[HN Gopher] CrowdStrike's impact on aviation
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       CrowdStrike's impact on aviation
        
       Author : jjwiseman
       Score  : 184 points
       Date   : 2024-07-29 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (heavymeta.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (heavymeta.org)
        
       | feyman_r wrote:
       | >> Why were other airlines able to get back to normal so much
       | faster than Delta?
       | 
       | I read somewhere that their crew tracking software was hit hard
       | and took time to recover. Will look for source on that.
       | 
       | (Edited) source: https://news.delta.com/update-delta-customers-
       | ceo-ed-bastian
       | 
       | "... and in particular one of our crew tracking-related tools was
       | affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented
       | number of changes triggered by the system shutdown..."
        
         | Onavo wrote:
         | Because they used Windows 3.1
        
           | ZeWaka wrote:
           | In the article it says Southwest used 3.1, not Delta (though,
           | that's apparently incorrect according to other posters).
        
             | Someone1234 wrote:
             | And Southwest had two crew-management outages in 2022[0],
             | so let's not sing their praises for escaping the
             | CrowdStrike disruption. Southwest has been widely critized
             | for under-investment in technology, Delta on the other hand
             | purchased one of the best security products on the market
             | and that backfired.
             | 
             | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Southwest_Airlines_s
             | chedu...
        
               | chgs wrote:
               | Delta put all their eggs in one basket and had no DR
               | capability
        
               | Someone1234 wrote:
               | What basis do you have for saying that? It is likely
               | their DR was running on a mirror of their production
               | systems, and was similarly impacted by the Crowdstrike
               | outage. So they fell back to Windows Servers similarly
               | stuck in a boot-loop.
               | 
               | Keep in mind there was no way to opt out or delay CS
               | Channel updates.
        
               | chgs wrote:
               | If your DR system is susceptible to the same faults as
               | your main system it's not a DR system.
               | 
               | It would be like claiming raid1 is a backup.
        
               | freeopinion wrote:
               | > Keep in mind there was no way to opt out or delay CS
               | Channel updates.
               | 
               | Do CS updates somehow work over airgaps? You know, the
               | kind that production systems have to prevent any access
               | to or from external networks? Well... some production
               | systems anyway.
        
           | shagie wrote:
           | I chased through this chain the other day...
           | 
           | https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/windows-31-sav.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2024/07/20/meltdown-
           | wha...
           | 
           | > A story on the website govtech.com on Friday asked the
           | question, "Why isn't Southwest affected by the
           | CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage?
           | 
           | > "That's because major portions of the airline's computer
           | systems are still using Windows 3.1, a 32-year-old version of
           | Microsoft's computer operating software," the website said.
           | "It's so old that the CrowdStrike issue doesn't affect it so
           | Southwest is still operating as normal. It's typically not a
           | good idea to wait so long to update, but in this one instance
           | Southwest has done itself a favor."
           | 
           | The govetech.com article is https://www.govtech.com/question-
           | of-the-day/why-isnt-southwe...
           | 
           | which linked to
           | https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/southwest-
           | cloudstrik...
           | 
           | which linked to an earlier Forbes article -
           | https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2022/12/31/can-
           | sou...
           | 
           | > The December 2022 scheduling fiasco was the result of
           | skimping on information technology. I am old enough to
           | remember when Microsoft introduced a new operating system
           | called Windows 95, to replace its predecessor operating
           | system Windows 3.1. The 95 in Windows 95 refers to the year
           | of its introduction: 1995. By some accounts, major portions
           | of Southwest's scheduling system for pilots and flight
           | attendants is built on the Windows 95 platform. That platform
           | is now more than 25 years old.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | Southwest does not run Windows 3.1:
             | 
             | "That's it. That's where all these stories can trace their
             | origin to. These few paragraphs do not say that Southwest
             | is still using ancient Windows versions; it just states
             | that the systems they developed internally, SkySolver and
             | Crew Web Access, look 'historic like they were designed on
             | Windows 95'."
             | 
             | https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-
             | is...
        
               | shagie wrote:
               | The other day, I saw a screen capture from Tom's Hardware
               | and so chased the series of links and quotes to try to
               | find the earliest one that had reporting on it that was
               | the source. That was the chain that I found.
               | 
               | I am not claiming that they run Windows 3.1 or Windows 95
               | ... but rather "this is where that story was sourced
               | from" because everyone kept linking to somewhere else.
               | The relevant XKCD is https://xkcd.com/978/
        
               | Modified3019 wrote:
               | Funny enough, this cycle is close to what the Russian
               | disinformation machine does deliberately to spread
               | bullshit.
        
         | smileysteve wrote:
         | Re Delta
         | 
         | It's not so much a severity as "hard"; but with the hub and
         | spoke model that Delta uses, scheduling being down (at all on
         | Friday), combined with FAA hour limits. It becomes
         | exponentially difficult to reschedule flights.
         | 
         | Put more plainly, on Friday, your scheduling software is down
         | for 4 hours in the morning, so you "borrow" any replacements
         | you need for employees that are late or sick. This ruins the
         | availability for the next flights, at which time you hope the
         | system is up again; but if it's not, you borrow from the
         | evening flights. Combine this with each flight that was
         | late/cancelled as you were hoping to fill now affects the hours
         | available for the employees that were available. Finally, as
         | you've cascaded this, you head into a weekend trying to catalog
         | how many hours each crew member did or did not log, and you're
         | not sure how to get them back in time.
        
           | inferiorhuman wrote:
           | Except for Southwest the other legacy airlines (United,
           | American) also use a hub and spoke model. So does jetBlue.
        
             | crazytony wrote:
             | Funny you should mention WN. Delta's meltdown is the exact
             | same scenario as Southwest. Crew scheduling is messed up,
             | they don't have a way of tracking where employees are, if
             | the employee is legal, etc and so the operation grinds to a
             | halt
        
           | sidewndr46 wrote:
           | wouldn't this imply either an upper bound on down time
           | (airline simply folds as it never catches up) or an upper
           | bound on the duration of the impact ?
        
         | reaperducer wrote:
         | _> > Why were other airlines able to get back to normal so much
         | faster than Delta?
         | 
         | I read somewhere that their crew tracking software was hit hard
         | and took time to recover. Will look for source on that._
         | 
         | I heard on the radio (maybe NPR, not sure) it wasn't about the
         | computers, it was about Delta's response.
         | 
         | According to the report, the other airlines delayed flights,
         | while Delta cancelled them outright. That left Delta with more
         | people and planes in the wrong places, making it harder to
         | recover.
        
