The problem with floppy discs is that they are performing a service that price gouging private contractors could be doing. Unfortunately there are still government agencies that are saving tax dollars by sticking to so-called “legacy” systems that are well understood and are as near to perfected as they can ever be.
It’s just unfair competition. How can they compete with old tech that just works. And works without an LLM shoved in it… hell, they don’t even need to connect to a company server!
Tech bros will see to it that every aspect of the public sector is loaded down with broken enshitified proprietary spyware garbage that require regular service subscriptions.
System has been running on floppy disks for 50 years… people : “Floppy disks are not reliable!”
<sigh>
Old tech is solid and reliable. Do you really want the modern tech ethos of “move fast and break stuff” to apply to Air Traffic Control? I wouldn’t trust the big tech companies to write software for red-lights without killing people.
Old tech still requires maintenance and replacement parts. This tech is so old that they can’t effectively provide either. I 100% agree with you that you don’t want to “move fast and break things” but there does need to be a program to upgrade over time to deal with the maintenance and replacement problems, as well as improve capabilities and safety. The fact that some ATC systems completely crashed in recent months, leaving air traffic in a very dangerous state, is evidence of this problem.
Edit: November 13, 2026 - nationwide ground stop due to telecommunications issue. I’ll just leave this here
First time I’ve heard a floppy disk being referred to as reliable
The floppy disk is 60 years old. In which universe is migrating away from 60-year-old technology “moving fast and breaking stuff”?!
What are they moving to? Because that’s what the comment is referencing. The new tech they are moving to, not the old tech.
It’s not so much that new tech is bad … new tech could be made to be ten times safer than what we have now.
The problem is that the new tech is controlled by psychopaths who want to squeeze as much profit out of everything imaginable … imagine all that new tech controlling air traffic but its all locked up by proprietary software that would hold entire airports, agencies and governments hostage, or be made available to the highest bidder and even for international opponents or enemies … and all of it up for grabs for profit and regardless of morals, ethics or human decency.
Moving away from floppy discs in 2026 is moving fast and breaking things? Peak Lemmy moment.
Somebody out there is thinking “why not vibe code it and get it done by AI fast?”
Billionaires start dropping out of the sky because ChatGPT told them to nose dive into the tarmac.
Stop trying to seduce me.
I hear AI would make a great traffic controller. Surely you wouldn’t regret replacing human traffic controllers with AI.
If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he’d be all about it.
This is going to devastate the floppy disc industry.
Goodbye S&P500 floppy was its last true champion.
Other countries would be horrified to hear that critical infrastructure had been so neglected, but this is just another day in the US of fucking A
It’s way more common than you think.
If something works then you don’t need to fix it.
There was actually a benefit to being behind the curve on this.
The scheduling is done on modern machines, the actual flight control console is a glorified comms station with a very beefy audio recorder.
It’s built to last, and to be as reliable as possible, while still being repairable by a skilled technician.
Any update needs to be as solid and reliable as what it replaces. That’s the key, not being advanced or some shit.
It’s fairly typical of aviation around the world
Old is safe, and if it’s reliable, why change it?
We just add new layers on top of the old system
For the record, whole lot of planes using floppy disks too
Sounds like they actually only entered the 20th century.
I don’t trust it happening well under Trump so I’m going to take this as a sign to be prepared for far more crashes in the next two years.
I’m sorry, what?
Apparently they believe an unreliable storage medium that hasn’t been manufactured in more than twenty years may not be trustworthy enough for a life critical system anymore. That, or finding “new” floppies is more expensive than making the switch…
You need a computer to do a thing, ALL you want is the command prompt and thing doing.exe
Can’t hack a floppy disk remotely, it’s the OG air gap
