Fax machines will never die no matter how they are mocked. It simply is the easiest way to send documents with private information and it's fast. At least we have e-faxing now to receive documents.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Please don't tell me you buy that "they can't be hacked". It's pretty much on the same tier as email.
Not so much they can't be hacked, but that nobody seems to bother to.
Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.
Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.
Pager and satellite phone. Mostly a niche usecase for health workers and remote location settlement respectively.
Pagers.
Still in use by hospitals and emergency services
Shit works
Steam engines.
The vast majority of our power comes from making something really hot and boiling water. Coal plant? Oil plant? Gas plant? Nuclear fission plant? Geothermal plant? The grand holy grail of energy production that would be a nuclear fusion plant? All steam engines.
Yes, unbeknownst to everyone, this is what a steampunk society realistically looks like.
After first contact
A: These are our mini neutron star fusion reactors. The most advanced technology to have ever existed. We basically take a chunk of neutron star matter and divide it into two. We neutralize the negative effect and extreme gravity with our space-time bending gravity manipulation technology. We let the two mini neutro spheres accelerate and collide. This generates enough energy to power atleast 3 planets for 1000 cycles. Not onl--
H: Wait a minute. I have a question.
A: Please feel free to ask any questions.
H: How do you convert the raw energy generated into a usable form at that scale?
A: We use utlra high intensity lasers for energy transfer to plane--
H: No. That's not what I'm asking. How do you convert the raw energy at reactor into a usable form?
A: ...
H: ...
A: We boil water wi--
H: Motherf-- enrages and loses sanity
Stolen from reddit.
We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.
The IRS still use COBOL.
So does pretty much the whole banking and credit industry. When you get money out of an ATM there's usually some COBOL code involved.
True, we stack old technologies on top of older technologies, and somewhere at the bottom, there is z/OS with COBOL running. A young person right now learning COBOL has a secure future with big paychecks.
Depends on your tolerance for code spelunking. Back in the 90s I was encouraged to do Y2K prep because I had some COBOL experience, but I really hated pawing through old code. To be fair, COBOL was designed to be self documenting and English-like. But I'm glad I got into web dev instead back then. It was right at the dawn of "dynamic HTML" when web pages started actually doing things. Very cool time. Right now I'd be more inclined to go into helping companies recover from failed AI projects.
That's not even a government thing. It's a finance/banking thing, as most major banks are still using mainframes and legacy COBOL code for most of their business logic.
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General Aviation is still using magnetos. The typical GA airplane is hilariously primitive.
Yeah, it's so hilarious to want an engine that will continue to run after a complete electrical system failure at 10000ft.
Fuck 100LL though.
The Rotax engines use digital CDI ignition that is independent if the airframe electrical system, and from each other. I've never seen one fail.
NOOO I NEED LEADED FUEL CAUSE MY LYCOMING IS FROM THE 60s 😭😭
If you buy a brand new Skyhawk here in the space year 2025, it will come with a newly made Lycoming IO-360 that requires 100LL. I think they're still working on eliminating leaded avgas, I think because the Trump regime hasn't noticed it yet.
fax machines, both in Germany and Japan.
They're common in the US too in doctors offices and hospitals because of the security requirements of transmitting patient records and such.
Legally defined as secure, not actually secure.
They are fairly insecure in practice, since they are throwing the data at misdialed numbers and they are frequently placed in shared and insecure locations in the building where lots of people can access whatever comes through.
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Fax, still in official use in Germany.
It will never go away in health care and government departments in Canada.
It's considered a secure method of document transfer over email, despite email being able to be secured and fax can be hacked with like a length of wire and a knife. Fucking irks me.
Because how many attackers are actually interested in attacking fax? Like... have you ever heard of hackers hacking physical mail? It's to old for people to care, and "people not caring" is implicitely secure by ignorance.
Yeah for sure, but security through obscurity only works until it's actually important or exploitable for monetary gain. I wouldn't even mind that, but e-mail can do so much better and it's treated like a giant security risk.
I mean, if all the good secret information is going over fax and everyone knows it, sure, people will hack it. Blackhats are in it for the money, not to work with the newest technology. Most of what they do is already mind-numbing grinding.
The main security there is just the security of whatever phone line it's going over. And that's assuming you never dial a wrong number...
Also there is fax spam. I get all these random advertisements faxed to me for companies for window replacement services that don't actually exist, and sometimes fortune tellers. I have no idea why.
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IPv4.
IPv6 became a recognized standard by 1998.
EDIT: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption
Nearly 30 years later, and less than half of the connections to Google are via IPv6.
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I'm surprised nobody mentioned jack plugs yet. Basically unchanged since 1877 when it was invented for phone switchboards, roughly as old as safety pins or modern hairpins (give or take a few decades)
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
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It surprises me how many system utilities I use that are older than I am. I am currently initializing a disk on a cloud server with an application that was written when Ford was the US president.
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There's a used bookstore near me that has the oldest cash register I've ever seen. It has keys like a typewriter, and makes the most satisfying "ka-ching" sound when it opens. They always use it to add up your purchase and print a receipt, even when you're paying with a credit card. But I always try to bring cash when I'm there so that the drawer gets used. (And also, y'know, screw credit card companies taking their cut.)
I know that's not really "in widespread use" today, which is probably what the question meant, but that was the first thing that came to mind for me.
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The Wheel. We should've graduated to antigravity by now, don't you think?
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