4 ms·

When you get fined $30 billion dollars for a fire, yes, it makes sense.

by robertcope 7y ago

ecf 7y ago
When you neglect maintenance and cry fowl when a state wants to charge for your negligence.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  There’s a difference between getting fined for lax maintenance and “you’re bankrupt now”. To put this in software terms it’s equivalent to if you miss one bug, anywhere in your code you post on GitHub, and the government comes and takes your house. Because that’s about how easy it is to accidentally start fires in California in the dry season. How much code do you think you would publish in that case?
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    This except the code you put on GitHub was part of a billion dollar contract that specifically required static code analysis to catch bugs because it was going to be used in life or death situations, and then a bunch of people died because you got lazy and didn't do the static code analysis.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      But, even if you had done the static code analysis, you still would have been liable for any bugs that were missed. There is no level of diligence that would have released PG&E from liability.
  - danaris 7y ago
    There’s also a difference between “lax maintenance” and “you started fires causing millions of dollars in damage, destroying many homes and killing people.” When you are writing software that you know is being run on medical devices around the country, you need to raise your coding to a higher level of rigor than some rando writing an open-source utility for finding anagrams.
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      But in this case, the fire could’ve started from a lightning bolt or a single cigarette, instead statistics chose a cable spark.
      - danaris 7y ago
        Or, to look at it another way, the chances of a catastrophic fire starting were increased dramatically by all the poorly-maintained cables. It's not like the DM pulled a "forest fire" event and rolled "cable spark" as the initiator. Events in our world are linear and causal, not narrative in nature.
        throw0101a 7y ago
        > Or, to look at it another way, the chances of a catastrophic fire starting were increased dramatically by all the poorly-maintained cables. As well as building homes / subdivisions in areas with high risk of fires, and individual home owners not maintaining their properties to reduce risk: * https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Wildfire/Preparing-homes-for-wildfire https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1WxCBU6JAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1WxCBU6JAM * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM Just like with plane crashes, there is rarely a single event that causes catastrophe, but a chain of events, avoiding anyone one of which could break the path to the disaster.

When you get fined $30 billion dollars for a fire, yes, it makes sense.

ecf 7y ago

When you neglect maintenance and cry fowl when a state wants to charge for your negligence.

mdorazio 7y ago
There’s a difference between getting fined for lax maintenance and “you’re bankrupt now”. To put this in software terms it’s equivalent to if you miss one bug, anywhere in your code you post on GitHub, and the government comes and takes your house. Because that’s about how easy it is to accidentally start fires in California in the dry season. How much code do you think you would publish in that case?
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  This except the code you put on GitHub was part of a billion dollar contract that specifically required static code analysis to catch bugs because it was going to be used in life or death situations, and then a bunch of people died because you got lazy and didn't do the static code analysis.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    But, even if you had done the static code analysis, you still would have been liable for any bugs that were missed. There is no level of diligence that would have released PG&E from liability.
- danaris 7y ago
  There’s also a difference between “lax maintenance” and “you started fires causing millions of dollars in damage, destroying many homes and killing people.” When you are writing software that you know is being run on medical devices around the country, you need to raise your coding to a higher level of rigor than some rando writing an open-source utility for finding anagrams.
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    But in this case, the fire could’ve started from a lightning bolt or a single cigarette, instead statistics chose a cable spark.
    - danaris 7y ago
      Or, to look at it another way, the chances of a catastrophic fire starting were increased dramatically by all the poorly-maintained cables. It's not like the DM pulled a "forest fire" event and rolled "cable spark" as the initiator. Events in our world are linear and causal, not narrative in nature.
      - throw0101a 7y ago
        > Or, to look at it another way, the chances of a catastrophic fire starting were increased dramatically by all the poorly-maintained cables. As well as building homes / subdivisions in areas with high risk of fires, and individual home owners not maintaining their properties to reduce risk: * https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Wildfire/Preparing-homes-for-wildfire https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/... * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1WxCBU6JAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1WxCBU6JAM * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM Just like with plane crashes, there is rarely a single event that causes catastrophe, but a chain of events, avoiding anyone one of which could break the path to the disaster.