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Where are floppy disks today? Planes, trains, and all these other places


No, really! Floppy drives still live on in many surprising places, and not just the homes of die-hard techies.

Some older Boeing 747 models still use floppy disks to load critical navigation database updates and software into their avionics systems. Closer to the ground, in San Francisco, the Muni Metro light railway, which launched in 1980, won't start up each morning unless its Automatic Train Control System staff is booted up with a floppy. Famously, or infamously, until 2019, the US nuclear missile sites force still used 8-inch floppy disks as part of the system for coordinating operational components.

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