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Comment by k0k0 | Hacker News Reader

Your experience is quite limited. Too limited to have a meaningful opinion on this subject frankly.

> Your experience is quite limited. Too limited to have a meaningful opinion on this subject frankly.

I am having quite the big problem with this getting downvoted. The poster is spot on here and this needs to be communicated. Not doing so is irresponsible. Overconfidence in this regard is extremely dangerous and there is no nicer way to say this.

You can not reasonably assume that you are able to judge something works reliably without understanding how the error cases look. Especially if these are capsuled from you and or you dont know what to look out for.

This is at the very core of why something like the post scandal was possible. People repeating the same mistake in this very thread is just really bad. The only thing worse would be not telling them this.

Please don't cross into personal attack. If you know more than someone else, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know—without putdowns or snark—so the rest of us can learn.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Enlighten us then.

No one else but you can provide you with experience. Hardware has both bugs (defects) and it fails, sometimes in ways not gracefully. An experienced multidisciplinary developer is certain to encounter them at some point. Depending on the discipline this may be a very common occurrence or it may be rare. Devs working at either extremes of scale are more likely to encounter these problems. Defects may go unnoticed due to software workarounds of all things

Here is just one example to get you started: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/08/10/bh-2011-bit-squa...

https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/design/confid...

A very common problem is bugs caused by cosmic radiation if you want an example. But bugs in silicon are also not rare and really difficult to catch. You really got to stick your neck out and hope you can actually proof that through stuff like debugging with electron microscopes. Especially if it becomes an issue of responsibility between different departments. The monetary stakes make this all the more difficult.

Hardware bugs are simply capsuled better so people dont recognize them as such. Its the same mechanism at play as for people who assume software normally functions. They are also just unaware of the inner working.

Stuff is just really complicated and people should manage their expectations. I get that going from assuming to have a solid base to no such thing existing is difficult to handle but there is no sensible way around that. Not doing so gets you stuff like the article.

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