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Someone will buy this thing.
Someone will hack this thing.
And this someone will make it openWhat annoys me about this is that it implicitly says that if you have more money you deserve to be safer.
Hate to break it to you but that’s kind of what capitalism means.
Next up on the capitalism shit train:
Pay us or we fucking kill your family
That’s gotta be illegal, isn’t it LITERALLY EXTORTION to lock a REQUIRED SAFETY FEATURE behind a paywall?
Imagine if the Fire Extinguisher at your workplace had a fucking credit card slot next to it.
I use a 350€ manual airbag vest that was tested quite well
Here’s a great vid on airbags for motorcycles
Fun fact the manual ones are better
That dude annoys me so much, but his content is usually pretty good. Great points on the different air bag systems.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Here’s a great vid on airbags for motorcycles
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It reportedly checks subscription upon putting the vest on and supposedly won’t turn off mid ride.
The problem is the subscription, not how it was implemented
Yes, but also from an implementation perspective: if I’m making code that might kill somebody if it fails, I want it to be as deterministic and simple as possible. Under no circumstances do I want it:
- checking an external authentication service.
- connected to the internet in any way.
- have multiple services which interact over an API. Hell, even FFIs would be in the “only if I have to” bucket.
It checks the service when booting up before a ride. After that it doesn’t connect to the internet. If you’ve gone past your grace period of 60 days it won’t boot up at all, and it will alert you that the device isn’t active.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the idea of the subscription but it’s important to have accurate information. Did you even read the product page?
That information changes none of my issues; if you don’t see the plethora of potential implementation bugs involved, either you don’t code professionally or you shouldn’t be.
I code professionally, specifically I develop very resilient medical software. From a software perspective, as long as the developers are competent I have no issues with the device. There are so many other things you could take issue with when it comes to the vest, but I’m telling you software just isn’t one of them.
I’m sure the developers are competent, but the reason I care about the design decisions is the same reason the electric brakes on cars don’t interface with its infotainment system; the interface inherently creates opportunities for out of spec behaviour and even if the introduced risk is tiny, the consequence is so bad that it’s worth avoiding.
If you have to have an airbag be controlled by software (ideally the mechanism is physical, like a pull tab), it should be an isolated real time device with monitoring your accelerometer and triggering the airbag be it’s only jobs. If it’s also waiting to hear back from another device about whether your subscription ran out before it starts checking, the risk of failure also has to consider that triggering device.
It can be done perfectly, but it’s software so of course it has bugs.
If the customer is dead, they definitely can’t renew.
Who wouldn’t tout your service if it saved them?
But also… why the fuck does this require a sub?
The argument the company makes is that it allows them to sell the device for cheaper upfront, which means that more people can afford to have one. They sell them for $400. But also fuck them, nobody ever died from HP disabling printers.
Also, if they genuinely wanted to make it more affordable up front in order to get the safety device in more hands, they could charge a chunk initially and then a regular payment plan for so many months. Not paying in perpetuity or we disable it.
But also… why the fuck does this require a sub?
Because “fuck you, we’re rent-seeking and you can’t do anything about it,” that’s why.
And if there’s a bug in that code, you’re fucked.
Safety features should work if everything else fails. Their failure mode can’t be “fuck it, it didn’t work”. Which is directly opposite to the failure mode of a subscription based service.
And if there’s a bug in that code, you’re fucked.
If there’s a bug in your car’s airbag, you’re also fucked.
Pop verification neck to continue.
My dad worked for AAA. Once he got a call because a lady’s car errored out and thought she didn’t have her seatbelt buckled mid-drive, so it shut the engine off. On the freeway.
Even without a subscription, failsafes should always fail safe.
Thorium reactors have a cleverly dumb failsafe. If reactor control fails, there’s a plug that melts and drains the contents into a container that’s not fit for runoff neutron generation.
That’s an example of a failsafe that fits its purpose. It’s still possible to fuck it up, but it would take a lot of effort to do so.
This is why:
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The FTC needs to do its job and start outlawing all these obscene subscription business models for things that are rightfully products, not services. Where’s my goddamned First Sale Doctrine, FTC?!
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Software Engineers working on commercial products need to be professionally licensed, so that proper consequences can be applied for unethical “fail-deadly” designs like this one.
As a software engineer, the thought of my code being responsible for someone’s safety is fucking terrifying. Thankfully I’m not in that kind of position.
