Absolutely true.

[daniel_gonzalez@neopaquita.es]

@selzero @Uilebheist @cstross I've been in similar situation, moving code from Excel to Java as Excel didn't pass newer compliance certification.

[inkomtech@infosec.exchange]

@jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross good point. I’ve done sec (GRC, TPRM) work at many, and saw so many hodgepodges due to mergers AND repeatedly being squeezed both on IT and Infosec resources. bad stale tech, understaffed, underpaid. Irony: incidents => merger/acquistions.

[ragingcelt@corteximplant.com]

@cstross As-400 just wont die. It was running at a couple of others jobs i worked

[causticmsngo@mastodon.social]

@peachfront @ldmay65 @jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross This absolutely happens (example: https://nj1015.com/nj-cops-confiscate-property-of-the-innocent-these-towns-grabbed-the-most/) & there's a lot of corruption involved. Don't read too much about how "law enforcement” works in the USA unless you want to be depressed (for example, see Serial podcast season 3 & “No Special Duty” from Radiolab).

[frankendrullat@mastodon.social]

@cstross @charette Got paid 800 Irish ££ after taxes for two nights doing absolutely nothing over Y2K together with maybe 20 others at Compaq in Dublin. Over the two nights we had a grand total of 4 calls, if I remember correctly. 2 HDD RMAs, one dead PSU and an old lady who dialled the wrong number. 🤷‍♂️

The mostly non-event cost companies a shit ton of money.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@FrankEndrullat @charette Yet it was only a non-event *because the remediation work got done properly ahead of time*. It's led to an infuriating denialism: like anti-vaxxers, they're ignoring the huge amount of hard work that went into making sure nothing happened, and assume it means nothing *can* happen.

Next time we won't be so lucky.

[lazarou@mastodon.social]

@cstross I recall working in banking in the 00s and they were still using programs from the 80s, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" as well as their appropriate attitude to risk (which was starting to lapse in the 00s, but hey...)

[frankendrullat@mastodon.social]

@cstross @charette Completely agree! For months before we made sure that every bloody customer was running the latest and greatest firmware / BIOS / Insight Manager / whatever else to minimize the impact. That must have also been a significant amount of money that got invested there.

[uilebheist@polyglot.city]

@aapis @selzero @cstross I have my opinion on anything "enterprise" and it's not quite complimentary:

https://polyglot.city/@Uilebheist/116101530297706771

[jtonline@mastodon.me.uk]

@johnrohde @cstross I'm tempted to add it to my annual review goals! :)

[peachfront@toot.community]

@causticmsngo @ldmay65 @jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross

it's just plain cruel because people who are unbanked & living out of their cars can't save up & rise to help themselves because their cash gets stolen

i played on a blackjack team in the 90s, a legal cash business, we helped a formerly homeless player get back on his feet but once he went back out on his own, i don't think it was 6 months before some traffic cops stole all his cash & put him homeless again

very discouraging

[mathew@universeodon.com]

@selzero @Uilebheist @cstross Funnily enough my cousin worked building VBA front-ends for banking systems.

[interpipes@thx.gg]

@skolima @cstross @davidgerard I think this is less about their risk aversion and the fact that the "could" in "could go to prison" is vaguely equivalent to "99% likely not to because accountability is for the poors"

[jsl@hachyderm.io]

@fn0rd @cstross You will find developers at banks who are genuinely intrigued by the new tools, and that's good. But a lot of the ones who maintain the dinosaur pens of old iron that run the core banking services with uptimes north of 99.99% take pride in what they do, and that includes telling their line and top management where to shove vibe coding.
Sure, this is an independence based on good education, a good salary and strong employment protection, but that's why the middle class, while slowing good things down, also prevents CEOs from shooting themselves into both feet. /end

[wellsitegeo@masto.ai]

@selzero @Uilebheist @cstross

Fintech's "Mars Climate Orbiter" moment?

No, probably not ; they had hundreds of prior warnings, all dismissed.

[joxn@wandering.shop]

@cstross @charette Boeing, in the 90s, could and did spin up the engineering project for the 777 with a clean sheet design in 5 years from start of program to service entrance of the first aircraft. Now, they can’t really build new planes and they can’t modify old designs without the effort being an utter (sometimes fatal) disaster.

The world of professional and technical services looks a lot different now. I’m not sure that banks’ caution around Y2K bugs is necessarily predictive of anything.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@joXn @charette Boeing *today* is run by McDonnell-Douglas management, which is why they can't build another 777. McD-D lost the market war but won by a management reverse takeover. This is how industries die. (Airbus are eating their lunch despite the giant miss-step that was the A380.)

[ravenonthill@mastodon.social]

@cstross Has anyone else had the disorienting experience of reading an “AI” summary and realizing that it is wrong, wrong, wrong, but very neatly worded? Why does anyone think the summaries and documentation Claude generates will be any better? And there will be no way to check them…

At slightly greater length, https://shinycroak.blogspot.com/2026/02/ai-and-financial-software.html

[llewelly@sauropods.win]

@selzero @Uilebheist @cstross I guess he shorted himself?

[cadbury_moose@wandering.shop]

@jawarajabbi @jzillw @cstross

<Sigh> That has brought back all the memories of wrangling remote printing for customers:

1) The office move where the old site was wired with Twinax and used SNA with antediluvian protocol converters [1] for each printer[2], and the new site that was all TCP/IP and 10BaseT.

2) The company that was still using X.25 PSS and some dot-matrix printers with multipart stationery when they physically skipped the X.25 network hardware.[3]

Continued...