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

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#41

Post by dopamean » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:40 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.

Whatever the average age of the HN crowd is would probably inform a little. I'm 34 and have been a dev for about 8 years. The only code from a past job that I know for a fact is still in use today is something that I wrote in early 2017 (a let's encrypt integration for a web host). So about three years. I'm very curious to know how it has been updated since but I'm no longer at that job.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#42

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #35

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.

I get why prefer old but works over new and fancy, but what about new and works? They could trial new technology for five or ten years in parallel with the old before switching gaining both the stability of old and proven and the future-proof-ness of "new and we think it will stick but it might not". The reason why it isn't done this way is probably cost, but at what point will the difficulty of sourcing the old tech…

I'm fairly confident that newer aircraft are using newer, but works, technology. There's no reason to update the hardware on the 747 to use that technology, though. It'll be expensive to certify and retrofit.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#43

Post by detaro » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:44 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.

Not a single comment in this comment section seems surprised by this - so probably a large percentage.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#44

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #35

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.

I get why prefer old but works over new and fancy, but what about new and works? They could trial new technology for five or ten years in parallel with the old before switching gaining both the stability of old and proven and the future-proof-ness of "new and we think it will stick but it might not". The reason why it isn't done this way is probably cost, but at what point will the difficulty of sourcing the old tech…

You can still buy new, still shrinkwrapped, recent production floppy disks and new drives. I'd imagine if you're supplying parts for these, a warehouse with a stack of known-to-work floppy disk drives isn't much of an expense and certainly not difficult.

Even if it became a problem, you reasonably have the margins to ask a manufacturer to setup an assembly line and run a new batch just for you - the only downside is that you're likely spending a lot of warehouse space to house the new parts.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#45

Post by quacked » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:47 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.

Definitely not, but they could probably convince the public that the reason their airplanes kept crashing was one of their competitors.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#46

Post by dhosek » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #9

dhosek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When 3.5" floppies (stiffies) were introduced, the big selling points were that (a) they could fit in a shirt pocket and (2) you could toss them across the room and they'd still work. At my first job, I kept a 5¼" floppy with "only copy of important data" written on the label hanging off my filing cabinet with a magnet.

They were before my time, but I had an old drive I "examined" (destroyed) as a kid. It was unclear to me how such a large thing could hold so little memory.

Your younger self would have been fascinated by these: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_335...

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#47

Post by tantalor » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

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,…

Why not just virtualize it and use whatever hardware you want?

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#48

Post by fallingmeat » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #24

WJW wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigation is not critical? It seems like a pretty dangerous turn of events to try a low-visibility landing based on outdated navigation data.

Navigation data is important , which is why it's required to be refreshed within 28 days (this was a big worry during the recent Garmin outage BTW), but whether it's critical depends on often domain-specific definitions. AFAIK it doesn't meet that standard by either software or aviation standards. Also, it's definitely not software, so "critical software updates" is still incorrect.

It's going to be required to fly legally, without a waiver. But in terms of the engineering development assurance required, typically it is more 'critical' than radios and less so than flight controls, engine controls or displays. Of course this depends on the safety analysis performed for the individual aircraft and intended operations.

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#49

Post by virtue3 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #39

hindsightbias wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have built applications that have been around for 10 to 15 years. The only thing that would have been good is to know in advance which ones will last that long - one was a temporary proof of concept!

The jerks always say that it will be 'temporary' and we can redo it later. HAH

Re: Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks

#50

Post by blahyawnblah » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #47

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,…

Why not just virtualize it and use whatever hardware you want?

The hardware itself may be the issue. Even com ports over usb don't work a good amount of the time