         | crazytony wrote:
         | One other compounding problem is that Delta's headquarters and
         | main traffic patterns are on the east coast. Crowdstrike
         | affected all the airlines at roughly the same time. This gave
         | them roughly one to two fewer hours to respond before they hit
         | their morning peak flights.
         | 
         | As someone else pointed out, they probably weren't ready by the
         | time they needed their systems for the morning rush so they
         | went to their business continuity strategy (manual). This has a
         | throughput and recovery time penalty and obviously it compounds
         | the longer they are in that mode.
         | 
         | I think what we're finding with the Southwest meltdown and now
         | the Delta meltdown is that the big airlines just don't have the
         | manpower or scheduling slack to accommodate going into business
         | continuity. I do think this should be investigated. Hopefully
         | financial penalties incentivize action but time will tell.
        
       | firtoz wrote:
       | Is there a similar global analysis?
        
         | fullspectrumdev wrote:
         | I'd love to have some solid numbers of "global cancellations
         | due to" - I heard a bunch of varying figures so far.
        
         | jjwiseman wrote:
         | Maybe I'll do a Part 2: The World.
        
       | ssivark wrote:
       | > _Apparently Southwest Airlines' ingenious strategy of never
       | upgrading from Windows 3.1 allowed it to remain unscathed._
       | 
       | OMFG, does this mean we need to be prepared for a (juicy) "IT
       | failure" that brings down Southwest at some point?
        
         | ryanmcbride wrote:
         | You don't even have to wait it's been happening
        
         | Someone1234 wrote:
         | Southwest had two of these recently. It was widely reported:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Southwest_Airlines_schedu...
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | Southwest experienced this kind of scheduling issue in 2021
         | [1], and again in 2022 [2]. Honestly, if they're running win
         | 3.1 or win 95 as suggested, I think that puts them in a better
         | place tech wise than keeping up with the Joneses on the upgrade
         | treadmill --- although they should consider updating to windows
         | 3.11, because they have a workgroup :P and the microsoft hearts
         | network is pretty cool; but they have historically done poorly
         | on scheduling after a significant disruption. An article from
         | last year [3] says they updated their crew assignment software
         | as well as increased staffing in colder airports and in general
         | and got more deicing equipment. We won't really be able to tell
         | if it works, until they experience another disruption.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/12/southwest-airlines-
         | reduces-c...
         | 
         | [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/26/1145536902/southwest-
         | flight-c...
         | 
         | [3] https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211064462/southwest-
         | airlines...
        
         | tracerbulletx wrote:
         | This isn't true, and that should have been obvious to technical
         | people. It's so sad that we have a tech media that doesn't give
         | a damn about making things up.
        
       | bedobi wrote:
       | > Apparently Southwest Airlines' ingenious strategy of never
       | upgrading from Windows 3.1 allowed it to remain unscathed.
       | 
       | this is pretty damning both ways
       | 
       | on the one hand, it's insane, unfathomable and inconceivable that
       | anyone can run anything critical on windows 3.1 (!!!)
       | 
       | on the other hand, it's equally insane, unfathomable and
       | inconceivable that those who do are actually _better_ off - 30
       | years of  "progress" is actually just bs? what are we as an
       | industry "even doing here"???? is computing actually a solved
       | problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and
       | enshittifying perfectly already working systems?
        
         | TonyTrapp wrote:
         | From my memory, this wildly circulating Windows 3.1 quote is
         | inaccurate. The software they were running was compared to
         | running something like Windows 3.1, but it wasn't actually
         | running on Windows 3.1, as far as I understand.
         | 
         | Edit: https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-
         | scree...
        
         | Swizec wrote:
         | > is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just
         | mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly
         | already working systems?
         | 
         | 80% of the work is json bureaucracy
         | 
         | The other 80% is adapting to new requirements
         | 
         | And if you're lucky maybe 0.1% of the time you get to build
         | something new.
         | 
         | Fear not, a lot of this stuff was perfectly solved with pen and
         | paper long before us computer nerds came to play in the big boy
         | sandbox
        
         | nightpool wrote:
         | Obviously Southwest is not using Windows 3.1, and you should
         | probably be thinking hard about the trustworthiness of any
         | outlet or article that repeats that claim:
         | https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is...
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | It's like a calculator, if you need to do basic math, you can
         | use an old calc.
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | In the long run the hardware that can still run Window 3.1 will
         | become harder and harder to find and they'll be forced to
         | upgrade, but currently enjoying the benefits of "if it ain't
         | broke don't fix it". Plus, there were literally millions of
         | systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many
         | years before the hardware is too hard to find.
         | 
         | We're talking about a problem on the scale of 4,000 flights per
         | day. Assuming you avoid O^2 complexity computations that's the
         | sort of thing even 90s computers could handle easily.
        
           | arsome wrote:
           | You can basically run Windows 3.1 in dosbox on a potato now,
           | so the hardware really isn't even a problem. If any of this
           | was actually true...
        
           | burningChrome wrote:
           | >> Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that
           | can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the
           | hardware is too hard to find.
           | 
           | Two of my first contractor roles I had as a developer really
           | opened my eyes to a lot of this.
           | 
           | We were building an inventory management system for a large
           | company that built farm equipment. We started building it and
           | once we got to the browser and mobile requirements, one of
           | the VPs spoke up and asked if it would run on IE6 since they
           | had not one, but THREE of their inventory legacy systems that
           | still ran on Win98. This was in 2014, a full 6 years after
           | many companies had stopped supporting it. And another 4 years
           | since websites stopped supporting it.
           | 
           | The other one was for a very large, regional construction
           | company. Same thing, we were building a web app for them and
           | in one of the conference calls, one of the VP's was asking
           | how this would run on Windows95 for the same reason. They had
           | several legacy ERP systems that were running on Win95 and had
           | specific requirements for stuff to run on that OS.
           | 
           | As a developer who was used to working with somewhat current
           | tech - it was a real eye opener. It was crazy to think how
           | many massive companies just didn't have the constitution to
           | upgrade their stuff, and then by not doing so, had now dug
           | themselves into an even deeper hole.
           | 
           | Once I started hearing stories about the details of this
           | scenario, it made perfect sense to me since I had seen it
           | multiple times. And not from little companies who didn't have
           | the money or resources to upgrade, but massive Fortune 500
           | companies who just neglected their stuff until was too late.
        
