← Back to context

Comment by cph123

21 hours ago

I personally think printing unless absolutely necessary is a waste of resources.

Printing also covers things like exporting to PDF, or rendering in an eBook format (EPUB, Kindle, etc.) for reading the content offline while travelling, etc.

Considering trends in CVEs, printing is only growing importance. Printing has the unique advantage of giving you a record of data that's durable, unhackable, and possible to read without computers. If you print something, you can be confident that it's still going to be the same when you read it later.

  • this.

    read books too.

    if anyone thinks msdn, github, reddit, stackoverflow, and soon if not now (hosted) llm's don't export and mine their users queries for architectural goodies...

    developers ALL have targets on their backs, it's just the way the world has evolved.

It is. But sometimes it is absolutely necessary for something to be printable, and PDFs are useful. Sensible OSes can generate PDFs from the print dialogue.

When there is a website that I want to save indefinitely, I will print it to pdf. It means I can go back in a few years after the site is offline or has rearranged its urls (thus breaking bookmarks.)

I mostly do this with order confirmation pages when I order off of random e-commerce sites, and with my bank when I use online bill pay. (And then if someone claims I didn't pay them, I go back through the pdfs and see if I made a mistake.)

More importantly, I "print to pdf" recipes that I want to save. Every year I print out the same turkey recipe, from a pdf, and then I don't need to worry about getting my phone or computer gross by interacting with it while I prep the turkey.

Must be horrifying for you to walk into a barnes and noble. Don’t go read up on how bitcoin works or hell nascar. Seems pretty unnecessary that we drive cars around in a circle for countless hours. I will take books and people making physical copies of whatever they want over many other things you would probably pile on your list of wasting resources.

  • In the early 90s, I would print out usenet posts so I could read them on the commuter train. Seemed a good idea at the time and I probably read them with more attention than my current online practices.

  • * I don't feel that's a charitable interpretation of the OP's comment. I have seen people print emails just to read them, including a page of CCs they discard, or 37 version of the draft slide decks, etc. And that's on their own printer - the office printer pre-COVID was just always printing random pointless stuff (as witnessed by the volume of it that was never even picked up!:). I don't have particular urge to print randomly, so I probably fit into the "unless absolutely necessary" group, but goodness there's a lot, and I mean a LOT of paper waste that doesn't provide entertainment value of nascar or B&N.

    * (Bitcoin, I'll agree, is an even more massively irrational and wasteful human endevour, but that doesn't mean all printing is awesome:)

    * This is not to say that some webpages shouldn't be printable, I agree that they should - for a lot of the webpages focused on displaying information rather than interaction, making them print consumable is good. Just that parent's comment doesn't make them the buzz-kill party-pooper, necessarily :)

  • >> I will take books...

    and you can, without attacking the GP statement about their PERSONAL preference, or clumsily trying to tar them with some sort of pejorative NASCAR paintbrush.

Printable does not mean it will be printed, if a page is printable one can assume the creator hasn't fucked with the scroll wheel for example, or forced you to sit through unnecessary animations.

I agree that unnecessary printing is wasteful. But i would see this just as anecdotal: Having information structured consistently and a easily accessible format. That makes a difference in the long run

Did they mean specifically printing to paper? Unfortunately the term is overloaded to include exporting to pdf, ePub, etc...

Or do you mean even exporting is a waste of resources?

You might be discounting the electricity and battery wear on devices down to zero, and inflating the cost of prints in your mind. Paper is EXTREMELY cheap and efficient.

I often print things that I do not want but need to read, and go outside with it.

Cuts well on procrastination.