Discussion

JavaScript Required

rich_sasha: Is it just me that finds it terrifying that theres any Windows bits on a spaceship?

Rooster61: We can't even leave the planet without MS enshittifying our equipment. God, I really want out of this timeline

alex1138: Clippy "It looks like you're trying to go to the Moon. Want any help with that?"

ramesh31: >"Is it just me that finds it terrifying that theres any Windows bits on a spaceship?"SpaceX Crew Dragon console interfaces are entirely React apps

ryandrake: Everything is terrifying in computing these days, and bringing it to space rockets makes it even more terrifying.

allears: Why in the name of all that's holy would you use a Microsoft product on a mission like this? Just about the only thing you can trust about MS is that their software is buggy.

SanjayMehta: USS Yorktown, the aegis missile carrier comes to mind for some reason.I think it was the same ship which shot down a passenger airliner.

robin_reala: “Guns don’t kill people, Windows does”?

fuzzfactor: From the comments:‪Andy Meyers‬ ‪@andymeyers10.bsky.social‬ · 3h I said “launch window”, not “Launch Windows”!

nekusar: Copilot (which one?!?) says "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot allow you to do that"

rationalist: computer virusnoun A program which can covertly transmit itself between computers via networks (especially the Internet) or removable storage such as CDs, USB drives, floppy disks, etc., often causing damage to systems and data. A software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer.

jmacklin308: We migrated earlier this year and had a similar problem. Outlook (classic) works differently than the OWA version. They keep the classic version so people don't spontaneously throw a chair out a window. It's being phased out slowly.

mvkel: I'm betting in 15 years, people will still be using Outlook (classic). This is the culture.

nekusar: Its the fucking federal government's policy. Basically it amounts to "pay microsoft as a form of corporate welfare", "permit but not really allow linux", and "this is how it has always been done".

yablak: They also keep their own inboxes; emails downloaded to or sent from the old version are not visible on the new version.

unethical_ban: I want to say something like "oh well, this is certainly a non-critical piece of software". Hopefully it's the convenient dashboard and there are other, more hardened consoles for fallback or something.But in all seriousness, and without glibness or sarcasm: I cannot comprehend how there is any "unexpected" software running on that spacecraft, regardless of operating system.EDIT*** For those who like me only watched the video and didn't read the thread: This is on a laptop that is non-critical, it is not a part of the spacecraft. Whew. Now I'm sad that one of the Linux distros didn't try to pitch themselves to the astronauts for a sponsorship... Would have been especially on brand for Pop_OS.

russdill: They have a diverse range of devices, including iPhones

gchamonlive: [delayed]

babypuncher: The culture is correct, the new version of Outlook is hot garbage

guzfip: Blame the gaggle of idiots from that slop thread the other day.Now that the clowns are running the circus, I suspect digital goods will begin to rapidly decay soon.

dgb23: Bashing on MS products and on ReactJS (apparently used by spacex UIs) is a common pastime here and I'm guilty of it myself.But here we're talking about actual space rockets flying to space with humans in them.My expectation would be that something like https://tigerstyle.dev/ would be followed or the NASA rules linked from there https://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/P10.pdf

babypuncher: this is a crew laptop and not a mission critical computer at all.

HeyLaughingBoy: At a previous job I was a developer on a medical instrument that used Windows to run the UI.Before everyone gets all up in arms about it, Windows/Linux UI & database with external microcontrollers handling real-time control is a very common architectural choice for medical and industrial equipment. To the point where many Systems-on-Module (SoMs) come with a Linux-capable ARM processor and a separate, smaller processor for real-time, linked via shared memory.Anyway, a customer called to report a weird bug that we couldn't resolve. After remoting into the instrument, we discovered that one of the lab technicians had attempted to install Excel on it. At some point the install must have failed, but it left a .dll behind that was causing a conflict with something in our code and keeping the UI from starting properly.No, we did not learn anything from this incident...

joe_mamba: Which new Outlook? I think there's like 3 versions of Outlook. The Classic Win32 one they want you to stop using, the new Poverty Spec one bundled for free with Windows 11 and the new Full Spec one that comes with O365, both of which are built in web technologies IIRC.

cgh: Clippy: “Hi, it looks like you’re trying to go to the Moon”

stackskipton: Everyone likes to point and laugh, sure, I'm getting a chuckle as well.However, on more practical level, what are other options? Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies, is pretty low bandwidth and very familiar to end users.IMAP with Thunderbird is probably only other option that would satisfy the requirements.EDIT: Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.

