21 ms·

Running late for college, and the scooter is stuck in an update

48 points by crappybird 3y ago

jacknews 3y ago
I get a similar thing teaching a coding club. I'm not sure how the machines are set up, as I have an aversion to Windows from my time as an NT 'certified professional', but at least one machine will spend 10 minutes 'updating' during any class. No doubt you can turn this off or set update time windows or whatever, but I'm not the admin for these machines. At least the updates generally work. For my kids' machines at home, almost anytime they boot windows, it will do an update, and a good percentage of the time, the update will fail, and brick the machine, requiring a complete re-install.
- k12sosse 3y ago
  So you're saying approximately 3 times a week you reinstall windows on your kids machines?
  - jacknews 3y ago
    huh? They mostly use linux, and maybe Windows once or twice a week at most, to maybe every couple of weeks. So for your stats, last year we re-installed the windows partition of one machine 4 times and another I think 2 or 3. Could be hardware problems, of course. But each time was triggered by a windows update, so maybe the update stressed the hardware to the point of failure, which linux does not.
  - PopAlongKid 3y ago
    It sounds from sibling comment that Windows is only booted up at irregular, far-apart times. So most likely there are weeks or months of accumulated updates all trying to go at the same time. No mention of what Windows version is running, or how old the hardware is (limited ram, slow disk, etc). As a counterpoint anecdote, I've been using Windows 10 Pro on a half dozen both newer and older machines ever since it came out, and have never once had to re-install Windows due to a failed update (and in fact failed updates have only happened a few times, each simply requiring trying once again). But these machines are booted up and used on a regular basis.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      The only time I had problems with a win10 update was the fiasco when an update broke veracrypt. But that was pretty annoying.
- iwontberude 3y ago
  I think your kid’s computer needs a new disk, that seems odd.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  Windows has gotten pretty good at staying out of your way with updates if you have typical usage patterns. That is: either you turn it on at the beginning of the business day, it downloads updates in the background and installs them when you shut the machine down at the end of the day; Or you leave the machine on 24/7, get a couple prompts over multiple days about a scheduled restart with the option to schedule it, and if you don't react it just restarts in the dead of night (or rather, a reasonable prediction of when you won't be using the computer). The rub is that this doesn't work as well in atypical setups like a lab. The machines are probably only on while students are using it, preventing the "install at night" strategy, and if your normal workflow includes restarts Windows will take that as a cue to finally install the update. Of course all of this is avoidable by configuration, or by the user (restarting explicitly without updates). But the Home version hasn't always given you as much agency in this as the more expensive Windows versions.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
    Updates on shutdown make sense in some of my machines but are awful in the laptop I use to teach classes. When I finish a class, what I want is to leave to do something else elsewhere (often another class in a different room). I know I could probably suspend or something, but I never do that because it used to be a lottery on Windows whether your machine would actually unsuspend or you would need to fight it pressing the power button until it rebooted (did they ever fix that?)
    - pmontra 3y ago
      Is that a Windows installed by the manufacturer or a Windows installed by somebody else with possibly not all the right drivers for that machine?
    - thfuran 3y ago
      That sounds like a problem from twenty years ago.
      - jacknews 3y ago
- pmontra 3y ago
  A friend of mine moved from Windows to Linux many years ago because of that. He used his computer at home only in the weekends and almost every time he switched it on he had to wait for an update to download and install. Sometimes he just switched off the machine and did something else.
- b3lvedere 3y ago
  ""For my kids' machines at home, anytime they boot windows, it will do an update, and a good percentage of the time, the update will fail, and brick the machine, requiring a complete re-install." My wife and kids all use and have used 2nd hand company Windows 10 laptops. Since one of my roles by day is being a system administrator, i took quite some time to setup Windows 10 as they and i like it, being very very thorough in its various settings. The things just.. work.. It's quite rare if they ask for help about updates, crashes, etc. Haven't had a bricked OS since Windows ME. Getting Fifa 23 and FC24 to work flawlessly on the Windows 10 game computer on the other hand.... Maybe i should start working for EA :)
  - jacknews 3y ago
