The myth of retro technology

I'll try to express my opinion on a topic that I'm tired.
The reason for this note was a viral video from YouTube
mentioned in communication on FTN networks because
of my Gopher Hole. In this video, a person installed
Windows XP and the system allegedly immediately became
infected with viruses when connected to the Internet. I am,
of course, sure that people who have worked with industrial
legacy equipment for 20-30 years are dumber and know less
than that guy from YouTube. That is why it is important and
necessary to broadcast this "expert opinion" everywhere. But
still, this is irony and a joke. Let's talk about the problem
seriously. For example, I am writing these lines from that same
Windows XP and I don't have any viruses. What am I doing
wrong?
The fact that nuclear power plants do not explode en masse,
chemical plants do not pollute the atmosphere with emissions
over hundreds of square kilometers, mines continue to steadily
extract coal, trains do not derail every day, and planes fly on
schedule and do not collide in the sky or fall on your heads,
all this is due to those same "old" and "unsafe" operating
systems. Created by "old school" engineers with planned fault
tolerance and other necessary functional elements for critically
important sectors of the economy. Visit any plant, factory,
automobile plant or handicraft production where professional
industrial equipment is used. And you're unlikely to find
Windows 11 or the new Linux kernel there. Why? It's simple.
Business is driven by economic expediency. Time is money.
Therefore, if something works and brings profit, no one gives
it up. Unlike the co-opted centralized leftists propaganda
of BigTech about "obsolescence" and "insecurity". Why leftist
agenda? The fact is that the main ideologist of modern
"techno-utopian leftists globalism" is the bourgeois communist
Marcuse. One of the main his ideas was to transform social
problems into technical ones (global village), and then introduce
leftist politics into these technical solutions (global family).
In other words, as Marcuse wrote, the virtualization of human
needs, and then their centralization under the dictate of collective
control. In practice, this looks like the creation or purchase
of certain solutions that meet ideological demands, for example,
ARM architecture processors, the Android operating system,
and so on. These are all communist projects. Because when
you're building a dystopia, you need tools. In Bolshevik society
it was the secret police and censorship; in the modern world
of unelected leftist institutions, it is the "monopolization
of communication standards."
Left wing globalists have long and unsuccessfully fought against
the so-called "old technologies", in every possible way canceling
them as unsafe or obsolete. And the reason is banal. These
operating systems, communication protocols, communication
standards do not spy on users to the extent that modern antiviruses,
smartphones and applications for them do. What prevents the
construction of a full-fledged dystopia (for example, a private
IRC server with 40 thousand Republicans online). This is the
reason why such a phenomenon as "retro computing" was created.
A propaganda narrative that co-opts computer counterculture
to the level of consumer posturing from YouTube. In other words,
the idea of "retro technologies" is a very specific PsyOp operation
of the globalists. In fact, there has never been any "retro"
in technology. Look around. Retro computing is pure gaslight, just
like retro cars or retro fashion. Well, how can a carburetor become
obsolete and retro? Are you serious? This does not exist and never
existed. Everything from DOS, QNX, Windows 3x-NT, OS/2,
Unix are still around and powering your everyday life everywhere
from hospitals to the banking sector.
The truth is that these so-called "new secure operating systems"
and hardware are unsafe and outdated. They are unsafe because
they use technical solutions that initially contained errors and
were not intended for industrial use. All these scripting languages
(JS, Python, PHP, etc.) cooperating with each other, programmable
microprocessors, add-ons, hacks, patches, etc. are consumer toys
that are now being used to replace professional working technical
solutions.
One of the fundamental principles of systems states that if any
system is designed with errors and contains these errors, then the
subsequent update of such a system will lead to even more errors.
The so-called entropy of information. Therefore, one should not
breed new systems without necessity. After all, a new system is
worse than the so-called "old" system precisely because it contains
multiple unknown errors. "Double unknown" is much worse than
"known unknown". Because it leads to the system behaving
chaotically. And the more complex the solution, the more
unpredictably everything will work. That's why you will never see
a finished release of a web browser or a "modern operating" system.
