| At some point computers need to stop being treated as magical boxes that no reasonable person can learn how to use safely. We expect people who use cars to learn how to use them safely, we expect people who use lawnmowers to not stick their fingers in them. Computers have been a part of daily life for normies for decades at this point, it's infantilizing to suggest that average, non-tech savvy people can't learn to use (not necessarily build, repair, etc.) them properly and need to be protected from them. |
| |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent | next [-] | | People have to successfully get through a state exam in order to drive cars in first place, can be jailed, get fined when not driving them safely, or forbidden for life to ever drive again. People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company. What I would agree is that it is about time computing gets the same liability laws that the rest of the world already has in place and no EULAs that work around local laws should be considered valid in any form or shape. | | |
| ▲ | voakbasda a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you hate open source and want only projects where their authors can afford liability insurance and are willing to put themselves in the firing line of a legal system that can be both arbitrary and capricious? Because that’s what you seem to want. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent [-] | | Even people selling on the street or doing charity work have to account for liability of their actions. Lets stop talking about open source as special snowflakes where everything is excused. | | |
| ▲ | voakbasda a day ago | parent | next [-] | | And that’s how you prevent bake sales, lemonade stands, and more. You create a barrier to entry that gets raised little by little until only the biggest players can afford the game. Software liability would end all small open source projects. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent [-] | | Bake sales and lemonade stands are perfectly fine as long as people don't land on hospital urgency, due to careless work on preparing them with spoiled ingredients or lack of hygiene. Lets strive for quality in software. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent [-] | | Now do that again without careless work or spoiled ingredients. Do you still want them punished or facing so much regulation they can't exist? Because you'll definitely get that with software; even really good development will have flaws, and single flaws can lead to a thousand or million hacks. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent [-] | | All humans face scrutiny in their interactions with others. Software only got this bad, because we educated users broken tools are acceptable and fixable with computer reboots and anti-virus. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent [-] | | I dunno, people seem to accept most kinds of tool being fussy or flaky. But the special thing about security flaws is that they turn a one in a billion error into a guaranteed attack. It's moderately hard to make something that doesn't feel buggy, but ridiculously hard to be secure. If you hold to the standards of a bake sale it's the former. If you want full security then nobody releases anything outside very strict contracts. | | |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | esikich a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The problem is it's literally speech. Selling something isn't speech, you do not have the right to do charity work or run a business. It goes even beyond speech, it's closer to pure math/logic and I feel very uncomfortable about regulating that. I also think it's literally impossible. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent [-] | | Speech is subject to laws in most jurisdictions. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | dml2135 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company. Anyone is allowed to sue the lawnmower company. Did they win? | | |
| ▲ | lightedman a day ago | parent [-] | | The amount of "Do not put hands here" labels I've seen on lawnmowers would suggest that, yes, someone did sue and win (or at the least got a settlement) and thus the lawyers forced the companies to put disclaimers and warnings on the lawnmower, directly on the top of the deck in plain sight. |
| |
| ▲ | close04 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | On power tools, appliances, etc. the safety features are at the user's latitude to bypass. They are usually a hint (don't microwave your dog), not a hard barrier ("I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"). A spinning blade is covered by a grill you can trivially remove without permission from anyone. I agree that the defaults should be secure, but you can't force security on people without creating parallel issues which are maybe worse. Centralizing this power in a single point can have orders of magnitude bigger blast radius than a security failure on an app. At some point users have to take responsibility and be accountable for their actions. We can't just infantilize them forever as if a magical hand will always be over them protecting and having their best interest in mind. And we certainly shouldn't punish every user for the sake of some of them. The worst part is that Google gets the benefit of putting itself as the central point of control over the ecosystem based on a promise to keep users safe, but without any of the liability from failing to keep that promise. When the app store is chock full of malware I'm really starting to suspect that their goal is actually only the control. And all those people defending it with "but people don't know better, they need a hand to guide them" were equally misled. What do you think? | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent [-] | | Yes, and when they fail to do so, there are laws in place for liability of third party, or when their own irresponsible actions affects others. |
|
| |
| ▲ | misnome a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Using a computer wrong doesn't kill people. | | |
| ▲ | jprjr_ a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes and no. The computer itself won't really do anything. But I'm sure suicides go up when people lose all their money, or get personal private details leaked, and so on. | |
| ▲ | m4rtink a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ehm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 | | |
| ▲ | anonymars a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > "One [software fault] was when the operator incorrectly selected X-ray mode then in 8 seconds quickly changing to electron mode, which allowed the electron beam to be set for X-ray mode without the X-ray target being in place" Therac-25 is an important software-development case study but a torturous stretch of "Using a computer wrong" | | | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | misnome a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | You are right! Computer use should be taught, tested and licensed exactly the same way of steering several tons of metal at 70mph are! |
| |
| ▲ | pjmlp a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Depends on what those computers are responsible for. | |
| ▲ | esikich a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm sure you can think of many examples where it does though. |
| |
| ▲ | marcosdumay a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, computers first stop being magical machines that no person can learn how to use safely, then. And, honestly, if you think the endpoint safety problem doesn't apply to you, you are part of the problem. |
|