    "being very very thorough in its various settings. " Perhaps that's the key. I don't have time for that, linux just works, though of course some apps aren't available at all on linux, hence the windows boots.
    - b3lvedere 3y ago
      Perhaps, but Linux updates and upgrades sometimes will break things as well and require quite some time to get it right.
wongarsu 3y ago
Software trying to update when it is started is such a common pattern, despite almost always going against user intent. When I start software, that's because I want to use it. It's pretty high on the list of times I don't want it to become temporarily unusable while it updates itself. Doing the same with vehicle firmware is a sad but predictable state of things.
- rjsw 3y ago
  Zoom asks if you want to update after a call, which seems the best time for it to me.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I just use the browser version, so I assume it is always the latest version. This is one of the compelling arguments for everything is a web page/app. A single centralized place version millions of separately controlled copies.
    - schmookeeg 3y ago
      And the equally compelling anti-argument against everything-is-a-web-page is every time I go to a website I haven't been to in awhile (and some I use on the daily), I need to swat away a cacophony of "What's New! Let's Take a Tour!" popups, like so many cobwebs. :)
      - dylan604 3y ago
        of course there are people that want to be examples of "you're why we can't have nice things" or "ruining for the rest of us"
  - D13Fd 3y ago
    Is that true? Maybe it's different on Mac OS, but for me (on a Mac), Zoom wants to update every time I open it, and often fails. It's very annoying.
Derek122 3y ago
Uber drivers would love this feature.
michaelt 3y ago
Honestly I've never understood any sort of software update or new user guide or changelog appearing when the user starts the software. You know why I've just launched this game in Steam? Why I've just opened this shared meeting whiteboard software? Why I've opened my bank's banking app? Because this is the moment I want to use it. If I open Skype it's because I need to be on a video call within the next 15 seconds. It doesn't matter what the popup says or does or how valuable it might be - I'm dismissing it, because I need to be on a video call within the next 15 seconds and it's between me and that. How could a UX team possibly conclude that the precise moment a user shows unambiguous intent to use your product, is the best time to get in their way?
- jerf 3y ago
  "How could a UX team possibly conclude that the precise moment a user shows unambiguous intent to use your product, is the best time to get in their way?" Well, the most natural answer is that it's not a UX team. It's the software engineers observing that since our program isn't running all the time, this is the moment we have to check for things. And roll around that design issue a few more times and that's why your computer is running upwards of dozens bespoke programs that do nothing but scan for updates periodically and consume surprisingly large amounts of resources to do it since apparently most programmers can't write a program to try a network request every couple of days to consume anything less than a gig of RAM and 25%+ continuous CPU.
- bluGill 3y ago
  I get annoyed enough when it is a normal startup. I turned my computer on at 6:28 today, because I knew I had a 7:30 meeting I needed to be join - I was a minute late and that was normal startup. It is even worse if the computer did an update the day before - even though the computer was off for 15 hours and so there was plenty of time: there is no option "install updates doing whatever reboots needed then shutdown when done". Instead I have to sit there staring at a update screen while it does whatever.
leros 3y ago
This reminds me of a friend who missed a dinner date because his Tesla update took way longer than usual.
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  Holy shit, that's a real thing and not just a meme? They don't let you cancel the update because you need your car to get you from point A to point B? That's, uhhh, really bad.
  - leros 3y ago
    I'm not sure. I would hope they let you cancel the update. It's entirely possible my friend is an idiot.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    You can schedule it for the middle of the night. You can manually do it whenever, but it takes 30+ minutes.
    - leros 3y ago
      He did his manually for some reason and I know it took a few hours.
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
wkat4242 3y ago
Reminds me of that early Airbus issue where the fly by wire system would suddenly go "rebooting, please wait" in the middle of a flight :) It was on the earliest fly by wire versions as far as I recall, and was fixed pretty quickly :)
ubermonkey 3y ago
If I've learned one thing from 30 years in software it's: Minimize the number of things in your life that need software updates.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wutwutwat 3y ago
We live in a shitty utopia
ryandrake 3y ago
