this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 29 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

[–] [email protected] 33 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Doing a bit of research online, my info is slightly out of date.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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

3.5" is much more solid than 8" floppies.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

The R in smart looked like an H at first. Was wondering if they made these in Maine.

[–] [email protected] 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Like one of those old cassette tapes with a headphone cable when MP3 players first came out and cars didn't have adapters? Lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks this makes me feel (a bit) more secure...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yup, we don't want it to crash.

[–] kogasa 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Eh? You can verify bit for bit that a digital transfer off an SSD was successful.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

yea but SSDs are not reliable enough. random bit flips from cosmic events, degradation of data if unpowered for a long time, can only be written to so many times

they are VERY reliable for casual PC use or even server storage but not for something that could start ww3 if it glitches

also, as some other people said, dont change something that already works

[–] kogasa 2 points 10 months ago

That has nothing to do with file transfer ("updating"), just long term storage. It's also a solved problem. You can solve it at the software level with modern self-healing filesystems.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It boils down to "never change a running system"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Laughs in Linux