https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/japans-government-finally-exits-90s-ends-floppy-disk-use/

in this comment thread: a lot of people realizing just how many things/processes still use faxes lol

its in the same vein as realizing how much of the world runs on shell and Perl scripts or COBOL for those folks over in banking

in general, technology changes very slowly for a lot of day to day bureaucratic processes because inertia, budgetary constraints, people being used to it etc etc.

also get this: sometimes the new technology introduces new problems that such orgs and their processes are not ready for

so its not just technology changes, its process and mindset changes

but in this case I'll say, floppy disks are bad, they have always been bad and your 90s computer nostalgia about it cannot change my mind about that

I actually used floppy disks when i was starting to use a computer back in the late 90s and they were Not Good

1.44 fucking megabytes

im not immune to nostalgia, its just for...USB thumb drives instead

my first thumb drive was Expensive and only came with 256MB but oh my god it actually made transferring data between computers so much more convenient

USB thumb drives are still the king for portable data transfer imho

(micro)SD cards are too small and easy to lose and need a reader that's not available on a lot of computers

there was a time when I used to carry a USB thumb drive in my pockets because I used them so much

very useful in high school when I had to use the school computers and could save docs on the USB drive and then work on them at home

not a thing I have to think about anymore with the advent of cloud storage services and fast internet access