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Comment by mcny | Hacker News Reader

To spell it out, I think the joke here is the assertion that they are probably using old operating system and software. The screenshot is for windows XP.

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Why is that a joke? Factory equipment is ordered and has a lifetime of 20 years. Of course it has old systems. These are grownup industries. They have no time for development hipster nonsense and extraction games for unwanted features to stave of unemployment in some glass-towers.

You're shooting the translator.

> They have no time for development hipster nonsense

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-xp-suppo...

> extraction games for unwanted features

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

> If you continue to use Windows XP now that support has ended, your computer will still work but it might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses

It only matters if the machine is online, and they often aren't.

> they often aren't.

This was NOT my experience while working in the automotive industry.

> This was NOT my experience while working in the automotive industry.

Exactly. The only people who can climb the corporate ladder are people who care about business "impact" more than anything else.

> It only matters if the machine is online, and they often aren't.

No.

Really, you shouldn't think that. It's really bad security practice.

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

It is typically introduced to the target environment via an infected USB flash drive, thus crossing any air gap.

Funny when you never touched a computer in 20 years and as soon as microsoft posts "Support ended" it suddenly is a problem, when in fact, nothing changed. Computer still send signals and recieves signals just fine.

> Computer still send signals and recieves signals just fine.

Yes, this is in fact the problem which gets exploited and said exploits remain unfixed because it's EOLd.

Mostly works fine until some internal limit is reached. For example, the Y2K bug at the turn of the century. Good thing that was mostly dealt with ok. :)

If that is so, factories should maybe not buy software that has a much shorter lifespan than their 20 years. In essence, they are the ones making the mistake, not the OS vendor. Heck, they should probably fork an existing OS and maintain it themselves if this lifetime requirement is such an important thing.

You're likely not wrong, but also the fact that Windows tells you you're running out of storage going as far back as XP if not further back. I wont be surprised if Mac and Linux do the same. My guess is, they kept ignoring it until it became impossible to ignore. I wonder if years passed until it was unavoidable.

A lot of server OS's/configurations will just silently fill up and take down any services depending on that volume with it.

Well yeah, if your swap partitions on the same as the rest of your OS, eventually it will just make itself known as an issue.

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