The day my script killed 10k phones in South America • Hacker News Board

Re: The day my script killed 10k phones in South America

#161

Post by kingcharles » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

inquist wrote: post #37

scollet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you made the wrong call here.

On the plus side, why are they storing gender info in the first place?

Because zero thought went into the account signup form. It just asked for whatever the coder who wrote it thought it needed. Shit, it might even have been me who wrote the signup. I don't remember. This was back in 1999. Now I try to ask for the absolute bare minimum of information to onboard someone. No information at all if I can! Times have changed. Damn, I don't even identify as a binary gender myself anymore and hate forms that ask me.

Re: The day my script killed 10k phones in South America

#162

Post by kingcharles » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #97

kingcharles wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once ran a query on a live production web site thinking I was doing a SELECT but somehow ran an UPDATE which set all the millions of users' gender to 'M', regardless of their selection. Restoring from backups would have been a nightmare. And telling my supervisor would have been a nightmare. So I used everyone's selected title (Mr, Ms, Mrs etc) to reset their gender setting, and then put the keyboard down and went…

What did you do about 'Dr's?

I can't remember if the system had Dr. as an option. Probably not, IIRC.

Re: The day my script killed 10k phones in South America

#163

Post by FDSGSG » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #158

jfrunyon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, please go ahead and show me where the article claims that they "lock[ed] out emergency functions on the phones", thanks.

Okay. It's right there on the title: "my script killed 10k phones". Do you have any reason to believe "killed" means anything lesser than "rendered completely useless, bricked"? Also, there's the fact the software "would lock the low-level features that allowed you to make calls". There is no reason to believe calls to emergency services were exempted. I don't really want to comment on the rest of the article. Actual…

>Do you have any reason to believe "killed" means anything lesser than "rendered completely useless, bricked"

Yeah, because traditionally all the normal ways of locking phones still let 911 calls through. It should be fair to assume so unless stated otherwise.

Re: The day my script killed 10k phones in South America

#164

Post by jfrunyon » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #159

jfrunyon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't, not if you secured the bank loan using the phone. Which you did if you financed it through a carrier. Just like if I go to a bank, get a loan for a car, buy that car, and stop making payments... THE BANK OWNS THE CAR.

I assume that isn't done because the value of the good is too low to justify the effort of repo'ing it.

Correct. Which is why they instead simply disable the device (and this has been done for quite a long time, by the way, with banned IMEI lists, back before phones were useful for anything without a cellular connection).