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What’s the point of this article?
Life-among-the-ruins of old technology. Accretion, aggregation, accrual. The lifecycle of systems. The author has their own pretty direct answer for you:

> if only because I thought it'd be interesting to watch such a legacy, time-worn piece of automation come back to life.

> ...and it was [ed: coming back to life]! I got to see the terminal boot from a quite sophisticated script and the sound of everything settling into place was enchanting, pitifully.

Being perceptive & interested in the world is what hackers do & are.

The very next line, which you elided:

>Unfortunately, though this did clear the error, it landed on (and got stuck) the exact same error when I tried my card lol

He didn't actually fix anything. It's still broken.

There wasn't so much as a screen shot, nor was the system explored or restored.

This post is way below any reasonable standards for a site like this and should have been buried, not promoted to the front page.

(comment deleted)
This is the shittiest post I've seen on HN.
Sorry... I'm gonna stop definitively just tossing content on here when I think it might be interesting and occurs to me. The two? times I've been on the front page (including this one) have been (not exactly intentional) and embarrassing.
My first thought was, "I wonder whether a car wash is good for laundering money."
> I would encourage the owners of that car wash - if they happen to see this - to contact MFA Corporate (my employers) at their main phone number. Ya never know - they've expanded stores a lot and they might be interested in the property.

Maybe the owners of the that car wash will contact MFA corporate to inquire why one of their employees was messing around with their equipment.