this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Memes

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[–] SuperIce@lemmy.world 79 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The US nuclear arsenal still runs on floppy disks.

EDIT: The Air Force claimed they finished a migration from 8-inch floppy disks to solid state storage in June 2019, so my info is slightly out of date. They did use floppy disks for over 50 years though (1968-2019).

[–] Usernamealreadyinuse@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The thing with random internet replies: you never know if it's true (you could look it up, but that would make life to easy).

So this is or:

  • really scary
  • unbelievable smart cause nobody knows how to use them
  • not true

Probably there are some other options but I'll go for a combination of the first and second one and hoping for the third

[–] SuperIce@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Doing a bit of research online, my info is slightly out of date. They used floppy disks from 1968 to 2019. In 2019, they migrated from the old 8 inch floppy to "highly secure solid-state storage". They don't specify what type of solid state storage they actually use now though.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html

[–] Daqu@feddit.de 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

3.5" is much more solid than 8" floppies.

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[–] constantokra@lemmy.one 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'd guess it's one of these.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Highly secure solid-state storage"

Probably used the same encryption scheme on an SD card adapter that plugs directly into the floppy drive lol.

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[–] TurboDiesel@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

It was true at one point, but has since changed. The systems are totally air-gapped and worked 100% of the time, so there was never a reason to change them.

Also true: Boeing still uses floppies to update their 747s.

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[–] kamenlady@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It boils down to "never change a running system"

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[–] imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee 50 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It's not the disks it's what's ON the disks

[–] jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Supposedly on the disks. The files were saved, but did the FAT table eat itself was the question. 😂

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

FAT table eat itself

heh

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[–] Flabbergassed@artemis.camp 14 points 10 months ago (4 children)

And they always act as if there's no way it could have been copied and exist somewhere else.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But my dude... Diskettes had Copy Protection! /s

[–] atlasraven31@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah! The little plastic slider you moved up and down.

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[–] oldGregg@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

An embarrassing snapshot of spongebob at the Christmas party?

[–] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 38 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I remember when floppies where called floppy because they were huge and floppy (that's what she said). Before the hard shell smaller floppies became a thing.

[–] wunami@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

The disk part was still floppy.

[–] toofpic@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Still, hard floppys was really easy to damage - fart near it, and it's unreadable

[–] atlasraven31@lemm.ee 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

My favorite thing was messing with the metal slider until it broke.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago

Fidge spinners of their time

It was that or ballpoint pens. Good thing we still have the latter since even fidget spinners seem to have disappeared

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[–] meldroc@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I think in the later dying days of the floppy disk, the manufacturers made them with really poor quality. It used to be in earlier years, say the 8-bit years when floppy disks were still floppy, that the disks could keep your data for years if you treated them like vinyl records and never touched the magnetic surface.

In the late years, I've seen floppy disks that failed almost immediately.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They weren’t that bad. Hell AOL mailed millions of those damn things in envelopes and they usually worked.

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tape over the read only hole and reuse it: H A C K E R M A N

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[–] gazby@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Fritzer09@feddit.de 7 points 10 months ago

Woolsey! We need a stargate community :D

[–] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 27 points 10 months ago

The most important 1.44 MB you can imagine.

[–] banana_meccanica@feddit.it 26 points 10 months ago (5 children)

My first porn was on floppy disk

[–] KernelAnxiety@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (5 children)

There's something poetic about using a floppy disk to get hard

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[–] tiredofsametab@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

My first porn was probably NNTP (newsgroups) before I even had the actual WWW. Had to learn how to stitch images together from multiple posts in the early-mid '90s.

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[–] Caboose12000@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

what are all these old memes doing with save icons? /s

[–] unrelatedkeg@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

SAVING THE WORLD

[–] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] atlasraven31@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I remember when movies/games first started using UBS sticks to contain important plot-macguffin data, it seemed very high-tech and expensive. Of course, now high-capacity sticks are incredibly cheap so anyone can have a whole drawer of them.

[–] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 14 points 10 months ago

I liked when they used minidisks. It looked high tech and you could toss it around, unlike a cd. And it was bigger than a usb stick, so it was a better plot device.

[–] buzz86us@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Well considering most code is under a megabyte it makes sense

[–] Godort@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Shredder and Usagi seem to be holding Zip discs rather than floppy discs. I have no idea what Ripster is holding.

In fact, Lexington seems to be the only one with a floppy disc here

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 months ago

Yeah that was the episode where shredder had some software that could create holographic clones of people. But Bebop and Rocksteady fucked up and caused the machine to make Shredder behave like Michaelangelo.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I was going to guess LS120 (a.k.a. "superdisc"), but that's not it.

Turns out after some searching that it looks like 3.5" magneto-optical.

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[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

It's a goober

[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Nowadays it's microSD cards.

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

I mean, microSD makes for much more interesting drama. You can hide it in the lining of a suit, sew it underneath the skin, hide it in a ball point pen, in your pet. MicroSd drama is much more sneaky.

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Nah. Nuclear launch sites just retired 8" floppies required for launch verification like maybe 5 years ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html

[–] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

Climate change increased drastically since the era of floppy disks, coincidence!?

[–] BustinJiber@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Remember a Decepticon that transformed into a cassette?

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[–] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

And it was microfilm before floppy disks. And after it was CDs then USB sticks.

[–] OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
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