FCC updates covered list to include foreign-made consumer routers

> The analogy does work. The house is any software provided by any vendor.

Even before we start, you immediately have a problem. When a house is built, the thing to be inspected is built in the jurisdiction requiring the inspection.

If you have some code being written in China or India and some US jurisdiction wants to require the sort of programming practices you're suggesting, is the US going to send inspectors to other countries? How do they even validate that the processes are being followed either way? And what are you proposing to do with all the existing code that was written in the past? Requiring the company to have a checklist included in their book of procedures that nobody is actually following doesn't solve anything.

The way this nominally works for building inspections is that the inspector waits until after the work is done and then inspects the work, but that's a validation of the result rather than the procedures. The equivalent for code is an audit, which is dramatically more labor intensive for the government than sending someone to have a quick look to see if the wires appear to be hooked up right, if you expect it to actually do anything.

> I think the problem here is there's too many armchair experts saying "Can't be done" when they don't know what they're talking about

There are too many armchair experts saying "if they can land a man on the moon then surely they can land a man on the sun."

> That's not the way it is in the trades, in medicine, in law, and those folks actually have more to think about than software engineers, and more restrictions

First notice that you're listing all the professions where costs are out of control and the incumbents have captured the regulators to limit supply.

On top of that, those regulations are not even effective in solving the analogous problem. For example, the ethical requirements for lawyers nominally require them to do the thing public defenders aren't provided with the ability to do, i.e. spend enough time on the case to give the client adequate representation. Public defenders are given more clients by the state than they have the resources to actually represent. Quite unsurprisingly, this utterly fails to solve the problem of indigent defendants not having adequate representation.

But that's the thing most analogous to what you're proposing. If you nominally require companies to do something they otherwise have no real incentive to do, which you have no efficient way of verifying that they've done, and provide them no additional resources to do it, you can't expect "they will now do it well" to be the result.

> I think SWEs are just trying to get out of doing work and claiming it's too difficult, and the industry doesn't want to stop the free ride of lack of accountability it's had for decades.

What makes you think the software developers are the ones objecting to it? They, and the incumbent companies trying to raise costs on smaller upstarts, are the ones trying to establish a new racket and exclude newcomers from the industry. The ones objecting are the customers, and anyone who values efficiency and efficacy.

> We need to stop screwing around and create the software building code, before the government does it for us.

"We need to stop screwing around and create the Torment Nexus, before the government does it for us."

You’re just saying it’s painful and don’t want to do it which is the purpose of the law.

It's quite different. The transceiver in your device is mainly a low-power receiver, transmit power is limited to ~100mW at best. Meanwhile a typical AP can go up to 1W per antenna for transmit. Also, the firmware that operates the wifi stack on your network card is not open source or user-modifiable beyond firmware updates issued by the manufacturer. I suggest reading up on wifi and RF before going further.

I can't change what you believe, but as far as I understand the American manufacturing industry, there is zero chance they could build a WiFi 8 router in the time period where it's the current standard. Not low, zero.

This article is a good example: https://archive.is/RAZMJ

Apple, with all their resources, couldn’t even get American screws. Now, if they really wanted to, they could have spun up their own screw manufacturing, eventually. But for a router, you need a lot more than screws. Resistors, capacitors, PCBs, plastics, all the secondary and tertiary industries for the materials behind those--it would probably take decades and trillions of dollars.

> But then many consumers value cost or other things over security, which is why you need all the devices to be able to be updated even after the vendor is gone.

This is only possible if the firmware is replaceable. Along with a practical update mechanism it also requires the possibility to create an update package. That can be achieved by using open source components, but there might be other mechanisms. For example making provisions in case of bankruptcy.

> Then why are you talking about a warranty to begin with?

I was making a comparison with warranty law, which exists to ensure a certain minimum bar for quality and longevity of products. Which is usually desired, therefore legal provisions for updateability of hardware should also be required. Note that a firmware update might well become required within the warranty period.

This is by no means a new concern. IP cams, home routers, robot vacuums, and internet-enabled fridges exist for a long time already. The warranty period was never intended to cover "smart" devices. Maybe forcing an extension of the warranty period for such devices is enough to take care of the problem.