AIS requirements for the Panama Canal

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/op/notices/2014/N01-2014-Rev01.pdf has requirements for AIS on ships going through the Panama Canal.   I hear rumor that 16% of ships going through need to have a 2nd AIS added as their primary does not meet the requirements.  Some of these like the heading and pilot port are not too surprising.  But a lot of AIS units that I consider not okay would pass this.  All of this would be much easier if the IEC standards were not paywalled and there was open source software that could used to test AIS units.

And this cyber attack stuff is a load of crap.  Systems on ships are designed so stupidly, it hurts.  Why are people still using full windows machines for ship board operations?  Clickbait follows...

https://www.emaritimegroup.com/article-how-your-ship-has-probably-been-cyber-attacked-already/

End of my USCG NAIS Feed

Last month, I finally called an end to my USCG NAIS feed.  The server running AISUser was running an ancient version of CentOS whose is end-of-life for security patches is this month. I had not been rebooted the machine since about 2011 (there is a large natural gas generator right outside its server room).  It feels like a weight has been lifted.