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Comment by avidphantasm | Hacker News Reader

How long before companies start consciously de-risking by replacing general-purpose systems like Windows with newer systems with smaller attack surfaces? Why does an airline need to use Windows at all for operations? From what I’ve seen, their backend systems are still running on mainframes. The terminals are accessed on PCs running Windows, but those could trivially be replaced with iPadOS devices that are more locked down than Windows and generally more secure by design.

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They likely run software written for windows, patched together over decades, that wouldn’t port easily to an iPad.

One of the problems possibly preventing this is that budgets for buying software aren't controlled by people administering the software. Definitely not by people using it.

Often, the cost of switching is too high or too complex to justify. On top of that, many applications commonly run in manufacturing etc., simply does not run on any other OS.

It's true that a multi-billion dollars screw-up, with possible deaths, is a cost that is much easier to justify..

And you think that any realistic alternative (which does require appropriate funding) does not have similar risks?

The billions that have been lost, and the lives that have been lost, have, in the blink of an eye, rendered the "too costly to implement" argument moot.

For bean-counting purposes, it's just really convenient that the burden of that cost was transferred onto somebody else, so that the claim can continue to be made that another solution would still be too costly to implement.

Accepting the status-quo that got us here in the first place, under the pseudo-rational argument that there are not realistic alternatives, is simply putting ones head in the sand and careening, full steam ahead, to the next wall waiting for us.

That there might not be an alternative available currently does not mean that a new alternative cannot be actively pursued, and that it is not time for extreem introspection.

Certain backend systems run on mainframes, yes. But the airline's website? No (only the booking portion interacts with a mainframe via API calls). Identity management system? No. Etc.

Embedded Windows has always seemed like an oxymoron to me.

You lost me at iPadOS.

Never if they can help it and have heard of Santander

“Nobody ever got fired for Buying IBM”

They should’ve been.

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