         | shagie wrote:
         | Thirty years of progress is still progress for managing the
         | additional complexity that modern software needs.
         | 
         | A lot of software doesn't need that additional complexity.
         | Having thirty year old software, if properly sequestered (since
         | there are security holes large enough to fly a 737 through),
         | means that this is software that has been working for three
         | _decades_. It has issues (as the mess they had previously
         | showed), but Southwest appears to be able to be able to manage
         | that to some degree without needing to incur the additional
         | complexity of managing a modern software stack for application
         | software that doesn 't need it.
         | 
         | The ability to play minesweeper on critical computing equipment
         | without impacting it isn't necessarily a desirable feature.
         | Having the computer boot in five seconds and run the desired
         | application _is_.
         | 
         | And there are a number of ways to handle that ... running old
         | operating systems is one of the ways. Space Force S02E07 is not
         | a desirable situation https://youtu.be/xDLvUqhwHZc . You could
         | also have a kuberentes cluster with multiple replicas and load
         | balancing and all of that additional complexity that takes more
         | people to be able to manage without any real gains in what the
         | application itself is doing.
        
           | Wytwwww wrote:
           | > Having the computer boot in five seconds
           | 
           | There are certainly more modern options that allow that and
           | it's highly doubtful that specifically is particularly
           | relevant for Southwest.
           | 
           | Not that there is any evidence that they're actually using
           | 3.1 for anything?
           | 
           | > that this is software that has been working for three
           | decades
           | 
           | Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so
           | poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it. e.g. I doubt
           | there are many (even any?) practical reasons for airlines to
           | use GDS besides the cost and complexity involved in designing
           | an entirely new system and somehow forcing all other airlines
           | to switch to it?
        
             | shagie wrote:
             | > Not that there is any evidence that they're actually
             | using 3.1 for anything?
             | 
             | Windows 3.1? No. I'd even say there's no evidence that
             | windows 95 is being used but rather that they've got what
             | appears to be some old software with older design.
             | 
             | https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/12/30/wha
             | t...
             | 
             | > 2. The crew scheduling system is the main culprit.
             | 
             | > Southwest uses internally built and maintained systems
             | called SkySolver and Crew Web Access for pilots and flight
             | attendants. They can sign on to those systems to pick
             | flights and then make changes when flights are canceled or
             | delayed or when there is an illness.
             | 
             | > "Southwest has generated systems internally themselves
             | instead of using more standard programs that others have
             | used," Montgomery said. "Some systems even look historic
             | like they were designed on Windows 95."
             | 
             | Screen shots of this are in http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.
             | aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2Do...
             | 
             | Unfortunately, I don't know the nuances of Microsoft
             | Windows UI well enough to be able to pick out which OS
             | version is running the software in those screen shots.
             | 
             | ---
             | 
             | > Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so
             | poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it.
             | 
             | That is a _very_ common occurrence (I 'm dealing with that
             | now ... a .jar file that hasn't been rebuilt in 15 years).
             | The big rewrite is something that comes with one part
             | excitement (I can do it right this time!) and dread (oh my,
             | that's how much code that I need to retest?!).
             | 
             | I was involved in the tail end of a 3 year project at one
             | company with some software that replaced previously running
             | DOS (and yes, it was DOS - they had an C and assembly guru
             | employed who's job it was to remove / optimize code in the
             | binary to get it to fit into 640k) to a Java Web Start
             | (which was a neat technology) and the millions of lines of
             | software that monstrosity had and needed to be debugged and
             | fixed.
             | 
             | While they're in a better spot now (can use modern
             | hardware), and its something that they can build in house
             | (a major part of the reason to do it was to drop the
             | external contractor who didn't like maintaining the C code)
             | ... but that also came with the added complexity of the
             | software that they licensed and the maintenance and
             | deployment of that software. Before they could put the
             | software on a floppy and have it shipped to each location
             | ... now its a big bigger and more complex of a deployment
             | (that was built with duct tape and chewing gum one night to
             | do diff deployments of specific class files rather than
             | trying to push the entirety down the pipe for each
             | location).
             | 
             | My rambling point is that we are moving forward with
             | complexity - and that allows us to manage more complex
             | situations, but it comes at the cost of managing that
             | additional complexity of the infrastructure and software it
             | needs and that cost is ongoing and not always taken into
             | account.
        
               | jwagenet wrote:
               | Those screenshots look more like WinXP to me with the
               | rounded and shaded button elements. It's the boring grey
               | and buttons people presumably associate with the 90s.
        
             | spookie wrote:
             | Most times its less about a system being poorly designed
             | and more about it being able to solve very hard problems
             | which most existing employees today haven't even heard of.
             | Institutional knowledge plays big time on these decisions.
        
         | aftbit wrote:
         | Well all you'd really need to do to avoid this outage is not
         | run auto-updating proprietary kernel modules in the early anti-
         | malware environment. Bare Windows 11 would have been fine - the
         | problem was Crowdstrike.
        
         | jakub_g wrote:
         | You don't want to know what OS Sabre (backend for 30% of
         | world's airlines) is using on their mainframes.
        
           | bedobi wrote:
           | actually, I do :) is it DOS? some IBM mainframe OS? do tell
        
             | Wytwwww wrote:
             | Was DOS actually every used on mainframes/servers on a
             | significant scale? (genuine question, not saying it wasn't)
        
               | wrs wrote:
               | A mainframe OS called DOS was in fact quite popular, but
               | it's not the same thing as the DOS that was in PCs.
               | (There were others, too, like Apple ][ DOS. As soon as
               | your computer gets the capability of attaching a disk
               | drive, somebody has to write a Disk Operating System.)
        
           | kayodelycaon wrote:
           | I do actually. My last job had a mainframe team maintaining
           | (and adding to) an AS/400 application. They still had
           | punchcard programs.
           | 
           | They had json apis. Each one had some variation on parsing
           | http from a raw tcp connection with IBM RPG. I had to do some
           | unspeakable things to a ruby library so I could control the
           | order of the headers.
        
           | fourteenfour wrote:
           | Looks like it was IBM System/360 mainframes but they've
           | recently migrated to google hosted services.
        
         | numpad0 wrote:
         | It is BS. Continuous updates for security notion, especially
         | so. That said, the barrier to entry for programmers did come
         | down significantly.
        
         | alliao wrote:
         | productivity wise 70's and 80's peaked with those thin
         | terminals with every action carried out by keyboard... workers
         | tapped at light speed due to muscle memory, didn't look fancy,
         | but it got the job done. GUI is sexy but like short videos
         | ultimately did nothing for the user
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _productivity wise 70 's and 80's peaked with those thin
           | terminals with every action carried out by keyboard_
           | 
           | Computers only started showing up in nationwide productivity
           | figures in the 80s to 90s.
        
