[HN Gopher] Molly guard in reverse
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Molly guard in reverse
        
       https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard
        
       Author : surprisetalk
       Score  : 204 points
       Date   : 2026-03-20 14:33 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (unsung.aresluna.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (unsung.aresluna.org)
        
       | jiehong wrote:
       | Oh! Then perhaps the long press required for the iPhone's action
       | button to trigger is a Molly guard!
       | 
       | Also, perhaps `rm` should be molly guarded to move things to the
       | trash on all systems by default, and delete only if forced to by
       | a flag.
       | 
       | Note: I'd have expected Molly to be a cat, because they tend to
       | be pretty good at disrupting things in my experience.
        
         | denkmoon wrote:
         | rm has mollyguarding, that's why every invocation of rm you see
         | on the internet is followed by -f
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | I think that may be a combination of (IMHO unfortunate)
           | factors:
           | 
           | * Yes, on some systems rm is aliased to rm -i by default.
           | 
           | * Some _scripts_ will use rm -f because normal rm returns an
           | error if the target already doesn 't exist but -f doesn't
           | care.
           | 
           | * Finally, sometimes files are just ... I think it's being
           | marked read-only that does it? I've hit this while trying to
           | rm a git checkout; you actually do need to add -f sometimes
           | to succeed. So if you just add -f then it'll always work.
        
         | Modified3019 wrote:
         | Seeing long presses implemented for those intermittent and
         | irreversible actions in games is something I've always
         | appreciated. I often end up making errant inputs, especially on
         | keyboards.
         | 
         | A guard I often make for myself is removing/disabling the
         | delete key on my keyboard, and setting FN+Backspace to Delete
         | with whatever control software is involved. I often then
         | repurpose the delete key location to F2, which is typically
         | used to "Edit" a spreadsheet cell or file name.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | Red team demur: I HATE the iPhone's long press requirement to
           | restart from off.
           | 
           | To me, a button that forces me to wait for an unknown and
           | indeterminate period of time before functioning is a FAIL.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > Also, perhaps `rm` should be molly guarded to move things to
         | the trash on all systems by default, and delete only if forced
         | to by a flag.
         | 
         | Not _all_ systems, but some (RHEL, I think?) default alias rm=
         | 'rm -i', yes
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | disk space is cheap these days alias to mv to trash for an
           | extra layer of protection.
        
       | jiehong wrote:
       | I do wish those were a thing on flat touch sensitive induction
       | cooktops! (For all those pesky water droplets causing the cooktop
       | to error out and turning itself off)
        
         | gib444 wrote:
         | I get annoyed even at the thought of those things! Had to use a
         | few while travelling. Ugh!
        
       | hyperhello wrote:
       | "Mollyguarding" sounds like a great derogation of unnecessary
       | safety measures. Stop mollyguarding me!
        
       | Shadowmist wrote:
       | I've been looking for this!
        
       | evanjrowley wrote:
       | I'm reminded of this legendary HN comment:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16530398
        
         | cortesoft wrote:
         | I am confused by the second guy who was curious and punched the
         | plastic lid... it says you have to hold the button down for 30
         | seconds, how did that happen?
        
           | charles_f wrote:
           | The guard itself ends up pushing the button
        
       | JoshTriplett wrote:
       | There's a great piece of software called "molly-guard", which
       | intercepts calls to "poweroff" and "reboot" and similar. It
       | checks if it's being invoked via an SSH session, and if so, it
       | asks you to type the name of the system you're shutting down.
       | That way, you never accidentally shut down a remote server when
       | you meant to shut down your own system (or a different server).
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | Another fun one is disabling the network interface on a remote
         | server. An acquaintance did that by mistake on a cloud VM
         | running some core services, and the cloud provider had no
         | virtual console for some reason. Ended up having to write off
         | the VM and restore from backup. Fun day at the office.
        
           | adrian_b wrote:
           | Long ago, I succeeded once to cut my own access through SSH
           | to a remote server, after some firewall changes. That of
           | course has required a long trip to the server, for physical
           | access.
           | 
           | However that was good, because after that I have always been
           | extra careful at any changes that could affect the firewall
           | in any way. (That is not restricted to changes in firewall
           | rules, because there are systems where the versions of the
           | firewall program and of the kernel must be correlated, so an
           | inconsistent update may make the firewall revert to its
           | default state of denying all connections.)
        
             | kqr wrote:
             | I can warmly recommend the nohup-sleep-disable-cancel
             | pattern for this, as a dead man's switch for danngerous
             | changes.
             | 
             | https://entropicthoughts.com/locking-yourself-out-with-
             | firew...
        
             | learn_more wrote:
             | I previously managed a firewall via scripts which would
             | automatically revert your update in 20 seconds unless
             | interrupted. So if you botched it and lost access, you just
             | had to sit tight for 20 seconds.
        
