Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why you've never been in a plane crash

asteriskmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 310 posts

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#111

Post by josephg »

lmz wrote: post #91
josephg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might do the opposite. Imagine if the company was held responsible for the quality of the software regardless of how it was made. I suspect it would be much easier to meet any quality standards if software was written in-house.

It would get outsourced to the first provider who can indemnify the company against any failures in the software. Whether or not any provider would dare to provide such a service however...

However it happens, it still attaches a legal & financial cost to lazy security practices. And makes it actually in companies' best interest to do security auditing. I think that would be a net win for computer security - and consumers everywhere.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#112

Post by ericbarrett »

latexr wrote: post #65
throwaway713 wrote: post #34

This concept of a blameless culture reminds me of one time when I was talking to a SWE at Facebook around 2010. I don’t know whether the story is actually true or just folklore, but apparently someone brought down the whole site on accident once, and it was pretty obvious who did it. Zuckerberg was in the office and walked up to the guy and said something along the lines of “Just so you are aware, it would probably t…

> Just so you are aware, it would probably take a lifetime or more to recoup the revenue lost during that outage. But we don’t assign blame Assuming that’s accurate, it’s a pretty shitty way to put it. “Hey man, just so you know you should owe me for life (and I pay your salary so I decide that), but instead of demanding your unending servitude, I’m going to be a chill dude and let it slide. I’m still going to point…

I was an FB infra engineer in 2010. It's not accurate, there was already a "retro" SEV analysis process with a formal meeting run by Mike Schroepfer, who was then Director of Engineering. I attended many of them. He is a genuinely kind person who wouldn't have said anything so passive-aggressive. Also, many engineers broke the site at one time or another. I agree this is just a mutation of the Watson quote.

The only time I ever saw an engineer get roasted in the meeting was when they broke the site via some poor engineering (it happens), acknowledged the problem (great), promised to fix it, then the site went down two weeks later for the same reason (not great but it happens) and they tried to weasel out of responsibility by lying. Unfortunately for them there were a bunch of smart people in the room who saw right through it.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#114

Post by beAbU »

izacus wrote: post #33
josephg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the number of data breaches we see cropping up, I wonder if a similar law could be written to hold companies liable for the safe handling of personal data.

TBH having software engineer output in general be liable to some minimum safety, correctness and quality standard would be a god send for the world. But of course the developers will revolt against that.

If you want to call yourself "engineer" then at a minimum all those standards and minimum requirements should apply, no questions asked.

I've heard stories of hauling civil engineers out of retirement and in front of a tribunal after some structure that collapsed before it's time, or it was found that the original design was flawed in some way.

An engineer "signing off" on something actually means something, with actual stakes.

Of course the "developers" will revolt against this, because they are not engineers. A developer does not get to sign off on anything, and everything they do must be scrutinised by the engineer in charge before it can be deployed.

Doing this for your common run-of-the-mill CRUD app or HTML website is obviously overkill. Just like you don't need an engineer to replace a broken window or hang a new door. But when it comes to things that actually matter, like data safety and privacy, you must ensure you bring in the right culture (let alone job title).

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#115

Post by Angostura »

roenxi wrote: post #66
throwaway713 wrote: post #34

This concept of a blameless culture reminds me of one time when I was talking to a SWE at Facebook around 2010. I don’t know whether the story is actually true or just folklore, but apparently someone brought down the whole site on accident once, and it was pretty obvious who did it. Zuckerberg was in the office and walked up to the guy and said something along the lines of “Just so you are aware, it would probably t…

Someone get Zuck an above-average-manager award. But that isn't quite what you want in a blameless culture. The right response looks something like ignoring the engineer, gathering the tech leads and having an extremely detailed walkthrough of exactly what went wrong, how they managed to put an engineer in a position where an expensive outage happened and then they explain why it is never going to happen again. And a…

Perhaps one slight amendment - maybe don't ignore the engineer, but ask them (in a separate, private meeting) if they have any thoughts on the factors that lead to it, and any ideas they have on how it could be avoided in future. Could be useful when sanity-checking the tech-leads ideas

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#116

Post by dalmo3 »

kqr wrote: post #109
Jensson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cost which often gets quoted with those mistakes is not a real cost It is still money they would have made that now weren't made. It is very important to explain to people how much value is lost during these events so that we also correctly value the work to prevent such events in the future.