From experience though, I can tell you that most of the reasons software is shitty is because of middle or upper management, either forcing idiotic business requirements (like a subscription where it doesn’t fucking belong!) or just not allocating time to button things up. I can guarantee that every engineer that worked on that thing hated it and thought it was fucking stupid.
Licensing would be overkill for most software as it’s not usually life and death. I think in this case since it’s safety equipment it really should have been rejected by NHTSA before it ever hit stores.
I can guarantee that every engineer that worked on that thing hated it and thought it was fucking stupid.
As a software engineer who was also a civil engineer-in-training before switching careers, I think one of the big overlooked benefits of being licensed is that it would give engineers leverage to push back on unethical demands by management.
Management can always just fire the engineering team and hire one overseas. It’s not like it’s even that difficult to do.
I don’t think you understand what being licensed means. It means the state requires that people doing that job hold a license. Offshoring would become illegal.
This is managements fault, not the engineers fault.
We have to implement the requirements we are given. If we don’t, we get fired and they hire someone else who will do it.
If we don’t, we get fired and they hire someone else who will do it.
If we were licensed, any replacement would be similarly ethically bound to refuse and that tactic wouldn’t work.
who’s doing the licensing and do they share my ethics?
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Isn’t that illegal?
I’m pretty sure that “motorcycle airbag vest” is not considered a standard piece of safety equipment by law
Honestly the fact that it has code that says “under condition X, don’t save the user” is concerning in and of itself. I wouldn’t trust this thing in the first place.
First law of robotics:
Money up front.
klim: do you have a subscription for that?
me: guess i’ll die 🤷♂️
More like kil’m, amirite?
Heyoooo
You know, if I’m going to spend my entire adult life in a cyberpunk dystopia, I should at least be able to get Kid Stealth legs.
“which include unlimited warranty”
Are they expecting people to periodically test the device to verify it’s working? This kind of thing is going to be a one shot deal, or at least needing a overhaul after use to be functional again.
Subscribe and ‘test’ afterevery ride, get new gear for free?
They are reusable, they use replaceable argon cannisters, those cannisters cost 130bucks a pop though.
Klim could save a lot of bad pr by just blowing the airbag anyway and sending a bill for the remaining value of the vest after the fact.
But then you’re just financing a vest and that’s not a fancy buzzword that makes the c-suite cream their pants.
If I ever get one of these I’m gonna try hack them to no longer need that stupid subscription
Might be tricky because airbags are single-use. How do you know that your hack worked? If you test it to confirm you lost the air bag, so you’d have to buy at least two, make sure you did the exact same modification on the second one after confirming it worked on the first, and still be unsure if it’s actually going to go off when it matters.
Just don’t buy it.
airbags are single-use. […] If you test it to confirm you lost the air bag
Please try to avoid presenting your hypothesis as fact. If your third sentence was phrased as a question it’d be fine. Currently it’s misinformation.
Of course it can be tested without destroying it. The actual air bag component could be disconnected from the rest of the device and the connection point monitored for the appropriate voltage/current required for activation.
And then you can never be sure you connected it back properly or if there was some anti tamper mechanism it tripped. Probably not, but wouldn’t risk my life with it.
Uh, or just don’t get one? This is a stand-alone product with an unconventional business model. It’s not like they’re forcing it on anyone.
Uh, that’s not really the point? If you’re making a product that aims to promote safety and save lives, then you shouldn’t be able to cancel it at the will of the company. It would be like waking up in the middle of a surgery and the doctor telling you “Hey, looks like your anesthesia subscription expired, so unless you’ve got an extra $20 in your pocket right now, then we’re just going in raw.” If you absolutely NEED the extra money as part of your business model or whatever, then just charge them AFTER the service is used. Don’t just fucking turn the airbag off with no warning because they’re behind on a payment
Nobody really likes the implementation of the insurance model of healthcare, but… You do at least asunderstand the idea behind it, right?
Insurance charges a much lower rate than the actual price, but everyone pays even when they don’t need it. That way the people who aren’t using it cover the people who are. It doesn’t work if you only get charged when you use it.
That’s all this is. You pay a subscription that is much lower than the price of the product. If it gets used, they send you another one.
The cost is fixed, and you don’t have to worry about going without an important piece of safety equipment or incurring further costs after needing to use it.
If you have enough money to buy one directly, nobody is stopping you. This is actually aimed at people who can’t afford that and would not have access to this technology at all otherwise.
