this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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It reportedly checks subscription upon putting the vest on and supposedly won’t turn off mid ride.
And if there’s a bug in that code, you’re fucked.
Safety features should work if everything else fails. Their failure mode can’t be “fuck it, it didn’t work”. Which is directly opposite to the failure mode of a subscription based service.
This is why:
The FTC needs to do its job and start outlawing all these obscene subscription business models for things that are rightfully products, not services. Where's my goddamned First Sale Doctrine, FTC?!
Software Engineers working on commercial products need to be professionally licensed, so that proper consequences can be applied for unethical "fail-deadly" designs like this one.
As a software engineer, the thought of my code being responsible for someone's safety is fucking terrifying. Thankfully I'm not in that kind of position.
From experience though, I can tell you that most of the reasons software is shitty is because of middle or upper management, either forcing idiotic business requirements (like a subscription where it doesn't fucking belong!) or just not allocating time to button things up. I can guarantee that every engineer that worked on that thing hated it and thought it was fucking stupid.
Licensing would be overkill for most software as it's not usually life and death. I think in this case since it's safety equipment it really should have been rejected by NHTSA before it ever hit stores.
As a software engineer who was also a civil engineer-in-training before switching careers, I think one of the big overlooked benefits of being licensed is that it would give engineers leverage to push back on unethical demands by management.
[email protected]
Dear manager please clarify the specifications for product. From the discussions in the last design meeting i felt the specifications to potentially be ambigious about their compliance with critical safety regulation. Please reply with the clarified specifications.
Management can always just fire the engineering team and hire one overseas. It's not like it's even that difficult to do.
I don't think you understand what being licensed means. It means the state requires that people doing that job hold a license. Offshoring would become illegal.
I just don't see how it would help. It would require legally defining what is or isn't an unethical or unsafe software product, in which case why wouldn't you just... regulate the product.
That's easy with civil engineering: did the thing collapse and kill people? You dun fucked up. But bridges and buildings and tunnels don't have EULAs with liability disclaimers.
Anyone who paid for this piece of shit vest almost certainly had to accept some sort of license agreement that disclaims any liability on behalf of the manufacturer. It's a safety supplement meant to reduce the risk of a fatal injury, not prevent them altogether.
You'd also end up with a situation where an overseas team develops the software and you just have a licensed engineer on retainer to rubber-stamp it. It'd probably kill what little domestic software development we have left, because however much time and money it costs to get licensed will jack up everyone's salary requirements that gets licensed.
It would also mean heavy restrictions on the import of any software, which pretty much fucks... everyone. It'd likely kill the Internet or make it even shittier, because you could only visit websites developed by a licensed engineer. Every website visit requires the downloading of software: the Javascript frontend.
It would also effectively kill open-source, because the legal liability would override the warranty disclaimer in every single open source license. Why would you put something out into the world for free if all it would do is open you up to litigation?
Could a well written law take this all into account? Certainly. Would you realistically expect it to, though? I don't think so.
This is managements fault, not the engineers fault.
We have to implement the requirements we are given. If we don’t, we get fired and they hire someone else who will do it.
If we were licensed, any replacement would be similarly ethically bound to refuse and that tactic wouldn't work.
who's doing the licensing and do they share my ethics?
You can buy the vest without a sub. Feel free to resell it all you want.
My dad worked for AAA. Once he got a call because a lady’s car errored out and thought she didn’t have her seatbelt buckled mid-drive, so it shut the engine off. On the freeway.
Even without a subscription, failsafes should always fail safe.
Thorium reactors have a cleverly dumb failsafe. If reactor control fails, there’s a plug that melts and drains the contents into a container that’s not fit for runoff neutron generation.
That’s an example of a failsafe that fits its purpose. It’s still possible to fuck it up, but it would take a lot of effort to do so.
If there's a bug in your car's airbag, you're also fucked.
Ahh more slippery slope crap. Maybe let's get on their shit if something actually happens.
The product has been around for years now without issues.
Yes let's talk about it once someone actually dies
Yes let's. You are inventing an imaginary problem.
You could be radicalized by Chinese communists here on lemmy. Developers could weight code and front page algorithms to manipulate you. See what I did there?
You don't ban shit for theoretical edge cases.
What did you to there? Get drunk and talk nonsense? Legitimate issues were raised, software fails all the time due to bugs. If you consider this an imaginary problem you probably have no idea what people are discussing about in this thread, and by replying with some crap about the Chinese you are not really making clear that you have no idea what people are discussing about in this thread.
I'd say you are welcome to get this subscription yourself but the truth is that, as many have already said, this shouldn't be allowed, to protect idiots that don't see this as a problem and could end up dying so that a corporation can make a couple bucks more. You are welcome.
Has THIS software failed in over three years of sales? Have these airbags failed anymore than the literal hundreds of thousands of computer controlled air bags sold in cars every day? How is the recent air bags recall that was caught any different than the ones in the in the mid 90s?
Same reasoning that idiot of my mate does. He's never got any girls pregnant by pulling out so he's happy to continue. Also, you should give Russian roulette a go, it can be fun.
