Re: Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the business depends on it?

A certain nuclear power plant had a Windows NT 4.0 machine running as late as 2007. The reason is interesting.

The machine's purpose was to report status of the control rods that mitigate nuclear reactions. Basically, "are the rods inserted, and if so, how many / how far?". I want to emphasize that this was reporting only, NOT control.

The original software was written back in the 80's, when the plant was originally commissioned, for AmigaOS. Of course, it's hard to buy Amigas anymore, and the original one died long ago (nobody remembers when).

So in the mid '90s, the utility purchased an AmigaOS emulator that ran on Windows NT 4.0, which was current at the time. The emulator (IIRC) was developed by a firm in the UK. The firm went out of business sometime in the late '90s. The control rod monitoring software ran under this emulator on top of NT4.

Windows NT 4.0 was the last OS to allow the emulation software direct access to the physical hardware that produced the status signal. Later versions of Windows abstracted the hardware access away, and the monitoring software broke. Because the emulation company had gone belly up, there was no way to fix the incompatibility.

So the utility had a choice: get new hardware/software certified (by NRC?), or keep doing what they were doing with the software (and hardware) that they had. They chose the latter.

So this is how, in 2007, during a tour of the facility, I stumbled across a Pentium 1 system running an AmigaOS emulator on Windows NT 4.0 that was responsible for displaying the status of the control rods of a nuclear power plant.

Spare hardware for this setup was purchased off of eBay and stocked on an adjacent shelf.

freeli, 13 hours ago

Re: When did Google get so weird?

Like it or not, this is exactly what normies have always wanted out of search engines - a little guy in their computer they can talk to for answers, advice and reassurance. They've always been trying to use Google Search this way and have been confused and annoyed that it doesn't work. And now it does! It's a massive quality of life improvement for the average user and a huge product win for Google.

nutrientharvest, 3 hours ago

Мем про виробництво 🥲

microsoft banned their own mail service due to abuse, lmao

Shake Shack order kiosk adds $0.50 to each item in your order if you choose not to tip

https://redd.it/1wttbr7
@AssholeDesign

В українській локалізації ChatGPT підписка за 500 баксів на місяць цікаво називається

Spotify using Opposite-Meaning Checkboxes to Trick Users into Permitting Marketing Spam
https://redd.it/1wnwft2
@AssholeDesign

Google Play Store bundles ad notifications with payments to discourage users from turning them off

https://redd.it/1vyc0gq
@AssholeDesign

Russian carrier added "5G" to its network name so that iPhone users would think they had 5G—even though it doesn't actually work on iPhones
https://redd.it/1wdd79j
@AssholeDesign