gabriel (2 inches taller)

@ArtificialAngel

video gams 🎮

any pronouns
444631.xyz/

Alastar Gabriel (but you can call me anything). I'm an ex-professional software developer, now I make weird art and music :p I will give you bug facts unprompted

Twitch, Ko-fi, Neocities, Mastodon

We can be friends but I have to warn you, I am a little awkward and kind of hard to get ahold of :p

ENG/日本語 OK

website

444631.xyz/

dreamwidth

artificialangel.dreamwidth.org/

mastodon

tech.lgbt/@artificialangel

Tumblr (I probably won't use this one much)

www.tumblr.com/444631

gabriel (2 inches taller)@ArtificialAngel11/12/2023, 11:15 PM

Lapis the Nevrean @lapisnev

sin_pyro @sinpyro11/12/2023, 7:21 PM

Abandonware should be public domain

#The Cohost Global Feed #abandonware

Gay Eminem on 9/11 @DecayWTF11/12/2023, 7:50 PM

I've hollered about software preservation as a "thing we need to make anything work at all". Even at the Old Job in the 90s we were already dealing with tons of that shit. I ended up at one point rewriting some DOS control software for an outdoor LED display in Perl for a client because the original software was on a failed hard drive (in a failed 286, in 1999) and was just, not available anywhere.

Weasel Hills Golf & C.C. (hole 19)@wildweasel11/12/2023, 8:24 PM

i've seen people pass up or throw away stuff like System Restore CDs for ancient laptops, because they're "useless" or not as interesting to them as some lost media computer game or whatever, and I have to just metaphorically slap them across their faces. You cannot know everybody's use case. Someone, somewhere, has that exact model of laptop, that they're relying on for something just so damn specific for some critical or at least semi-important task. And wouldn't it be awfully nice if they had the peace of mind that, if it ever all went to shit, they could use the correct restore CD to get the thing back in working order, instead of having to deep-dive through ancient forum posts and FTP servers that might or might not still be running, deciphering the 8-character file names of a hundred some WinZip Self Extractors in hopes that maybe one will be the one that enables the PCMCIA slots in their bizarre, manufacturer-customized version of Windows NT 3.51.

This isn't even me exaggerating. In 2015, one of Paris's busiest airports had to shut down temporarily because their air traffic control computers, some of which were still running Windows 3.1, had failed. In a lot of cases, systems like this are so important that the time cannot be spared to take them offline even to upgrade them to newer hardware or software. And if it fails? To say nothing of whether anybody even knows how to fix it, even a skilled maintenance engineer would have trouble repairing a computer without the correct software. And the clock would very much be ticking, if it was not already.

Birdout: Paradise @SomeEgrets11/12/2023, 10:32 PM

i have a radar that runs on FreeBSD 6.3 from 2008

with custom kernel modules for bespoke hardware cards

reverse engineering old unsupported shit should be an actively supported, not-for-profit job publicly funded in the interests of the greater public good

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in reply to @sinpyro's post:

Quinn64 @Quinn6411/13/2023, 2:11 AM

It should go even further. I think it should be legally required that as soon as software is no longer supported (whether it's a game, firmware, system tool, etc.), it should be re-licensed to be copyleft and open-sourced. That would not only be great for preserving that history, but also allow it a new future.

Need a program from the 90s that isn't supported anymore? It may take a bit of work, but with the source code available, it could be updated to work on modern systems. Want to play a retro game? You could emulate it, sure, or you could see if there's a community maintained port for your modern platform of choice.

Noxulous of Fyth @Noxulous11/13/2023, 6:17 PM

I had no idea research labs had this issue, this is only going to make me more insufferable about this issue.

living in 16QAM @vxo11/13/2023, 7:15 PM

absolutely!!!

up until at least the mid 2000s, the National Weather Service forecast office in Miami would launch weather balloons with a radiosonde attached. The only receive-and-store-data frobozz available for the radiosondes they used ran on an IBM XT. The data was sneakernetted across the room on a floppy.

He Who Is Pale @hewhoispale11/15/2023, 1:09 AM

Yeah, most Big Microscope units in research labs (i.e. any facility called a "Microscopy Core" somewhere in a 3rd basement) are air-gapped. They require labtechs to bring fresh in-packaging flash drives to get the images off of them (a fresh one, every single time) to make sure the Windows Far-Too-Old system from touching anything on the modern internet it has no protection from.

in reply to @DecayWTF's post:

blimp @hillbillyinablimp11/12/2023, 8:21 PM

Remember when it was revealed that all of our nuclear stockpile silos in the united states were run on ancient tech from the fucking cold war because there's no budget to upgrade it so it's probably in exactly the same kinda state

Gay Eminem on 9/11 @DecayWTF11/12/2023, 11:09 PM

The frustrating part is that "old" does not have to mean "bad". There's lots of absolutely solid, battle-tested systems that, if they can be kept working with good, up to date parts, or are amenable to bug fixes in the case of software, shouldn't need to be upgraded! TeX, the gold standard for mathematic and scientific paper typesetting, has been feature-frozen since 1989. Especially for systems like fire-control computers that really don't need new features or anything and are not likely to be exposed to "new" problems like eg being hacked over the Internet, to which they are not connected, it should not be that expensive or burdensome to keep them running and in good health except that there's effort being explicitly spent to make it hard to give them the necessary maintenance, because the whole tech industry is focused on New New New All The Time.

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