@sabik @futurebird

Yo, Ukraine paid for em and paid for the service. Russia didn't pay. Don't be making up rights for war criminals where there isn't one.

Absolutely, you are right about the right to repair and other options. But if consumers buy the product, thats also their right.

You are wrong to plant the right to repair flag on 'Russia, the victim'. Get some moral fiber.

@dobetterinstitute @futurebird
More broadly, what does it mean for a company to have the ability to remotely destroy agricultural equipment in bulk, whether deliberately or inadvertently

What are the security controls on such a capability, for example

@dobetterinstitute @futurebird
We aren't talking about whether Russia committed war crimes with this incident; that's a separate discussion

We're talking about whether John Deere committed war crimes, and deliberate destruction of agricultural equipment certainly sounds like it would count

@futurebird What is "complete" software?

Does complete software have bugs?

Do you want those bugs fixed?

Don't get me wrong. The current situation of every software team everywhere trying to constantly shove more and more "value add" features into old products and breaking them is a problem. Doubly so when you bought a thing for a single purpose and now it's useless for that because they tried to shove in 17 new features, none of which you needed.

But I'm not clear on what the alternative is.

@futurebird Often people like to look back fondly on the days when you bought software on a CD and installed it and that was the software you had. But they also forget that those were the days when 50% of applications shipped with a random version of QuickTime and if you didn't install them all in order of increasing QuickTime versions, everything that needed a newer version than the one shipped with the latest CD you installed would break. They were all "fixed". (Yes. I wrote down the QuickTime versions of every game we had as kids and reinstalled that damn machine, starting with fresh Win95 more times than I can remember. Why do you ask? )

@futurebird Remote bricking absolutely shouldn't be allowed and the company absolutely should be held liable if that happens.

I also don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to expect some separation of feature/UI updates from security updates. However, software teams can only keep fixing so many old versions for so long before the task becomes unbearable. I think we can do more but I'm not sure how much more or where to draw that line or how to regulate it.

@futurebird What I will say, though, is that we absolutely need to kill the entire concept of "value add" in American engineering business culture.

Most of the shit that gets shoveled into consumer products is done in a blind attempt to be able to put something on the side of the box that no one else has on the side of their box. It's a marketing arms race that creates an endless stream of half-baked "features" that no one asked for. Some of them turn out to be useful. Most turn out to be liabilities.

@freya @futurebird I'm not saying the Brads of the world are blameless, but we gotta at least throw some shade at the product managers as well, especially if we're talking about every shifting UX.

@futurebird

When I got solar panels and a battery pack for my house; one of my requirements was a system that both would work when the net is down and could not be remotely bricked (by negligence or any other reason).

Which was annoying to have to check, since much of the point is to be able to keep essentials running during power outrages.

@Avner @freya

Unexpected changes in a user interface are also a safety concern. People may have strict procedures based upon an in interface working in a certain way.

Furthermore, I think it’s an accessibility issue. I know several blind people who count on certain touch-screen buttons presenting in the same location and doing the same thing.