The IRS still use COBOL.
That’s not even a government thing. It’s a finance/banking thing, as most major banks are still using mainframes and legacy COBOL code for most of their business logic.
So does pretty much the whole banking and credit industry. When you get money out of an ATM there’s usually some COBOL code involved.
True, we stack old technologies on top of older technologies, and somewhere at the bottom, there is z/OS with COBOL running. A young person right now learning COBOL has a secure future with big paychecks.
Depends on your tolerance for code spelunking. Back in the 90s I was encouraged to do Y2K prep because I had some COBOL experience, but I really hated pawing through old code. To be fair, COBOL was designed to be self documenting and English-like. But I’m glad I got into web dev instead back then. It was right at the dawn of “dynamic HTML” when web pages started actually doing things. Very cool time. Right now I’d be more inclined to go into helping companies recover from failed AI projects.
Reminds me I have to catalogue 2 Tandem Non-stop! Systems at work… I don’t need to meddle with the cobol code atop but still, this was quite a surprise to stumble upon.
SS7, part of the old ass 2g and 3g networks
Kinda surprised this doesn’t have more upvotes considering it seems that it continues to be a massive security vulnerability.
Yep and a family member of mine was a victim of a SS7 attack yesterday
Are they a CEO or something?
If they are just an average person, this is kinda unsettling… 😬
Average person, nothing special. Got a SMS OTP code for their Uber account and changed the information (email, phone #).
fax machines, both in Germany and Japan.
They’re common in the US too in doctors offices and hospitals because of the security requirements of transmitting patient records and such.
As someone who directly manages faxing in the company i work for, yup! In Healthcare and we send out results to doctors and hospitals through faxing all day every day. We have mostly converted to electronic fax. We still control the servers on prem but the account is linked to a cloud solution so all the faxes are created with the servers and instead of using our own telephony solution like we used to, we send directly over internet to the provider who then sends out to the clients at the last leg. Hundreds of thousands of pages every month. From my understanding, it’s still the easiest solution to get away with not having to implement some new system that will be subjected to audits. Faxes are accepted, and little is required to show for compliance.
Interesting, how is eFax any more secure than email? The advantage of fax is it’s one machine to one machine, no possibility of interception without physically tapping the POTS line.
It’s not. Information is secure at rest and encrypted during transfer, but once it reaches the part where it is sent over voip using a telecom provider, it has the same issues as it always did. We use it because its the best way to send this many faxes, as well as automate things using our internal applications to send faxes through it as well as other applications that we leverage its API to use the service. One advantage that makes it semi more secure is if we send a fax to another client that also uses the same service as we are then then it’s actually a secure stream for the entire path.
Legally defined as secure, not actually secure.
They are fairly insecure in practice, since they are throwing the data at misdialed numbers and they are frequently placed in shared and insecure locations in the building where lots of people can access whatever comes through.
Sure. But as someone who used to work IT with a focus on cybersecurity, physical access to anything trumps everything else, and people who put fax machines in insecure locations will also put email servers or whatever in them. Also throwing data at misdialed numbers is a tiny threat because the odds of transposing a number or whatever and also getting a fax machine are pretty tiny.
Although the guy above you was just talking about how he works in the industry and they mostly do efax now, which… Iono how that’s supposed to be more secure than just email or whatever. I guess if you’re sending to physical machines it’s more secure on that end, but if the senders are using efax some of the receivers prolly are too, at which point we’ve lost the whole point of using fax machines.
In the US they cannot be in “insecure locations” legally. And sending HIPAA materials to the wrong number is a reportable offense.
I used to work at a retail store not even ten years ago, and we would submit delivery orders via fax. It’s weird until you realize they’re great for reliability and record-keeping. No batteries needed, totally existing infrastructure, kinda fun to use tbh.
And it’s WAY older than people think. The first patent for a fax like machine was granted in 1843.
It surprises me how many system utilities I use that are older than I am. I am currently initializing a disk on a cloud server with an application that was written when Ford was the US president.
Can you say which application it is? Does it run on a mainframe? Any idea what language was used to program it?
Sorry this is just quite interesting.
Snot Flickerman was right, it’s dd. It was in the docs I linked to show the commands. It runs on anything with storage devices and an operating system. I mainly use it on Windows servers running on AWS.
I’m gonna hazard a guess at
dd
The Wheel. We should’ve graduated to antigravity by now, don’t you think?
Back to the Future lied to me again!
In fact, it didn’t.
Hoverboards actually do exist. And for bonus points, so do speeder bikes. You probably already know about real-life jetpacks.
I wish I could live another 100 years to see better optimized versions of them.
I found a new exotic propulsion device to hang all my hopes on, so maybe we can get it soon!
we dont posess the knowlegde of how to do that, that isnt done by magnetism. maybe if aliens come to earth than maybe.
Talking to a good friend 20 years ago, very smart guy, and he was thinking we already artificial gravity.
i remember mythbuster tried to experiment with it.
Phone numbers
A decade ago, I thought phone numbers would soon die out. Instead, the most popular messaging apps use them as identifiers and adoption of those in North America is poor.
