5 ms·

"It's your error, having a system with important data no actual/realtime backup" Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crim

"It's your error, having a system with important data no actual/realtime backup" Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? How dare you use an unreliabke system without ECC, what if a random bitflip would cause it to send 10x more money or data woupd be lost without realtime backup! This disrespect to users and wanky attitude is the cardinal sin of our industry, people's lives are at stake and it's their fault for trusting us.

bcrosby95 5y ago
You're unlikely to notice a single bit flip in a picture you take.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  unless it gives the killer the same mole that you have on the back of your neck
- jagger27 5y ago
  I just tested this on a JPEG. Flipping any bit in the first few bytes of a JPEG renders it unopenable on my Fedora system. I get that it's just a header and could probably be fixed, but there are consequences for bitflips, even on images.
  - wyldfire 5y ago
    Consider the likelihood of the bitflip occuring in the critical area you targeted versus any old place in the file. The file is dominated by encoded raster info. Most errors like the bitflips we discuss are not correlated with file locations. They're typically medium errors and the design of typical filesystems will result in something closer to uniform distribution of errors. Bus errors could perhaps be correlated with the start of activity but I think that seems uncommon.
  - jasfi 5y ago
    For compressed images (such as JPEG), if you flip a bit in the image section that breaks the compressed data, and the decompression algorithm won't make sense. However it could also be that there's a checksum on most of the file data. That would explain why you can't open the image at all.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
I strictly use Xeon processors for online banking for this reason.
sgtnoodle 5y ago
I dunno, I think both points of view are valid, and it's important to be pragmatic. Stuff fails all the time and it's usually not a big deal. Every holiday season, all the cash registers at Cost Plus stop working, and I stand in line for an hour to buy stocking stuffers. All three AV nerves on my heart failed and I had to get a pacemaker. The first night it skipped 5 beats and the doctors scratched their heads for a while. Turns out it was a loose ring terminal! I have no idea if it has ECC memory, but probably not, because it's a pain to replace the battery... The probably of most things randomly failing at any particular instant is approximately zero. The probability goes up as you increase the size of the time window, or push things to their limits. You can trust your phone to store an important photo for a few days, as long as you don't run it through a washing machine or something. A few years? You're taking a risk. Many people take that risk, and it works out fine for them. I've had phones fail, hard drives fail, heart nerves fail. I take reasonable precautions to back up stuff I care about. I also have plenty of data that I would be bummed to lose that I haven't backed up yet. I'll get to it one day, or maybe it will get corrupted and I'll be bummed.
nix23 5y ago
>Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? I don't compare my phone to a server (24x7) with 10000$ worth of data, but even if i do i would make a versioned backup every X minutes, especially before "updates". But yes phones should have ecc too.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  I do, because a picture of the criminal might be worth more than $10,000, or you might have to call an ambulance and your life is worth something
  - nix23 5y ago
    >I do, because a picture of the criminal might be worth more than $10,000, or you might have to call an ambulance and your life is worth something He had the chance to have a good solution and decided it's not worth it, that's the difference. >and your life is worth something Restart your phone.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      > Restart your phone. Alright, next time my 80 year old grandoa is having a heart attack I am sure he will have time to wait for android to boot, then input the encryption key Thats why i still keep a dumbass analogue phone wired to the socket - our industry is full of wankers and cant be trusted
      - nix23 5y ago
        >Alright, next time my 80 year old grandoa is having a heart attack I am sure he will have time to wait for android to boot, then input the encryption key Let's go an buy her a Mainframe and three redundant inet connections and power-lines, but don't try to sue intel because of your own stupidity to rely on a cellphone...alone! If you trust your life to a cellphone.....your problem. And just for your information...your cellphone is not a server nor reliable...keep that in mind, go climbing in mountains and you see the massive difference from your iphone to a rugged satellite-phone (with buttons), but even then, never ever trust a single device.

bcrosby95 5y ago

You're unlikely to notice a single bit flip in a picture you take.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
unless it gives the killer the same mole that you have on the back of your neck
jagger27 5y ago
I just tested this on a JPEG. Flipping any bit in the first few bytes of a JPEG renders it unopenable on my Fedora system. I get that it's just a header and could probably be fixed, but there are consequences for bitflips, even on images.
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Consider the likelihood of the bitflip occuring in the critical area you targeted versus any old place in the file. The file is dominated by encoded raster info. Most errors like the bitflips we discuss are not correlated with file locations. They're typically medium errors and the design of typical filesystems will result in something closer to uniform distribution of errors. Bus errors could perhaps be correlated with the start of activity but I think that seems uncommon.
- jasfi 5y ago
  For compressed images (such as JPEG), if you flip a bit in the image section that breaks the compressed data, and the decompression algorithm won't make sense. However it could also be that there's a checksum on most of the file data. That would explain why you can't open the image at all.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

I strictly use Xeon processors for online banking for this reason.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

I dunno, I think both points of view are valid, and it's important to be pragmatic. Stuff fails all the time and it's usually not a big deal. Every holiday season, all the cash registers at Cost Plus stop working, and I stand in line for an hour to buy stocking stuffers. All three AV nerves on my heart failed and I had to get a pacemaker. The first night it skipped 5 beats and the doctors scratched their heads for a while. Turns out it was a loose ring terminal! I have no idea if it has ECC memory, but probably not, because it's a pain to replace the battery... The probably of most things randomly failing at any particular instant is approximately zero. The probability goes up as you increase the size of the time window, or push things to their limits. You can trust your phone to store an important photo for a few days, as long as you don't run it through a washing machine or something. A few years? You're taking a risk. Many people take that risk, and it works out fine for them. I've had phones fail, hard drives fail, heart nerves fail. I take reasonable precautions to back up stuff I care about. I also have plenty of data that I would be bummed to lose that I haven't backed up yet. I'll get to it one day, or maybe it will get corrupted and I'll be bummed.

nix23 5y ago

>Have you ever taken picture of anything important with your phone, like a crime, or a car accident? Have you ever called 911 or sent money? I don't compare my phone to a server (24x7) with 10000$ worth of data, but even if i do i would make a versioned backup every X minutes, especially before "updates". But yes phones should have ecc too.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
I do, because a picture of the criminal might be worth more than $10,000, or you might have to call an ambulance and your life is worth something
- nix23 5y ago
  >I do, because a picture of the criminal might be worth more than $10,000, or you might have to call an ambulance and your life is worth something He had the chance to have a good solution and decided it's not worth it, that's the difference. >and your life is worth something Restart your phone.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    > Restart your phone. Alright, next time my 80 year old grandoa is having a heart attack I am sure he will have time to wait for android to boot, then input the encryption key Thats why i still keep a dumbass analogue phone wired to the socket - our industry is full of wankers and cant be trusted
    - nix23 5y ago
      >Alright, next time my 80 year old grandoa is having a heart attack I am sure he will have time to wait for android to boot, then input the encryption key Let's go an buy her a Mainframe and three redundant inet connections and power-lines, but don't try to sue intel because of your own stupidity to rely on a cellphone...alone! If you trust your life to a cellphone.....your problem. And just for your information...your cellphone is not a server nor reliable...keep that in mind, go climbing in mountains and you see the massive difference from your iphone to a rugged satellite-phone (with buttons), but even then, never ever trust a single device.