4 ms·

This has destroyed one of my older laptops, it decided on its own to patch itself while in a laptop bag in sleep mode. It was a "workstation" laptop that can dr

This has destroyed one of my older laptops, it decided on its own to patch itself while in a laptop bag in sleep mode. It was a "workstation" laptop that can draw something like 60W from battery, and it promptly cooked itself. The plastic melted and smoke was coming out of the bag. On a moving train. Here's the thing: this self-serving behaviour from Microsoft will eventually kill someone, or quite possibly a large number of people. It's just a matter of time until a high-powered laptop does this in someone's luggage on a plane, catches fire, and then there will be congressional investigations like we had with the Boeing 737 MCAS system. In both cases near-monopoly companies are gambling with peoples' lives to meet some internal KPI that in the grand scheme of things just doesn't matter... but it does to some manager's bonus, so you see... people are going to have to die.

erinaceousjones 2y ago
Thing is.... My gigantic desktop computer has thermal cutoffs, it will shut down if the CPU gets too hot. I remember desktop PCs having that for ages. I've had overheating laptops do the same. Are laptop manufacturers just getting lazy and skimping on failsafe hardware temperature cut-offs!?? Like, as a hardware manufacturer I would always add that factor-of-5 "the software side WILL fuck up" safety measures. How is the HARDWARE allowing software to let it melt itself in this day and age!?
- misiek08 2y ago
  Having accountants and not engineers architecting software and hardware gets you to that point. Crappy engineers don’t help too, there are too many unskilled people in „IT” „old” and „legacy” hardware 8-10 years ago was fighting with the tasks and you could still put laptop on your legs. Funny enough yesterday I went into this sleep stuff, because my 5yo Dell battery drained while being „shut down” after 1.5 weeks and while charging I tried to run 2 tabs in browser to look for fix and my legs burned - so I had to put it diagonally on the table to cool down. We have order of magnitude faster hardware capable of doing order of magnitude less things.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  It's probably because the hardware was not designed to be operating at full power surrounded by insulation (i.e. in a bag). In that scenario the parts that the hardware monitors may still be at 'acceptable' temperatures (which can be ~100C), while other (unmonitored) parts that would not normally get that hot get way too hot.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    Once the lithium batteries start to experience thermal runaway, it doesn't matter if the CPU turns itself off.

erinaceousjones 2y ago

Thing is.... My gigantic desktop computer has thermal cutoffs, it will shut down if the CPU gets too hot. I remember desktop PCs having that for ages. I've had overheating laptops do the same. Are laptop manufacturers just getting lazy and skimping on failsafe hardware temperature cut-offs!?? Like, as a hardware manufacturer I would always add that factor-of-5 "the software side WILL fuck up" safety measures. How is the HARDWARE allowing software to let it melt itself in this day and age!?

misiek08 2y ago
Having accountants and not engineers architecting software and hardware gets you to that point. Crappy engineers don’t help too, there are too many unskilled people in „IT” „old” and „legacy” hardware 8-10 years ago was fighting with the tasks and you could still put laptop on your legs. Funny enough yesterday I went into this sleep stuff, because my 5yo Dell battery drained while being „shut down” after 1.5 weeks and while charging I tried to run 2 tabs in browser to look for fix and my legs burned - so I had to put it diagonally on the table to cool down. We have order of magnitude faster hardware capable of doing order of magnitude less things.
rcxdude 2y ago
It's probably because the hardware was not designed to be operating at full power surrounded by insulation (i.e. in a bag). In that scenario the parts that the hardware monitors may still be at 'acceptable' temperatures (which can be ~100C), while other (unmonitored) parts that would not normally get that hot get way too hot.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Once the lithium batteries start to experience thermal runaway, it doesn't matter if the CPU turns itself off.