macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
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macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
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Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#2Wow, that’s pretty rare/impressive. It’s not often these days that the killer poke rears its head.
Anyone have more detail here? What is it about the TRAKTOR KONTROL S4 MK3 that makes it vulnerable to damage via software?
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#3Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus?
I wonder how it damages them.
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#4Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.
The device that can be damaged is a DJ controller with haptic feedback. So it has motors in it, and some kind of audio outputs. If the audio levels get turned to maximum or the motors get sent invalid commands, it could cause the device to damage itself. I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast, but anyway it may be reason for them to warn their customers. The editorialized hacker news headline makes it look like Big Sur is to blame, but it could easily be written as “Native Instruments Hardware does not fully support Big Sur and could be damaged if run on Big Sur.”
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#5Wow, that’s pretty rare/impressive. It’s not often these days that the killer poke rears its head. Anyone have more detail here? What is it about the TRAKTOR KONTROL S4 MK3 that makes it vulnerable to damage via software?
No idea but it apparently has motors. Firmware should protect against damage this way but perhaps they didn’t account for the way Big Sur would end up communicating with it.
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#6Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.
The device that can be damaged is a DJ controller with haptic feedback. So it has motors in it, and some kind of audio outputs. If the audio levels get turned to maximum or the motors get sent invalid commands, it could cause the device to damage itself. I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast, but anyway it may be reason for them to warn their customers. The editorialized hacke…
Or, depending on the cause, “Bugs in Native Instruments hardware / drivers can damage their hardware with Big Sur”.
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#7Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.
It's definitely a buggy device/firmware. There is no way an OS update can cause this (barring some massive Apple bug which is unlikely); more likely the device firmware mishandles some valid standard USB commands that older OSes didn't issue.
In general, it's quite common for USB device firmware to be of extremely poor quality; it'll be tested and bugs fixed until it works with the target OSes and drivers, but no comprehensive testing of whether it can deal with all possible standard request patterns is done.
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#8Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.
As I understand it the Kontrol S4 has moving parts (essentially motors) under USB control.
Obviously you could design this sensibly so that no legal inputs result in malfunction let alone damage, but that might cost more, so, do it all in software right? And then you're at the mercy of the software and anything (such as the OS kernel) which that software depends on.
We do teach Computer Science / Software Engineering students not to do this, showing them e.g. the Therac-25 incident as an example of why software control isn't enough - but well, check out how many HN regulars are proud that they either didn't pay any attention in class or never attended and are "self-taught".
SANE (the Free Software document scanner software) has run into cases where it's just cheaper to have code that checks "Is this the end of the bed? If so, turn off the motor" than spend five cents on a limit switch or one cent adding a stop so that the scan head physically can't fall off. Somebody reverse engineering a driver sends "Move scan head" and, to their astonishment, it falls off its rail and their scanner is broken. Oops. Now, who feels comfortable shipping that to users knowing if your finished driver didn't catch every edge case you might destroy their scanner?
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The device that can be damaged is a DJ controller with haptic feedback. So it has motors in it, and some kind of audio outputs. If the audio levels get turned to maximum or the motors get sent invalid commands, it could cause the device to damage itself. I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast, but anyway it may be reason for them to warn their customers. The editorialized hacke…
Or, depending on the cause, “Bugs in Native Instruments hardware / drivers can damage their hardware with Big Sur”.
To be fair to the person you're replying to they say:
> I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast
So it sounds like they agree with you.
(Edit: typo)
Re: macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News
#10I think the title is misleading. Most ppl here would know it is a firmware issue most likely.