The comment section is wild. So many people thinking that the Japanese government is somehow late to the floppy free party. Clearly they have no idea how dire the IT infrastructure situation is for the most critical systems of the world’s major super powers
If you think the US government is floppy free, let alone capable of going floppy free in the next 5 years, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya
Not only because the infra is bad but also because floppy is “safer”. It’s not "connected"amd no one can invade it.
Security by obscurity
Security through obscurity would be having a system connected to a network, but relying on a secret / unknown protocol to secure it.
Air-gapping a system is a real and very useful security method. That being said, it’s not enough by itself.
If you’re interested, have a look at past examples, like the recent work on breaking Tetra communication standard and Stuxnet.
As another guy joked it’s really is genuinely more accurate to call floppy discs security by obsolescence because everyone doesn’t have the stuff required to manipulate/read floppy discs and there are even people who don’t even know what a floppy disk is and just think it’s a physical save button
That’s why I only communicate via poop/sparkle emoji Morse code
✨💩💩💩 ✨✨💩 ✨✨✨ 💩➿✨💩✨✨ ✨✨ 💩✨💩 ✨➿💩 ✨✨✨✨ ✨✨ ✨✨✨
✨✨ 💩✨💩➿💩 ✨✨✨✨💩💩 ✨✨
Security by obsolescence
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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
I’m not sure about government but I am aware of test equipment in commercial aerospace that still use floppy disks, soooo…
Meanwhile I’m pretty sure even putinism didn’t stop Russia from being floppy-free
it would be pretty hilarious if sanctions push them to ditching floppies
Flopoies aren’t used at all AFAIK. But email is. And USB tokens.
US gov isn’t even tape free
Tape makes an excellent, dirt cheap, large scale backup solution. You can get a 30 TB tape for 45 bucks.
As long as you test restoring those backups, which is where many entities fail.
Wish smaller scale tape storage was more viable for home use (homelab scale). Would love to have tapes instead of spinning drives for something like a home media server.
Last time I looked into it I didn’t even know where to start. Is it more feasible now? I’d imagine power consumption would also be better than keeping disks spinning all the time.
Tape is not great for things you actually want to access like media
Yes, but it’s great for your emergency backup copy of media.
My thought process is that in the case of media I’m not accessing the same files over and over, at least not for most of the files. For a media archive it would make sense, to me at least. I’m not familiar with modern tape storage, I’m sure there’s many good reasons why this isn’t done (yet?).
Would be good for self hosted offsite backups too I’d imagine.
You don’t get fast random access. So you have to read the whole tape if it’s near the end.
The tape drives are found were really expensive. But as others mentioned, it’s not really suitable for media anyway. Only cold storage backup.
Hell yeah brother
Amazon and Facebook probably aren’t tape free either. Tape is crazy cheap and reliable. It’s just really slow.
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) has significant advantages in certain situations, such that you have to make specific design decisions if you don’t want people to use it: https://www.chia.net/2018/06/11/the-asic-resistance-of-proof-of-space/ https://chiaforum.com/t/lto-tape-drive-as-a-storage-option/12829/3
I will always remember stumbling upon this video (“HP Protecting your business data (or Disc vs Tape)”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHP_bKJx2xg
Frick yeah
Its been a while since I used one but arent 3.5’s unreliable? I still remember having problems with data integrity way back then. I dont remember them as some rock solid tech and I’d rather put my faith into 650MB CDs if I had to choose.
3.5 inch disks only held about 2MB on a good day. Reliable or not, you won’t get much on that disk these days.
Unless you are going to make your own backups and take them somewhere else, I would use a cloud solution. Yes, you have to trust the company you choose not to fuck with your data, but they are fault-tolerant solutions that will likely last longer than some random removable solution.
Granted I’m too young to have handed floppys but from what I understand from my dad and other people the appeal of floppys today is not reliability but rather that normal people have moved on to USB and CDs and have long since thrown away their floppy drives and some people only know them as icon buttons making them pretty good spot to hide classified documents and government secrets
I can’t imagine that’s the main reason. You can buy a 3.5" floppy reader with a usb connection for like 20 bucks on amazon and anyone who wanted to get their hands on government secrets would not be deterred by that.
I think the simplest and most likely reason is that updating things and making changes in bureaucracies is hard on its own, and any time you start dealing with tech it’s all a house of cards where one system depends on another and so changing any one thing will either make it all fall down or bring along with it massive sweeping changes.
I somehow wouldn’t be surprised if certain parts of the US government still used reel to reel tapes.
…punch cards. My money is on punch cards.
