Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#111

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #34

ir77 wrote: post #12

i'm surprised that people are surprised by this. i work for aerospace, and this is fairly typical -- albeit not floppy disk examples, but we keep a bunch of old laptops running win 7 and other examples around, hound around for them and spare parts. these machines are off the network, etc. these systems were developed 20+ years ago and per contract the a manufacture is obligated to maintain them for the service life,…

It is interesting that people don't think on these scales. What percentage of the HN crowd has developed something that has had (or will have) a 10, 20 or 40 year life span? Because I've seen a bit of that and it's what makes the world go round. There's certainly a lot of bad/crazy stuff out there but wonder if the ephemeral fashions of today will stand the tests of time.

> What percentage of the HN crowd has developed something that has had (or will have) a 10, 20 or 40 year life span?

The backend of the dmd D compiler was originally developed in 1983. Of course, it's been through a lot of dramatic changes.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#112

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #84

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why at my last job we had a rule that said prototypes could not be shipped as production software. It had to be either completely rewritten, or at least completely code reviewed and the "bad" parts rewritten.

I approach this by writing exploratory prototypes with good modular boundaries, but stub/hacky implementations. Keeping it simple lets me throw modules away as I refactor, until everything's been rewritten and then I ship it.

Sure, and that works great for a personal approach to code. But when your lifecycle from requirements through release needs to be validated, something more scalable is required. Sometimes that scalable thing is "anyone shipping prototype code will be fired."

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#113

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #34

ir77 wrote: post #12

i'm surprised that people are surprised by this. i work for aerospace, and this is fairly typical -- albeit not floppy disk examples, but we keep a bunch of old laptops running win 7 and other examples around, hound around for them and spare parts. these machines are off the network, etc. these systems were developed 20+ years ago and per contract the a manufacture is obligated to maintain them for the service life,…

It is interesting that people don't think on these scales. What percentage of the HN crowd has developed something that has had (or will have) a 10, 20 or 40 year life span? Because I've seen a bit of that and it's what makes the world go round. There's certainly a lot of bad/crazy stuff out there but wonder if the ephemeral fashions of today will stand the tests of time.

> It is interesting that people don't think on these scales. What percentage of the HN crowd has developed something that has had (or will have) a 10, 20 or 40 year life span?

> Because I've seen a bit of that and it's what makes the world go round. There's certainly a lot of bad/crazy stuff out there but wonder if the ephemeral fashions of today will stand the tests of time.

Not many, I'd wager. I've even seem a few people argue here (IIRC) that backwards compatibility is an antipattern, which is the thing that allows systems to function on scales longer than an ephemeral fashion.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#114

Post by JoblessWonder » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

I work on aircraft that up until last year received updates via ZIP DISK. Do you know how hard it is to find a working ZIP disk and/or ZIP drive?

Luckily we convinced the owner to update their avionics and now it uses... CDs? DVDs? A laptop? I honestly don't know. Something that isn't ZIP disks. We also have aircraft that need floppy disks.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#115

Post by taldo » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

cordite wrote: post #40

ir77 wrote: post #12

i'm surprised that people are surprised by this. i work for aerospace, and this is fairly typical -- albeit not floppy disk examples, but we keep a bunch of old laptops running win 7 and other examples around, hound around for them and spare parts. these machines are off the network, etc. these systems were developed 20+ years ago and per contract the a manufacture is obligated to maintain them for the service life,…

Google could never maintain an airplane.

There's probably a few very widely depended-on libraries in google3 (internal monorepo) that have been in 'maintenance mode' for 10y or more.

And pretty major pieces that get replaced with nothing breaking noticeably.

A better analogy would be like swapping the engines for electric drive props mid-flight, while other team is replacing most of the wings, but keeping the control surfaces in place.

Now, the cargo service would've been killed, and you'd have 3 mostly equivalent screens to choose from to watch movies during your flight.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#116

Post by JoblessWonder » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

lukeramsden wrote: post #107

code4tee wrote: post #32

Not surprising at all, and not really a problem either provided it works. More modern aircraft use things like USB sticks but often with old file formats and they can’t use a stick bigger than 2GB (actually hard to find if you want to buy one). Aviation engineering vastly prefers “old but works” over “new and fancy” and this article is just one detailed example of that.

Couldn't you just take any USB stick and only write a 2GB partition?

Yes. Usually it is a FAT/FAT32/NTFS formatting issue.

Although the most annoying issue is usually related to SD cards. Most SD Cards these days are usually "SDHC" or "SDXC" cards and formatting them to a 2GB partition doesn't actually work.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#117

Post by MrDOS » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #71

alfalfasprout wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, provided you have error checking logic and don't store them next to a magnet... floppy disks are pretty damn bulletproof. I've had way more issues per-use reading a thumb drive or a CD/DVD-ROM than I ever did reading floppy disks.

Really? I'm not doubting you, but I'm surprised. I only used them up until I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, but I still vividly remember often having to go through a couple of floppies from my drawer to find one that was working. And yelling at my little brother for putting a bad one back in the drawer. Are they really that robust? Was I just storing them stupidly maybe? Or maybe it was because all the ones we had wer…

I have similar memories from around the time when USB sticks started gaining popularity. I think floppy disk manufacturers started slacking off on QA through the last few years of large-scale manufacturing. They certainly didn't used to be that bad.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#118

Post by JoblessWonder » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #78

dehrmann wrote: post #59

The bigger story in the article is how little security review the software on these planes get > "Aircraft themselves are really expensive beasts, you know," said Lomas as he filmed inside the big Boeing. "Even if you had all the will in the world, airlines and manufacturers won't just let you pentest an aircraft because [they] don't know what state you're going to leave it in."

The physical floppies use the same chain of custody that any other part of the system use. Every floppy has essentially been signed off dozens of times before it ever sees the insides of an airplane, and there is nowhere between the manufacturer and a flying plane where there isn't a person who is officially in charge of it. From what I understood, there is (was) a real danger of a part that was used in a stress test…

The good news is that any new avionics system is going to have the ability for electronic distribution. Mostly due to reduced cost (cheaper than mailing out disks/CDs/DVDs) and better ability to correct any bad updates that are released.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#119

Post by echelon » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

mtbnut wrote: post #106

I worked in HAWK missiles in the Marine Corps for many years. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. In 1994, Block II launchers were still effectively using vacuum tubes. In fact, I still recall the one that faulted the most, from its label in the FM: relay K-9! Ninety-percent of launcher issues were attributed to that old relic of a tube. Then, in 1995, Raytheon came out with Block III updates, which replaced the entire…

> each with an NSN price tag of $170,000 per

This is why we don't have decent public health care. That's obscene.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#120

Post by ponker » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

The software that really matters, like really matters (not talking even about something like Google Search or Gmail)... is usually like this, since it's built to be almost never changed, since changing it is so high risk that it's almost never worth the cost.