           | Wytwwww wrote:
           | > GUI is sexy but like short videos ultimately did nothing
           | for the user
           | 
           | That's a stretch.
           | 
           | I guess it increased the productivity (measured in amount of
           | "work" done, not necessarily something useful) expectations
           | for most workers which effectively did nothing for them
           | because they still need to work as much even if modern
           | software allows them to accomplish much more in the same
           | amount of time. So t might make sense in that regard.
           | 
           | > workers tapped at light speed due to muscle memory
           | 
           | That's great if we're mainly talking about robotic tasks than
           | can be mostly automated to only require a fraction of those
           | clicks but wasn't for some unclear reasons.
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | Almost every industrial embedded system I've ever used runs
         | Windows XP at the absolute _newest,_ and it is not uncommon in
         | the slightest to see stuff as old as 95 /3.1. These are
         | computers that operate machinery that costs 6 or 7 figures. If
         | it ain't broke, don't fix it.
         | 
         | Don't get me wrong, my Macbook is an absolute beast for all of
         | my work tasks, and my gaming PC is an utter joy to use for my
         | recreation time, but at the end of the day, for a ton of
         | applications, a computer doesn't need to do shit beyond sending
         | a lot of signals out of a parallel/RS232 port to control
         | systems to operate... I mean Christ, anything. CNC mills,
         | building lighting/security systems, packing machines, or to do
         | things like issue tickets to people parking in a ramp. Like...
         | a lot of this stuff just does not benefit at all from a modern
         | software stack. Stick a crappy PC inside instead, load it up
         | with the same image it had before which includes firewall rules
         | that shut down every last port and connection apart from
         | whatever needs to manage it, and you're done.
         | 
         | Don't fix what ain't broke.
        
         | josephg wrote:
         | > is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just
         | mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly
         | already working systems?
         | 
         | On a whim I tried playing Solitaire on windows the other day.
         | You know, that game that's shipped with windows since forever.
         | Well, it's horrible now. When I tried firing it up, it first
         | spent several minutes downloading software updates. Then it
         | loaded in some horrible "casual games bundle" app which felt
         | laggy like a web app - complete with Xbox cloud sync for my
         | progress, and daily achievements and other junk.
         | 
         | The game used to run flawlessly on my old 486. My computer now
         | is orders of magnitude more powerful - but solitaire feels
         | laggy. I bet the entirety of windows XP is smaller than the
         | "update" it performed to install solitaire.
         | 
         | I have a personal theory that there's always something that
         | gets the attention of the best engineers. Decades ago it was
         | human interface guidelines and UI toolkits. Today it's LLMs and
         | AAA game engines. Most of the rest of the software in the world
         | is worked on by the B team. And they don't blink an eye at the
         | idea of rewriting solitaire for windows on top of electron. If
         | JavaScript is all their team knows, so be it. Heaven forbid we
         | have to learn how to properly build software for windows.
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | Well, what actual new features does Windows 11 give you
         | compared to Windows 3.1?
         | 
         | It will support a huge number of new chips, new peripherals,
         | more memory, and so on.
         | 
         | If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how much
         | of that do I care about? Do I care that it will now support the
         | latest Bluetooth? Do I care that it now has the same UI as
         | tablets? Do I care that it has better ads to display on the
         | start menu? No, no, and _no_.
         | 
         | The only thing might be more memory. (I mean, the UI might not
         | look like it belonged in the Stone Age, so that's something, I
         | guess...)
         | 
         | There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the
         | _functionality_ of OSes since Windows 3.1. It 's all been
         | device support (including new classes of devices), new CPU
         | support, and new UI styles. (The security improvements in
         | Windows were a legitimately big deal, but those were fixing
         | what was broken, not adding new functionality.)
         | 
         | And I'm sure that, having said this, someone is going to point
         | out something really important that I forgot...
        
           | Wytwwww wrote:
           | > If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how
           | much of that do I care about?
           | 
           | Not a lot of if you can't/don't want to upgrade or replace
           | that software to make sure it runs on modern OSes. I'm sure
           | that for the most part that software is causing various
           | unnecessary issues and decreasing potential productivity at
           | least to some extent. Just look at GDS, they love to get rid
           | of that, but that would require a coordinated effort and
           | extensive collaboration between all major airlines which is
           | somewhat tricky.
           | 
           | > There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the
           | functionality of OSes since Windows 3.1.
           | 
           | Multitasking? A massive amount of other important features
           | that matter if you want to build new software or
           | significantly improve what you're using now.
           | 
           | Also you seem to be downplaying security a but too much?
           | Those devices would need to be carefully isolated from
           | everything else (not that as I understand there is any
           | evidence that Southwest Airlines is actually using 3.1?).
           | 
           | > but those were fixing what was broken, not adding new
           | functionality
           | 
           | It's like saying that every new feature in introduced in any
           | type of software that wasn't entirely novel was actually
           | fixing stuff that was broken and wasn't "new". I guess some
           | would apply to the claim GUI/desktop wasn't something new but
           | it was just "fixing" (inherently "broken") command line
           | interfaces?
           | 
           | Being able to design significantly objectively better (based
           | on how much it could increase productivity) is I guess is not
           | strictly tied to the OS at least in some cases. But it
           | certainly make it a lot cheaper/easier.
        
             | AnimalMuppet wrote:
             | Multitasking. Yeah, I'll give you that. That is actually a
             | huge step up.
             | 
             | I'm presuming that Southwest's internal software backends
             | are not internet exposed, which is why I'm downplaying
             | security.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | It was a "troll tweet" says the guy who started the rumor:
         | 
         | https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179
        
       | jujube3 wrote:
       | Sounds like we saved a lot of tons of CO2.
        
         | more_corn wrote:
         | Always look on the bright side!
        
         | aflag wrote:
         | Hard to say, it could actually increased emissions. As when the
         | timings of things don't align correctly it's common to cause an
         | increase of resource usage. Eg. people travelling less optimal
         | route, extra commutes back and to the airport. People having to
         | physically travel to datacentres in order to fix things, just
         | rebooting the machine without need will use more CPU.
        
           | mbreese wrote:
           | Or planes taking less efficient routes or flying at faster
           | speeds to "make up time".
        
         | systemtest wrote:
         | In my country, companies are required by law to keep track of
         | their CO2 emissions.
         | 
         | In the case of CrowdStrike, they would have been able to deduct
         | this event from their emissions for decades.
        
       | aftbit wrote:
       | One interesting feature of this outage was that "PROD" was
       | generally fine, on account of mostly running on Linux and/or
       | ancient proprietary software, while "CORP" was generally wrecked,
       | on account of mostly running Windows. In other words, the bank
       | systems responsible for moving money mostly worked, while the
       | systems responsible for allowing humans to interact with them (to
       | issue approvals, change configuration, or other ops things) often
       | did not.
        
