Hacker News

FAA Begins Retiring Decades Old Floppy Disks from Air Traffic Control

50 points by pseudolus ago | 35 comments

jonhohle |next [-]

More information needed. Was this a sneakernet? No one thought of replacing with a floppy emulator and SD cards? All of the data can fit into 1.44MB?

If the last one is true, devs take note. If FAA can rely on slow, small storage for safety critical applications, you probably can reduce the resource requirements for your app and improve your customers’ experience and extend the life of their hardware.

wat10000 |root |parent |next [-]

According to this article, it's far worse than that: eight inch floppy disks! Capacity might be as much as 1.2MB per disk, but probably less. https://simpleflying.com/americas-atc-floppy-disks-12-billio...

shermantanktop |root |parent |previous [-]

> devs take note

There’s been an incredible expansion of computer hardware and networking in every dimension since the heyday of the floppy. And the floppy itself was a huge step up from technology of even a few years prior.

Your comment could have been made in any year since 1950, and it would have been both correct and irrelevant outside the areas most resistant to hardware upgrades. FAA is conservative, and should be, but the rest of us have supercomputers in our pockets.

Have software developers abused the hardware capabilities they have been granted? Of course they have. I’d love to see some care put into that. But beyond the basics, hand-twiddled hyperoptimizations are now an exercise for craftspeople. Or…AI?

Dwedit |next |previous [-]

At the very least, physical media is airgapped. Floppies still aren't a good choice though, since they develop bad sectors so easily.

alex_suzuki |next |previous [-]

> replacing outdated floppy disks that contain vital weather and other critical information with a streamlined, 21st-century system

What does this even… mean?

mmmlinux |root |parent |next [-]

zip disks.

whynotmaybe |root |parent |previous [-]

Micro-services with docker running out of a kubernetes compliant blockchain with somewhere some "AI" added in the mix. I guess this news is more for PR than anything else because I don't see how the replacement of 69% of copper wire is meaningful in any way. What copper wires? Where? Is it because you removed landlines and replaced with voip?

greenavocado |root |parent [-]

Probably something something fiber optic

theturtle |next |previous [-]

[dead]

ethin |next |previous [-]

I have a bad feeling that this is not going to end well. Especially given that this administration is... Rather incompetent. I hope that safety is like number one on their list of priorities but somehow I doubt it

charcircuit |root |parent |next [-]

I would rather things be done "incompetently" than nothing being done at all.

wat10000 |root |parent [-]

Nothing being done at all means the system continues working as it is. Something being done incompetently means more people die.

readthenotes1 |root |parent |previous [-]

I agree, nothing says poor priorities like upgrading the air traffic control system. It removes the opportunity for graft, only supports the monied elite who can afford to fly and don't care about climate change, and diminishes the opportunities for crises to exploit.

Instead, the United States government should have continued the policies and values that led to Next Gen, ERAM, STARS, and AAS.

iberator |root |parent [-]

what do you mean. a lot of poor people fly as well. I won't would even risk to say that poor people fly more often. For example migrant workers flying lets say Bulgaria-Ireland every few months

tencentshill |next |previous [-]

I don't want the FAA to make changes at "lightning speed" or "rapidly moving to make upgrades" or "record pace". Safety must be further down the list for these guys.

p-e-w |root |parent |next [-]

Using outdated computer systems with aging storage media is a safety issue.

1970-01-01 |root |parent |next [-]

No, it isn't. This is time tested process. Find me any flight that had to land or crashed because the floppy disk was broken.

Jtsummers |root |parent [-]

I've worked on systems this decade that still relied on floppy disks. It's getting harder and harder for them to operate because the disks are getting rarer, as are the drives. And often the essential component is not the disk itself. There's some other computers in the system that cannot be upgraded to any more recent device, systems from the 1980s and 1990s that force them to continue using a floppy disk.

If it was just two modern computers and transferring data between them, the floppy disk would have been dropped in a heartbeat. But it's the old computers still in the critical path that are holding everything back. And those are really hard to maintain. Last year we phased out a system that was dependent on computers from the mid-1990s, getting replacement parts was practically impossible, they mostly just don't exist. You'd buy old systems off ebay and hope that they had enough working parts to scavenge, and the right working parts.

EDIT: Light editing because I had some extra words.

ale42 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Replacing them with cloud-based systems (if this is the "streamlined, 21st-century system") is a safety issue as well. I hope they are not.

Jtsummers |root |parent [-]

Fortunately the choice isn't between 1980s hardware with floppy disk requirements and rented servers in someone else's building. There are a lot of options in between those two.

creatonez |root |parent |previous [-]

Just turn WinRAR error correction up to max /s

adrian_b |root |parent |previous [-]

[dead]

InsidiousWombat |next |previous [-]

hopefully not with pendrives

fhdkweig |root |parent [-]

Zip Disks are the future. click click

alt227 |next |previous [-]

> The greatest nation in the world deserves a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, and under President Trump, we’re delivering just that

They are signalling Trumps involvement so I will assume it must be another vanity project he wants to stamp his name on. I look forward to hundreds of grounded planes due to cloud based weather reporting not being available because of a borked server update or misconfigured wifi adapter.

stevep98 |root |parent |next [-]

> You can track the progress of the Brand New Air Traffic Control System (BNATCS) by state and airport on our Modern Skies website.

Another trump tell… Lame acronym.

1-more |root |parent [-]

Initialism. If this were the neocon era it'd be an awkward shoehorned acronym like SKYHAWK or something though.

creaturemachine |root |parent |previous [-]

They'll just switch to gold floppies

superxpro12 |next |previous [-]

why is this "historic"? the thirst for this admin to use the most bombastic language possible is so tiring.

Just... modernize the thing already. thats your job. It's not impressive that you did this. You're supposed to do this. You dont get extra kudos for doing the thing you signed up to do...

and dont forget to put Trump's name at the beginning. Or he might get cranky

njovin |root |parent |next [-]

Everything they try to spin positively has to be 'historic' because:

1. The party leader is a fragile, dying narcissist who is desperate for his name to be attached to anything other than the misery he's inflicted upon the world.

2. Their _actual_ historic achievements are all war crimes, human rights violations, and policy changes that would terrify their average supporter if they actually understood the long-term consequences.

TedDoesntTalk |root |parent |next |previous [-]

It’s historic because no else has done it in the last 40+ years. Doesn’t make it a big deal, but it’s still a big change.

readthenotes1 |root |parent [-]

It is a big deal if you fly :)

The inability to keep the air traffic control system effective and maintainable is far more embarrassing than the inability to update the IRS software or build a high-speed rail.

tokai |root |parent |previous [-]

You could call it histrionic.

Bluestein |previous [-]

Out with FDD, in with GPT! (!)