Fixing C's Biggest Mistake

[Don Allen]

On Wednesday, 11 January 2023 at 05:27:05 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
> On 1/10/2023 8:32 PM, Don Allen wrote:
>> Do you carry a cellphone? There are risks, as I'm sure you 
>> well know.
>
> Yeah, I do. But I don't build my life around the phone, because 
> I'm aware of what happens when it gets hacked, stolen, lost, 
> etc. Pegasus can remotely read everything you do on your phone. 
> You can catch Pegasus by clicking on a link. A password manager 
> is useless when faced by that.
>
>
>> I have friends at MIT who won't use them who, I'm quite sure, 
>> would agree with you about password managers. Use credit 
>> cards? See what Richard Stallman has to say about that. Write 
>> checks? Risks.
>
> I've had my credit cards stolen, and my checking account 
> compromised. Both were a fair amount of work to fix. But it's 
> not *ALL* of my online accounts.
>
> I keep things compartmentalized, like how airplanes are 
> designed. Airplanes are deliberately designed to withstand any 
> single failure and land safely. They can lose an engine, a 
> pilot, a wing spar, a hydraulic system, a bird strike, a hole 
> in the cabin, jammed actuators, etc. The incredible safety 
> record of airliners shows this works.

True. But it doesn't work perfectly, which was my point. The 
jammed 737 rudder actuator problem killed a lot of people and it 
took years for the NTSB and Boeing to figure it out. Need I 
mention the DC-10 cargo door latches? You can have ATC errors, 
pilot errors, etc. that get people killed. So flying is not a 
zero-risk proposition, just like everything else we've been 
talking about, including password managers. Again, every case 
requires that we do our own personal calculation to decide 
whether the benefit is worth the risk.

>
> I take my cues from that.