         | brazzy wrote:
         | In the original thread there were some reports of people having
         | their Linux systems taken down by Crowdstrike as well. At
         | separate times, of course, and I supposed the greater
         | heterogeneity of Linux distros prevents events of this
         | magnitude. But that would be little consolation when it takes
         | down your systems.
        
           | foobarchu wrote:
           | Those should be considered coincidence until proven
           | otherwise. Crowdstrike is intended to bring down systems when
           | it believes there was an intrusion, after all.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Same thing for a lot of industries actually. PROD runs on Linux
         | and probably has some delay to prevent this. Corp gets hosed.
        
           | LeifCarrotson wrote:
           | Yep, here in manufacturing production/OT PLCs run on Wind
           | River VxWorks from Rockwell, Siemens, and others. The HMI
           | (human-machine interface, basically a touchscreen used to
           | display status and enter setpoints and other data) and
           | SCADA/ERP systems run on Windows. Sometimes, this is an
           | industrial fanless PC with eg. Ignition (Java+Python)
           | software, other times it's a Rockwell Panelview which
           | actually still run Windows CE 6.0.
           | 
           | This gets to be a problem when IT wants to get their hooks
           | into OT networks. The PLC is meant to be left alone, and will
           | happily send its Ethernet packet to that servo drive or
           | digital IO card every 10ms for literal decades. There is no
           | reason to update its firmware ever, just don't expose it to
           | the Internet. But corporate wants everything on the Internet.
           | 
           | The PLC will reliably run its sequence when you close the
           | contacts on the physical "Cycle Start" pushbutton. But if
           | corporate is down, you can't know what part number you're
           | supposed to make or how many of them, or get a serial number
           | from and report test results to the traceability database.
        
       | ks1723 wrote:
       | I found it quite interesting, that crowdstrike actually exclude a
       | bunch of services explicitly. They also basically say, don't use,
       | if it needs to be reliable. I don't know if this is standard for
       | software, but for me this was quite surprising.
       | 
       | From crowdstrike terms and services [1]: [...] THERE IS NO
       | WARRANTY THAT THE OFFERINGS OR CROWDSTRIKE TOOLS WILL BE ERROR
       | FREE, OR THAT THEY WILL OPERATE WITHOUT INTERRUPTION OR WILL
       | FULFILL ANY OF CUSTOMER'S PARTICULAR PURPOSES OR NEEDS. THE
       | OFFERINGS AND CROWDSTRIKE TOOLS ARE NOT FAULT-TOLERANT AND ARE
       | NOT DESIGNED OR INTENDED FOR USE IN ANY HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT
       | REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE OR OPERATION. NEITHER THE
       | OFFERINGS NOR CROWDSTRIKE TOOLS ARE FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF
       | AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION, NUCLEAR FACILITIES, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS,
       | WEAPONS SYSTEMS, DIRECT OR INDIRECT LIFE-SUPPORT SYSTEMS, AIR
       | TRAFFIC CONTROL, OR ANY APPLICATION OR INSTALLATION WHERE FAILURE
       | COULD RESULT IN DEATH, SEVERE PHYSICAL INJURY, OR PROPERTY
       | DAMAGE. Customer agrees that it is Customer's responsibility to
       | ensure safe use of an Offering and the CrowdStrike Tools in such
       | applications and installations. CROWDSTRIKE DOES NOT WARRANT ANY
       | THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.
       | 
       | [1] section 8.6 of https://www.crowdstrike.com/terms-conditions/
        
         | objclxt wrote:
         | > I don't know if this is standard for software
         | 
         | This is pretty standard. There is almost identical language in
         | the Windows and macOS EULAs, for example.
        
           | ale42 wrote:
           | Same for datasheets of most electronic components. The
           | manufacturers don't want the responsibility to avoid possible
           | multi-million lawsuits.
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | So how does it get installed on all the endpoints in 911
           | dispatch centers?
        
             | nemonemo wrote:
             | What is the alternative? Have you considered a possibility
             | that those could be the best out there for 911 despite
             | their imperfections?
        
             | wrs wrote:
             | Because no endpoint protection software exists that doesn't
             | have the same disclaimer clause. So you install this one
             | and accept the lack of vendor liability.
             | 
             | (If such a thing did exist, it would cost a lot more!)
        
             | EvanAnderson wrote:
             | Because FBI CJIS requirements, adopted by state law
             | enforcement bodies, require it. I support a Public Safety
             | Answering Point (PSAP, aka a 911 call center) and I push
             | back on as many of the inane requirements as I can with
             | compensating controls.
             | 
             | Example: As of right now I am still required to expire
             | passwords every 90 days. My state is considering the
             | current guidance from NIST but FBI CJIS policy still
             | mandates the expirations.
        
         | sidewndr46 wrote:
         | My experience has been better legal counsel has the relevant
         | terms struck before the deal is signed. In this case it would
         | have been the terms around Aircraft and aviation
        
       | mjevans wrote:
       | Outsourcing a core business competency and surely also cutting
       | the contracts to the bone as well to pocket the savings
       | embrittled Delta and I seriously hope the compensation to
       | customers costs more than any savings or profits they made in the
       | interim. It MUST be painful enough that they do not repeat this
       | mistake again.
       | 
       | The article quotes
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comments/1edtfbh/why_did_delt...
       | (with improper attribution)
       | 
       | topgun966Platinum wrote on Reddit """ These "experts" are
       | completely wrong. The core issue was Delta did NOT have a proper
       | DR plan ready and did NOT have a proper IT business continuity
       | plan ready. UA, AA, and F9 recovered so fast because they had
       | plans on stand-by and engaged them immediately. After the SWA IT
       | problem, UA and AA put in robust DR plans staged everywhere from
       | the server farms, to cloud solutions, to end-user stations at
       | airports. They had plans on how to recover systems. DL outsources
       | a lot of their IT. UA and AA engaged those plans quickly. They
       | did not hold back paying OT for staff. UA and AA have just as
       | much reliance on Windows as Delta. AA was recovered by end of
       | data Friday and resumed normal operations Saturday. UA was about
       | 12 hours behind them having it resolved by Saturday morning
       | resuming normal schedules Saturday afternoon. The ONUS is 100% on
       | DL C+ level in their IT decisions. The problem is that the lower
       | level IT staff is going to get the brunt of the blame and the
       | consequences. """
        
       | rdtsc wrote:
       | From the included link:
       | https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/southwest-airlines-av...
       | 
       | > To give you an idea of just how outdated this operating system
       | is, Windows 3.1 was originally launched in 1992, and Microsoft
       | ended support for it on December 31, 2001, except for the
       | embedded version, which was officially retired in 2008.
       | 
       | I keep hearing the Windows 3.1 story repeated. I mean here it
       | comes from TechRadar and even has the "Pro" in the name, they
       | can't possibly make stuff up, right? But still don't quite
       | believe it.
       | 
       | Can anyone working at Southwest confirm that their main
       | scheduling system is running on Windows 3.1?
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _keep hearing the Windows 3.1 story repeated_
         | 
         | It's wrong [1] and serves as a litmus test for whether an
         | outlet independently verifies its claims.
         | 
         | ("The systems [Southwest] developed internally, SkySolver and
         | Crew Web Access, look 'historic like they were designed on
         | Windows 95'." That got mangled into they run 3.1.)
         | 
         | [1] https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-
         | is...
        
