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Floppy disks were high-tech weapons once (files.mastodon.social)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 90 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

The US nuclear arsenal still runs on floppy disks.

EDIT: The Air Force claimed they finished a migration from 8-inch floppy disks to solid state storage in June 2019, so my info is slightly out of date. They did use floppy disks for over 50 years though (1968-2019).

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    The thing with random internet replies: you never know if it's true (you could look it up, but that would make life to easy).

    So this is or:

    • really scary
    • unbelievable smart cause nobody knows how to use them
    • not true

    Probably there are some other options but I'll go for a combination of the first and second one and hoping for the third

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Doing a bit of research online, my info is slightly out of date. They used floppy disks from 1968 to 2019. In 2019, they migrated from the old 8 inch floppy to "highly secure solid-state storage". They don't specify what type of solid state storage they actually use now though.

    Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It was true at one point, but has since changed. The systems are totally air-gapped and worked 100% of the time, so there was never a reason to change them.

    Also true: Boeing still uses floppies to update their 747s.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yup, we don't want it to crash.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Eh? You can verify bit for bit that a digital transfer off an SSD was successful.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    yea but SSDs are not reliable enough. random bit flips from cosmic events, degradation of data if unpowered for a long time, can only be written to so many times

    they are VERY reliable for casual PC use or even server storage but not for something that could start ww3 if it glitches

    also, as some other people said, dont change something that already works

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