Phone numbers are the new ICQ number
Mindblown
The sewing machine. Like we got 3d printers than can give me whatever I want in 20 hrs but I still got to fight with a sewing machine to stitch an outfit. Like why no polyester clothes printer?
For one, polyester fabric and clothes are just terrible
Two, technically you can 3d print a chainmail shirt, but it’d suck to wear normally
We have knitting machines, and automated looms (weaving machines,) we even have sergers for fancy sewing. Its just plain easier to make the finished product as a custom job since humans aren’t uniform in size, and it’s way easier to weave a rectangular piece of cloth than any other shape.
Steam engines.
The vast majority of our power comes from making something really hot and boiling water. Coal plant? Oil plant? Gas plant? Nuclear fission plant? Geothermal plant? The grand holy grail of energy production that would be a nuclear fusion plant? All steam engines.
Yes, unbeknownst to everyone, this is what a steampunk society realistically looks like.
After first contact
A: These are our mini neutron star fusion reactors. The most advanced technology to have ever existed. We basically take a chunk of neutron star matter and divide it into two. We neutralize the negative effect and extreme gravity with our space-time bending gravity manipulation technology. We let the two mini neutro spheres accelerate and collide. This generates enough energy to power atleast 3 planets for 1000 cycles. Not onl–
H: Wait a minute. I have a question.
A: Please feel free to ask any questions.
H: How do you convert the raw energy generated into a usable form at that scale?
A: We use utlra high intensity lasers for energy transfer to plane–
H: No. That’s not what I’m asking. How do you convert the raw energy at reactor into a usable form?
A: …
H: …
A: We boil water wi–
H: Motherf-- enrages and loses sanity
Stolen from reddit.
We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.
Americans signing for credit card purchases.
But maybe that died in the past few years, it’s been a while since I’ve visited. You must have tap by now, but if not… awkward
Really depends on the place. Most chain stores, restaurants, etc, will have tap to pay. It’s mostly local businesses using old hardware from budget credit card merchants that really require you to sign anymore. Sometimes there’s the odd tap and still have to sign, but it’s usually done on the electronic pad.
Car thermostats for the radiator. You don’t want the coolant flowing when the engine first starts, because it will run like shit. So you have a cylinder filled with wax that expands with heat. That controls a valve to set the flow of coolant. Low tech, works fine, no particular reason to change it.
Is that how the covers over the radiator are operated as well
I thought it was just a spring that expanded with heat and opened/closed with the expansion?
Every one I’ve seen or replaced was just that. No idea what the wax thing is about so I looked it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_thermostatic_element
OP’s right!
Air traffic control still uses floppy disks, windows 95, and a plastic board of paper tag numbers to keep track of shit instead of a computer.
To be fair I have infinity more confidence in the system you just described than whatever tech bro disruptor was going to pitch
Not all of them, most of ATC in EASA airspace is Linux based and use electronic strips instead of the plastic paper strips.
But the foundation of the ground/ground communication is still AFTN based on x400 network (Europe used to have an X.25 network for its CIDIN communications).
The latest and newest tech for international data exchange is AMHS based on X400, often it is x400 over IP ok, but still a 50 years or so tech.
The main idea behind ATC and aviation tech is reliability and compatibility with countries with less money to upgrade tech.
Fax, still in official use in Germany.
It’s considered a secure method of document transfer over email, despite email being able to be secured and fax can be hacked with like a length of wire and a knife. Fucking irks me.
Because how many attackers are actually interested in attacking fax? Like… have you ever heard of hackers hacking physical mail? It’s to old for people to care, and “people not caring” is implicitely secure by ignorance.
Also there is fax spam. I get all these random advertisements faxed to me for companies for window replacement services that don’t actually exist, and sometimes fortune tellers. I have no idea why.
I mean, if all the good secret information is going over fax and everyone knows it, sure, people will hack it. Blackhats are in it for the money, not to work with the newest technology. Most of what they do is already mind-numbing grinding.
The main security there is just the security of whatever phone line it’s going over. And that’s assuming you never dial a wrong number…
Yeah for sure, but security through obscurity only works until it’s actually important or exploitable for monetary gain. I wouldn’t even mind that, but e-mail can do so much better and it’s treated like a giant security risk.
Because it doesn’t have encryption by default, and encryption is not a setting in many public providers + if security works, then only within a single provider, not between them.
How does one hack fax in that fashion?
Fax operates as data over phone line, similar to dialup. If you can get a wiretap on a phone line, you essentially can get everything that passes over it. Technically you could encrypt it, but it’s usually not required you do legally.
Fax is too simple to completely die.
Very common in the US medical field as well
It will never go away in health care and government departments in Canada.
Pagers.
Still in use by hospitals and emergency services
Shit works
Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.
Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.
Microsoft Windows
UNIX
If some of the stories are to be believed, some of the code dates back to 3.1/dos too
Oh you can clearly see that this is true when you launch certain programs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o1x183/the_famous_windows_31_dialogue_is_again_in/
Oh that’s tremendous, I don’t run windows to see this. But come to think of it I have come across some ancient screens doing odbc/data connections ancient popups in excel at work!
