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Comment by JonChesterfield | Hacker News Reader

Uh, maybe not. These things are safety critical and ten days in a workshop is probably a reasonable heuristic for this thing has to be taken out of service and recommissioned from scratch.

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> These things are safety critical and ten days in a workshop is probably a reasonable heuristic for this thing has to be taken out of service and recommissioned from scratch.

This makes little sense. It's pretty reasonable that any machine that is sent for repair may take longer than expected in the workshop. Parts availability for one. Also, manpower shortages, scheduling (we don't need it back until next month) and so on all make this "heuristic" more likely be a scam. This idea that the manufacturer is entitled to a lifetime stream of repair revenue has to stop.

I shudder to think what would happen in the US if an auto manufacturer tried this heuristic on the average owner of a pickup truck.

> I shudder to think what would happen in the US if an auto manufacturer tried this heuristic on the average owner of a pickup truck.

Yeah if you're going to try to pull a scam like that the US is not your best option:

https://nypost.com/2022/12/27/texas-mechanic-executed-over-5...

https://www.thetrucker.com/trucking-news/the-nation/pennsylv...

https://apnews.com/article/auto-shop-shooting-florida-c4d45f...

If you just search "truck owner murders mechanic" you get tons of unique results.

The top comments on that nypost article are insane, blaming the victim for probably doing "unauthorized repairs", and saying that the "southern border" is at fault.

Wow.

> and saying that the "southern border" is at fault

There's people posting like that here on HN.

Nah, the Canadians on HN are too nice to blame us.

I feel like blaming guns might upset some people, but I don't feel like this type of thing happens as much in the rest of the western world, where gun laws are typically a lot stricter.

Don't you ever care about upsetting people who live in countries with unreasonable gun laws. Especially third world countries like the US.

I assume most of it is access to guns. But I do wonder how much is due to people are not using giant ego-soothing trucks in the parts of the world where petrol doesn't get subsidies. So there are fewer truck owners to do the murders.

Total nonsense, car owners murder truck drivers too.

It seems weird to blame guns for the story of a customer running down the mechanic with his vehicle?

That's nuts. Who says those were scams? To me it reads as though the customers had a couple of loose wires.

I'm not saying these were scams. I was just pointing out that customers in the US that feel like they were scammed can often get deadly violent.

Ah ok, I see now. Yes, between deranged and entitled customers and the ready availability of point-and-click interfaces of the fatal variety you can have some pretty bad outcomes.

No, absolutely not.

(1) This was scheduled maintenance service, not a quick repair. Maintenance is complicated and is expected to take more than 10 days:

> Maintenance a train is a complicated affair – it has to be taken apart, the parts sent to the various manufacturers, checked, sent back, the train put back together again and tested. The SPS carries out the maintenance procedures according to the relevant maintenance manual (some 20,000 pages) provided by the manufacturer, but the train does not start after being put together.

From [1].

(2) If this was a legitimate check then there should be a legible error code instead of the train randomly locking up with no explanation why. This was clearly designed to sabotage competing maintenance service companies.

[1] https://badcyber.com/dieselgate-but-for-trains-some-heavywei...

The manufacture's current position is someone hacked their systems and changed the code so that it would make them a lot of money, they totally didn't do that.

>"The president of Newag contacted me," Cieszyński wrote. "He claims that Newag fell victim to cybercriminals and it was not an intentional action by the company. The analysis I saw indicated something else, but for the sake of clarity, I will write about everything.

>Newag president Zbigniew Konieczek said that "no evidence was provided that our company intentionally installed the faulty software. In our opinion, the truth may be completely different—that, for example, the competition interfered with the software."

Which is obviously bullshit made up by the PR agency they hired, designed to muddy the waters. For example, researchers dumped the Train's firmware (in presence of third party witnesses) before and after sending it to the Newag's service, and found that the a backdoor code was recompiled and updated there.

> These things are safety critical and ten days in a workshop is probably a reasonable heuristic for this thing has to be taken out of service and recommissioned from scratch.

I know HN is a great place to practice PR-speak, but could you please stop fucking with the gullible people?

The words were chosen to indicate uncertainty on my part. A train parked in a repair depot for a fortnight triggering a need for more checks before putting it in service? I can totally imagine that spec being signed off in meetings. Fortunately the voting system on here does an excellent job of hiding unpopular thoughts so I doubt I've confused anyone.

You’re just pushing a pretty blatantly uninformed opinion supporting a frankly indefensible position. My car had minor collision damage and it took the manufacture’s 1st party service center 3 weeks to fix it. The assumption that manufacturers are uniquely positioned to repair their products is a poisonous tactic being used by insidious players to discredit right to repair.

This is stretching my sarcasm meter to the breaking point, either you are very good at deadpanning or you are trying really hard to muddy waters that are crystal clear. If the former, well played.

That’s not a long outage. If someone decided to paint it, the clean, prep and paint could take that long. And now you have a dead train.

"Hey, car 1812 needs a new restroom toilet and a couple of new seats."

"Lead time on the toilet is 21 days from the manufacturer."

"Uff, 21 days? That's more than 10! We will have to junk the whole car."

Of course, because we all know that only the manufacturer of such a complicated device can be trusted to maintain it. Oh wait, maintenance of trains is a competitive process? The manufacturer provides a 20,000 page maintenance specific manual? Maybe trains really are simpler than iPhones.

Parent comment is really an indication that society has lost the plot when it comes to ownership. The trains do not belong to the manufacturer after sale. They can't introduce anti-competitive code and pretend that users want it, like phone companies can.

That would make sense if we were talking about something that changes dramatically over time; like a human heart for transplants. Or a nuclear fission core without its carbon bars. But trains don’t change significantly in a 10-day period. I doubt they degrade much after a full year, even. They need to be sturdy.

Ok so no sarcasm, well, there are many reasons a train can spend a long time in the workshop:

Complete checkup takes time, or one important mechanic is sick, delaying things or whatever. It is not the responsibility of the manufactor anymore. (A different company has the official service contract.) If you have other informations pls share.

In at least two cases, the train was simply unused for 10 days for unrelated reasons.

After which the two specific trains this happened to "gained" GPS lockout.

Was that sarcasm?

No sarcasm, just in total disagreement with the (initial/apparent) HN consensus. I've put a top level comment which is hopefully clearer.

You are also disagreeing with the owner and operator of the train, who is responsible for its safe operation.

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