31–40 of 94 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So like suicide, drugs and other and other cases where we are denied dominion over ourselves for our own good? IE. Your life and body are not yours, they belong to society and you only get limited access.
Society doesn't have to give you the rope to hang yourself.
But the sad news is, we carry around with us portable surveillance circlets which have the ability to access our medical conditions. We give it information voluntarily, and through occasional advertorials, this practice is becoming more normalized and accepted. I'm not convinced that the convenience outweighs the trouble this is going to bring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quality of life critical software should be ensured by FDA certification. Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified.
> Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified. The official modifications of that software — in the name of "profit" — are currently risking the patient’s life and health, and therefore should also be illegal by your logic. Surely you must also support effective (ie harsh/deterrent) prosecution and punishment for thes…
I think this is the key part of the comment - yes, uncertified changes by anyone could feasibly be illegal. The FDA or similar should probably do code reviews.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified. The official modifications of that software — in the name of "profit" — are currently risking the patient’s life and health, and therefore should also be illegal by your logic. Surely you must also support effective (ie harsh/deterrent) prosecution and punishment for thes…
>>>should be illegal if uncertified. I think this is the key part of the comment - yes, uncertified changes by anyone could feasibly be illegal. The FDA or similar should probably do code reviews.
What if you fix a bug in your own pacemaker? Would it be ok to:
a) Fine you?
b) Jail you?
c) Force you to revert the change? (plausibly leading to death in an extreme case)
[edit: I do agree that there's a chance that making a 'fix' to your own pacemaker might also make it worse. In which case, who do we trust more? The person on the ground with a stake in the matter (however misinformed), or $government_official with no stake in the matter (however well informed).
I think it's tricky! ]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quality of life critical software should be ensured by FDA certification. Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified.
In EU (and probably elsewhere), there are strict rules for the stability of power wheelchair. One such rule is "On a incline of x% (x chosen by the manufacturer), pushing for max speed from stop should not lift the front wheels" To achieve that, the max acceleration must be quite low (software controlled), and the whole experience is sluggish, like trying to steer a car by pulling on rubber bands attached to the whee…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quality of life critical software should be ensured by FDA certification. Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified.
> Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified. The official modifications of that software — in the name of "profit" — are currently risking the patient’s life and health, and therefore should also be illegal by your logic. Surely you must also support effective (ie harsh/deterrent) prosecution and punishment for thes…
Yes, bad software modifications are bad and should be punished wherever they arise.
Homebrew modifications make it way easier for bad stuff to happen, and make it harder to punish.
Great article. Real life horror stories of life-critical software gore, with some good news at the end. It should be illegal to sell software that someones life depends upon without giving the user the right to inspect and modify the code.
Quality of life critical software should be ensured by FDA certification. Homebrew modifications of that software, even in the name of “freedom”, risks the patient’s life and health and should be illegal if uncertified.
Control software is much more involved topic, let me illustrate it with a scenario: one family member is non-techy but has an insulin pump, another family member is techy and likes to hack around, they made a change to the insulin pump software to "improve it", but by accident the change triggered insulin overdose at night during sleep and family member died. We have rules and regulations not just to have rules and regulations, we have rules and regulations because they are written in blood.
While advocating for ability to freely modifying any life dependant control software is a noble goal, in my opinion it's the wrong end to approach it, instead it would be more constructive if we as computer science industry figure out ways how to make software such as we don't kill people, how to "certify" it in self service fashion (validation passed == no-one will die), etc, it's no trivial and it feels this particular part of our industry is not as developed/main stream as compared to something like civil engineering. If we have easy ways to ensure that modifying software will not lead to death then it will be easier to change the legislation to enforce this freedom.
Great article. Real life horror stories of life-critical software gore, with some good news at the end. It should be illegal to sell software that someones life depends upon without giving the user the right to inspect and modify the code.
I have an ICD (implanted cardioverter-defibrillator) to save my life if my heart stops. I was also given a proprietary box that sits at home, reads data from it and sends it to my cardiologist over a cellular network, on demand. As part of periodic remote checkups I'm supposed to sit next to it, press the button, which causes it to read data and send any abnormal heart rhythms it detected (via cellular network), whet…
I wish more programmers would refuse to contribute to this kind of exploitation.
Great article. Real life horror stories of life-critical software gore, with some good news at the end. It should be illegal to sell software that someones life depends upon without giving the user the right to inspect and modify the code.
I have an ICD (implanted cardioverter-defibrillator) to save my life if my heart stops. I was also given a proprietary box that sits at home, reads data from it and sends it to my cardiologist over a cellular network, on demand. As part of periodic remote checkups I'm supposed to sit next to it, press the button, which causes it to read data and send any abnormal heart rhythms it detected (via cellular network), whet…