Welcome to “That’s not surprising at all!”
The IRS still use COBOL.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.
Fax, still in official use in Germany.
Fax is too simple to completely die.
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.
Very common in the US medical field as well
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?
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.
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
I’m surprised nobody mentioned jack plugs yet. Basically unchanged since 1877 when it was invented for phone switchboards, roughly as old as safety pins or modern hairpins (give or take a few decades)
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
That can’t be the actual name of those, is it?
I’ve always kinda wondered, and generally call them TRS or something (I’m audio engineering background, American, millennial), so looked it up:
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio) under the “other terms” section:
The 1902 International Library of Technology simply uses jack for the female and plug for the male connector.[3] The 1989 Sound Reinforcement Handbook uses phone jack for the female and phone plug for the male connector.[4] Robert McLeish, who worked at the BBC, uses jack or jack socket for the female and jack plug for the male connector in his 2005 book Radio Production.[5] The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, as of 2007, says the more fixed electrical connector is the jack, while the less fixed connector is the plug, without regard to the gender of the connector contacts.[6] The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1975 also made a standard that was withdrawn in 1997.[7]
The intended application for a phone connector has also resulted in names such as audio jack, headphone jack, stereo plug, microphone jack, aux input, etc. Among audio engineers, the connector may often simply be called a quarter-inch to distinguish it from XLR, another frequently used audio connector. These naming variations are also used for the 3.5 mm connectors, which have been called mini-phone, mini-stereo, mini jack, etc.
RCA connectors are differently shaped, but confusingly are similarly named as phono plugs and phono jacks (or in the UK, phono sockets). 3.5 mm connectors are sometimes—counter to the connector manufacturers’ nomenclature[8]—referred to as mini phonos.[9]
Confusion also arises because phone jack and phone plug may sometimes refer to the RJ11 and various older telephone sockets and plugs that connect wired telephones to wall outlets.
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.
Microsoft Windows
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!
UNIX
Steam turbines.
Like those damn nuclear reactors!
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.
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.
In the US they cannot be in “insecure locations” legally. And sending HIPAA materials to the wrong number is a reportable offense.
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.
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.
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.
And it’s WAY older than people think. The first patent for a fax like machine was granted in 1843.
It surprises me how little stick-built houses have changed in the last 50 years or so, at least in the USA.
IPv4.
IPv6 became a recognized standard by 1998.
EDIT: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption
Nearly 30 years later, and less than half of the connections to Google are via IPv6.
IPv6 is such an ugly monster.
Based on how ISPs seem to not get their CGNAT setups right, it’s not going away any time soon.
Fucking NAT. Never should have been allowed to escape from the lab.
Lolol, you’re not wrong. NAT made IPv6 a later problem
I ❤️ IPv4
There’s no place like 127.0.0.1
There’s no place like
::1I can’t understand that gibberish, speak RFC 791 like a true patriot
As a South African, I have never even seen IPv6. My university has two /16 blocks and no NATing
I’m almost at the point where all of my connections are IPv6, but still hampered by my mobile provider (ironically, since IPv6 was generally adopted earlier on mobile in many countries).
There’s a used bookstore near me that has the oldest cash register I’ve ever seen. It has keys like a typewriter, and makes the most satisfying “ka-ching” sound when it opens. They always use it to add up your purchase and print a receipt, even when you’re paying with a credit card. But I always try to bring cash when I’m there so that the drawer gets used. (And also, y’know, screw credit card companies taking their cut.)
I know that’s not really “in widespread use” today, which is probably what the question meant, but that was the first thing that came to mind for me.
Wow. Many years ago I bought an old cash register to use as a prop in a play, sounds like the type you’re talking about, and it was already way outdated then. Thing was amazingly heavy, like a refrigerator.
Pagers
That’s a good one. Why would companies give employees special purpose gizmos that just tell them to use the phone in their pocket to call the office.
Hospitals use pagers because the frequency band they run on is better at penetrating walls. Shorter waves carry more data, but are easily blocked by walls. Pagers don’t need a lot of data, so they use really long waves.
And hospitals are built like bunkers, to avoid the potential need to evacuate patients during an emergency. Things like fire breaks between individual rooms, earthquake protections, being strong enough to stand up during a hurricane, etc… The goal is to be able to shelter in place instead of evacuating, because a mass evacuation of bedridden patients who all need monitoring equipment would be a logistical nightmare.
But this also means hospitals are really good at blocking wireless signals, because the walls are all super thick and sturdy. So they use pagers, which use long waves and can reliably penetrate the bunker-like walls. You don’t want a doctor to miss an emergency call because they were sitting in the basement; Hospitals need a wireless connection that reliably works every time. And pagers just happen to fit that specific niche.
Seems like a good level of digital freedom actually. Be connected, but only just enough.
Meshtastic > Pagers
Didn’t think I’d ever see THAT again. Damn lol
Have you used one before? If so, how did it go? What are the pros and cons?
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.
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!
Is that how the covers over the radiator are operated as well
