[glitchinc]

I could not agree with you more.

All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.

As someone who has worked in tech my whole life, and who currently runs a technology-centric company, I generally detest the state of technology these days. I have reached a point in my life where I consciously limit my use of technology, and make it a point to steer clear of purchasing and making use of devices and services with "superfluous technology" unless their are no alternatives.

Many (if not most) modern technology systems are far too complex to be properly tested, especially when taking into account integrations (via "standard" interfaces) with third party technology systems. As technology systems have become more complex, their reliability as tools to accomplish an intended goal has drastically decreased while the telemetry capabilities of the systems have been drastically improved (without me knowingly realizing any benefits thereof). As such, I have learned to rely on technology less and less as I have aged.

There are surely many reasons for the inverse relationship between complexity and reliability of technology systems, but a cursory list of suggested root causes that come to mind include: - use of (necessary, in modern software development) automated test tools; - use of programming languages too-abstracted from technologies employed within the system; - a likely growing percentage of developers lacking a working domain knowledge of the systems they are developing; - the corporate / financial pressure to needlessly upgrade or evolve technology systems--even in the absence of flaws or demand for the upgrade--in the name of maintaining / increasing shareholder value (see also: planned obsolescence, etc.)

Two immediate examples of "too much technology" that come to mind, because I have experienced them within the past few days:

1) Bluetooth is soon to be 26 years old, yet my model year 2022 smartphone cannot reliably communicate with my model year 2022 vehicle's head unit via Bluetooth to play music or relay audio during phone calls. I cannot tell you how many point releases of smartphone software (or vehicle head unit software) have been released since I have owned both the phone and the via Bluetooth, but Bluetooth has never worked correctly on any of them. Why?

2) On some recent releases of macOS Sonoma, the OS can read FAT* formatted USB media without issue, while other releases (to include 14.3.1) cannot read FAT* formatted USB media. Regarding 14.3.1: on 14.3, I could read and write to FAT* USB drives just fine, but I could not type an email longer than a couple of lines without the UI overlaying text on top of other text in the email, making the entire text of the email illegible. When 14.3.1 (with the text overlaying issue fixed) was available, I applied the update right away. Now I can write emails without issue, but I cannot read FAT* formatted USB drives. Why?

[vel0city]

I've had nearly flawless Bluetooth support across several different car brands and devices in my cars for well over a decade. Pair it once, and it just works all day every day. I truly don't understand people saying Bluetooth is unreliable, I've personally never experienced it and I use Bluetooth across several different devices every day.

Even now, my phone's Bluetooth is my key to the car. I don't normally carry any other key.

[pasabagi]

> All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.

This is kind of a weird take: I was reading about the Therac 25 (radiation therapy machine that killed a few people because of software bugs), and one of the reasons why they were so confident it was going to work is that software isn't vulnerable to two classes of 'bugs' that analog devices suffer from: wear, and manufacturing defects.

I mean, they turned out to be wrong, but they have a point: physical devices are subject to entire categories of bugs that software can be reliably proofed against. All worm screws will ultimately fail, while software can (if done correctly) run forever. All manufactured devices are unique and have unique defects. Software can be reproduced without any defects whatsoever.

[Kbelicius]

> physical devices are subject to entire categories of bugs that software can be reliably proofed against.

electronics != software

> All worm screws will ultimately fail, while software can (if done correctly) run forever.

You also need a machine to run that software forever.

[int_19h]

Worm screws have a known and simple failure mode, however, which people understand. It can also take a very long time to fail depending on the design - longer than the useful life of the product in many cases.

Software fails suddenly and unexpectedly, and when it does, it's rarely clear how to mitigate it. Witness all the "turn it off and on again" jokes...

[pasabagi]

Mechanical objects frequently fail unexpectedly, especially if you're trying to do something weird or unusual. We're just used to living in a world of machines that are in their second century of iterative improvement.

I make installation art, and from personal experience, despite being an equally shitty programmer as I am an engineer, the software is way more reliable, and there are way fewer ways in which it can fail. Anything from materials being not what they say they are, to some jackass accidentally making earth live, to stuff catching on fire - it's all possible.