You're comparing "reality where accident happened" to "an alternate reality where everything is exactly the same but the accident did not happen" and this is not a sensible comparison. The reality we have produced the accident. You can't have that reality and have it not produce the accident, because it was set up to produce the accident. Proof: it produced the accident. To avoid the accident, you need an alternative…

Sure, the probability that things that have happened will have happened is 1.

The real test for hard determinists is being able to conclude that the probability of things that will happen is also 1. At that point there's no such thing as "falsifiable".

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#117

Post by 946789987649 »

roenxi wrote: post #66
throwaway713 wrote: post #34

This concept of a blameless culture reminds me of one time when I was talking to a SWE at Facebook around 2010. I don’t know whether the story is actually true or just folklore, but apparently someone brought down the whole site on accident once, and it was pretty obvious who did it. Zuckerberg was in the office and walked up to the guy and said something along the lines of “Just so you are aware, it would probably t…

Someone get Zuck an above-average-manager award. But that isn't quite what you want in a blameless culture. The right response looks something like ignoring the engineer, gathering the tech leads and having an extremely detailed walkthrough of exactly what went wrong, how they managed to put an engineer in a position where an expensive outage happened and then they explain why it is never going to happen again. And a…

I would say you need to acknowledge and talk to the engineer. They will be stressed and upset, highlighting there is no blame will ease that.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#118

Post by josephg »

mnau wrote: post #110
pintxo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By having professionals agree on a minimal set, and writing them down?

So you propose no idea of "minimal set". If a liability is proposed, it has to be reasonably binary state: compliant/non-compliant. Just like every time, there is no concrete proposal what constitute "minimal set". That's like "make education better", with no concrete plan. We can agree on goal, but on on the method.

There are several ways we could write a list of best practices. But the simplest would be to simply attach a financial cost to leaking any personal data to the open internet. This is essentially how every other industry already works: If my building falls down, the company which made it is financially liable. If I get sick from food poisoning, I can sue the companies responsible for giving me that food. And so on.

We could also write a list of "best practices" - like they do in the construction and aviation industries. Things like:

- Never store personal data on insecure devices (eg developer laptops which have FDE disabled or weak passwords)

- Install (or at least evaluate) all security updates from your OS vendor and software dependencies

- Salt all passwords in the database

And so on. If you locked some competent security engineers in a room for a few days, it would be pretty easy to come up with a reasonable list of practices. There would have to be some judgement in how they're applied, just like in the construction industry. But if companies are held liable if customer data was leaked as a result of best practices not being followed, well, I imagine the situation would improve quite quickly.

Its boring work. Compliance is always boring. But it might be better than the current situation, and our endless list of data breaches.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#119

Post by pintxo »

mnau wrote: post #110
pintxo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By having professionals agree on a minimal set, and writing them down?

So you propose no idea of "minimal set". If a liability is proposed, it has to be reasonably binary state: compliant/non-compliant. Just like every time, there is no concrete proposal what constitute "minimal set". That's like "make education better", with no concrete plan. We can agree on goal, but on on the method.

Well, I interpreted your question 'How do you define "minimum safety, correctness and quality standard"?' as to be about the process, not about the outcome.

I actually have not invested much thought into what the outcome should/would be as I think it's unlikely to happen anyway. So why invest time? But maybe ask the author of the original comment?

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#120

Post by pintxo »

josephg wrote: post #118
mnau wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you propose no idea of "minimal set". If a liability is proposed, it has to be reasonably binary state: compliant/non-compliant. Just like every time, there is no concrete proposal what constitute "minimal set". That's like "make education better", with no concrete plan. We can agree on goal, but on on the method.

There are several ways we could write a list of best practices. But the simplest would be to simply attach a financial cost to leaking any personal data to the open internet. This is essentially how every other industry already works: If my building falls down, the company which made it is financially liable. If I get sick from food poisoning, I can sue the companies responsible for giving me that food. And so on. We…

> But if companies are held liable if customer data was leaked as a result of best practices not being followed, well, I imagine the situation would improve quite quickly.

One might argue that GDPR does exactly this, it holds companies financially liable for data leaks. Would you say it has improved the situation?

Post reply on HN