4 ms·

A brief history of hardware epidemics

47 points by ingve 1y ago

TZubiri 1y ago
Interesting, I love the field of infectious disease and of course software, so the intersection is always fascinating. A related failure mode (which is closer to organ transplants I guess), is that when replacing a part with a faulty one, a defect in the new part can cause the other parts to bear more load. When a part fails abruptly you have a halted system and a lot of healthy parts, but when a part fails gradually, the whole system starts to degrade with it by sympathy. And of course electrical networks are a classical example of faults expanding, there may be security devices to limit the failure to the device or even the local electrical network, but sometimes those failsafes fail, and that's what causes wide blackouts like the one in Spain recently.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  This is called "cascading failure".
  - privatelypublic 1y ago
    And powergrid failures have little to no relation to any of this
    - TZubiri 1y ago
      No? My understanding is that Electric devices (including infrastructural), are connected by networks, electricity can "travel" downstream just as easily as it can travel upstream unless specific mechanisms are engineered to avoid that, sometimes those mechanisms fail. A power surge generated by oversupply in a power plant can affect burn both "downstream" devices that consume its electricity, as well as lateral unrelated networks, since they are all connected in a network. I'm sure I'm wrong in a lot of points, but pretty confident in the fact that failures can flow upwards and cause blackouts downstream.
jcalx 1y ago
From the title I was expecting some hardware faults that were transmissible (as opposed to merely widespread), like the classic "hardware virus" story from The Daily WTF: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus
- vikingerik 1y ago
  Yeah, the headline is using "epidemic" clickbaitly just to mean widespread, not transmissible. The classic real example of actual transmissibility was the Zip drive click of death. A bad drive would damage disks, which would in turn damage another drive they were put in. The case was rarer than people thought but did happen. https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm
  - willyt 1y ago
    I got an electric shock plugging in a zip drive once. They used to arc when you plugged the mains cord into the back of the drive or the power brick, I forget which.
  - irishsultan 1y ago
    The word epidemic does not imply contagiousness, not in the medical context and therefore definitely not outside of it.
    - kibwen 1y ago
      Yes, the definition of "epidemic" literally refers to something being widespread (etymology derived from "upon the people"). It's not wrong to refer to e.g. an obesity epidemic despite obesity not being contagious.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  Or "Coding machines" https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/ https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/
- 1y ago
OptionOfT 1y ago
I remember leadfree solder. I ordered an Nvidia 8800GT at that time and it was significantly delayed because of failures. The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while, essentially reflowing some of the cracked solder. And I know of countless BMW M3s and M5s dying too soon because of early iterations of lead-free bearings. I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment? The origin of the capacitor plague is so interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague > A 2003 article in The Independent claimed that the cause of the faulty capacitors was due to a mis-copied formula. In 2001, a scientist working in the Rubycon Corporation in Japan stole a mis-copied formula for capacitors' electrolytes. He then took the faulty formula to the Luminous Town Electric company in China, where he had previously been employed. In the same year, the scientist's staff left China, stealing again the mis-copied formula and moving to Taiwan, where they created their own company, producing capacitors and propagating even more of this faulty formula of capacitor electrolytes. Stolen and stolen again.
- cnasc 1y ago
  > I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment? Part of the issue is in manufacturing. It might be hard to prevent exposure of employees to lead dust if they’re machining parts containing lead even if the final product isn’t too risky.
  - gizmo686 1y ago
    How relevant is this to solder? Typically soldering is done after machining, so machining dust should be a non issue. As far as I am aware, the act of soldering does not produce any sort of lead vapor or particulate either.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      How does the solder get manufactured? Don't forget to account for the rest of the supply chain - the mines for example
fred_is_fred 1y ago
Lead-free solder was such a big deal when it first came out, have things improved significantly like the author mentions in passing? Similar arguments were made about leaded gasoline when it was banned and tech caught up and made it not needed.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  People have gotten used to working with it. Much like with any process change it took some time to work out the kinks. There are still a fair few RoHS exemptions (including for solder) where replacement is more difficult, but the're much more niche.
neuroelectron 1y ago
Missing: those switches on newer Logitech mice that fail with intermittent no-click/double-clicking on single click after about 8 months.
willtemperley 1y ago
Apple replaced my 2015 MBP battery and my 2017 MBP butterfly keyboard for free, even though both machines were more than 5 years old. Impressive I think.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  Years after AppleCare ended, they replaced literally every part of my 2012 MBP, for free, except the bottom cover (new display, new circuitboard, new battery, new keyboard). Unfortunately, it was replaced with new hardware (identical RoHS solder problem), so it failed again relatively quickly (to crickets from Apple). I didn't buy another Apple laptop until the M3 MacBook Air debuted (what an impressive machine — particularly battery life!). I already know this machine is "disposable" (i.e. delicate), but heat is definitely not going to pop any circuits (like the MBP from a decade+ ago — that thing got HOT).

