3 ms·

And people wonder why I laugh when they say "non-mechanical devices are more reliable." Sure mechanical devices need pieces to stay moving in the same way over

by nDRDY 7mo ago

And people wonder why I laugh when they say "non-mechanical devices are more reliable." Sure mechanical devices need pieces to stay moving in the same way over and over again, but electronic devices need a huge number of very precisely-placed atoms to not move in any way, including chemically.

treesknees 7mo ago
In what context are people saying this? I’ve never heard anyone proclaim that electronic devices are more reliable than mechanical devices. See for example how people desire cars with “no computers”.
- pvdebbe 7mo ago
  Timepieces are a classic example of this.
- Xylakant 7mo ago
  The problem is not that modern cars are somehow less reliable than old cars. They are much more reliable. But they’re also much less repairable without specialized equipment. You can with somewhat accessible technology repair almost all defects on a purely mechanical car. You cannot do the same for a modern car unless you happen to have a chip fab.
- lazide 7mo ago
  For a given feature set. Anyone that has had to deal with a carbureted engine, or old school hydraulic ‘computer’ based automatic transmission is never going to extol their reliability or ease of repair. Those also are doing 1/10th of the work (for things like automatic engine tuning, wear adjustment, on the fly power band adjustment, altitude adjustment, anti-pollution adjustment, etc). The reason why people complain about modern cars is because computers have made it exceptionally easy to add massive amounts of new (and poorly tested, in many cases) functionality. And even the equivalent of DRM. If if you used current tech to implement the old feature set, and spent even a little effort making it open instead of DRM-ish, it could be even simpler and more reliable. But no one is doing that. Because it’s more profitable using it ‘for evil’, as it were.
Jensson 7mo ago
You can easily make it more reliable just by making larger features, and then no mechanical thing can even come close to compare to how reliable digital circuits are. There is a reason 40 year old NES consoles still works today, they are very reliable because the circuits are so large. To break those old machines you have to essentially melt them.
- nDRDY 7mo ago
  They work, as long as you replace all of those leaky caps (and maybe the ceramic resonator)!
  - NobodyNada 7mo ago
    I know quite a few people who've had SNESes with failing ICs in recent years (mainly PPU and APU chips). That's pretty annoying because the only way to get replacement parts is from a donor console.
nkrisc 7mo ago
Ok, but how are you going to make a billion mechanical transistors? Even if you could, latency would be limited by the speed of sound in whatever materials you use.
- lloydatkinson 7mo ago
  Did he suggest you make those?
HPsquared 7mo ago
Reliable in the sense that after initial testing, it'll be stable over time.
ajb 7mo ago
There's a question about the right units here. Your CPU performs more operations in its first millisecond* than most mechanical devices do in their entire lifetime. So in per operation units, they are staggeringly reliable. Actual operating life is often determined by the economic feedback loop which causes manufacturers to cut costs until basically all consumer products have roughly the same expected lifetime, regardless of the potential of the underlying technology. * Or at least, the first millisecond after it starts using its normal operating clock, which might not be the very first millisecond
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  > Actual operating life is often determined by the economic feedback loop which causes manufacturers to cut costs until basically all consumer products have roughly the same expected lifetime, regardless of the potential of the underlying technology. Which is why, despite being a huge BEV proponent, laugh when I hear people say things as "BEV are inherently more reliable due to having no transmission and less moving parts that could break". It might have been true in the early stage, that we're currently at the end of, but we already know that the reliability of a second-hand mid-range ICE car is what market has been bearing for decades, so we can be certain BEVs will be "value-optimized" until they are just as unreliable.
  - ssivark 7mo ago
    But that also just means that BEVs will become way cheaper as companies rush to optimize value and capture users at more attractive prices.
    - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
      Yes. Cars have fixed cost ranges for people so the end result is pretty much predetermined - electric cars settling at the same price and quality points as ICE cars are today.

by nDRDY 7mo ago

treesknees 7mo ago

In what context are people saying this? I’ve never heard anyone proclaim that electronic devices are more reliable than mechanical devices. See for example how people desire cars with “no computers”.

pvdebbe 7mo ago
Timepieces are a classic example of this.
Xylakant 7mo ago
The problem is not that modern cars are somehow less reliable than old cars. They are much more reliable. But they’re also much less repairable without specialized equipment. You can with somewhat accessible technology repair almost all defects on a purely mechanical car. You cannot do the same for a modern car unless you happen to have a chip fab.
lazide 7mo ago
For a given feature set. Anyone that has had to deal with a carbureted engine, or old school hydraulic ‘computer’ based automatic transmission is never going to extol their reliability or ease of repair. Those also are doing 1/10th of the work (for things like automatic engine tuning, wear adjustment, on the fly power band adjustment, altitude adjustment, anti-pollution adjustment, etc). The reason why people complain about modern cars is because computers have made it exceptionally easy to add massive amounts of new (and poorly tested, in many cases) functionality. And even the equivalent of DRM. If if you used current tech to implement the old feature set, and spent even a little effort making it open instead of DRM-ish, it could be even simpler and more reliable. But no one is doing that. Because it’s more profitable using it ‘for evil’, as it were.

Jensson 7mo ago

You can easily make it more reliable just by making larger features, and then no mechanical thing can even come close to compare to how reliable digital circuits are. There is a reason 40 year old NES consoles still works today, they are very reliable because the circuits are so large. To break those old machines you have to essentially melt them.

nDRDY 7mo ago
They work, as long as you replace all of those leaky caps (and maybe the ceramic resonator)!
- NobodyNada 7mo ago
  I know quite a few people who've had SNESes with failing ICs in recent years (mainly PPU and APU chips). That's pretty annoying because the only way to get replacement parts is from a donor console.

nkrisc 7mo ago

Ok, but how are you going to make a billion mechanical transistors? Even if you could, latency would be limited by the speed of sound in whatever materials you use.

lloydatkinson 7mo ago
Did he suggest you make those?

HPsquared 7mo ago

Reliable in the sense that after initial testing, it'll be stable over time.

ajb 7mo ago

There's a question about the right units here. Your CPU performs more operations in its first millisecond* than most mechanical devices do in their entire lifetime. So in per operation units, they are staggeringly reliable. Actual operating life is often determined by the economic feedback loop which causes manufacturers to cut costs until basically all consumer products have roughly the same expected lifetime, regardless of the potential of the underlying technology. * Or at least, the first millisecond after it starts using its normal operating clock, which might not be the very first millisecond

TeMPOraL 7mo ago
> Actual operating life is often determined by the economic feedback loop which causes manufacturers to cut costs until basically all consumer products have roughly the same expected lifetime, regardless of the potential of the underlying technology. Which is why, despite being a huge BEV proponent, laugh when I hear people say things as "BEV are inherently more reliable due to having no transmission and less moving parts that could break". It might have been true in the early stage, that we're currently at the end of, but we already know that the reliability of a second-hand mid-range ICE car is what market has been bearing for decades, so we can be certain BEVs will be "value-optimized" until they are just as unreliable.
- ssivark 7mo ago
  But that also just means that BEVs will become way cheaper as companies rush to optimize value and capture users at more attractive prices.
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    Yes. Cars have fixed cost ranges for people so the end result is pretty much predetermined - electric cars settling at the same price and quality points as ICE cars are today.