Automatic updates are terrible and the first thing I do when I get a new device or reinstall an OS is try to figure out how to disable them. Sadly, I am losing this battle and more and more stuff insists on updating behind my back, without me commanding them to update. This should be unacceptable. When I buy something I should be in full control of what it’s doing, not the manufacturer. I dont care if the software is vulnerable to CVE-1234567 or if there are lots of great bug fixes or if the manufacturer simply really really really wants me to see the yet-another big UI update it’s done. Updates should be done when I say they are done (or not), on my schedule, and only after I know what the update changes. I don’t want to hear the manufacturer’s excuses. I know “most people” are clueless and leave security problems unpatched. “Most people” have also gotten accustomed to being abused by their software products that are out of their control. I’m not “most people” and I won’t tolerate being treated like this by device manufacturers. The product gets returned if I have no control over what it does.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > I dont care if the software is vulnerable to CVE-1234567 But your neighbour plugged into a life-support machine at the local hospital does, because your machine could be used as a staging point for further attacks. When we built an "interconnected world" we created interconnected responsibility. That said, I agree with you that products that assume permission to connect to the internet and update when they feel like it are a menace. They result from disgraceful, lazy, inept software engineering and allow sloppy manufacturers to unload responsibility on to users. That is unacceptable and it is going to change in Europe with a slew of legislation coming soon. But that law may actually make things worse because it misunderstands the locus of responsibility and trust models. Centralising trust in automatic updates with a manufacturer makes security much worse in many regards. Solarwinds is nothing compared to what is coming when billions of connected devices can be owned and turned into a botnet in s single exploit. Your right to control your device is not to be championed solely because of your property rights, but perhaps ironically, because that is the better security model as the lesser of two evils. Please don't say "I don't care about CVE-1234567", because at the end of the day, you're the only one whose 'care' actually matters. The manufacturer doesn't care and cannot really be trusted.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
The fundamental mistake of software engineering here is not when the "scooter" updates, but that it updates at all. Not everything that uses electricity requires an embedded computer connected to the internet. We could ask the question as: Give me a list of good reasons why a scooter should be connected to the internet? We might get answers like: The built in map or GPS needs updating The pricing list for hire needs changing The battery monitoring software has changed Every one of these reasons, and many more, have nothing to do with the operation of the device qua scooter. Everything it did yesterday it could do equally well today. The problem is modularity, specifically the poor coupling and cohesion of subsystems within the design. Everything in our list relates to something other than the function as a scooter; like navigation, payments, telemetry. In a properly designed system these have to be seen as essentially separate systems with diverged functional requirements. Each could operate and update in its own way if necessary. The default behaviour of the 'scooter' system should be to keep operating as a scooter, regardless.
- peteradio 3y ago
  But its Agile! This way you can release a known broken product and "fix" it for the next decade under a maintenance contract.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    I hear you, but let's not "blame Agile" Also the key problem is not iterated development but remote access (AKA backdoors) baked into designs as a way to hedge bets. There's some cases where remote field maintenance is absolutely the right thing to do. You would not send a space probe to Mars without the ability to radically change its software while in service. When facing unknown future conditions the concept of deferred functionality is essential. In situations of consumer electronics, which are designed, purchased and deployed within a rigid set of operational expectations, deferred functionality is a MASSIVE security risk and a subversion of expected trust models. Convergence means that these days I can literally turn any of your devices into anything else... your wall clock into a radio, your fridge into a web-server, your television into spy camera. It's not Agile as a development philosophy that is somehow "to blame" but its corruption by the devious into an excuse for reserving the ability to change functionality while hiding behind the plausible deniability of "necessary maintenance".
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
My car tells me it has an update pending when I start it up; it then allows me to choose to update now or to schedule it for later - defaulting to 2.30am - the dialog includes a warning that the car could be unusable for an hour or two.