Imagine if Germany tried to do this. So much crucial infrastructure would simply collapse. Bureaucracy everywhere in Germany is based on and hinges on technologies from the past millennium: floppy disks, FAX etc. Jesus
Fax machines are actually still pretty widely used in corporate America (but not in households at all). Especially insurance and medical companies. I remember having to ask my dad years ago to fax something for me from his work (a bank’s corporate office) since we didn’t have one in the house. (I don’t remember what the fax was for.)
I think with voip you can fax again, now from computer
Jesus only in Bavaria. But otherwise you’re right.
An anecdote: Back when I was studying we had the opportunity to gain a temporary full version of a specialised software. All there was to do was to proof that one is a legit student. We had to submit our proof of enrollment to the software’s manufacturer. The only way to do so was to submit it via fax! It coldn’t be done with email, as they told us on the telephone hotline. The software was a German product. We already have been overtaken by the rest of the world (regarding the IT sector).
As a german I can’t remember, when I used a fax the last time. I think, I have sent two or three faxes in my whole life and that was long ago. But while I am pretty sure, some administrations still use that shit, I cannot imagine, anyone in Germany used a floppy after the 90th. Maybe some retro freaks or an ancient tecnological device that resist to die. But that would really be an exemption.
Fucking excel sheets, though …
Well, at least they’re trying to make their resource use more efficient in terms of technology. Big problem with society on the globe as a whole. Everything is built on top of the old. If cities were built from scratch today, well… yeah. Would be a lot different.
Than we can finally have an entire highway with parking lots build into the city. Oh, wait, that’s already reality.
I drew a floppy disk as part of a workplace online Pictionary game, only to find somebody I work with has never seen one.
We work in IT.
The rest of us tried to explain what they were and he was like “did you use them in a GameCube?” and “was it like a USB stick?”
I mean it was a bit like a USB stick. Just nobody made the comparison back then because USB didn’t exist. But yes it is removable storage that is read/writable.
GameCube though…
Yeah, I’m starting to doubt he’d ever seen a GameCube either.
“it’s the save icon”
He thought the save icon was a printer…
It’s happening… there have been posts from time to time over the years pointing out this issue.
It was bound to happen but now I can’t remember the ideas people came up with for a new save icon.
oh no… and what was the printer icon for him?
this makes me feel old…
We didn’t get a chance to ask that as everybody over 30 had already crumbled to dust by this point.
On windows “save as PDF” is a printer.
Nintendo was planning on adopting floppies iirc, but they were too easy to copy from.
Nintendo did use them for the add-on Famicom Disk System but that was all the way back in the 80s.
There was definitely a SNES floppy drive you could buy for piracy purposes. A few kids at school had them.
Not sure if it worked with larger games or Starfox which supposedly had an extra SuperFX chip to do 3D work.
No supposedly about it, Starfox was the most famous example but having extra hardware in the cartridge to power games was a thing.
Happy cake day!
They still have a love affair with faxes though. Thank God you can fax from 7 Eleven. You can do pretty much anything from 7 Eleven.
You know, since e-mail is a fucking wasteland of unread messages and spam, faxing doesn’t seem so bad.
I have had a total of three humans in my inbox in the past year
You… can fax from 7-11? I need to know more about this!
Convenience stores in Japan are much more than the cigarettes and lottery tickets of North America. They have lots of ready-to-eat food, snacks, drinks as well as some banking services, bill payments, faxing and more.
Ours have that too, but it’s old hot dogs and ATM’s with fees up your ass.
Yeah sorry. I should have said “ready-to-eat food that you actually want to eat”. As in hot food regularly being cooked and refrigerated food that is brought in fresh multiple times a day.
Each 7-11 in Japan has one of those big business multicopiers. You can copy, print, scan, fax. The printing is sweet because it does photo printing on glossy paper, but also laser printing up to A3 size or even making custom post cards. They also have databases of paid content like sheet music and stuff you can print. I prefer Lawson/FamilyMart though since they also have sticker printing!
You have just convinced me to put “visit a 7-11” on my Japan bucket list*. I need to know what it feels like to print sheet music there.
*I may not ever get to go to Japan, but we can all dream
Trust me, if you go to Japan you will go to a 7-11 whether you want to or not. They are absolutely everywhere, like “ubiquitous” is an understatement. I think when we were there we went to 2-5 convenience stores per day just because they were just so… convenient…
You should try to visit 7-11 in most countries, they are all very different!
Get the 7 Eleven multicopy app. You can do all kinds of things.
I hope fax stays relevant, even if it’s less used.
At a broader level, this is why I stopped chasing after the cutting edge technology for the sake of it. If it vastly improves my everyday life, sure, I’ll consider adopting. Otherwise, I’ll just be miserable if it’s not something I’m passionate about.
Not gonna lie, this sounds like something North Korea would say.
Great job!
Although, using floppy disks has the advantage that everyone has to make sure their file sizes are small enough to fit on them. Which makes for much easier handling for those who don’t use floppy disks.
