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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

"reboot"

Crash. My PC does not normally reboot without me having asked it to. If it does so, it's a crash (unless it's fucking windows update).

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Yup, its like an automaker issuing a service bulliten for 'unintentional parking', or 'rapid decelleration'. I get there must always be some marketing involved, but that breaks down fast when it just feels dishonest. That is fast becoming a trend with Intel it seems. And intel desprately needs trust from an industury that depends on them. I really hope they can refocus, and not die a slow death of 'everything's fine'.

Apple did it since approximately forever for kernel crashes as well. Anything to avoid any agency and shift the blame onto the user. https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

From the same page:

> Your computer restarted because of a problem: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

> Your computer was restarted because of a problem: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

Isn't that the message you get if you forcefully power off (long-press power) a hanging mac, instead of a panic where it would reboot automatically after the core dump?

Yeah, it is. A kernel panic dumps a vague message into the middle of the screen prompting you to reboot, in a bunch of different languages.

But in recent years, it also reboots quickly enough that you'd have to be sitting there watching to catch it.

Out of all of these types of terms, I like the aviation industry's term for a crash the most: uncontrolled flight into terrain.

Or rocketry: rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Unequested fission surplus.

Rocketry's synonym to that is lithobraking.

.. causing rapid plastic deformation.

The phrase I have heard is controlled descent into terrain. Sounds much calmer.

To be fair, controlled flight into terrain unfortunately also has precedent.

> unintentional parking

That one doesn't have to be a euphemism; I could totally see a self-driving car seeing a parking space beside you as you're driving down the road, and suddenly deciding that it would really rather slot itself in there than keep driving.

I'm not happy with the wording, but if the problem it actually causes the systems to entirely reset and go to post again automatically, spontaneously reboot probably is more accurate than crash, as it implies crash (but the implication may be missed by some). Also, depending on the role of the system, and how often the reboots happen, which is worse of a crash and a spontaneous reboot may be different. A reboot once a day is different than a reboot once every 10 minutes which is different than a continuous reboot prior to completing the boot process.

A reboot might be a crash in disguise, followed by a hardware watchdog timeout.

Worse than that: they were telling the press that “computers were rebooting _more_often_than_normal_”

Most people in the press, and their consumers, expect computers to be rebooted on a regular basis. "Have you tried turning it off and on again" isn't just a line from the IT Crowd, it's been the way of the PC world for decades.

Sure, but this is like describing a scenario where automobile brakes are randomly spontaneously being applied as “cars are being parked more often than usual.”

It highlights the lack of computer literacy in the population at large that they can get away with saying something like this (which makes it seem not as bad as it actually is)

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