Japan declares ‘war’ on the humble floppy disk in new digitization push

Japan's digital minister, who's vowed to rid the bureaucracy of outdated tools from the hanko stamp to the fax machine, has now declared war" on a technology many haven't seen for decades - the floppy disk.

The hand-sized, square-shaped data storage item, along with similar devices including the CD or even lesser-known mini disk, are still required for some 1,900 government procedures and must go, digital minister Taro Kono wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday.

I understand wanting to dump the floppy and CD, but why dump MiniDisc? Us people of culture know the MiniDisc is the end-all-be-all of storage media, and nothing has ever surpassed it. Japan is about to make a grave, grave mistake.