48 points by crappybird 3y ago

I get a similar thing teaching a coding club. I'm not sure how the machines are set up, as I have an aversion to Windows from my time as an NT 'certified professional', but at least one machine will spend 10 minutes 'updating' during any class. No doubt you can turn this off or set update time windows or whatever, but I'm not the admin for these machines. At least the updates generally work. For my kids' machines at home, almost anytime they boot windows, it will do an update, and a good percentage of the time, the update will fail, and brick the machine, requiring a complete re-install.

k12sosse 3y ago
So you're saying approximately 3 times a week you reinstall windows on your kids machines?
- jacknews 3y ago
  huh? They mostly use linux, and maybe Windows once or twice a week at most, to maybe every couple of weeks. So for your stats, last year we re-installed the windows partition of one machine 4 times and another I think 2 or 3. Could be hardware problems, of course. But each time was triggered by a windows update, so maybe the update stressed the hardware to the point of failure, which linux does not.
- PopAlongKid 3y ago
  It sounds from sibling comment that Windows is only booted up at irregular, far-apart times. So most likely there are weeks or months of accumulated updates all trying to go at the same time. No mention of what Windows version is running, or how old the hardware is (limited ram, slow disk, etc). As a counterpoint anecdote, I've been using Windows 10 Pro on a half dozen both newer and older machines ever since it came out, and have never once had to re-install Windows due to a failed update (and in fact failed updates have only happened a few times, each simply requiring trying once again). But these machines are booted up and used on a regular basis.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    The only time I had problems with a win10 update was the fiasco when an update broke veracrypt. But that was pretty annoying.
iwontberude 3y ago
I think your kid’s computer needs a new disk, that seems odd.
wongarsu 3y ago
Windows has gotten pretty good at staying out of your way with updates if you have typical usage patterns. That is: either you turn it on at the beginning of the business day, it downloads updates in the background and installs them when you shut the machine down at the end of the day; Or you leave the machine on 24/7, get a couple prompts over multiple days about a scheduled restart with the option to schedule it, and if you don't react it just restarts in the dead of night (or rather, a reasonable prediction of when you won't be using the computer). The rub is that this doesn't work as well in atypical setups like a lab. The machines are probably only on while students are using it, preventing the "install at night" strategy, and if your normal workflow includes restarts Windows will take that as a cue to finally install the update. Of course all of this is avoidable by configuration, or by the user (restarting explicitly without updates). But the Home version hasn't always given you as much agency in this as the more expensive Windows versions.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  Updates on shutdown make sense in some of my machines but are awful in the laptop I use to teach classes. When I finish a class, what I want is to leave to do something else elsewhere (often another class in a different room). I know I could probably suspend or something, but I never do that because it used to be a lottery on Windows whether your machine would actually unsuspend or you would need to fight it pressing the power button until it rebooted (did they ever fix that?)
  - pmontra 3y ago
    Is that a Windows installed by the manufacturer or a Windows installed by somebody else with possibly not all the right drivers for that machine?
  - thfuran 3y ago
    That sounds like a problem from twenty years ago.
    - jacknews 3y ago
pmontra 3y ago
A friend of mine moved from Windows to Linux many years ago because of that. He used his computer at home only in the weekends and almost every time he switched it on he had to wait for an update to download and install. Sometimes he just switched off the machine and did something else.
b3lvedere 3y ago
""For my kids' machines at home, anytime they boot windows, it will do an update, and a good percentage of the time, the update will fail, and brick the machine, requiring a complete re-install." My wife and kids all use and have used 2nd hand company Windows 10 laptops. Since one of my roles by day is being a system administrator, i took quite some time to setup Windows 10 as they and i like it, being very very thorough in its various settings. The things just.. work.. It's quite rare if they ask for help about updates, crashes, etc. Haven't had a bricked OS since Windows ME. Getting Fifa 23 and FC24 to work flawlessly on the Windows 10 game computer on the other hand.... Maybe i should start working for EA :)
- jacknews 3y ago
  "being very very thorough in its various settings. " Perhaps that's the key. I don't have time for that, linux just works, though of course some apps aren't available at all on linux, hence the windows boots.
  - b3lvedere 3y ago
    Perhaps, but Linux updates and upgrades sometimes will break things as well and require quite some time to get it right.