Hardware recalls happen but are rare and in between. Software bugs, for something dependent on checking something over an internet connection? Yeah not thanks. And the fact that it hasn't failed yet doesn't mean the new version that goes out in a rush next week will not be buggy, enshittification and all.
Listen to the software enginees in this thread they know what they are talking about. Plus basic human decency: a life shouldn't be saved or not based on wether a subscription has been paid, we can be better than this as a species, and should expect more from regulations around business.
👌👍 just continue to ignore the current data
Current "data" means fuck all. The fact that they haven't had a serious bug, or that it hasn't occurred while the device needed to deploy is not an indicator that there won't be problems, sorry doesn't work that way.
Die in a fire. Then we'll talk about it.
Let's ban fairs! A company might fuck up and hurt someone! Pools too, infact let's just ban swimming, a life guard might fuck up!
Oh yeah, you're totally naming safety devices that exist to function in emergency situations!
Fucking vegetable.
Let's ban all airbags because of the takata recall! They are all controlled by computers! Let's ban rock climbing rope because they could miss something in QA! Let's ban seat belts, Honda had a 300k recall so there is plenty of room for mistakes happening there!
I can make shit up related to safety gear all day because it's just paranoia and a lot of anti corporatism under a thin veil.
They have sold millions of these things. Zero failures related to the hysteria here. Zero. You can make a great argument about the morals of profiting from safety gear. But at the end of the day they have made safety gear more accessible. Their shit does and has saved lives. This theoretical imaginary not deploying has afftected 0.
So what we're left with is more safety gear being deployed and saving lives right now, at a long term overall cost than buying outright and will disproportionately affect the poor? And that's an insane value proposition? Far from perfect in my view but I bet if you ask anyone on the subscription plan who has crashed a bike they'd disagree and probably not own the airbag.
I'm gonna stop feeding the troll.
I know. You can't address it so I'm a troll. Continue to raise hysteria over an imaginary event. Fascist on both sides of me.
Your strawmanning only proves how fucking stupid you know your arguments are. Grow up and stop being pathetic.
Whatever you say. You all are riled up over an imaginary event that hasn't happened yet 🤷♂️
The problem is the subscription, not how it was implemented
Yes, but also from an implementation perspective: if I'm making code that might kill somebody if it fails, I want it to be as deterministic and simple as possible. Under no circumstances do I want it:
If the customer is dead, they definitely can't renew.
Who wouldn't tout your service if it saved them?
But also.. why the fuck does this require a sub?
Because "fuck you, we're rent-seeking and you can't do anything about it," that's why.
The argument the company makes is that it allows them to sell the device for cheaper upfront, which means that more people can afford to have one. They sell them for $400. But also fuck them, nobody ever died from HP disabling printers.
Also, if they genuinely wanted to make it more affordable up front in order to get the safety device in more hands, they could charge a chunk initially and then a regular payment plan for so many months. Not paying in perpetuity or we disable it.
It checks the service when booting up before a ride. After that it doesn’t connect to the internet. If you’ve gone past your grace period of 60 days it won’t boot up at all, and it will alert you that the device isn’t active.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the idea of the subscription but it’s important to have accurate information. Did you even read the product page?
That information changes none of my issues; if you don't see the plethora of potential implementation bugs involved, either you don't code professionally or you shouldn't be.
I code professionally, specifically I develop very resilient medical software. From a software perspective, as long as the developers are competent I have no issues with the device. There are so many other things you could take issue with when it comes to the vest, but I’m telling you software just isn’t one of them.
I'm sure the developers are competent, but the reason I care about the design decisions is the same reason the electric brakes on cars don't interface with its infotainment system; the interface inherently creates opportunities for out of spec behaviour and even if the introduced risk is tiny, the consequence is so bad that it's worth avoiding.
If you have to have an airbag be controlled by software (ideally the mechanism is physical, like a pull tab), it should be an isolated real time device with monitoring your accelerometer and triggering the airbag be it's only jobs. If it's also waiting to hear back from another device about whether your subscription ran out before it starts checking, the risk of failure also has to consider that triggering device.
It can be done perfectly, but it's software so of course it has bugs.
So go purchase one of the many many different products with a higher up front investment.
If I needed one, I would. But keep in mind that consumers have limited power (voting with our dollars), and top-down protections are essential.
Yes we should definitely make it harder to get safety equipment that nobody really wears anyway because subscriptions == evil.
Did you throw out a strawman on purpose just then or were you trying to make a real point?
What's the cheapest I can manufacture such a vest? No telemetry, just the safety. Honestly, what do you think the price point is to manufacture that piece of safety equipment? Factor in liability. You will get sued, frequently.
How many do think will sell at that price point? Is it even worth running a factory if only a small segment of the motorcycle-riding population could possibly own one? Is this product too expensive to exist?
Such full throated rhetoric in defense of subscriptions. Everything okay at home?
I have no need for such a subscription. But I don't care to market this device either. I just don't see how it could exist without a leasing option.
My only subscriptions are on Patreon, but I used to pay rent too. I didn't like paying rent, but I couldn't afford a house. I don't like the housing market, but "pay up front or leave it" makes no sense with houses. It makes no sense here either.
Could you please point out my full-throated defense of subscriptions? I asked a few questions. If you don't care to think, I don't care to chat.