FAA Begins Retiring Decades Old Floppy Disks from Air Traffic Control

In one role, I worked on writing software for drones.

That very rigorous process was very reassurring to me. Reasonable progress was absolutely occurring.

> One of the eng I worked with was 80+ years old and just didnt want to retire. He did not understand modern systems at all and the risks we were looking at were not (imo) realistically balanced.

What kind of risks were you looking at with what kinds of balances, if you're able to share?

we can look at this more holistically than a specific IT project. like in china, which is not a place i want to live, it is still valid to say, their process of steamrolling past local interests means that airport expansion and transit to new airports can be built quickly, which helps meet demand for air travel better than working at the absolute limits of safety and efficiency tradeoffs.

local control in the US infests everything. it causes airports to be too small, guilds to grow too slowly, it opposes infrastructure, it makes politicians too vulnerable and too weak to make changes that upset minor but powerful real estate interests.

so in one POV, safety is a blocker to reasonable change, but everywhere else in the world, they just increase capacity, and the huge stresses on safety limits are reduced.

There’s been an incredible expansion of computer hardware and networking in every dimension since the heyday of the floppy. And the floppy itself was a huge step up from technology of even a few years prior.

Your comment could have been made in any year since 1950, and it would have been both correct and irrelevant outside the areas most resistant to hardware upgrades. FAA is conservative, and should be, but the rest of us have supercomputers in our pockets.

Have software developers abused the hardware capabilities they have been granted? Of course they have. I’d love to see some care put into that. But beyond the basics, hand-twiddled hyperoptimizations are now an exercise for craftspeople. Or…AI?

https://sysatl.com/ids4/

Instead, the United States government should have continued the policies and values that led to Next Gen, ERAM, STARS, and AAS.

Another trump tell… Lame acronym.

1. The party leader is a fragile, dying narcissist who is desperate for his name to be attached to anything other than the misery he's inflicted upon the world.

2. Their _actual_ historic achievements are all war crimes, human rights violations, and policy changes that would terrify their average supporter if they actually understood the long-term consequences.