Quote:
Originally Posted by Libby K
Unfortunately I've seen plenty of attitudes that say "I'm GLAD Einstein screwed up, because FIRST sucks and they had it coming". Paraphrased from many emails/FB comments/tweets/what have you, but that's the sentiment.
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I just wanna say that I personally voiced concerns about several issues that did apparently impact Einstein. I was aware of deauth and what it could do. It's part of my daily responsibility to educate myself in security issues and I knew about that for more than a year...though I never imagined that someone would intentionally do that (assuming they did it intentionally which I think we may never know).
My daily activities involve risk analysis. The shear amount of risk means that more often than mitigate all those risks personally (which in a way I have done with by prototyping some things I've offered to FIRST) I spend time writing up that risk and making it clear to other people that they accept what I deem as those risks by not taking some mitigating action (whether it's the one I recommend or not is up to them).
I've been a vocal advocate that the risks for an outcome like Einstein in robot power quality have been present for too long (for years). That those risks having been under communicated or under addressed could be a real problem and this report somewhat vindicates that point. FIRST is taking the position that they'll educate but the core problem remains. We build robots that crash into things, are moved frequently while not under power and the same is true for the field. Things are going to break. It doesn't matter how much you write reports people need the tools to diagnose those issues within the time frame the competition offers.
I tried to offer FIRST assistance at Einstein via communications in this forum and later via communications up to and including requests in the official forum. As a majority the risks were accepted that's not my job to do a little dance of pride about that when what I worried about happened.
It is however part of the healing process to make it clear in the aftermath that we can't ignore the underlying process that accepted this risk and insure that in the future we all more fully acknowledge the risks going in.
There are tragic moments in my life where I have pointed out risks to people and a great number of people died including dozens of friends of mine because they took a risk I deemed as reckless and complacent. You can stand there in shock and worry about laying blame or use the failed responsibilities as a tool to honor that which was lost with practical goals in mind.
I just want to make it extremely clear. I personally get no joy from being right when something bad happens I may have warned about. It reminds me every day that people often set their priorities in ways that take risks and don't know what to do once the risk is proven with consequences.
FIRST has expended a great effort with this report. However, this is hardly the end of it. This demands that FIRST consider ways to make sure that power quality issues can be analyzed with in the time frames they desire to operate. It further demands they more actively consider the security risks to their communications systems moving forward in the grander sense beyond this one deauth issue. To do anything less is to ignore the lesson cause and effect is offering.
What isn't apparent from this report because it hyper focuses on Einstein is how much of this happened years before and how much of it happened into the seeding up to Einstein. The fact is it is entirely possible that the whole of the competition was shaped by deauth and power quality issues in no small way.