this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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Where are floppies used in the US government? Old mainframes are all over the place but where are floppies?
Japan just got an acute case of what a lot of western governments have - IT early adopter disease. These old systems were built using (at the time) revolutionary technology that was designed without much thought given to modularity or sun-setting.
Iirc literally the nuclear launch systems? I'll see if I can find the article.
Edit: not anymore, but as recent as about 2019ish. Can't imagine they're the only ancient infrastructure still using this level of technology though. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html
https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-muni-trains-floppy-disks/
I'm not sure about government but I am aware of test equipment in commercial aerospace that still use floppy disks, soooo.....