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Comment by ano-ther | Hacker News Reader

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ano-ther·

Here is a video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i77k2H5gJwI

View on HN

https://youtu.be/i77k2H5gJwI?t=34

Quite amazing how prevalent Windows XP is 22 years later

I hope it's either a completely offline computer or a Linux system with an XP theme to make it look more familiar to the users.

I worked in a very similar place a decade ago, and probably know a few of the major people involved here. Not that I've kept up with them.

The machines 10 years ago were on a LAN with limited access to the global (well, Chinese) Internet. It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible.

More troublingly, I would bet a large sum of money that there are Windows XP installs in this lab, and even pirate installs of LabView. I distinctly remember being onsite watching the guy next to me open up a NFO file to get the instructions for the LabView crack. At my station in one of the boxes I had a fully licensed multi-seat institutional LabView DVD set, paid for at staggering cost somewhere in the University hierarchy. I debated speaking up, but decided to just let him keep going on doing what he was doing. That was probably the right choice.

Maybe they patched it. But knowing Microsoft, i don't think so. (There are not enough people in China to patch the holes in the MS OS).

You can still pay for patches for Win2K if you pay MS well enough. There is a lot of critical infrastructure relying on legacy systems and Microsoft does have special programs for that.

Now whether China can get into them or not is another question since if they get patches they can RE the exploits as well…

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