696
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
696 points (98.1% liked)
Technology
59062 readers
3473 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's a legal term of art. Even over the air updates are literally recalls. It doesn't need a new term.
Yes, and as I said it is inaccurate. Legalese can be updated to better match the meaning of the word. Why is that such an unacceptable concept?
Edit: I'm really worked up about this. Seriously, why is changing the term that unimaginable to you people?
It's seems like you're saying "we should change the legal term of art 'payment intangible' because it's something that is general intangible under which the account debtor's principal obligation is a monetary obligation."
But that's already what "payment intangible" means.
Wtf are talking about?
I'm talking about this specific word that means bringing the thing back from where it went in every context but cars.
By your logic, the software bug in my Honda’s ECU would be called a recall because it required me going to a dealership and having them perform the software update. An owner can’t simply download and install ECU updates themselves in the vast majority of cases.
But then by your same logic the software update that Toyota mailed to me on a USB stick for my Prius shouldn’t be called a recall because I was able to plug the USB stick into the car myself. The only reason Toyota mailed that USB stick to me and thousands of other Prius owners is because they were legally required to fix a software bug identified by NHTSA in a recall notice. Toyota decided the USB approach was better than having all of us drive to dealers to have them apply it.
And the various over-the-air software updates that Tesla, Rivian, and others shouldn’t be called recalls either by your same logic.
Why cause confusion over calling software updates different things based solely on who installs it and/or how it’s installed? In all these cases NHTSA received reports about a safety issue, opened a formal investigation, and ultimately issued a legally binding directive to the manufacturer that required them, by law, to address it. That legally binding directive is a recall notice, and it can apply to software that you have to visit a dealer to install, or to software the owner can install, or to software the manufacturer can install automatically.
That entire process is what makes something a recall. Not how it’s addressed in the end.
Because they're different things? For the user it doesn't matter if they're both same legally, in one case they need to bring their car somewhere, in the other one they don't. If anything it's confusing to call them both a recall.
But they are NOT different things. In every one of these examples:
The only thing that is different in this entire process is how the remedy is applied. Every single step other than that is identical.
And that's the thing that matters to the person who owns the car. Currently when a user sees that word they don't know what they need to do to fix it. You can have some other name encompassing both (like 'critical fix'), but if you keep recall for when that fix isn't user applicable, (and furthermore have specific names for the fixes themselves if they're user applicable) people would immediately understand
Lots of people here are disagreeing with me but I'm yet to see an argument about why that shouldn't be the case other than that it currently isn't. But even that's an argument for why changing the term would be difficult, not for why calling every fix 'recall' makes sense.