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1. Ars Technica (arstechnica@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Oct-2024 02:43:10 JST Ars Technica

   $212 million contract will finally get San Francisco trains off floppy disks

   Muni Metro also plans to ditch super-slow loop cable communication system.

   https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/212-million-contract-will-finally-get-san-francisco-trains-off-floppy-disks/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

   • WesDym (wesdym@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Oct-2024 04:15:04 JST WesDym

     in reply to

     @arstechnica The article doesn't make much sense to me. While 'ha ha floppy disks!' probably impresses people who don't know much about it, that's just an interface method, which is easily replaceable by others (such as flash drive) that do exactly the same thing in mostly the same way, for not a lot of effort or cost.

     After that, it would be difficult to achieve "less bandwidth than an old AOL dial-up modem," as that's literally phone lines. The phrase makes almost no sense.

   • WesDym (wesdym@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Oct-2024 04:17:41 JST WesDym

     in reply to

     @arstechnica Further, underground wireless may sound sexy, but is probably less reliable and more costly to maintain than more conventional hardwire systems. If this merely replaces the current hardline station-point system, fine; but if you want reliable system-wide tracking and real-time operational management, good luck with that. That 20 years of support is going to come in handy in that case. It's also much easier to jam, by almost anyone.