Your DS18B20 temperature sensor is likely a fake, counterfeit, clone

Thanks for posting a constructive fact-based comment.

The question of who the victim is under the FTDI scenario is a really interesting one and likely one that is difficult to resolve with absolute certainty. By this I mean that the consequences of various permutations of potential and actual actions require the benefit of time in order to fully grasp. All we can do is attempt predict outcomes based on experience, knowledge of technology, markets, and, of course, the bias every human being brings to the table.

It is important to note that FTDI devices don't just exist in Windows PC's. They are part of a wide range of products covering an unimaginable range of applications. Defects in clones, therefore, can have an equally large and unknowable range of consequences.

In my case I see two scenarios.

The first is what took place: FTDI was forced to retreat, effectively allowing millions of clones to exist unencumbered and without suffering any financial or legal consequences.

On first inspection forcing FTDI to back off was a pro-consumer stance. The victim, in this line of argument, was the consumer and FTDI --to be dramatic-- was the evil greedy corporate actor wanting it all. How dare they!

It is interesting to note that in this narrative the true criminals, the counterfeiters, never seem to be characterized as the culprit, when in fact, they are. It is easy to demonstrate that the marketplace would be safer without fakes.

This, BTW, applies to any product category, not just chips. Simple example: Fake dog food that could potentially kill your dog because the producers don't really care and have no responsibility or accountability to society, whether it be legal or moral.

And yet, if you analyze this scenario, it is also easy to demonstrate that the actual long term outcome is precisely opposite to the desired outcome (protecting the consumer).

How?

By forcing a retreat at such a high level (FTDI devices are everywhere) the message was clear: Counterfeit chips got away with it, will get away with it. Legal and market forces only care about the here and now and will force legitimate companies to not interfere with counterfeiters.

One might say "Nobody issued a statement even remotely resembling what you just said".

True. Nobody ever does. We are defined by our actions. Society and individuals. In this case society cared more about immediate effects rather than the promotion and maintenance of a healthy ecosystem based on laws and regulations that, among other things, respect intellectual property and ownership rights.

The net result of taking this path is easy to predict: Nobody is ever going to challenge counterfeits because of the way the marketplace --due to shortsightedness-- pushed back on FTDI. Nobody wants to be the focus of a mob.

And so we are now in a situation where consumers, because of this path, will remain the victims for decades to come. Today, they, quite literally, have no idea what's inside the devices they purchase and legitimate hardware manufacturers dare not challenge counterfeits for fear of what the mob might do.

This is, at least to me, a clear case of good intentions not thought through to completion actually causing more damage to consumers in the long term in exchange for a short term benefit. This is why I think it was a terrible decision not to take the pain, support FTDI, repair/replace devices and send a strong message to counterfeiters that they risk going bankrupt rather than the opposite.

Part of that encapsulates the second scenario, one where counterfeiters are not allowed to derive financial gains from their operations. That would have been the true pro-consumer stance. And one that would have delivered a future where consumers could have a reasonable certainty of quality, safety and performance from the products they purchase.

I am not going to lay the entire responsibility of the counterfeit problem on the FTDI event, that would be preposterous. However, this was a very clear cause-and-effect case where one choice was to punish counterfeit makers (and the companies who knowingly use their products to increase profits) and the other was to think consumers were being protected by pounding down the legitimate manufacturer when, in reality, the outcome was precisely the opposite when a long term view is taken.

I can't imagine anyone making an argument proposing the unencumbered proliferation of counterfeits (anything, not just chips) is good for consumers. I think what was done with the FTDI case was extremely shortsighted and damaging.

If you really take the time to think it through you should conclude that the forcing FTDI to back off is actually as anti-consumer as you can get. It guarantees long-lasting harm to consumers as counterfeiters now know they can continue to push their devices --of any kind, not just FTDI-- without suffering any consequences.

In other words, when viewed with a long term perspective the mob actually succeeded at protecting the counterfeiters rather than consumers.

That's what people disagreeing with my perspective are missing in this argument.

Show me a legitimate scenario where giving counterfeiters a free pass leads to long term (decades) protections for consumers and there might be something to argue about.

My quote is far better, BTW:

"A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way" --Mark Twain

Most everyone voicing opinions on this thread has zero experience manufacturing products at scale and perhaps even running a non-trivial company. Nobody has held any of these cats by the tail and yet everyone seems to think they understand market and business dynamics.

As my wife puts it (she is a doctor): A google search isn't a medical degree.

I think they were talking about the McMaster-Carr situation, since that is what they generally supply.

No. This is not what engineering is about. Engineering is about making reasonable design trade-offs. Simply throwing dollars at a wall without doing an ROI estimate is called overengineering, and overengineering is bad engineering.

For reliability, where that trade-off sits depends on the application. Aerospace, medical, consumer electronics, and disposable toys will sit in different places. If I lose a mission to Mars saving $100 on part which had a 5% chance of failure within a year, that's very poor engineering. If I include that same part in a $3 toy, bringing the price to $103, that's equally poor engineering.

Whether I trust or trust-and-verify depends on how much the "verify" part costs, how strong my trust is, and what the costs of failure are. Normally, the ROI calculation is easy; capitalist markets work well for this. I can ballpark expected costs.

When working with a customer like the government, the boundaries might be a little bit distorted, since the customer is process-oriented. The government might have a hard salary cap which makes it impossible to bring in qualified engineers, and I might take 3 years with a team of 5 people at $100k to do what one person at $300k could do in 6 months. At the same time, I might have hard requirements on process, such as origin-tracing every part.

The danger is when that becomes in-cultured and spills over to other places. If I'm working for the government, I'll follow government processes, and I understand why those are there. But I won't confuse those processes with good engineering. Once people do, they become poor engineers.

If I've shipped a toy which unwittingly has thousands of fake parts which I thought you made, we'll both have been cheated, and I'll expect you to solve that with me cooperatively. If you hack into my product and brick it, even if you were legally in the right (and you're not), you've lost a customer. That's bad business too.