The railway depot in the city of Dalian, China, was thrown into chaos on January 12 when Adobe caused a death switch to end support for Flash. It turns out … it was critical for a bunch of their systems!
However, it seems that the technicians who run IT for the station have a sense of humor, as they have real-time WeChat updates about their battle – “in the style of a military thriller, written with all the Dwight self-awareness out there” The Office ‘, “as David Cohen and Yue Sun invented on Technode.
As they write …
The staff split into task forces for hardware and software, trying to restore an older version of Flash from a backup ‘GHOST system’, an attempt marked by triumphs and defeats. By 10pm, they were mostly repairing computers in backup states – suddenly automatic updates caused the systems to deactivate Flash again.
According to a brief statement that later replaced the viral post, the problem was limited to newer computers in the depot and no trains were affected.
After midnight, the team started to get lasting victories:
“January 13, 0113:” Wan Jia Ling station is stuck! Ling Ma shouted … we all gathered and confirmed. The room bursts with cheers and applause. ” [snip]
“1411 hours. The station is in crisis again. We can not use the printer again.”
The authors note that Flash is still used ‘widely’ in the Chinese government, which is quite interesting if true.
(via waxy)