10 ms·
because the whole industry [and by extension the whole world] is built on a throne of lies, shit, pain, and weapons-grade idiocy. there's absolutely no safety
by pas 4y ago
because the whole industry [and by extension the whole world] is built on a throne of lies, shit, pain, and weapons-grade idiocy.
there's absolutely no safety mindset for anything behind the cover.
if it's industrial, just put a big sticker on it, write something about it in the mandatory occupational hazards training kit, maaaaaaaybe consider adding a fence, but it's fine anyway.
if it's consumer stuff? well, as long as kids won't choke on it, it's A-OK. especially if it comes to electronics. just write in the user's guide that always disconnect it from the mains when not in use, if used improperly that's on you, and don't ever think about opening it. that only for professionals who are trained in the dark arts of handling this exact piece of immanetized hell-forged eschaton housed in a convenient beige plastic.
adding a voltage limiter between the LCD panel and the input would cost money. designing it would cost money. adding an analog limiter on the regulator would cost money (plus setting it mechanically is very expensive compared to flashing on some firmware), compartmentalizing the software - by having a segment that's set at assembly that contains the physical properties of connected parts, which communicates the operational limits, and the other segment which can be set via software - would also cost a lot of money.
- capableweb 4y ago> there's absolutely no safety mindset for anything behind the cover. As a counter-point: One persons "safety" is another persons "limitation". Sometimes it's good that things are generally protected but you can break through the protections somewhat.
- pas 4y agoI'm not advocating for filling out the whole insides with epoxy. (Quite the contrary, I think it'd be great to have better markings on components, and have data sheets - and schematics - for them readily available. I mean it's ridiculous that the whole IP protection legal machinery is justified in the name of incentivizing invention and new works, but in practice all we got is cheaper and cheaper copies/derivatives of the same noname things.)
- collegeburner 4y agofacts, if there was a regulator some hackernews would be on here complaining about how it's "not hackable" or whatever.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoLots of real time, safety critical, and control systems rely on software and don't have mechanical or hard wired electronic interlocks or fallbacks. That doesn't make it worse than alternatives. You could hack the firmware and make the device behave out of spec, but you could also hack the hardware. If you bypassed your voltage limiter on the board then you could blow it up too.
- GTP 4y agoAnd there is the crucial difference: you would need to bypass the voltage limiter on purpose, your display wouldn't be ruined by mistake just by putting a slider to the maximum possible value.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoIt won't be ruined by mistake just by putting a slider to the maximum possible value unless you first bypass the firmware on purpose and install your own one that allows voltage limits to be disregarded.
- mojzu 4y agoI think the argument is less related to hacking, as that would be like making something tamper proof which is a much higher bar. But more like if software can cause hardware damage, that means software bugs can cause hardware damage and potentially pose a safety risk, which should be seen as a critical hardware bug For example the safety critical systems you mention should absolutely fail-safe at the bare minimum, all kinds of things can adversely affect running software like equipment generating EM noise nearby or someone tripping over the wrong cable
- throwawaylinux 4y ago> I think the argument is less related to hacking, as that would be like making something tamper proof which is a much higher bar. I meant hacking as-in messing around, poor choice of word. > But more like if software can cause hardware damage, that means software bugs can cause hardware damage and potentially pose a safety risk, which should be seen as a critical hardware bug Hardware bugs can cause hardware damage. > For example the safety critical systems you mention should absolutely fail-safe at the bare minimum, all kinds of things can adversely affect running software like equipment generating EM noise nearby or someone tripping over the wrong cable They're just not. The ABS, stability, and collision avoidance systems in your car can't fail safe if the software fails because the software is required to control the dynamic situation. It can't just say stop everything. Same as control software in airliners. Or industrial control and monitoring systems (although they can have mechanical interlocks in more cases, not all). And very little that can be _absolutely_ fail-safe, not even purely mechanical devices. How do you make a fail safe bridge?
- bsenftner 4y agoThis person speaks the truth, and one would be wise to internalize his perspective. I've seen this first hand, for decades. Lies, half truths, and blind belief someone else's job is looking out for others. Someday in the not so distant future, a large scale automation is going to kill thousands while destroying our entire civilization's belief "the technology people" know what they are doing.
- protoman3000 4y ago> built on a throne of lies, shit, pain, and weapons-grade idiocy Obligatory xkcd post https://xkcd.com/2030/ https://xkcd.com/2030/
- rayiner 4y agoAre you allowed to make that joke anymore in 2022?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- uwagar 4y ago[flagged]
- jtc331 4y agoInjecting mRNA into human cells is exactly the kind of brilliant hack you’d expect software engineers to come up with (and those same engineers would of course brush aside any concerns about unintended consequences in complex systems.)