47 points by ingve 1y ago

Interesting, I love the field of infectious disease and of course software, so the intersection is always fascinating. A related failure mode (which is closer to organ transplants I guess), is that when replacing a part with a faulty one, a defect in the new part can cause the other parts to bear more load. When a part fails abruptly you have a halted system and a lot of healthy parts, but when a part fails gradually, the whole system starts to degrade with it by sympathy. And of course electrical networks are a classical example of faults expanding, there may be security devices to limit the failure to the device or even the local electrical network, but sometimes those failsafes fail, and that's what causes wide blackouts like the one in Spain recently.

HPsquared 1y ago
This is called "cascading failure".
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  And powergrid failures have little to no relation to any of this
  - TZubiri 1y ago
    No? My understanding is that Electric devices (including infrastructural), are connected by networks, electricity can "travel" downstream just as easily as it can travel upstream unless specific mechanisms are engineered to avoid that, sometimes those mechanisms fail. A power surge generated by oversupply in a power plant can affect burn both "downstream" devices that consume its electricity, as well as lateral unrelated networks, since they are all connected in a network. I'm sure I'm wrong in a lot of points, but pretty confident in the fact that failures can flow upwards and cause blackouts downstream.

jcalx 1y ago

From the title I was expecting some hardware faults that were transmissible (as opposed to merely widespread), like the classic "hardware virus" story from The Daily WTF: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus

vikingerik 1y ago
Yeah, the headline is using "epidemic" clickbaitly just to mean widespread, not transmissible. The classic real example of actual transmissibility was the Zip drive click of death. A bad drive would damage disks, which would in turn damage another drive they were put in. The case was rarer than people thought but did happen. https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm
- willyt 1y ago
  I got an electric shock plugging in a zip drive once. They used to arc when you plugged the mains cord into the back of the drive or the power brick, I forget which.
- irishsultan 1y ago
  The word epidemic does not imply contagiousness, not in the medical context and therefore definitely not outside of it.
  - kibwen 1y ago
    Yes, the definition of "epidemic" literally refers to something being widespread (etymology derived from "upon the people"). It's not wrong to refer to e.g. an obesity epidemic despite obesity not being contagious.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Or "Coding machines" https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/ https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/
1y ago

OptionOfT 1y ago

I remember leadfree solder. I ordered an Nvidia 8800GT at that time and it was significantly delayed because of failures. The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while, essentially reflowing some of the cracked solder. And I know of countless BMW M3s and M5s dying too soon because of early iterations of lead-free bearings. I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment? The origin of the capacitor plague is so interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague > A 2003 article in The Independent claimed that the cause of the faulty capacitors was due to a mis-copied formula. In 2001, a scientist working in the Rubycon Corporation in Japan stole a mis-copied formula for capacitors' electrolytes. He then took the faulty formula to the Luminous Town Electric company in China, where he had previously been employed. In the same year, the scientist's staff left China, stealing again the mis-copied formula and moving to Taiwan, where they created their own company, producing capacitors and propagating even more of this faulty formula of capacitor electrolytes. Stolen and stolen again.

cnasc 1y ago
> I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment? Part of the issue is in manufacturing. It might be hard to prevent exposure of employees to lead dust if they’re machining parts containing lead even if the final product isn’t too risky.
- gizmo686 1y ago
  How relevant is this to solder? Typically soldering is done after machining, so machining dust should be a non issue. As far as I am aware, the act of soldering does not produce any sort of lead vapor or particulate either.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    How does the solder get manufactured? Don't forget to account for the rest of the supply chain - the mines for example

fred_is_fred 1y ago

Lead-free solder was such a big deal when it first came out, have things improved significantly like the author mentions in passing? Similar arguments were made about leaded gasoline when it was banned and tech caught up and made it not needed.

rcxdude 1y ago
People have gotten used to working with it. Much like with any process change it took some time to work out the kinks. There are still a fair few RoHS exemptions (including for solder) where replacement is more difficult, but the're much more niche.

neuroelectron 1y ago

Missing: those switches on newer Logitech mice that fail with intermittent no-click/double-clicking on single click after about 8 months.

willtemperley 1y ago

Apple replaced my 2015 MBP battery and my 2017 MBP butterfly keyboard for free, even though both machines were more than 5 years old. Impressive I think.

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
Years after AppleCare ended, they replaced literally every part of my 2012 MBP, for free, except the bottom cover (new display, new circuitboard, new battery, new keyboard). Unfortunately, it was replaced with new hardware (identical RoHS solder problem), so it failed again relatively quickly (to crickets from Apple). I didn't buy another Apple laptop until the M3 MacBook Air debuted (what an impressive machine — particularly battery life!). I already know this machine is "disposable" (i.e. delicate), but heat is definitely not going to pop any circuits (like the MBP from a decade+ ago — that thing got HOT).