Unzipping archive. Please insert disk 34/2365
File read error on disk #2209.
Installing Photoshop with disks was a chore, or rather a cumbersome task.
or… you end up with more smaller files to keep track of in order to carry the same information that could’ve been in one large file
The best big data solution is those big boxes with 100 floppy disks. Just make sure you get one with the labels included. Not making that mistake again.
How does small file sizes in floppy disks make it easier handling for those won’t use floppy disks? Genuinely curious.
I think it’s because it’ll promote smaller sizes in general, which is almost always better to handle. (If it can be done without significantly losing quality.)
Think if Twitter for government documents. If the pure text can’t fit in a floppy, nobody’s got the time to read it.
Although, using floppy disks has the advantage that everyone has to make sure their file sizes are small enough to fit on them. Which makes for much easier handling for those who don’t use floppy disks.
What? How is that at all relevant in today’s age?
The lack of pressure leads to absurd file sizes for silly things.
A few weeks ago, I needed a vector company logo, so I asked our graphics team for one. The file they sent me was 6MB. While working with it, I noticed it was actually quite clean, so I exported it as an SVG and it came out to 2KB. 1/3000th the size for the exact same graphic.
I opened their file up in a text editor and found font configs for specific printer models (in a graphic with only filled curves), conditional logic, multiple thumbnails, and other junk.
Ok yea, but it’s 6MB, it’s inconsequential with today’s storage densities and a modern system can handle it with ease
“It’s not that big of a deal” repeated enough times, is exactly how our society got to this state in the first place.
Not when you have 1000s of files. It adds up.
A month ago i had a customer rating about not being able to upload the new Header image ( 250 MB ), while the error message clearly states: max 5 MB file size allowed. I didn’t even know where to start.
This is how the world ends
I had a student send me the screenshot of a pdf for his homework submission. So, yeah. I guess that’s how it ends.
How much battery life did their phone have?
No idea. It was a laptop screenshot.
And fax?
Man stelle sich vor, Deutschland würde das versuchen. Es gräuelt mir bei dem Gedanken :s
Ja, aber das war doch auch so ein Grossprojekt, das die Jap. Verwaltung Fax loswerden wollte.
This is a headline
On to Zip drives, then?
Maybe now they can switch to the magneto-optical disks like in Mission: Impossible.
The funny thing was 1.44mb is probably enough to store a really really long list of names and codenames so…they could have used a normal floppy disk lol.
NOCLIST.TXT, 78KB
“We’ve got it.”
ken_all.csv is 1.61MB so not enough.
rumor has it some or all of the united states nuclear arsenal is run off of floppy disks
They retired them in 2019.
I can’t remember where, but I think I’ve seen that spun as a security benefit (probably facetiously). Simply because few people can access floppies anymore, especially 5 1/4". And there’s probably like 20 people with 8 inch floppy drives.
Edit: oops… There is literally a comment in this thread saying the very same.
Buy a floppy drive off ebay == end up on a watchlist
there’s no victory here - in the article it states that at least one still law requirse floppy disks must continue to be used.
The past persists in that regard lol
If it works well for the job that it’s tasked to perform, why change it? It’s got the added benefit of being an unintentional security feature now too, as very few others will even have a drive for reading them. Sort of like how manual transmissions are much less likely to be stolen now.
This is a great point, but it probably doesn’t do the job as well as more modern alternatives.
- Easy to lose, possible data leak concerns.
- Easy to retain data that should have been deleted.
- Easy to lose data if a disk gets lost or damaged.
- Likely wastes time when trying to track down the disk you need to getting someone to transfer it.
- Lack of access logs and auditing capabilities.
- Easy way for viruses to spread.
Modern IT managed file servers solve a lot of real problems when well-managed.
All of those are true of even smaller USB drives (which has been a problem here).
On the other hand, if you use an old technology that isn’t being mass produced anymore, it can reach a point where it will become a big liability for a mission-critical piece of equipment.
I think there was something about the US government having to finally get rid of vacuum tubes because the only suppliers were in Russia.
Yah this is bad I run a cnc plasma table, big table 10 feet x 20 feet. It uses floppy disks. Pain in the ass to find a new drive and pain in the ass to find new disks because constant write re write emf and metal dust kills them. But despite that it’s still cheaper and easier than a $15k retro fit to a more modern controler.
If it works well for the job
Your example is one where it clearly isn’t a great fit for the job. If you wanted to transfer sensitive data discretely, a floppy could be significantly better than a wired network where you’ve got to worry about America/Russia/China/Israel/Iran and who knows who else peeping on the transfer, or a USB drive which is already known to be compromised by stuxnet derivatives.
The most practical reasons are that both the drives and media are getting harder to find.