kaybe: Oh ya I remember how some computer pulled a windows update over a satellite connection during a research flight (aircraft). That was super expensive, wow. Now Microsoft servers are banned at the outgoing point since you couldn’t reliably stop it the computer itself and new teams with new computers come in.

xnyan: I'm not letting Microsoft off the hook here, but if you have an expensive metered connection and you're trusting clients (especially a modern personal computer of any operating system type)to play nicely with bandwidth, that's 100% on you.

liendolucas: Is this actually true? What's next? A BSOD? I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings. Unbeliveable.

joe_mamba: Isn't this what Embedded Windows was always for, like for use in medical equipment, ATMs, POS, etc? And also what group policies were for, that can disable the user from installing any software? Am I wrong to assume that the fuckup was on your end?

aksss: Back in like early aughts I remember seeing an ATM in Rome that had evidently crashed and was sitting at a DOS prompt. I was much younger then, but I remember thinking it wasn't terribly surprising, but it was also a bit of a wizard of oz moment.

EvanAnderson: I don't know why people are surprised by this. Using suitable off-the-shelf solutions for non-mission-critical purposes seems like a very reasonable thing to do.I'm recalling this from my memory of "The Space Above Us" podcast: There were various bespoke teleprinters sent up on early shuttle flights that had exciting failure modes (if I remember correctly one of them started smoking) and in at least a couple of cases they had to stow the new hardware and pull out the old backup hardware because the new stuff didn't work.

EvanAnderson: It depends on how badly Microsoft continues to fuck up Outlook (classic).I don't use Outlook for my personal email, but I've used it in various corporate engagements and not been wholly dissatisfied. Newer versions are slower, more bloated, and unstable (though add-ins-- especially the Teams add-in-- contribute to that).The most egregious regression, for me, has been the "Advanced Find" functionality (which was wonderful in the 97 thru 2010 versions) being changed-out for the god-awful search box within the Outlook window.

cocodill: Maybe for emails and calendars, wouldn't want them to arrive and miss the appointment.

EvanAnderson: This talk about off-the-shelf hardware in space makes me wonder, given the clear line of sight, if it would be possible to detect their Wi-Fi access points' beacons from Earth.

jubilanti: That's a really sorry state of things, then. There's zero trust in software now, in the literal sense. How did it get that we live in a world where you can't trust a client to enforce its own documented behavior? How did it get to be the user's fault for not using OS and hardware level measures and not the software vendor's fault when the "Automatic updates" toggle is a no-op?

EvanAnderson: In an environment where bandwidth utilization costs money I think it's a good belt-and-suspenders approach, regardless of the expected behavior of the clients, to enforce policy at the choke point between expensive and not-expensive.(I think more networks should be built with default deny egress policies, personally. It would make data exfiltration more difficult, would make ML algorithms monitoring traffic flows have less "noise" to look thru, and would likely encourage some efficiency on the part of dependencies.)

netsharc: The astronaut's quote needs to be a billboard ad.. "I also see I have 2 instances of Outlook, and neither of those are working".

simonh: Houston, we have a problem!

rich_sasha: Ugh. Actually...> The thing about Space is that it's just so huge. Unbelievably so. And the real challenge? You have to make all your delta-V for orbital speed by pushing gas very fast. In one go.

golfer: Why on God's green earth is Windows running on the Artemis spaceship?

maxerickson: What should they use for email?

buildbot: Alpine & Linux?

CoastalCoder: > How did it get that we live in a world where you can't trust a client to enforce its own documented behavior?My guess a combo of economic incentives and weak legal protections.I realize that answer applies to so many issues as to be almost not worth saving, but I think it's still true here.

proactivesvcs: We could have said that for publisher a few years back. Its death knell has been sounded and microsoft aren't even offering any way for people to properly view or print their publisher files, let alone edit them.

HoldOnAMinute: Literally anything else. In 1992 we did email on the command line with green screen terminals

rich_sasha: Just imagine the aliens capture a probe and try to use Windows. What will they think of us?!

burnt-resistor: Don't worry, it will stop them at installation and demand internet access and creation of a Microsoft cloud account.

fuzzfactor: First they laugh.Then they wanna just cry when it brings down their whole starfleet with a virus that they have no immunity to ;)