3.5 inch diskettes ?
These are the real questions
Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
21–30 of 222 posts
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#22Wouldn't it be interesting if the floppy disks lost were 2.88MB and also only commonly readable in japan, where that rare format of drive was very slightly more popular in the mid 1990s.
Maybe HiFD or SuperDisk, Iomega something-or-the-other...
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#23more questions than answers, I love how the article provides no information on why floppy disks were being used as if it occurred in 1995.
The typical reasons costs a lot to upgrade tech for large organizations, existing supply lines to get the equipment, the pro/cons being well understood at this point, etc. Oh, and of course our good old friend "well we've always done it this way!"
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/10/22/us-nuclear-weapo...
"US nuclear weapons command finally ditches 8-inch floppies"
>And yet, such a computer system ranks as one of the most important in the world – so critical in fact that nobody has wanted to change or upgrade it since it was built nearly half a century ago.
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#24Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.
Why even publish this tbh? I mean it's good they're doing that, but advertising a leak with so few people affected seems weird to me.
it's a level of honesty that we are not used to it
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#25Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.
Why even publish this tbh? I mean it's good they're doing that, but advertising a leak with so few people affected seems weird to me.
Japan has been known to apologize publicly when a train runs a couple minutes late.
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#26Wouldn't it be interesting if the floppy disks lost were 2.88MB and also only commonly readable in japan, where that rare format of drive was very slightly more popular in the mid 1990s.
I know it's security by obscurity, but this would secure the data a very decent amount lol
Not quite obscurity given the attackers could measure the disk and do a quick Yahoo search. Maybe, security by antiquity?
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#27This makes me wonder what the top posts on HN would have looked like if it existed in 1995
This gives a glimpse of what it may have looked like: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=1995
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#28Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.
Why even publish this tbh? I mean it's good they're doing that, but advertising a leak with so few people affected seems weird to me.
I’m not familiar with Japanese law, but frankly leaking information about a _single_ person should be cause for a breach notification everywhere. The fact that it isn’t is indicative of the fact that profit is placed over privacy so often.
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#291.44MB?
Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the 8" ones? I guess we'll end up creating more questions and not getting any answers any time soon. You'd think that the duration or lifespan of equipment is written down somewhere, and that when stuff expires it's transferred to a replacement. But even in Japan that doesn't seem to apply to governmental bodies. Small benefit of this case: it can't be that much data, unless it's a private key to a server that…
Maybe they meant a SD card or USB drive, but translated it as "floppy".
The Japanese version says "FD" multiple times, so it really is talking about floppy disks.