thehatfox comments on As a crippling outage causes chaos in Japan, the fax gains favor

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The last I heard fax still hadn’t fallen out of favour in Japan. Despite being a big innovator in tech Japan still loves fax machines.

It’s one of those technologies that refuses to die. The NHS in the UK is still trying to phase them out.

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[–] Chozo@fedia.io 9 points 1 day ago (1 child)

Despite being a big innovator in tech Japan still loves fax machines.

Japan hasn't been quite the tech innovator in recent years like they used to be. IIRC, their tech sector has actually been in a pretty big slump for the last 20 years or so. Maybe "slump" isn't the right word, but the growth isn't as rapid as it was in the 80s and 90s.

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[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Japan has always lagged in software investment, and while you'd think open source would bridge that gap, the entire country is basically the poster child for the "not invented here" anti pattern. That allowed even the most rudimentary standards from western companies to run away with it.

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[–] farmgineer@nord.pub 5 points 1 day ago

When I signed up for NTT East to get my internet started ~ 5 or 6 years ago (sonet, my previous provider, can go to hell), I was required to fill out a form and fax it. No email, no taking it somewhere, it had to be faxed. It was a giant pain.

That said, things are getting better (which I define as not requiring faxes). Companies putting all their eggs in one basket is a different problem, but Japan is generally dogshit at IT. My information has been leaked once or twice a week for the last few months because of awful security procedures.

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