[horsawlarway]

And yet someone IS pushing code to these devices. Every single one.

So the question really becomes - Are these people working on their own pumps with open source more or less invested than the random programmers hired by a company that pretty clearly can't get details right around licensing, and is operating with a profit motive?

More reckless as well? Perhaps. But at least motivated by the correct incentives.

[dullcrisp]

So flying in a plane you built yourself is in fact safer than flying commercial because the motivations line up. Got it.

[AnthonyMouse]

You, an engineer at a major aircraft manufacturer that isn't Boeing, have been working after hours with some of your colleagues on a hobby project to add some modern safety features to an older model of small private plane, because you regard it as unsafe even though it still has a government certification and you got into this field because you want to save lives.

Your "prototype" is a plane from the original manufacturer with no physical modifications but a software patch to use data from sensors the plane already had to prevent the computer from getting confused under high wind conditions in a way that has already caused two fatal crashes.

Now you have to fly somewhere and your options for a plane are the one with the history of fatal crashes or the same one with your modifications, and it's windy today. Which plane are you getting on?

[sarusso]

This example is so right. Including the parallel with what happened with those two aircrafts.

[amrocha]

Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself!

Are you kidding me? How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself!

Nobody said it was untested.

> How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.

Which applies just the same to the people the company hired to do it, and now we're back to "the people with a stronger incentive to get it right are the people who die if it goes wrong".

[amrocha]

I can’t tell if you seriously think a random person writing code in their basement is equivalent to a company that has access to API docs, design specs, actual test hardware, the expertise of a ton of engineers that have worked on the project and understand how it can go wrong, not to mention all the regulations and verifications they’re subject to.

But if you do then wow. That really puts in perspective the kind of people that use hacker news. I’m gonna be more selective about who I bother replying to going forward.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I can’t tell if you seriously think a random person writing code in their basement is equivalent to a company that has access to API docs, design specs

Are you saying not having those things is dangerous? They should be required to publish all of that for safety-critical devices then.

> actual test hardware

Why would arbitrary people be unable to buy test hardware? Again something to be addressed if true rather than used as an excuse.

> the expertise of a ton of engineers that have worked on the project and understand how it can go wrong

Do they not have internet access? If they don't even work for the company anymore then that could be the only way to access that information.

Literally something which is happening on the linked Reddit page.

> not to mention all the regulations and verifications they’re subject to.

Regulations are for preventing someone else from harming you. You don't need a government incentive to protect you from yourself, you already come with that incentive.

[tstrimple]

Tested how? With 100% "unit test" coverage? I can certainly see how a random person on the internet might be highly motivated and actually talented enough to contribute to these sorts of projects. But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have. They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability. If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault.

I say this as someone who might modify my own medical devices because I'm so fucking jaded over the capitalist march towards enshitification and maximizing profit over human lives. There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree. It requires rigorous testing across hundreds to thousands of test cases. They at best can give you the recipe that works well for them and the few people that have voluntarily tried their version. That doesn't scale and certainly isn't any safer than corporate solutions.

[f1shy]

Why do people think constantly something made by some random company is automatically better than something made "DIY".

I totally understand, that because of liability and some more availability of resources, you would expect a company product to be "safe". BUT: if it is your butt that is going to be in the line, then I bet you: you will be much more careful that a random engineer in some random company. About the resources available in a big company, they are usually more directed to marketing, legal (including lobbing to avoid right to repair) and oder areas to maximize revenue, and not exactly in quality.

I worked in 2 different big companies which worked in "mission critical systems" and boy! I can tell you some stories about how unsafe is what they do, and how much money is invested in "cover your ass" instead of making products better/safer.

[AnthonyMouse]

> But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have.

Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants. You're not going from stone tools to jet engines in a month, but you could fix a bug in one in that time.

> They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability.

Things that exist to try to mitigate the misalignment of incentives that comes from paying someone else to create something you depend on. Better for the incentives to align to begin with.

Notice also that these things are floors, not ceilings. The company is only required to do the minimum. You can exceed it by as much as you like.

> If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault.

And then if the community version fixes a bug that would have killed you and you stick with the commercial version you can sue them for killing you. Except that you're dead.

> There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree.

Basically the entire population is on the internet, so the set of them includes all the people doing it for a corporation. Are they going to forget how to do their jobs when they go home, or when they or a member of their family gets issued another company's device and they want it to be right?

[mindslight]

Flying in a plane you built yourself is likely safer than flying in the same model of plane built by a company that assembled it for you using lowest-bid labor while making you sign a twenty page lawyer barf disclaiming liability.

[TylerE]

We have decades of data saying that isn’t true. Homebuilt aircraft have much worse accident rates than factory built aircraft.

[habinero]

Are you really comparing an amateur skillset to designs from paid engineers made on a company assembly line with QC?

Why on earth would you think an experimental aircraft made by a hobbyist would be safer?

