Japan wins 2-year “war on floppy disks,” kills regulations requiring old tech

… Per a Reuters report on Wednesday, Japan’s government “eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems.” The report notes that by mid-June, Japan’s Digital Agency (a body set up during the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed at updating government technology) had "scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling.” That suggests that there’s up to one government use that could still turn to floppy disks, though more details weren’t available. …

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German navy got the memo: German Navy to replace aging 8-inch floppy drives with an emulated solution for its anti-submarine frigates | Tom's Hardware

Armed forces liked big floppies I guess U.S. Air Force Finally Ditches 8-Inch Floppy Disks

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This reminds me also of the story where upon HP acquiring Digital Equipment Corp IP and products (via the diversion of Compaq) was planning to terminate the VMS operating system posthaste, but they got a call from the US Navy submarine top brass saying “not so fast”. Cannot find the story with couple of minutes of googling, sorry.

(VMS lives on, the product was purchased from HP by some old VMS engineering guys, who ported it to x86_64: https://vmssoftware.com/)

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I still prefer floppy disks on the sneakernet, tbh. Much harder for someone to accidentally bend and break fooling around near your machine than usb sticks sticking out.

I still use the sneakernet with usb sticks, only now it is video for the dvd player.