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> "I've experienced 100 error-free hours, so this is a non-issue for me and my users" It's a statement of fact: it has been a non-issue for me. If you're like

> "I've experienced 100 error-free hours, so this is a non-issue for me and my users" It's a statement of fact: it has been a non-issue for me. If you're like me, it's statistically reasonable to assume it will be a non-issue for you too. Also, no users, just me. "Proabably okay" is more than good enough for me, and I'm sure many people have similar requirements (clearly not you). I have no optimism, just no empathy for the negligent: I learned my lesson with backups a long time ago. Some people blame the filesystem instead of their backup practices when their data is corrupted, but I think that's naive. The filesystem did you a favor, fix your shit. Next time it will be your NAS power supply frying your storage. It's also a double edged sword: the more reliable a filesystem is, the longer users can get away without backups before being bitten, and the greater their ultimate loss will be.

lxgr 3y ago
> It's a statement of fact: it has been a non-issue for me. Yes... > If you're like me, it's statistically reasonable to assume it will be a non-issue for you too. No! This simply does not follow from the first statement, statistically or otherwise. You and I might or might not be fine; you having been fine for 100 hours on the same configuration just offers next-to-zero predictive power for that.
- jcalvinowens 3y ago
  > No! This simply does not follow from the first statement, statistically or otherwise. > You and I might or might not be fine; you having been fine for 100 hours on the same configuration just offers next-to-zero predictive power for that. You're missing the forest for the trees here. It is predictive ON AVERAGE. I don't care about the worst case like you do: I only care about the expected case. If I died when my filesystem got corrupted... I would hope it's obvious I wouldn't approach it this way. Adding to this: my laptop has this btrfs bug right now. I'm not going to do anything about it, because it's not worth 20 minutes of my time to rebuild my kernel for a bug that is unlikely to bite before I get the fix in 6.9-rc1, and would only cost me 30 minutes of time in the worst case if it did. I'll update if it bites me. I've bet on much worse poker hands :)
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Well, from your data (100 error-free hours, sample size 1) alone, we can only conclude this: “The bug probably happens less frequently than every few hours”. Is that reliable enough for you? Great! Is that “very rare”? Absolutely not for almost any type of user/scenario I can imagine. If you’re making any statistical arguments beyond that data, or are implying more data than that, please provide either, otherwise this will lead nowhere.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > I only care about the expected case. The expected case after surviving a hundred hours is that you're likely to survive another hundred. Which is a completely useless promise. That piece of data doesn't let you predict anything at reasonable time scales for an OS install. You can't squeeze more implications out of such a small sample.
    - jcalvinowens 3y ago
      I don't care about the aggregate: I only care about me and my machine here. > The expected case after surviving a hundred hours is that you're likely to survive another hundred. That's exactly right. I don't expect to accrue another hundred hours before the new release, so I'll likely be fine. > Which is a completely useless promise. Statistics is never a promise: that's a really naive concept. > at reasonable time scales for an OS The timescale of the OS install is irrelevant: all that matters is the time between when the bug is introduced and when it is fixed. In this case, about nine months.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        You only use your machines for twenty hours per month? Even so, "likely" here is something like "better than 50:50". Your claim was "very very rare" and that's not supported by the evidence. > Statistics is never a promise: that's a really naive concept. It's a promise of odds with error bars, don't be so nitpicky.
        3y ago

lxgr 3y ago

> It's a statement of fact: it has been a non-issue for me. Yes... > If you're like me, it's statistically reasonable to assume it will be a non-issue for you too. No! This simply does not follow from the first statement, statistically or otherwise. You and I might or might not be fine; you having been fine for 100 hours on the same configuration just offers next-to-zero predictive power for that.

jcalvinowens 3y ago
> No! This simply does not follow from the first statement, statistically or otherwise. > You and I might or might not be fine; you having been fine for 100 hours on the same configuration just offers next-to-zero predictive power for that. You're missing the forest for the trees here. It is predictive ON AVERAGE. I don't care about the worst case like you do: I only care about the expected case. If I died when my filesystem got corrupted... I would hope it's obvious I wouldn't approach it this way. Adding to this: my laptop has this btrfs bug right now. I'm not going to do anything about it, because it's not worth 20 minutes of my time to rebuild my kernel for a bug that is unlikely to bite before I get the fix in 6.9-rc1, and would only cost me 30 minutes of time in the worst case if it did. I'll update if it bites me. I've bet on much worse poker hands :)
- lxgr 3y ago
  Well, from your data (100 error-free hours, sample size 1) alone, we can only conclude this: “The bug probably happens less frequently than every few hours”. Is that reliable enough for you? Great! Is that “very rare”? Absolutely not for almost any type of user/scenario I can imagine. If you’re making any statistical arguments beyond that data, or are implying more data than that, please provide either, otherwise this will lead nowhere.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > I only care about the expected case. The expected case after surviving a hundred hours is that you're likely to survive another hundred. Which is a completely useless promise. That piece of data doesn't let you predict anything at reasonable time scales for an OS install. You can't squeeze more implications out of such a small sample.
  - jcalvinowens 3y ago
    I don't care about the aggregate: I only care about me and my machine here. > The expected case after surviving a hundred hours is that you're likely to survive another hundred. That's exactly right. I don't expect to accrue another hundred hours before the new release, so I'll likely be fine. > Which is a completely useless promise. Statistics is never a promise: that's a really naive concept. > at reasonable time scales for an OS The timescale of the OS install is irrelevant: all that matters is the time between when the bug is introduced and when it is fixed. In this case, about nine months.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      You only use your machines for twenty hours per month? Even so, "likely" here is something like "better than 50:50". Your claim was "very very rare" and that's not supported by the evidence. > Statistics is never a promise: that's a really naive concept. It's a promise of odds with error bars, don't be so nitpicky.
      - 3y ago