The MTA's Oldest Controls Kept Going During the Tech Outage | Hacker News Reader

The MTA's Oldest Controls Kept Going During the Tech Outage

curbed.com

36 pointshoward94111 comments

MTA knocked together a system that was comparatively half-baked. It is not wired into the mechanical signals, nor does it control the switches or link up to the PA. Instead, each train running on the lettered lines was equipped with a Bluetooth beacon (yes, the same technology that powers your wireless mouse) that trips a receiver as the subway nears a station, which then triggers the LCD screen over the platform to update.

That seems like a prudent approach, not half baked. Keep the ancillary system air-gapped from the life critical parts.

Yeah, detaching niceties from safety critical systems isn't half baked at all.

I agree that being able to get the live data straight off of the signals would probably be "better", in that it'd be more accurate and timely, but building that in to the existing framework would have been really expensive and risky.

What they landed on is an excellent solution.

Nature has one solution to creating durable complex systems. Create an ecosystem with a lot of diversity in it. Mono-anything is bad because of all the obvious reasons that we have just seen.

I agree, however note that diverse ecosystems are inefficient, or more accurately, they are inefficient until something comes along that that can kill your highly efficient mono culture. At which point you realize you were using the wrong metric for efficiency all along.

Decentralisation IMHO another key to building durable complex systems. It’s worrisome to see modern systems become more and more centralised.

Communications Based Train Control is a bit worrisome. It's too centralized, and worse, sometimes, the central part is outsourced.[1]

[1] https://www.mobility.siemens.com/global/en/portfolio/digital...

“the MTA’s deeply fragmented IT systems are so mutually incompatible that at least only half the system crashes at one time.”

Let me fix that for you “the MTA’s deeply fragmented IT systems are so mutually incompatible that at most only half the system crashes at one time.”

In Battlestar Galactica the technology was purposely primitive to prevent cyber attack from Cylons. Same motivation for the MTA.

Perhaps this will precipitate another tech industry collapse like the dotcom boom. I can see most infrastructure being reverted to more basic systems to avoid this sort of thing in the future. Perhaps if the Saudi oil money had dried off sooner, Silicon Valley may have learned this lesson while they were drenched: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Unfortunately, like the Saudis, the tech overlords know the well is drying up, and see the state as the next set of boots to kiss. Or do you really think Elon's campaign donations are merely political?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com