Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#91

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #87

Sunspark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If programming it was a school project for an 80s kid, might as well try to make its replacement a school project for a 20s kid. If a kid did it back then, the integration can't be that hard. You need to find a decision-maker to agree to the liability of letting some kid implement a system today. What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? Then the parents would sue. It'll never happ…

> What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? The real risk here seems to be "the HVAC stops working, the person who implemented it is indisposed/gone, and there is no entity to recover money from to get someone else to fix it"

[deleted]

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#92

Post by Sunspark » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #87

Sunspark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If programming it was a school project for an 80s kid, might as well try to make its replacement a school project for a 20s kid. If a kid did it back then, the integration can't be that hard. You need to find a decision-maker to agree to the liability of letting some kid implement a system today. What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? Then the parents would sue. It'll never happ…

> What if something goes wrong and all the children roast alive or something? The real risk here seems to be "the HVAC stops working, the person who implemented it is indisposed/gone, and there is no entity to recover money from to get someone else to fix it"

Do you replace your working appliances and vehicles in your home in advance of their failure just in case? Or do you wait, and then spend the money for a repair? Perhaps you could have a backup system in a storage closet?

In the US, school taxes to a school are generally from the local neighbourhood and not the city at large, so advocating for spending to replace something that isn't broken might mean needing to take currently allocated funds from other programs if some contractor says they can only give you a new control system if you agree to let them replace all the boilers as well.

Re: Amiga runs Michigan schools' heating and air conditioning systems (2015)

#93

Post by vaxman » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 6:39 AM UTC

vaxman wrote: post #12

JayMiner.beginSpinning();

Translation: "This post on a Venture Capital website implies that the legacy of Jay Miner's greatest engineering accomplishment is running a Michigan school's heating and air conditioning system, making Jay spin(); in his grave."

Moreover, this story is very old, is probably no longer true, but continues to resurface from time to time.

I think a novel benefit of open source is that it shields engineers from the often fatal consequences of being on the wrong side of a billionaire. As a consequence, there are now a couple of generations of engineers who can't relate to what life in their occupation was like before the open source movement went mainstream.