long ago, but I kept them just to see if/how they will last over time.
For the last ~7 years I've been using the same gpg master-key (and yearly extended sub-keys) on a yubikey which is used in combination with sysutils/password-store in which I store *everything*, including other gpg/ssh keys. So the only key I need perfectly reliable backups, is the key on that yubikey (of which I also have a backup in safe storage). So if I'd be very paranoid, I could easily replace that single paper-backup every few years...


but to get back on topic - there's a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1718/
 
My overall experience with ChatGPT can be summarized like this:
Everytime I ask it something I get a lot of useless 'blablabla'. After checking the result with a conventional search engine, and pointing out the answer was a complete load I only receive ornately verbose excuses, and even more useless BS.
So, I wonder if for that something like cluster computering was really necessary, or if a simple customary PC with some upgraded infocom parser wouldn't have done the same job for less expenses.
 
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, "OK, now what?"
 
Maybe the cook simply forgot to close the door and they leaked out from the storage.
Or they stopped by to laugh at the defeated of the last cockfight.
 
Maturin said:
My overall experience with ChatGPT can be summarized like this:
Everytime I ask it something I get a lot of useless 'blablabla'. After checking the result with a conventional search engine, and pointing out the answer was a complete load I only receive ornately verbose excuses, and even more useless BS.
So, I wonder if for that something like cluster computering was really necessary, or if a simple customary PC with some upgraded infocom parser wouldn't have done the same job for less expenses.
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I think base level ChatGPT, and probably many or all of the paid tiers, is there to harvest information from and not necessarily give it to you. The true power of those systems really comes out when they get focused in on an extremely specialized and specific field. Like producing proteins from scratch that actually fit the real world.
 
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