by sidlls on 4/7/24, 3:20 AM with 238 comments
by iancmceachern on 4/10/24, 6:39 PM
They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.
by Workaccount2 on 4/10/24, 7:15 PM
They haven't shown any interest in updating the system. It works, they can get service, and get "new" replacements for things that go bad.
What they might not know though is that there is basically just one engineer we have (and probably the only one on Earth) who knows how to work on these things. He's getting old, and obviously none of the younger engineers really have an interest in learning ancient forgotten systems.
by HumblyTossed on 4/10/24, 5:49 PM
This is the problem, not that they're using a floppy. This isn't web dev where you get to rewrite everything every 6 mos. Systems have to have decades long life cycles BUT THEY EVENTUALLY NEED TO BE REPLACED and that's not happening quickly enough here.
Edit: It was last updated in 1998, so it's due now not a decade from now.
by WaitWaitWha on 4/8/24, 2:14 PM
> "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer,"
In 1998, most personal computers already had hard drives [0]. From Wikipedia "The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal 10 MB HDD, and soon thereafter, internal HDDs proliferated on personal computers."
The 3.5" floppy is from the mid 80's, again from Wiki [1] "In the early 1980s, many manufacturers introduced smaller floppy drives and media in various formats. A consortium of 21 companies eventually settled on a 3½-inch design..."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
Why do I have to do this research instead of the "journalist"?
by nerdjon on 4/10/24, 5:09 PM
What is it about public transit in the US that it is so... bad? Inadequate funding seems to be the easy one, but the MBTA (Boston) doesn't even handle the funds it has well. Yeah it needs more funding but there is also just a core issue to how it's run.
It is sad to see the state of public transit in this country, particularly in dense urban areas where we should be discouraging Car use as much as possible.
I am very curious what other countries are doing that we are not.
by bigyikes on 4/11/24, 12:49 AM
I was expecting it to be some kind of utopia, with futuristic technology on every corner.
In reality, it is roughly the same as anywhere else in America. A bit of a let down. The innovation does not take place in the infrastructure.
Beautiful place, though!
by aluminum96 on 4/10/24, 8:00 PM
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-voters-narrowly-r...
by shrubble on 4/10/24, 5:57 PM
Sounds like they are using the floppy as an excuse to push for an upgrade that has nothing to do with the floppy drives.
by sevenseventen on 4/8/24, 2:07 PM
yes, I know safety-critical systems are different. I also expect that the floppy-disk issue is just the easiest problem to explain of a long chain of terrible legacy lock-ins. However, if they're literally holding their breath every morning when it's time to IPL the system off a floppy...that part sounds solvable.
by throwaway74432 on 4/10/24, 7:16 PM
That's not the 3.5" floppy disk in the video. This is the old floppy disks[1]
1. https://www.digitaltreasures.ca/img/level2_floppy_525.jpg
by skissane on 4/11/24, 12:17 AM
> "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer," said Mariana Maguire, SFMTA Train Control Project.
> SFMTA's train control system relies every morning on 5 inch floppy disks.
This doesn’t make any sense. 5.25-inch floppy disks and no hard disks was not “cutting edge technology” in 1998. It arguably wasn’t even “cutting edge technology” in 1988
by abeppu on 4/8/24, 2:01 PM
by Aloha on 4/10/24, 5:50 PM
The technology works, there is a replacement outlined, there is no shortage of floppy disks - even 5 1/4 ones.
by yonran on 4/10/24, 7:31 PM
by ericmcer on 4/10/24, 7:48 PM
by ilya_m on 4/11/24, 12:50 AM
by jcgrillo on 4/10/24, 6:38 PM
This naivety is not Katie's fault. We who work in tech are to blame for constantly pushing our half-baked experimental garbage as if it was "engineering" on par with civil or aeronautical systems. We can't blame people for occasionally believing the lies.
The tech-washed version of this quote might go something like "wow I thought everything was moving to the multi-cloud serverless kooberneetus now, why is it still running on a computer?"
> It is easy to run a secure computer system. You merely have to disconnect all dial-up connections and permit only direct-wired terminals, put the machine and its terminals in a shielded room, and post a guard at the door[1].