wongarsu 3y ago

Software trying to update when it is started is such a common pattern, despite almost always going against user intent. When I start software, that's because I want to use it. It's pretty high on the list of times I don't want it to become temporarily unusable while it updates itself. Doing the same with vehicle firmware is a sad but predictable state of things.

rjsw 3y ago
Zoom asks if you want to update after a call, which seems the best time for it to me.
- dylan604 3y ago
  I just use the browser version, so I assume it is always the latest version. This is one of the compelling arguments for everything is a web page/app. A single centralized place version millions of separately controlled copies.
  - schmookeeg 3y ago
    And the equally compelling anti-argument against everything-is-a-web-page is every time I go to a website I haven't been to in awhile (and some I use on the daily), I need to swat away a cacophony of "What's New! Let's Take a Tour!" popups, like so many cobwebs. :)
    - dylan604 3y ago
      of course there are people that want to be examples of "you're why we can't have nice things" or "ruining for the rest of us"
- D13Fd 3y ago
  Is that true? Maybe it's different on Mac OS, but for me (on a Mac), Zoom wants to update every time I open it, and often fails. It's very annoying.

Derek122 3y ago

Uber drivers would love this feature.

michaelt 3y ago

Honestly I've never understood any sort of software update or new user guide or changelog appearing when the user starts the software. You know why I've just launched this game in Steam? Why I've just opened this shared meeting whiteboard software? Why I've opened my bank's banking app? Because this is the moment I want to use it. If I open Skype it's because I need to be on a video call within the next 15 seconds. It doesn't matter what the popup says or does or how valuable it might be - I'm dismissing it, because I need to be on a video call within the next 15 seconds and it's between me and that. How could a UX team possibly conclude that the precise moment a user shows unambiguous intent to use your product, is the best time to get in their way?

jerf 3y ago
"How could a UX team possibly conclude that the precise moment a user shows unambiguous intent to use your product, is the best time to get in their way?" Well, the most natural answer is that it's not a UX team. It's the software engineers observing that since our program isn't running all the time, this is the moment we have to check for things. And roll around that design issue a few more times and that's why your computer is running upwards of dozens bespoke programs that do nothing but scan for updates periodically and consume surprisingly large amounts of resources to do it since apparently most programmers can't write a program to try a network request every couple of days to consume anything less than a gig of RAM and 25%+ continuous CPU.
bluGill 3y ago
I get annoyed enough when it is a normal startup. I turned my computer on at 6:28 today, because I knew I had a 7:30 meeting I needed to be join - I was a minute late and that was normal startup. It is even worse if the computer did an update the day before - even though the computer was off for 15 hours and so there was plenty of time: there is no option "install updates doing whatever reboots needed then shutdown when done". Instead I have to sit there staring at a update screen while it does whatever.

leros 3y ago

This reminds me of a friend who missed a dinner date because his Tesla update took way longer than usual.

smallmancontrov 3y ago
Holy shit, that's a real thing and not just a meme? They don't let you cancel the update because you need your car to get you from point A to point B? That's, uhhh, really bad.
- leros 3y ago
  I'm not sure. I would hope they let you cancel the update. It's entirely possible my friend is an idiot.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  You can schedule it for the middle of the night. You can manually do it whenever, but it takes 30+ minutes.
  - leros 3y ago
    He did his manually for some reason and I know it took a few hours.

