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As other comments have mentioned, the article is misleading. No software or hardware was remotely disabled. Parts failed over time. Once the company went out of

by chroma 5y ago

As other comments have mentioned, the article is misleading. No software or hardware was remotely disabled. Parts failed over time. Once the company went out of business, support was no longer available. Yes, this is terrible, but there was no malicious intent. If anything they tried mightily to support their customer base despite losing money the whole time. More importantly: If you require that medical devices be supported indefinitely, you will heavily discourage anyone from making medical devices. Such a requirement is an endorsement of the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics.[1] Had this company not existed, these people would have been blind for the rest of their lives. Instead, this company tried to help people and ran out of money. The net effect is that blind people were able to see for years. This is much better than the alternative. If you want to assign blame, assign it to the FDA. They're the ones who make it practically impossible to roll out any new medical technology. Their byzantine rules prevent the sale of devices as simple as epipens.[2] Their requirements (though well-intended) drastically increase treatment costs and slow the pace of progress. 1. From https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth... > The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular. 2. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs-chairs/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-d...

Jtsummers 5y ago
> As other comments have mentioned, the article is misleading. No software or hardware was remotely disabled. Nothing in the article is misleading in this regard, it says nothing about remote disabling of the systems. This is entirely a creation of this thread, and not the article. The word "remote" doesn't even show up in the article. Your comment is the one that's misleading by asserting things about the article that aren't even remotely true.
- aetherson 5y ago
  My reading of your parent comment was that "no software or hardware was remotely disabled" was intended to mean, "there was nothing even a little bit like dialing hardware or software," not,"no hardware or software was disabled from a distance."
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    > My reading of your parent comment was that "no software or hardware was remotely disabled" was intended to mean, "there was nothing even a little bit like dialing hardware or software," not,"no hardware or software was disabled from a distance." How is that a reasonable reading of their comment? They wrote: > No software or hardware was remotely disabled. How can that not mean: > "no hardware or software was disabled from a distance" "from a distance" and "remote" are, pretty much, the same thing in the context of computer systems.
    - aetherson 5y ago
      Because there's another meaning of "remotely," as in the phrase "that's not even remotely true." Not having anything to do with physical distance, and referring to metaphorical distance from the facts.
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        but that is not remotely how the phrase remotely disabled is ever used.
advael 5y ago
> More importantly: If you require that medical devices be supported indefinitely, you will heavily discourage anyone from making medical devices. Such a requirement is an endorsement of the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics.[1] Had this company not existed, these people would have been blind for the rest of their lives. Instead, this company tried to help people and ran out of money. The net effect is that blind people were able to see for years. This is much better than the alternative. I absolutely agree, which is why that is not even remotely what I proposed. Rather than require indefinite support, we should require that support be made possible by the owners of devices, or, when this is too technically demanding, anyone with the know-how and desire to help (out of kindness, profit motive, whatever). Currently, this is very difficult because devices tend to require proprietary information to maintain (such as software). Thus, I believe it should be a legal requirement to open-source and make publicly available the materials needed to maintain/modify/repair the device (e.g. firmware, internal tools) once you've stopped supporting it. Right now, maintaining an unsupported device requires serious reverse-engineering skills, and usually plying those skills for that purpose is illegal under the DMCA's anti-subversion rules. I believe such a measure to be necessary to reduce the insane amounts of waste companies create by releasing proprietary devices and then obsoleting them so that they will inevitably stop working, but the mere existence of cases where a device is critical to some function (like a medical implant) constitutes another compelling reason why this requirement is necessary, even if this particular article about this particular device is somehow misleading I will add (because it's fun to be provocative on the internet) that this is, I think, a reasonable compromise from the position I hold emotionally (which is that all proprietary software is a user-hostile scam and should be outlawed in its entirety) which still accomplishes not leaving devices that have lost support inoperable junk EDIT: I'd like to add that it's super uninteresting to me to talk about "malicious intent" with respect to corporate actors. They're not people, they have no capacity for malice. I don't believe such an entity's intentions ever matter. They are machines built out of rules and only ever are guaranteed to serve the purpose of trying to make someone money. This is fine, but it's important to ensure that they are built safely, as with any machine

by chroma 5y ago

Jtsummers 5y ago

> As other comments have mentioned, the article is misleading. No software or hardware was remotely disabled. Nothing in the article is misleading in this regard, it says nothing about remote disabling of the systems. This is entirely a creation of this thread, and not the article. The word "remote" doesn't even show up in the article. Your comment is the one that's misleading by asserting things about the article that aren't even remotely true.

aetherson 5y ago
My reading of your parent comment was that "no software or hardware was remotely disabled" was intended to mean, "there was nothing even a little bit like dialing hardware or software," not,"no hardware or software was disabled from a distance."
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  > My reading of your parent comment was that "no software or hardware was remotely disabled" was intended to mean, "there was nothing even a little bit like dialing hardware or software," not,"no hardware or software was disabled from a distance." How is that a reasonable reading of their comment? They wrote: > No software or hardware was remotely disabled. How can that not mean: > "no hardware or software was disabled from a distance" "from a distance" and "remote" are, pretty much, the same thing in the context of computer systems.
  - aetherson 5y ago
    Because there's another meaning of "remotely," as in the phrase "that's not even remotely true." Not having anything to do with physical distance, and referring to metaphorical distance from the facts.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      but that is not remotely how the phrase remotely disabled is ever used.

advael 5y ago

> More importantly: If you require that medical devices be supported indefinitely, you will heavily discourage anyone from making medical devices. Such a requirement is an endorsement of the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics.[1] Had this company not existed, these people would have been blind for the rest of their lives. Instead, this company tried to help people and ran out of money. The net effect is that blind people were able to see for years. This is much better than the alternative. I absolutely agree, which is why that is not even remotely what I proposed. Rather than require indefinite support, we should require that support be made possible by the owners of devices, or, when this is too technically demanding, anyone with the know-how and desire to help (out of kindness, profit motive, whatever). Currently, this is very difficult because devices tend to require proprietary information to maintain (such as software). Thus, I believe it should be a legal requirement to open-source and make publicly available the materials needed to maintain/modify/repair the device (e.g. firmware, internal tools) once you've stopped supporting it. Right now, maintaining an unsupported device requires serious reverse-engineering skills, and usually plying those skills for that purpose is illegal under the DMCA's anti-subversion rules. I believe such a measure to be necessary to reduce the insane amounts of waste companies create by releasing proprietary devices and then obsoleting them so that they will inevitably stop working, but the mere existence of cases where a device is critical to some function (like a medical implant) constitutes another compelling reason why this requirement is necessary, even if this particular article about this particular device is somehow misleading I will add (because it's fun to be provocative on the internet) that this is, I think, a reasonable compromise from the position I hold emotionally (which is that all proprietary software is a user-hostile scam and should be outlawed in its entirety) which still accomplishes not leaving devices that have lost support inoperable junk EDIT: I'd like to add that it's super uninteresting to me to talk about "malicious intent" with respect to corporate actors. They're not people, they have no capacity for malice. I don't believe such an entity's intentions ever matter. They are machines built out of rules and only ever are guaranteed to serve the purpose of trying to make someone money. This is fine, but it's important to ensure that they are built safely, as with any machine