           | jjwiseman wrote:
           | Thanks, I updated the post.
        
             | kragen wrote:
             | i miss the lemonodor blog
        
           | xp84 wrote:
           | Wow, that's even more frustrating considering it's conflating
           | an unfashionable UI (which I'd argue is a good thing, since
           | all modern UI trends are towards slick, minimalism-worshiping
           | messes which hide everything from users) and old, provably-
           | flawed technological foundations (like a 16-bit system
           | without things like filesystem access control or memory
           | protection).
           | 
           | I knew this story was false immediately though because no
           | company ever even in 1993 had production server systems which
           | ran a desktop OS like Win 3.1. It just wasn't up to the task.
           | They would have used NT if anything.
        
             | cjbprime wrote:
             | Windows 95 is an "unfashionable" OS which has not received
             | any security updates since 2001.
        
               | andrewxdiamond wrote:
               | Yes and the fact that my software's UI looks like Windows
               | 95 makes it vulnerable to all the same security
               | vulnerabilities.
               | 
               | /s
               | 
               | The systems don't run on W95, they look like W95
        
             | btown wrote:
             | http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2D
             | o... shows the system as of 2020. To the parent's point,
             | it's actually quite a reasonable UX, with colored outputs,
             | filter banks, and just enough abbreviations and whitespace
             | to balance density with intuitiveness.
             | 
             | But that doesn't mean this is the only modern design system
             | that meets those requirements. And conflating all modern UI
             | with consumer design trends is an equally frustratingly
             | broad statement.
        
               | quotemstr wrote:
               | Broken link
        
               | veggieroll wrote:
               | Link worked for me but took a long time to load. It just
               | seems like their server is overloaded.
        
               | qingcharles wrote:
               | OK, this is definitely unfashionable looking if your main
               | exposure to apps is the latest doodah on your phone that
               | was literally updated yesterday.
               | 
               | Very standard looking legacy Win32 looking app. Which,
               | admittedly, would have probably look very similar had it
               | been on Windows 3, but is probably running on LTSC
               | Windows 10 or something in reality.
        
           | spookie wrote:
           | Being blasted by media for running your own software,
           | incredible. As others have commented, just a single tweet was
           | enough to propagate this story. Quite concerning how easy it
           | is to fake reality nowadays.
        
           | madeofpalk wrote:
           | This is the same as the "Olympic cardboard beds are anti-sex"
           | fake story that persisted. Anyone who publishes it
           | demonstrates they don't actually research.
        
           | zitterbewegung wrote:
           | I know this is a hot take but companies have to figure out if
           | modernization of a UI will be worth it to retrain everyone in
           | the new UI. Many people were involved with its creation and
           | maintenance and due to its age the UI may have a large amount
           | of glue code that can't be separated unless you build an API
           | around the other software. Especially if there is some kind
           | of change in the system that moving off the old one is
           | meaningless. Southwest is also making changes to their
           | operations so they probably might be in maintenance mode for
           | the software especially when the outage of their current
           | software was done since they will have to not have anyone
           | choose any seat at this time. [1]
           | 
           | [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/investing/southwest-
           | airlines-...
        
             | stavros wrote:
             | I don't know, I like the classic Windows UI. I don't think
             | modern UIs are an improvement on that.
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | The "Southwest uses Windows 3.1" claim is false, and is a great
         | example of how bullshit can spread on the Internet once some
         | semi "reputable" organizations repeat the false rumor:
         | 
         | https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-scree...
        
         | dsr_ wrote:
         | Tech Radar quotes Tom's Hardware; Tom's Hardware quotes a
         | tweet.
         | 
         | Not a tweet from Southwest, mind you. Not even a tweet from
         | someone who says that they used to work for Southwest. Just...
         | a tweet.
        
           | shombaboor wrote:
           | I just wish there was some type of identifiable credit /
           | penalty system for writing accurately as a news source. And
           | this would include quotes / retweets. Never been a better
           | time to be wrong about everything.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _wish there was some type of identifiable credit /
             | penalty system for writing accurately as a news source_
             | 
             | Good starting point is if the news is free. A shocking
             | fraction of people get their news from solely free sources.
        
               | mewpmewp2 wrote:
               | And why would someone put in effort for free?
        
               | kspacewalk2 wrote:
               | What's "solely free"? Does the ad-driven model count as
               | free? Why do you think an outlet that works for you will
               | necessarily deliver better quality news that the one that
               | works for advertisers? There are obvious bias downsides
               | to both.
        
               | sxg wrote:
               | The ad-driven model does count as free, and it's far less
               | likely to deliver better quality news than a subscription
               | service users pay for. The core metric for ad-driven news
               | sites is maximizing views--it doesn't matter how you get
               | views as long as you get them. This means free sites are
               | heavily incentivized to be the first to break a news
               | story even if the details are wrong or sparse. Sure,
               | they'll issue corrections and updates later, but only a
               | small percentage of the initial viewers will ever see
               | these, and there's essentially zero cost for having made
               | the mistake.
               | 
               | The core metric for subscription news sites is minimizing
               | churn. A mistake will cost a subscription site
               | subscribers who have a massive lifetime value. These
               | sites are heavily incentivized to report high quality,
               | accurate news even if they're not the first to break the
               | story.
        
             | Analemma_ wrote:
             | Your cure is worse than the disease. The second such a
             | system existed, it would be gamed to hell and back, and
             | nobody would believe it anyway since they'd all angrily
             | insist that "you shouldn't have counted X" or "you
             | should've counted Y more" and it would just turn into a war
             | over who got to control the system and use it to deplatform
             | their enemies.
        
               | andrewflnr wrote:
               | It doesn't have to, and indeed shouldn't, be a single
               | system. We'd rather have a handful of independent news
               | checker orgs, maybe some topic-specific ones. Funding
               | remains an exercise for the reader.
        
             | treflop wrote:
             | There just isn't. You just have to read enough of one
             | source to determine your own opinion.
             | 
             | Just like with anyone you meet: you are the judge if they
             | are trustworthy, nice, mean, funny, etc.
             | 
             | That said, I think tech journalism is the bottom of the
             | barrel. I just feel like they focus more on tech than
             | journalism.
        
