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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

Using floppy disks and old hardware and software doesn't sound like a problem if it still runs and does what it's supposed to do. I'm skeptical that building a modern system would really save money since the temptation for feature creep is too great.

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> Using floppy disks and old hardware and software doesn't sound like a problem if it still runs and does what it's supposed to do.

It sounds like a problem to me for the simple fact that replacement parts are near impossible to find, and it's clearly costing the taxpayer a lot of money. That alone should be reason enough to upgrade.

It's also a huge security problem because many of these machines were designed before modern security procedures were invented. How am I supposed to maintain a cryptographically secure password system on a machine with a processor too slow to run a hashing algorithm?

> I'm skeptical that building a modern system would really save money since the temptation for feature creep is too great.

So, because we might be tempted to add a few features, we shouldn't upgrade technology? I don't understand where this weird pseudo-luddite mentality in the tech world comes from. I see it all the time in tech forums, and I just don't get it.

"If it's not broke, don't fix it" is a fun, catchy phrase, but it really breaks down as soon as you try to apply it anywhere. "Hey, you should really change the oil in your car." "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

That's because a lot of time the suggestion is more along the lines of "Why bother changing your brake pads on your old car when you can just buy a new car with new brake pads" than "You should really change the oil in your car." Nevermind the fact that your old car is a truck that you need in order to haul things, is easily repairable and you know how it works inside and out and people are telling you to get a SmartCar to replace it when you really just need new brake pads.

But now your old truck is 70 years old and all the replacement parts have to be hand made by some people you called back from retirement. It's okay to keep it running to show it off from time to time, but it's no way cost effective to do any real work with.

> How am I supposed to maintain a cryptographically secure password system on a machine with a processor too slow to run a hashing algorithm?

Counter-argument: How are you supposed to develop a virus for such obsolete technology, and even then, how are you supposed to infect a system without it being networked in a meaningful fashion?

That reminds me of this article https://www.wired.com/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

Cannot read the article (ad blocker blocker) but that does not look like '50 year old computers' ; those were actually running some version of Windows making them relatively new and easy to infect.

That's what happens with new technology is what I am saying.

Or, solve just what you need to. With floppies getting hard to find, but old industrial systems still working just fine, people designed and built floppy emulators:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator

It's often a lot cheaper to deploy a fix for what's actually broken, than it is to completely replace a business critical system.

Also, replace mentally replace every instance of "museum ready" in this article with "mission critical" (which most of them probably are), and it'll seem a lot less ridiculous that they maintain them.

I think the article is pretty light on the specifics.

There are parts of technology where you're absolutely right - if some mission-critical system is running on some old circuit, but it works reliably and maintenance is feasible, don't change it!

But other pieces of tech include the Windows 95 computer that is the only one anyone can do _____ with, because of some complex system that only runs on it. And anytime you do _____, you need to copy your data onto a file, and exclude some specifically formatted config file that you write in notepad, in order to get it done. And the whole system is a small project that could be feasibly implemented quickly and cheaply to run on modern computers.

So there are two sides to this, and arguing absolutes doesn't get us much closer to the truth.

From the article, it mentions that Social Security has a variety of legacy systems, and updates the ones that it thinks are the slowest and costliest. Which is the right way to think about it, so long as they have the technical expertise to make those judgements correctly.

Agreed. Plus, even if it is decided to modernize any of these systems, we would likely have to run an old system with the new one in parallel for quite some time to ensure a properly smooth transition. Air traffic control is an example of where such practices occur.

Even if the software never needs an update (possible for isolated process-control systems, less so for central record-keeping at the IRS), there's hardware to consider -- where, nowadays, do you get a replacement 8-inch floppy drive? Or, say, new read heads for one?

This is interesting:

http://jimwarholic.com/2009/04/fdd-floppy-disk-drive-emulato...

> Using floppy disks and old hardware and software doesn't sound like a problem if it still runs and does what it's supposed to do.

That's great reasoning, until the day it stops working.

Yeah but what happens further down the road when it doesn't run well anymore? My old company was facing issues where they were struggling to find SMEs for legacy systems

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