- uwagar 4y agoexactly and those are the same software engineers naysaying the voting system.
- hoseja 4y agoI was hoping in a couple years there would be proper studies about those potential consequences but honestly I can't make myself trust they won't be suppressed at this point. So I can only hope there won't be any severe ones.
- kortex 4y agoYou do realize every single virus, many bacteria, and some other germs, are literally injecting molecular/genetic payloads into your body to hijack your body's protein machinery, and your immune system updates itself in response? mRNA vaccines just cut out the middle man^w bug.
- marcinzm 4y agoThe risk of my home catching on fire each year due to any electrical issue is 0.04%. The risk of me dying or being injured due to such an issue is 0.00004%. That includes not just home electronics but every possible wiring and electrical insanity. For comparison, my risk of getting into a car accident is north of 1% and the risk of dying in a car accident is around 0.02%. So in other words compared to all the other risks out there home electronics are very safe.
- pennaMan 4y agoI would like to know where you got the hat you are pulling those numbers out of
- marcinzm 4y agoYou're free to Google the numbers yourself or provide your own rather than starting with insults. For the record the fire numbers are roughly the same between the ESFI, NFPA and FEMA.
- FeepingCreature 4y agoAssume you have 30 electrical devices in operation. Assume the cost of your house is $1mil. Then avoiding that fire should be worth ~$13 per device. However, the device manufacturer would not need to bear that cost, meaning it goes unpaid.
- marcinzm 4y agoYou'd be correct if every house fire totaled the property and the average house price was a million. It seems house fires cause $1.5billion in property damage per year in the US and there are 360k of them. Assuming electrical fires are twice as damaging as the average fire we end up with a cost of $10k per fire. That works out to around 15 cents per electronic device in your example. Even that is a high estimate since I believe only a minority of electrical fires are due to consumer electronics (versus things like faulty or old wiring).
- whoisthemachine 4y agoI think you are conflating quality and safety. While quality control can certainly help with ensuring safe operation of industrial equipment, I don't think a laptop LCD panel breaking is a safety hazard, although it is still a quality issue.
- pas 4y agoRight, good point. My main argument is that the consumer electronics as small systems are so so sooo optimized for cost. (Which is good, people can afford them.) But somewhere along the way the components inside them stopped being useful by themselves. (Of course a direct consequence of optimization of integrated parts.) This basically resulted in custom parts for custom systems. And now as software is eating everything custom software is also part of the system. (Though at least it brought back some general parts!) Safety as a system level property is still there, but completely lost in the parts. And similarly many other desirable properties have been optimized out. (Like reliability, serviceability, etc.)
- foobarbecue 4y agoThank you for introducing me to the phrase "immanetize the eschaton."
- f1shy 4y agoSooo much truth has been spoken! The quality of consumer goods is decaying everyday. It is all about the last millionth of a cent to be spared. Just nobody cares.
- ajross 4y agoTo be fair, the price of consumer electronics is falling through the floor too. A routine living room television (say a 60" 4k panel) is literally 50x cheaper in real value the 16" color set my family bought in 1982. You need to look at both sides of that equation. Would you be willing to pay, say, $4000 for a laptop where all the quality engineering was top notch? (It's a reasonably informed guess as to what that would cost.) Maybe some people would. Probably not many. Most people want the $700 laptop which is "just as good", even if the display sometimes fails.
- mindslight 4y agoWe would be able to find a balance between quality and price if the Fed stopped creating new money to erase lower prices. Your argument is only apparent for high technology because computing advances so fast that it has been able to outrun the policy of inflation. For example, appliances are being designed ever cheaper while also costing more. Consumers end up anchored to the bottom of the market based on sticky expectations of price, the market as a whole never develops a sense of wealth, and economies of scale make it so straying from the herd is very expensive. (edit: changed "printing" -> "creating" since the former is a tribalism trigger)
- ajross 4y ago> We would be able to find a balance between quality and price if the Fed stopped printing new money to erase lower prices. That is... a weirdly revisionist interpretation. People have been complaining about consumer electronics quality consistently and pervasively for decades and decades. Absolutely nothing about that point is "modern" or "new". Yet... you really think it's due to events of the last few months? And not even just any events, politically charged events interpreted and explained using partisan language[1]. Really? [1] Seriously, one of the easiest ways to tell whether or not to pay attention to an economics argument is whether it includes the phrase "printing money".
- scarface74 4y agoNintendo sells a product that includes hardware and software. As a product it is safe. They are no more responsible for the damages caused when you modify the product than they would be if you took the Switch and bludgeoned someone across the head repeatedly.
- chuckSu 4y ago