This is the kind of thing I want running the trains. Give it ECC RAM too, please.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(cryptographer...
by sitkack on 4/10/24, 6:26 PM
by VyseofArcadia on 4/10/24, 6:03 PM
Yeah, that's called a cold boot. Moving to not-floppies doesn't mean you can avoid this. Clearly it's off of floppies instead of ROM so you can more easily update the software, but I am wondering how often that ended up happening. Maybe EEPROMs would have been better.
> Luz Pena: "How dire is it to change the system to upgrade it from a floppy disk to a wireless system?"
I agree that floppies aren't the peak of reliability, but "a wireless system" also sounds like a disaster. I don't want critical urban infrastructure running on extremely hackable OTA updates. For the love of god, SF, you can avoid pretty much all potential cybersecurity problems by just not putting your trains online.
I feel like neither the interviewer nor the interviewee really had the technical expertise to speak to this. This entire piece is just, "oooooo, floppies are old. Old bad! Why not new yet? New good."
by zitterbewegung on 4/10/24, 5:39 PM
by nvahalik on 4/10/24, 5:05 PM
The retro community has proven reliably that a simple Raspberry PI can easily bit-bang floppy controllers. We have myriad floppy-to-SD card adapters.
Surely a plug-and-play solution that removes the area of most concern (reliance on the media itself) should be easily achievable in a few months?
by FpUser on 4/10/24, 5:38 PM
Do they know that floppy can be backed up?
by anigbrowl on 4/10/24, 5:16 PM
by mathgradthrow on 4/11/24, 12:50 AM
by _trampeltier on 4/10/24, 5:36 PM
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931800/usa-nuclear-8-i...
by therealmarv on 4/10/24, 5:13 PM
by wakawaka28 on 4/10/24, 11:49 PM
by t1c on 4/10/24, 5:02 PM
by asveikau on 4/10/24, 9:47 PM
by ornornor on 4/10/24, 10:02 PM
And in the video, she says “on 3x 5 inch floppy disks like this one <shows a 3.5 inch floppy>”
by ChrisArchitect on 4/10/24, 6:20 PM
by asdefghyk on 4/10/24, 11:16 PM
by sourcecodeplz on 4/10/24, 5:08 PM
by fifteen1506 on 4/10/24, 8:40 PM
by m3kw9 on 4/10/24, 5:36 PM
by time4tea on 4/10/24, 7:31 PM
by gojomo on 4/10/24, 7:02 PM
Woulda been a nice time to clean up some of this technical debt!
Or how about the SF Emergency Sirens, taken offline in late 2019 for a "2 year" upgrade plan that officeholders implied was already in place?
In August 2023, with no progress whatsover, with the Maui fire disaster fresh on their minds, Mayor Breed & Supervisors President Peskin touted they'd finally funded a plan to return them to service soon: https://www.sf.gov/news/mayor-breed-and-board-president-pesk...
In that same August 2023 timeframe, Peskin said the plan would bring this "need to have" system "up and running" & to "state of the art" by end of 2024, for $5.5M: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-city...
Of course, this was just more blatant self-exonerating bullshit from our local political machines immune from any real accountability for incompetence in basic public functions.
A mere 6 months later in February 2024, nothing's been started, Peskin admitted "we don't even have a plan", the department is still waiting until "funding is identified", and the cost estimate has ballooned to $20.5m: https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-sirens-emergency-911-aler...
That works out to $170K+ for each of 119 units – units that each could probably just be a weatherized consumer-grade handheld device with multiple mobile/packet/sat radios, & a simple authenticated-playback app, mounted on existing poles that presumably already have power and even loudspeakers.
by kazinator on 4/10/24, 10:30 PM
The key words in the sentence are: "it's working just fine".
Data degradation of floppy discs is easy: just copy them to fresh ones, and verify that you have a good copy. The images should be safely backed up so they can be regenerated. (Plus there are emulators; a topic covered elsewhere under this submission.)
I mean, are they really using the same 30 year old floppy discs over and over again until they degrade?
by JoyousAbandon on 4/10/24, 9:15 PM
"it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive"
Absolute BS. Pretty much every computer had a hard drive in 1998, and most had CD-ROM.
Then they referred to the 3.5" disk as a "5-inch floppy."
<sigh>