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

wkat4242 3y ago

Reminds me of that early Airbus issue where the fly by wire system would suddenly go "rebooting, please wait" in the middle of a flight :) It was on the earliest fly by wire versions as far as I recall, and was fixed pretty quickly :)

ubermonkey 3y ago

If I've learned one thing from 30 years in software it's: Minimize the number of things in your life that need software updates.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wutwutwat 3y ago

We live in a shitty utopia

ryandrake 3y ago

Automatic updates are terrible and the first thing I do when I get a new device or reinstall an OS is try to figure out how to disable them. Sadly, I am losing this battle and more and more stuff insists on updating behind my back, without me commanding them to update. This should be unacceptable. When I buy something I should be in full control of what it’s doing, not the manufacturer. I dont care if the software is vulnerable to CVE-1234567 or if there are lots of great bug fixes or if the manufacturer simply really really really wants me to see the yet-another big UI update it’s done. Updates should be done when I say they are done (or not), on my schedule, and only after I know what the update changes. I don’t want to hear the manufacturer’s excuses. I know “most people” are clueless and leave security problems unpatched. “Most people” have also gotten accustomed to being abused by their software products that are out of their control. I’m not “most people” and I won’t tolerate being treated like this by device manufacturers. The product gets returned if I have no control over what it does.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
> I dont care if the software is vulnerable to CVE-1234567 But your neighbour plugged into a life-support machine at the local hospital does, because your machine could be used as a staging point for further attacks. When we built an "interconnected world" we created interconnected responsibility. That said, I agree with you that products that assume permission to connect to the internet and update when they feel like it are a menace. They result from disgraceful, lazy, inept software engineering and allow sloppy manufacturers to unload responsibility on to users. That is unacceptable and it is going to change in Europe with a slew of legislation coming soon. But that law may actually make things worse because it misunderstands the locus of responsibility and trust models. Centralising trust in automatic updates with a manufacturer makes security much worse in many regards. Solarwinds is nothing compared to what is coming when billions of connected devices can be owned and turned into a botnet in s single exploit. Your right to control your device is not to be championed solely because of your property rights, but perhaps ironically, because that is the better security model as the lesser of two evils. Please don't say "I don't care about CVE-1234567", because at the end of the day, you're the only one whose 'care' actually matters. The manufacturer doesn't care and cannot really be trusted.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

The fundamental mistake of software engineering here is not when the "scooter" updates, but that it updates at all. Not everything that uses electricity requires an embedded computer connected to the internet. We could ask the question as: Give me a list of good reasons why a scooter should be connected to the internet? We might get answers like: The built in map or GPS needs updating The pricing list for hire needs changing The battery monitoring software has changed Every one of these reasons, and many more, have nothing to do with the operation of the device qua scooter. Everything it did yesterday it could do equally well today. The problem is modularity, specifically the poor coupling and cohesion of subsystems within the design. Everything in our list relates to something other than the function as a scooter; like navigation, payments, telemetry. In a properly designed system these have to be seen as essentially separate systems with diverged functional requirements. Each could operate and update in its own way if necessary. The default behaviour of the 'scooter' system should be to keep operating as a scooter, regardless.

peteradio 3y ago
But its Agile! This way you can release a known broken product and "fix" it for the next decade under a maintenance contract.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  I hear you, but let's not "blame Agile" Also the key problem is not iterated development but remote access (AKA backdoors) baked into designs as a way to hedge bets. There's some cases where remote field maintenance is absolutely the right thing to do. You would not send a space probe to Mars without the ability to radically change its software while in service. When facing unknown future conditions the concept of deferred functionality is essential. In situations of consumer electronics, which are designed, purchased and deployed within a rigid set of operational expectations, deferred functionality is a MASSIVE security risk and a subversion of expected trust models. Convergence means that these days I can literally turn any of your devices into anything else... your wall clock into a radio, your fridge into a web-server, your television into spy camera. It's not Agile as a development philosophy that is somehow "to blame" but its corruption by the devious into an excuse for reserving the ability to change functionality while hiding behind the plausible deniability of "necessary maintenance".

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

My car tells me it has an update pending when I start it up; it then allows me to choose to update now or to schedule it for later - defaulting to 2.30am - the dialog includes a warning that the car could be unusable for an hour or two.