I’m very happy to see the Navy running on old hardware. Do you really want the “move fast and break stuff” tech bros designing weapons!? Plus, this is the same week where businesses running Win3.1 dodged the biggest computer outage in history.
Yeah, I’m far past the point where I look forward to updates on applications I use anymore. Everything just keeps getting worse these days. Old thing that works perfectly is the way to go.
I think you have excessive confidence in the cyber security of old institutions.
But also: Is this not NCD? I absolutely want tech-bros running the MIC. I want the next generation of supercarriers to be the Starship to Gerald R. Fords, SLS we are NATO, we can sacrafice a little bit of short-term military readiness in exchange for doing cool shit again.
You might think this is a joke… But rest assured! IT IS NOT!
It makes sense. Updating the hardware is logical due to magnetic medium degradation. There’s no reason to run a current OS on a closed system. Features are irrelevant. It’s all about stability and security.
If it still works, it means it’s robust, and if it manages to do its work properly then there is no reason to replace it with something unproven.
If they are smart with their money yes, if not they would have had to replace everything.
I don’t see the problem. The system that reads those floppies is probably very deeply integrated into the ship and does it’s job very well. At the same time, being able to give it something like a USB instead will update the actually troublesome part (floppy drives) while keeping the part that does it’s job correctly untouched.
I do think that USB would not be a good choice, considering how frequently they’ve been implicated in malicious actions. I mean, USB as the bus would be fine, but, it should use a more esoteric connector.
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until private Doug plugs his compromised phone into the fire control computer USB port to charge it.
They could always use a USB pinout on a proprietary connector I guess.
when we say “emulates floppy disks” are we just talking about .img files?
if so, that’s not nearly as impractical as the meme makes it sound. .img files are quite common for distributing software.
Probably a floppy disk hardware emulator, something that essentially plugs to the original system’s floppy disk interface, has a drive for modern removable media (USB/SD card/whatever), and buttons/displays to support disk image swapping and unmount/eject.
And then got a celebratory fax from HQ.
That might not even be a joke, sadly.
![[A public service announcement by StarFlork Academy]: After 30 years of service German Navy retires Floppy Disks(sh.itjust.works)](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c08124c0-6bac-43ea-8baf-9617b7e96567.webp){kind=link}