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> For many users and applications, low-quality code will work. Oh, don't pretend "quality" is just a proxy for "has pretty animations and makes the user feel w

by seiji 11y ago

> For many users and applications, low-quality code will work. Oh, don't pretend "quality" is just a proxy for "has pretty animations and makes the user feel warm and fuzzy." The failure to ensure "quality" of this embedded router component has put millions of never-going-to-be-updated hardware devices in the wild at risk of 3rd party takeover, personal information leakage, installing proxies on them to send user details to hostile actors (monetary losses, blackmail), .... Programming errors shouldn't be excused just because we always say "whoops! we'll do better next time!" But, since humans are objectively bad at something as complex as programming, we can't hold people accountable (who wrote it? an intern from 8 years ago? punishing them does no good). We can't hold organizations accountable (recall all the consumer routers!) because public policy doesn't think that way. We're in a weird period of history where companies can get away with great computational damage with no repercussions at all. The market currently _does_ favor "just do whatever and try to fix it later (or not, whatever)," but that doesn't make it right.

userbinator 11y ago
we can't hold people accountable (who wrote it? an intern from 8 years ago? punishing them does no good). We can't hold organizations accountable (recall all the consumer routers!) because public policy doesn't think that way. Contrast that with the completely different approach taken by the aerospace industry, where people and organisations are held accountable; and it has resulted in great reliability overall --- interesting discussion about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569077 We're in a weird period of history where companies can get away with great computational damage with no repercussions at all In critical software for a plane it is literally a matter of life or death, and people are willing to pay much more for that level of quality; but if a consumer router gets exploited, what's the worse that could happen? I think it is important to put the risk into perspective: this is bad, but it's not really a people could get killed sort of thing.

by seiji 11y ago

userbinator 11y ago

we can't hold people accountable (who wrote it? an intern from 8 years ago? punishing them does no good). We can't hold organizations accountable (recall all the consumer routers!) because public policy doesn't think that way. Contrast that with the completely different approach taken by the aerospace industry, where people and organisations are held accountable; and it has resulted in great reliability overall --- interesting discussion about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569077 We're in a weird period of history where companies can get away with great computational damage with no repercussions at all In critical software for a plane it is literally a matter of life or death, and people are willing to pay much more for that level of quality; but if a consumer router gets exploited, what's the worse that could happen? I think it is important to put the risk into perspective: this is bad, but it's not really a people could get killed sort of thing.