Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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I don't understand your comment either. You say you don't understand and then you give a choice between two narrow interpretations neither of which seems to cover what I wrote.

To make this a bit more productive:

If Apple were liable for their defective products then they might decide not to ship them at all until they can be sure enough that the risk of the lawsuits putting them out of business is small enough that they can absorb it.

This worked wonders for other industries (notably: automotive, airlines, medicine). It may slow them down a bit, you may have a wait a bit longer for the next iteration of some gadget. But that's a small price to pay in my opinion.

As for the NSO group: I'm suggesting that Apple use their well filled cash coffers to buy these guys out, and failing that that they use some of that money to sue them for all of the damages that Apple incurs as a result of their actions as well as any criminal charges that they might get to stick. See 'Skylarov'.

It wouldn't be the first time that a US judge finds fault with a foreign company. At a minimum it would slow them and their employees down to the point that they will be in a US jail the next time they visit Disneyland. If it works against illegal gambling operations I see no reason why that sort of mechanism can't be brought to bear against state sponsored hacking groups and their employees.

> If Apple were liable for their defective products then they might decide not to ship them at all until they can be sure enough that the risk of the lawsuits putting them out of business is small enough that they can absorb it.

I think this works best at that level, like if there’s a sliding scale based on your company’s importance to normal people’s security. I think a lot of developers are worried that their two person consulting team is suddenly liable for bugs but it’s totally reasonable to say that Tim Cook should shake the spare change out of his office couch, call Graydon Hoare into his office and say “here’s a billion dollars, who should we hire so I never hear the phrase ‘buffer overflow’ again?”

Exactly. And if Apple can't do it then we should declare defeat.

> If Apple were liable for their defective products then they might decide not to ship them at all until they can be sure enough that the risk of the lawsuits putting them out of business is small enough that they can absorb it.

> This worked wonders for other industries (notably: automotive, airlines, medicine). It may slow them down a bit, you may have a wait a bit longer for the next iteration of some gadget. But that's a small price to pay in my opinion.

That's quite a big price for non life-critical equipment that is a billion times more complex than a pacemaker or the safety-critical parts of an airplane or car.

If there is anything that is life critical for a large number of people then it is their phones.

I think pacemakers are a lot more life critical than your phone.

I broke my phone once. I did not die in the next five minutes

Pacemakers are one of literally millions of regulated medical devices. If my CPAP fails one night, I don't die, but it's still regulated to ensure it's not gonna fail. You want this to be pacemakers vs Tetris but it's not. It's hearing aids and contact lenses and insulin pumps and wheelchairs and nebulizers and all kinds of devices that will not get you killed if they fail AND YET they are highly regulated and rightly so.

I mean, i assumed from context it was meant regulated in the way life-critical devices are regulated, since the mentioned industries like airlines that have elements that must apply with the regulations life-critical software has to be (e.g. full mc/dc test coverage and what not).

If the goal posts are being moved to regulated in any form, phones already meet this criteria as there exists regulations they are subject to.

So what regulation precisely did you have in mind and would it prevent the issue being discussed?

A billion times more complex than the safety-critical parts of an airplane? I think you lack perspective on avionics packages and the safety measures that are undertaken in that industry. Additionally, I think you're vastly over estimating how complex a smartphone is.

A billion might be hyperoble (although i dont think its a totally unreasonable guess either), but phone software is many GB large, i could easily believe that there are a million more MC/DC points in phone software, than in the safety critical part of airplane software.

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