           | tinyhitman wrote:
           | > cloud provider had no virtual console for some reason.
           | 
           | Azure still hasn't got this. It has serial and does
           | screenshots of the console, but no access to my knowledge.
        
             | amluto wrote:
             | Last I checked, if you non-forcibly reboot a GCE instance
             | via console or API and it does not shut itself down in a
             | timely manner, there was literally no way to force it to
             | turn off or hard-reboot so that your block storage
             | instances get released. IIRC the last time I encountered
             | this the process timed out eventually after some silly long
             | wait.
        
           | amluto wrote:
           | Hah, I once did "netplan try" on a prototype production
           | machine. The new config wasn't quite right (although not
           | catastrophic in any respect) so I told it to roll back. Bye
           | bye new machine.
           | 
           | Fortunately this was an exercise and we had BMC access, so no
           | big deal. Except that we got yet another datapoint suggesting
           | that netplan is not a high quality piece of software.
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | I once accidentally rebooted the reverse proxy for _all_ our
         | production traffic. We got some very quiet two minutes while it
         | came back up.
         | 
         | After that we installed molly-guard with a check for the number
         | of active connections. Made it painless to reboot standby
         | proxies and difficult to reboot active ones.
         | 
         | (We also instituted pairing on production proxy maintenance.
         | I'm not a fan of pair programming but pair maintenance is
         | great.)
         | 
         | I like telling junior hires about this incident because it
         | teaches them that (a) anyone can make mistakes, (b) even
         | serious mistakes usually aren't that dangerous, (c) you can
         | learn a lot from mistakes with the right mindset, (d) we cannot
         | prevent mistakes but with the right system design we can reduce
         | their consequences.
        
           | tetha wrote:
           | > (We also instituted pairing on production proxy
           | maintenance. I'm not a fan of pair programming but pair
           | maintenance is great.)
           | 
           | It's a great opportunity to share knowledge and techniques
           | and I very much recommend doing so. It's an important way to
           | get people familiar and comfortable with what the
           | documentation says. Or, it's less scary to failover a
           | database or an archiving clutser while the DBA or an archive
           | admin is in a call with you.
           | 
           | Also reminds me of an entirely funny culture shock for a new
           | team member, who was on a team with a much worse work culture
           | and mutual respect beforehand. Just 2-3 months after she
           | joined, we had a major outage and various components and
           | clusters needed to be checked and put back on track. For
           | these things, we do exactly this pilot/copilot structure if
           | changes to the system must go right.
           | 
           | Except, during this huge outage, two people were sick, two
           | guys had a sick kid, one guy was on a boat on the northern
           | sea, one guy was in Finland and it was down to 3 of the
           | regulars and the junior. Wonderful. So we shoved her the
           | documentation for one of the procedures and made her the
           | copilot of her mentor and then we got to work, just calmly
           | talking through the situation.
           | 
           | Until she said "Wait". And some combined 40 - 50 years of
           | experience stopped on a dime. There was a bit of confusion of
           | how much that word weighed in the team, but she did correctly
           | flag an inaccuracy in procedure we had to adress, which saved
           | a few minutes of rework.
        
           | saaspirant wrote:
           | I was using my company dev machine via Windows RDP remotely
           | during Covid and installed Glasswire which by default blocks
           | all traffic so I lost access. No one was there to uninstall
           | it so I continued development in my personal machine.
        
       | itayd wrote:
       | best molly-guard depicited in "The Good Place":
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etJ6RmMPGko
        
       | fainpul wrote:
       | Just please don't start adding molly-guards to your software. The
       | concept only makes sense in the physical world, e.g. where the
       | "important button", that you might never have to press, needs to
       | be in reach all the time. In software, there are better
       | solutions.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | my favorite Debian package is Mollyguard so when you shut down
         | a server remotely via SSH it just checks the second time to
         | make sure you really wanted to shut down that server and not
         | your laptop.
        
           | fainpul wrote:
           | "Are you sure?" type guards are not suitable for actions
           | which the user does regularly. If a user repeats this action
           | regularly, they quickly automate the thought process (i.e.
           | don't give it any thought anymore) and it becomes useless.
        
             | selfhoster11 wrote:
             | Which is why that's not what it does. It asks you to input
             | the hostname instead, just like deleting a repo in Github
             | does.
        
               | fainpul wrote:
               | I know how it works. Please don't nit-pick. It's an
               | interruption that forces the user to confirm. That's what
               | I meant.
               | 
               | I discussed this also here:
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845740
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | It's not nitpicking. The nature of the interruption being
               | different is material. I've lost files to automatically
               | answering yes to rm -i y/n confirm. Typing the hostname
               | itself is different enough to get me, at least to stop
               | and go wait, hold on. And snap me out of doing the wrong
               | one. Especially an SSH gateway machine.
        
