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“Difficult [for someone] to recover” should not be a partially overlapping state as “bricked”. I had a EdgeMax Lite router which has a propensity for the flash

by zaroth 7y ago

“Difficult [for someone] to recover” should not be a partially overlapping state as “bricked”. I had a EdgeMax Lite router which has a propensity for the flash storage to get corrupted at which point it fails to boot. The fix is to buy a particular model of USB flash drive, and image it with a specific .img file. Open the case and replace the flash stick, then boot holding the reset button. It was a somewhat difficult repair, but in the end just a matter of following step-by-step instructions with readily available tools. I would not consider the device to have been bricked. No more than your computer is bricked when your hard drive dies. I did brick an Xbox once, trying to solder on an early gen mod chip that was well beyond my soldering abilities! In this case it’s not even a question of hardware damage. The fix is to reset to factory, upgrade, and restore. This is the happy path recovery process which has done millions of times over on iPhones. I had to do it just a couple weeks ago when my son changed the PIN on an iPhone we use to play music on, and then promptly forgot the new PIN. (He’s 7) With the proposed meaning, everything is a brick to the technologically illiterate. Better to admit the headline is simply sensationalizing / clickbait.

Dylan16807 7y ago
Not a brick if you have to replace a storage device. Is it a brick if you have to replace a motherboard? Would replacing a motherboard not have fixed your xbox? (Surely the commercial availability of a part isn't the deciding factor in whether something is a brick, right?)
- zaroth 7y ago
  Commercial availability of a part is absolutely a factor in deciding whether something is a brick! I.e. some large expensive machine is bricked because the manufacturer refuses to sell you a small proprietary part without which the machine is entirely non-functional. It’s a fairly frequent pattern where an IoT device becomes a brick because an API shuts down. Similarly, if you can’t replace a crucial part because the manufacturer won’t sell it to you, that would brick a device. If the device is cheaper to replace than to repair, then it is bricked (the Xbox). A brick must be entirely non-functional and simply not worth repairing. It’s supposed to be a less vulgar version of FUBAR. There are rare stories of extraordinary lengths that a maker will go to (such as fabbing your own custom parts, or standing up a private version of an API and DNS hijacking requests from the device in order to make it function again) in order to “un-brick” a device. The defining trait of these stories is that something new is invented in order to make the device function again.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    I guess we have fundamentally different definitions of "bricked", then. I'm always going to define brick by the type of damage. It's not like a car being totaled, where even cosmetic damage can total a car when its value is low enough.

by zaroth 7y ago

Dylan16807 7y ago

Not a brick if you have to replace a storage device. Is it a brick if you have to replace a motherboard? Would replacing a motherboard not have fixed your xbox? (Surely the commercial availability of a part isn't the deciding factor in whether something is a brick, right?)

zaroth 7y ago
Commercial availability of a part is absolutely a factor in deciding whether something is a brick! I.e. some large expensive machine is bricked because the manufacturer refuses to sell you a small proprietary part without which the machine is entirely non-functional. It’s a fairly frequent pattern where an IoT device becomes a brick because an API shuts down. Similarly, if you can’t replace a crucial part because the manufacturer won’t sell it to you, that would brick a device. If the device is cheaper to replace than to repair, then it is bricked (the Xbox). A brick must be entirely non-functional and simply not worth repairing. It’s supposed to be a less vulgar version of FUBAR. There are rare stories of extraordinary lengths that a maker will go to (such as fabbing your own custom parts, or standing up a private version of an API and DNS hijacking requests from the device in order to make it function again) in order to “un-brick” a device. The defining trait of these stories is that something new is invented in order to make the device function again.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  I guess we have fundamentally different definitions of "bricked", then. I'm always going to define brick by the type of damage. It's not like a car being totaled, where even cosmetic damage can total a car when its value is low enough.