[mindslight]

See my other follow up comment ("same model"). Medical device software development feels much closer to homegrown (or worse) than aeronautical engineering.

[f1shy]

Why do you think a random person, who is VERY passionate about something, as to invest all the free hours in life to do something, is less skilled that one who just does it because is needed to survive?

Sorry. I would be much more inclined to have something made by somebody passionate about it, as done by some guy that received hopefully some kind of instruction on how to do things and was then left alone.

In this context (GA) we are not comparing Airbus/Boeing with a garage build. We are comparing some small company making 2 seaters with your hangar and maybe 10 certified aircraft mechanics that will help you a lot on the process.

[AdelaideSimone]

And why do you think pathos arguments are logical? Granted, they didn't cite them, but assuming it is true, empirical studies showing the accident rates are the logical point from which to draw conclusions. What you would like, how you and others feel about it, and what you would expect are meaningless.

You're also equivocating. They made it extremely clear they are referring to hobbyist and other such groups with vague or unknown qualifications; whereas, you go in and make stipulated claims about small businesses with certified mechanics, etc. These two are clearly not the same category, making your argument non-responsive. It's also contradictory in terms of discussed liabilities and such, as the small company, and its mechanics, that whoever worked with, would have liability as well, as opposed to the "random git repo".

[jacquesm]

You write that as if you have ample experience with codebases of medical devices and I'm going to take a stab at this and say that you don't. Prove me wrong.

[amrocha]

You can’t honestly believe that or you wouldn’t be able to function in society.

[mindslight]

My comment rests on the fact that the types of planes you can build yourself are completely different models than the fully assembled models from the likes of Boeing etc. I do agree that a kit 737, if such a thing existed, would be less safe than one off the line.

[amrocha]

I would still trust a cessna way more than any plane built or modified by a single person.

[jacquesm]

I think the Beechcraft Bonanza deserves special mention here. I'm sure all the people that worked on it were experts too!

The big problem with this analogy is that it conflates three very important things:

- GA is more dangerous, period. Doesn't matter whether you build the plane yourself or if you bought it ready made (hopefully new, hopefully very well maintained if second hand)

- GA craft tend to have less experienced pilots than airliners, but even airliner pilots tend to do worse as GA pilots than when they're at work. The reason for that is simple: the processes are what keeps commercial aviation (mostly) safe.

- GA craft tend to kill the pilots, because they are more often than not the only person on the plane.

- GA craft have malfunctions like larger aircraft, there is nothing special about them in that sense. But there is something that they don't have that larger aircraft do have: redundancy. In electronics systems, in the design of the mechanical bits, and finally in the people.

- GA craft that are designed and built by their operators are experimental class for a reason: they are untested and so more likely to fail than the ones that are certified. The design processes for commercial aircraft are nothing compared to the design processes employed by what we'll call hobbyists to distinguish them.

- And finally, even though it is a fun analogy I only meant it from a skin-in-the-game point of view, a GA hobbyist is still going to do his level best to make sure that he's not going to get killed. Boeing executives only care about the bottom line, safety is a distant second. And based on my experience with the difference between the guts of various bits and pieces of avionics and the software that they run on compared to my experience looking at medical devices, their guts and the software that they run on I would be more than happy to bet that the loop hackers know as much more more about the failure modes of these devices as the manufacturers do.

Cleanroom manufacturing under sterile conditions is the main differentiator here, and that just applies to the hardware, and it is an art that the medical industry understands very well. Electronics is already at a lower level of competence and their software knowledge tends to be terrible, not to mention the QA processes on said software.

Programmers working for corporations don't necessarily suddenly grow an extra quality brain when they do their work.

[array_key_first]

You can believe it and simultaneously function in society.

We aren't all building our own planes because it's worse, but because it's time consuming. I don't have 20,000 hours to burn learning about how planes work to make my own.

If we magically beamed the knowledge straight into people's heads and also had a matter fabricator, I'd imagine yes - everyone would build their own plane. And it might be safer, I don't know.

Point is, the ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can believe both and still resolve it internally and with the world

[habinero]

Not the original poster, but that was snark and not meant literally.

Also, building your own plane is absolutely worse, even if you do have expert-level knowledge. That's true for any complex design. Aircraft design, material sourcing, fabrication, assembly and quality control are all very different skill sets, but the real kicker is experience.

The reason why commercial aircraft are so safe is a lot of work goes into investigating and understanding the root causes of accidents, and even more work goes into implementing design fixes and crew training.

[amrocha]

Nope, not snark. You can’t believe that you’re better than everyone else and everyone else is incompetent and still function in society.

If you do then you probably have an undiagnosed mental illness.

[replyifuagree]

Those people on the boeing flights would have appreciated a little more of the correct motivations.

Instead they got McDonnell Douglas'd

As it turns out the motivations matter way more than you might think.