All these products contain critical architectural errors. So,
whether it's hardware or software, the principle remains. A modern
system always "glitches" because it produces little more benefit
than it does harm (for example, everyone who wants to steals your
data from your smartphone). And at some point, such "new systems"
begin to do only harm due to accumulated architectural errors. And
you need an update again. This leads to a cascading collapse of the
entire enterprise ecosystem. Want an example?
After the introduction of "modern IT technologies" of cloud
colonialism into Boeing aircraft, almost a thousand people died
as a result of undefined software errors. Only because "outdated
devices" were replaced by an integrated tablet system in scripting
languages. The shutdown of gas pipelines in the US, medical
equipment in Germany, power plants in India, extortionists in large
networks are caused by the same reasons - the replacement
of industrial standards with consumer solutions. And I can write
endlessly on this topic.
But how could this happen? Why is the quality of "new industrial
solutions" related to cloud colonialism so unsatisfactory? After
all, this is "progress"! The whole point is that initially there is no
need to mix ideology/politics with technology. Everything should
be guided by economic reason and rationality. Unless, of course,
the modern US and EU want to repeat the feat of the late USSR
(remember Chernobyl). Now I will tell you what IT specialists are
no longer taught in courses and what we engineers and technicians
were taught in universities/colleges.
In addition to the "systems theory", as you understand, there is the
concept of "information entropy". In other words, the second law
of thermodynamics extends to industrial facilities. Any economic
or industrial system is an object of dynamic disequilibrium
counteracting external forces of destruction (wear and tear
of equipment, labor costs, trade unions, taxes, government decrees,
etc.) by performing internal work. By internal work we mean
obtaining raw materials (energy) and processing them in order
to obtain a product at the output and, as a result, profit. Critically
important for such a system is the fault tolerance of equipment
(redundancy, interchangeability) - the tools for extracting profit.
Equipment work is measured in "machine hours" and "man hours".
Ideally, such a system should be idle as little as possible and work
as long as possible in order to bring profit to the owner and wages
to the workers. "Old systems" were always built on this very
principle - maximizing the profits of the owners. New ones built
on the ideological principles of leftist "cloud colonialism" through
endless updates, subscriptions, virtualizations, glitches. And as
a result of updates increase the downtime of equipment.
Thus, "new progressive systems" take profits from the real sector
of the economy without contributing to the growth of production
efficiency. In other words, what you could do in an hour without
"left-wing IT", now takes 8 hours with updates and other things.
Again, the cost of servicing such equipment is unreasonably high
compared to "outdated" Windows, QNX, OS / 2, DOS. Therefore,
if two machines do the same thing, but one costs several times less
to maintain than the second, then no one will buy the second
machine. Remember the story of the collapse of transportation
in the USA that did not affect Southwest Airlines with their
Windows 3x-95 in July 2024. Why did no one rush to throw a tantrum
at this airline because of legacy systems? The answer is obvious.
While other airlines were playing with CrowdStrike updates,
Southwest worked with a finished, proven solution and did not
let its passengers down. So, what is the bottom line of all this?
Although I think I got a little carried away. The point is that there
are no "obsolete operating systems" or technologies. There is no
such thing as retro computing. There is only leftist propaganda
from people who have not studied IT courses and live inside this
"smartphone ghetto". You can take a screenshot of these lines and
hang it on your wall.
Modern Big Tech will sooner or later lead you all to a cascading
collapse of systems on a global scale. It is because of information
entropy that you all will face a collapsing cascading collapse of
critically important objects of socio-political life, precisely
because the "new systems" will bring an unpredictable stream
of errors, which sooner or later, and I think within 5 years, will
cause a man-made disaster on a global scale. And all this in turn
will increase the cost of operation and restoration of these systems.
For which the consumer will pay again. Thus, take care of proven
working technical solutions until it is too late. After all, perhaps
at some point a guy with a DOS diskette, FTP, NE2000 network card
and an old Siemens controller will save our world from extinction.
For as long the problems after the next effeteness update of
Linux/Windows kernels will be solved...