             | mardifoufs wrote:
             | Community notes on twitter is the closest thing to what
             | you're describing I've seen yet. It's been very helpful too
             | imo
        
           | thereddaikon wrote:
           | A great example of why people don't trust journalists
           | anymore. They don't even perform a basic amount of fact
           | checking before publishing.
        
             | colechristensen wrote:
             | Articles from the likes of Tech Radar or Toms Hardware I
             | would trust to a higher standard than a random tweet, but
             | really I wouldn't label them as "real journalists"
             | 
             | I question the ethics and standards of the New York Times
             | at least a little at this point so it's not like great
             | journalism is common.
        
             | jxy wrote:
             | I don't trust any kind of generalization like this, which
             | only serves further disinformation and misinformation.
             | 
             | There are bad journalists (if they can be called
             | journalists at all) and good journalists. At this point in
             | history, our only hope lies with diligent reporters from
             | reputable publishers.
        
               | Dalewyn wrote:
               | As far as I'm concerned at this point, journalists are
               | cancers upon society without exception. The world would
               | be a lot more peaceful were it not for journalists'
               | constant sensationalizing of peoples' fear and anger.
               | 
               | I will not bat an eye when most of them are eventually
               | replaced by "AI" and other forms of automation. It
               | doesn't take entire payrolls of full time humans to spew
               | sensational bullshit, certainly not anymore in this day
               | and age.
               | 
               | And yes, I'm jaded. Very much so. Been taken for many
               | rides over the past 20 years if not more and I'm
               | sincerely sick of it. Screw journalism.
        
           | Terr_ wrote:
           | It's kind of depressing to think that we have had this world-
           | spanning system of knowledge and "hyperlinks" for decades
           | now, individual pieces that _should 've_ enabled an easy
           | chain of attribution/citation...
        
             | Y_Y wrote:
             | And encourage the reader to move away from your site!? No
             | self respecting PHB could condone such a thing.
        
           | nostromo wrote:
           | I've started seeing this on Wikipedia.
           | 
           | Wikipedia sources an article from a semi-legit source. That
           | semi-legit source either just says "sources" or points to
           | something less-legit, like a Tweet.
           | 
           | You can bring new "facts" into existence by just laundering
           | them from lower- and lower-quality sources.
        
         | umvi wrote:
         | > Can anyone working at Southwest confirm that their main
         | scheduling system is running on Windows 3.1?
         | 
         | I can't confirm that, but I can certainly confirm lots of
         | hospital equipment is still running Windows XP and lots of
         | hospital personnel browse the internet with Internet Explorer.
        
         | ponector wrote:
         | This story is another example how hallucinations from LLM can
         | successfully replace many "news" portals.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | The guy that started it all said it was just a "troll tweet":
         | 
         | https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179
        
         | brianpan wrote:
         | The San Francisco subway runs off of 5-inch floppy disks.
         | 
         | https://sfstandard.com/2023/02/02/sfs-market-street-subway-r...
         | 
         | That article links to an (only slightly older) article about
         | British Airways loading navigation updates every month off of
         | the fancy new 3.5-inch floppy disks.
        
       | Zigurd wrote:
       | I would like to know if a solid, up to date, well-rehearsed
       | disaster recovery plan saved anyone's butt, or if we're all just
       | raw dogging our machines whether IT is paying for backup and
       | recovery or not?
        
         | Zigurd wrote:
         | I see just moments after I posted, someone posted this:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41103486
         | 
         | So, yeah, lack of DR is why Delta was so screwed.
        
         | ta1243 wrote:
         | Our systems worked fine, we expect things to fail - including
         | software like sentinal one, crowdstrike, etc, and have DR
         | systems which can keep us limping along. We have DR systems
         | which will work should other things happen - say the Thames
         | barrier fails (i.e. no docklands)
         | 
         | Unfortunately some of our outsourced suppliers didn't have such
         | attitudes.
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | > Apparently Southwest Airlines' ingenious strategy of never
       | upgrading from Windows 3.1 allowed it to remain unscathed.
       | 
       | The "ingenious" strategy saved them from a weeks worth of
       | downtime this year. But that same "ingenious" strategy was the
       | primary reason for their meltdown in 2022
       | 
       | [1] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/30/1146377342/5-things-to-
       | know-a...
       | 
       | [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/travel/southwest-
       | airlines...
        
         | skrebbel wrote:
         | It's also not true
        
       | skrebbel wrote:
       | I love that "CrowdStrike" is now a synonym for "global outage".
       | Not some cute hihi name like "heartbleed", just the name of the
       | company that did the screwup. Seems fair.
        
         | jraph wrote:
         | Not sure it's fair, but I am certainly waiting for it to become
         | a verb or a noun.                   crowdstrike. n.          1.
         | A set of major disruptions caused by an update that was not
         | tested enough, pushed to many devices across the globe.
         | 2. The name of such an update.          3. (by extension) a
         | joke so bad it causes major disruptions.               For
         | instance:            - Congrats for your crowdstrike! Now my
         | weekend is ruined as I'll be the one who'll be asked to fix
         | this mess.              crowdstrike. v. (simple past
         | crowdstruck or crowdstriked1, past participle crowdstricken, or
         | crowdstruck, or (obsolete, regionalism) crowdstroke2)
         | 1. Action of pushing an update to many devices that causes a
         | global outage or major disruptions in various sectors.
         | For instance:            - We've been crowdstruck. Again.
         | crowdstrike. adj.          1. Qualifies an update that, when
         | pushed to many devices across the world, causes major
         | disruptions across the globe.          2. Qualifies such a (set
         | of) event(s).              For instance:            - We are
         | sorry for the crowdstrike event we caused. We gently remind our
         | kind customers and their end users that per our ToS, we will
         | issue no refund, and that no liability can be held against us.
         | Customers who don't try to contact us in the following month
         | will get a discount for their next contract renewal. You will
         | hear us speak before the Congress, who nicely invited us for
         | some comedy in the hope it will appease you all. Make sure you
         | like the related videos on the various online platforms. We
         | wish you a nice end of the week and nice, relaxing summer
         | holidays.
         | 
         | 1 people have differing but strong opinions on which simple
         | past form is correct, mainly due to regional differences. Some
         | avoid saying crowdstrike and say crowdhit instead.
         | 
         | 2 some people have tried to push crowdstricken, which first
         | caught on in some areas or particular contexts. The idea that
         | this form likens the qualified subject to the bearer of some
         | sickness has eventually seduced a critical mass of people after
         | some initial push back. Please also see the usage notes for
         | strike for other, rarer, alternative forms [*].
         | 
         | [*] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/strike#Usage%20notes
         | 
         | (Thanks to the contributors in this thread)
        
           | skrebbel wrote:
           | "The intern crowdstruck half the customers"
        
             | jraph wrote:
             | Exactly, by the way I added the irregular inflections and
             | fixed the example for the verb. Thanks for your
             | contribution.
        
