3 ms·

> Failure means minor inconvenience for a lot of people. That alone makes software more critical than we give it credit for. Especially if there's many people.

> Failure means minor inconvenience for a lot of people. That alone makes software more critical than we give it credit for. Especially if there's many people. Let's say you've got some mildly popular piece of software, with 10,000 users. Let's say a particular inconvenience means they each waste like 10 seconds per day. Total waste is 100,000 seconds per day, or 28 hours. Per day. This adds up pretty quickly.

serverQuestion 7y ago
What if you are a coffee machine manufacturer. a broken device or slow brew can waste way more time. and you can even hot-patch all devices at once!
- loup-vaillant 7y ago
  An online coffee machine? If that thing's got a vulnerability, I already envision some corporate spy recording discussions, send them home, and comb them for corporate secrets…
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    They've been putting listening bugs into appliances long before the IoT was a concept. The IoT "connect all the things" approach just makes it easy on a grand scale.
victorNicollet 7y ago
It still adds up slower than many other engineering areas. A recent technical problem on my subway line (Paris Métro 6) delayed everyone by 30 minutes for about an hour. Based on average ridership figures from Wikipedia, this adds up to ~250 days lost. An article from 2016 [1] places the downtime at ~2h16 per month for that line. That's ~1000 days lost per month, for only one subway line. [1]: http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/metro-rer-le-palmares-des-perturbations-ligne-par-ligne-06-11-2016-6296241.php http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/metro... I'm certain that even the current Windows 10 search bug doesn't come close to that kind of impact.
- loup-vaillant 7y ago
  The subway is not the norm, it's an outlier. Most engineering projects are not nearly as important or impactful. An apt comparison would be a fairly big internet provider, a popular game (1M users, not just 10 thousands), a popular productivity suite… I have chosen the small end of the scale, but let's think about Microsoft Word for a second. Or how much time Adobe Photoshop takes to start up.

serverQuestion 7y ago

What if you are a coffee machine manufacturer. a broken device or slow brew can waste way more time. and you can even hot-patch all devices at once!

loup-vaillant 7y ago
An online coffee machine? If that thing's got a vulnerability, I already envision some corporate spy recording discussions, send them home, and comb them for corporate secrets…
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  They've been putting listening bugs into appliances long before the IoT was a concept. The IoT "connect all the things" approach just makes it easy on a grand scale.

victorNicollet 7y ago

It still adds up slower than many other engineering areas. A recent technical problem on my subway line (Paris Métro 6) delayed everyone by 30 minutes for about an hour. Based on average ridership figures from Wikipedia, this adds up to ~250 days lost. An article from 2016 [1] places the downtime at ~2h16 per month for that line. That's ~1000 days lost per month, for only one subway line. [1]: http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/metro-rer-le-palmares-des-perturbations-ligne-par-ligne-06-11-2016-6296241.php http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/metro... I'm certain that even the current Windows 10 search bug doesn't come close to that kind of impact.

loup-vaillant 7y ago
The subway is not the norm, it's an outlier. Most engineering projects are not nearly as important or impactful. An apt comparison would be a fairly big internet provider, a popular game (1M users, not just 10 thousands), a popular productivity suite… I have chosen the small end of the scale, but let's think about Microsoft Word for a second. Or how much time Adobe Photoshop takes to start up.