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by Eddy_Viscosity2
642 days ago
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Assuming the level of certification will be proportionate the potential risk/harm, then this is actually totally ok. Like would you want to fly in a plane built but a bootstrap startup that had no certifications? Or go in a submarine to extremely deep ocean tours of the titanic? Or put in a heart device? Or transfer all of your savings to a startup's financial software that had no proof of being resilient to even the most basic of attacks? For me, its a hard no. The idea of risk/harm based certification and liability is overdue. |
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There's a different thread on HN about the UK Foundations essay. It gives the example of the builders of a nuclear reactor being required to install hundreds of underwater megaphones to scare away fish that might otherwise be sucked into the reactor and, um, cooked. Yet cooking fish is clearly normal behavior that the government doesn't try to restrict otherwise.
This type of thing crops up all over the place where government certification gets involved. Not at first, but the ratchet only moves in one direction. After enough decades have passed you end up with silliness like that, nobody empowered to stop it and a stagnating or sliding economy.
> Like would you want to fly in a plane built but a bootstrap startup that had no certifications?
If plenty of other people had flown in it without problems, sure? How do you think commercial aviation got started? Plane makers were startups once. But comparing software and planes (or buildings) is a false equivalence. The vast majority of all software doesn't hurt anyone if it has bugs or even if it gets hacked. It's annoying, and potentially you lose money, but nobody dies.