               | LeifCarrotson wrote:
               | I disagree, I think that the simple past should be
               | "crowdstruck" but the participle should be
               | "crowdstricken", as might apply to someone afflicted by
               | an illness:
               | 
               | "The update wasn't tested, so the servers are all
               | crowdstricken."
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | Thanks, I added the documentation for this form, and
               | added a second usage note. I initially wanted to tease
               | you by documenting that people with bad taste tried to
               | push for this form, but I really like this illness idea.
        
           | arrakeen wrote:
           | since nothing will happen to them except a slap on the wrist,
           | and all our employers will continue to force this crapware on
           | our machines, i think we should make a point to start using
           | their name as a pejorative (similar to the 'santorum'
           | neologism). any when they inevitably try to rebrand, use that
           | term too
        
         | stana wrote:
         | Rebranding project coming up at CrowdStrike?
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | That would be a shame, the name is so fitting, more than
           | ever!
           | 
           | They struck a very big crowd real bad.
        
       | knappe wrote:
       | For everyone flabbergasted by Southwest running ~Windows 3.1~ old
       | software, I have bad news about the telecom industry. I worked at
       | Ericsson at an R&D branch and one of the projects in the works
       | was to move one of the main pieces of routing equipment that
       | handled millions of telephony operatorations a day away from an
       | ancient version of Windows.
       | 
       | A lot of code lives on much longer than you think. The general
       | attitude we took was that most of the code we were writing would
       | be running for at least 30 years. And that was the attitude at an
       | R&D branch, arguably a side of that industry where we were
       | working on the new tech.
       | 
       | Edit: Win 3.1 or something else, the point still stands. There is
       | a lot of old software running out there that will continue to run
       | our core services. Legacy software doesn't just mean v1 versus
       | v2, it can mean v1 versus v41.
        
         | llm_nerd wrote:
         | >For everyone flabbergasted by Southwest running Windows 3.1
         | 
         | Southwest isn't running Windows 3.1, though. That's some rather
         | lame, but predictable, truth-through-repeated-assertion thing
         | on social media.
         | 
         | Not everyone uses CrowdStrike, and in this case SW was the
         | lucky one that didn't.
        
         | wrboyce wrote:
         | I find this more surprising, even if the Southwest & Win3.1
         | claims were true, I would expect most Ericsson systems to be
         | Erlang based and thus happily chugging along on a (perhaps
         | ancient) Linux box.
        
           | knappe wrote:
           | I did too. But I knew of only 1 project that was using
           | Erlang. I have always wanted to use it.
           | 
           | Instead I saw a lot of MML and (happily) TCL.
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MML_(programming_language)
        
         | ketchupdebugger wrote:
         | Good thing a lot of our banking still runs on mainframes, will
         | never be taken out by crowdstrike
        
         | fckgw wrote:
         | Southwest does not use Windows 3.1. Why does not one read the
         | article?
         | 
         | Southwest wasn't affected because they don't use Crowdstrike.
         | That's it.
        
           | knappe wrote:
           | I did read the article. It links to
           | https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/southwest-airlines-
           | av... perhaps you might want to read it again?
           | 
           | Notably, crowdstrike won't run on 3.1, and thus you're kinda
           | right.
        
             | philipwhiuk wrote:
             | Yes and that article is wrong.
        
               | knappe wrote:
               | Win 3.1 or not, the point still stands. There is a lot of
               | software out there that has been running for a really
               | long time and will continue to do so.
               | 
               | Relatedly, it is nice to provide a source for your
               | claims. I did see this [0] which would have been an
               | appropriate thing to link
               | 
               | [0] https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-
               | windows-3-1-blue-scree...
        
               | otterley wrote:
               | Dude, take the L. But for that false story being recited,
               | you wouldn't have made that point in the first place.
               | 
               | > For everyone flabbergasted by Southwest running
               | ~Windows 3.1~ old software
               | 
               | You said it; own it. You could have said "For everyone
               | who was tricked by the joke that Southwest runs ~Windows
               | 3.1~ old software" but didn't.
        
               | knappe wrote:
               | That is fair. I wasn't aware of the kerfuffle around
               | whether Southwest was using 3.1 or not. I took the source
               | and linked source at face value. It would have been nice
               | to have had someone do more than "nope" and instead link
               | to a reputable source. This is how you counter
               | disinformation.
        
             | kayodelycaon wrote:
             | No one runs servers with Windows 3.1. They would have used
             | Windows NT.
             | 
             | The really damning bit is Windows 3.1 did not have
             | preemptive multitasking. It barely had networking. You
             | couldn't run a server with it if you wanted to.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | > They would have used Windows NT.
               | 
               | Or, at the time, OS/2
        
       | otterley wrote:
       | It blows my mind how many people actually believed the claim --
       | clearly in the obvious-joke category -- that SWA is running their
       | mission critical flight systems on Windows 3.1. (Yes, Southwest
       | runs a lot of old tech in their stack, but that claim is patently
       | hyperbolic.)
       | 
       | People need to stop believing everything they read on the
       | Internet and have a little bit of skepticism.
        
       | beambot wrote:
       | Lawsuits inbound. Delta appears to be gearing up for one already:
       | 
       | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/delta-air-lines-seek-compensa...
        
       | azinman2 wrote:
       | What this also tells me is there are a lot of computers connected
       | to the internet that probably shouldn't be.
        
       | nostromo wrote:
       | It's insane to me that CrowdStrike's stock is still up 66% year-
       | over-year.
       | 
       | With all of the angry customers, lots of incoming lawsuits, and
       | the fact that their "protection" is provably more costly than no
       | protection at all now - I can't imagine why investors aren't
       | dumping it like mad.
        
         | parmenidean wrote:
         | Good news then! You can short it and make a ton of money if
         | you're confident this share price increase is a mistake.
        
         | johndhi wrote:
         | My guesses: -no one really cancels their security vendors since
         | security budgets don't shrink -they have a big moat so their
         | customers won't be able to leave them
        
         | MattGaiser wrote:
         | 1. Compliance. No protection at all isn't a contractual option
         | in many cases.
         | 
         | 2. Companies react slowly. When has a vendor paid a high price
         | for failure? Boeing can kill people and fail time after time
         | still sell planes.
         | 
         | Catastrophe always changes less than anticipated.
        
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