             | sixhobbits wrote:
             | Reminds me of this Matt Levine
             | 
             | >> At 08:56 a 'Trade Limit Warning' pop-up alert appeared
             | within PTE. This presented the trader with 711 warning
             | messages, consisting of hard block and soft block messages,
             | listed in a single alert where only the first 18 lines of
             | alerts were immediately visible unless the person who
             | received the alert scrolled down. The trader did not
             | appreciate their inputting error and overrode all of the
             | soft warnings in the pop-up.
             | 
             | > You get 711 alerts, you only see 18 of them, you are like
             | "ehh 18 alerts is pretty much the normal number," you
             | override them all without reading.
        
             | kqr wrote:
             | I agree. Fortunately, molly-guard the software can be
             | configured with automated checks to allow safe actions
             | (e.g. shutting down servers that don't receive significant
             | traffic) without pestering the user.
             | 
             | This means a properly configured mollly-guard is invisible
             | for routine actions but kicks in only when a genuine
             | mistake is suspected because the operation would cause some
             | sort of meaningful loss. That way, users aren't trained to
             | ignore it.
        
               | fainpul wrote:
               | > can be configured with automated checks to allow safe
               | actions (e.g. shutting down servers that don't receive
               | significant traffic)
               | 
               | That's clever. This is what I meant when I wrote, that
               | software allows for better solutions.
        
         | hrmtst93837 wrote:
         | Spend a week with a self-service admin dashboard and you'll
         | learn why software needs molly guards too, because one-click
         | disasters are common online.
        
           | fainpul wrote:
           | > In software, there are better solutions.
           | 
           | You missed the point. Most things can be solved better. For
           | example with undo or "fake undo" based on a delayed action or
           | many other solutions, depending on the individual problem.
           | Just asking "are you sure?" or forcing the user to jump
           | through some hoops is the laziest and least user friendly
           | way.
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | In _DevOps_ (and _Lean_ , _TPS_ ) the more advanced form of this
       | is the _Poka-Yoke_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke).
       | Poka-yokes don't just add safety, they also guide the human away
       | from making a mistake.
       | 
       | The canonical example is the automatic shift knob in a car. The
       | shift knob is designed to 1) prevent you from accidentally
       | shifting all the way back into reverse without pressing the shift
       | button, and 2) prevents you from leaving park or neutral without
       | depressing the brake pedal. This way you don't damage the
       | drivetrain or accidentally cause the car to roll
       | forward/backward.
       | 
       | Poka-yoke is a form of defensive design
       | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_design). For a beautiful
       | example of defensive design, see the average electric kettle. If
       | water boils over the top it won't short the device, if it boils
       | dry it'll stop operating, the handle and body are plastic to
       | prevent burning yourself, the handle is ergonomic to make
       | carrying 1.5L of sloshing boiling water not cause you to spill
       | it, the cord is detached from the kettle so you don't yank the
       | cord and spill the boiling water, the switches are located on the
       | bottom away from hot steam, and the lids usually lock while in
       | operation, again to prevent damage from spillage or steam. It's
       | the simplest and safest possible way to boil water, and it's $20.
        
         | vharuck wrote:
         | My favorite example of poka-yoke is when the pieces and
         | hardware in build-it-yourself furniture kits won't fit anywhere
         | except the correct places: two screws only have the same width
         | if they're interchangeable, wood bars refuse to go in unless
         | facing the right direction, etc.
        
         | graypegg wrote:
         | The example that comes to my mind is lockout tags. [0] It
         | usually means temporarily jamming up a specific control marked
         | as the lockout/ignition/energizing control while you're working
         | on some big and gnarly machine. There's a bunch of regulation
         | around the specifics of what that control has to prevent if not
         | activated/lockedout, but usually it's a dirt-simple breaker
         | switch or hydraulic valve, controlling whatever the main source
         | of energy into the machine is. The ones with holes are for
         | padlocks that everyone will lock padlocks onto so you have a
         | count of who's still "down there".
         | 
         | If you ever URGENTLY needed to start a machine, and you knew it
         | was safe to do so, the average shop gremlin could always break
         | the tag and start it since they're normally made of craptacular
         | plastic or thin sheet metal... but it's easily enough friction
         | to make you rethink what you're doing. Never known anyone
         | that's ever had to break a tag like that.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockout%E2%80%93tagout
        
         | ErroneousBosh wrote:
         | There's a great example I found a while back when I replaced
         | the fuse box in one of my Range Rovers.
         | 
         | It has seven plugs (there's space for eight) each of which have
         | space for eight pins. The plugs are identical - almost. They're
         | different colours, and they have a T- or U-shaped pin that fits
         | into a hole in the appropriate flying socket on the engine bay
         | wiring harness. The pins are rotated for each plug. [1]
         | 
         | There's no way to fit the fusebox the wrong way round in the
         | engine bay because it has three mounting holes with odd
         | spacings, and one has an angled slot for a bracket that holds a
         | coolant pipe which definitely wouldn't fit if it was wrong.
         | 
         | There's no way to fit the sockets in wrong even without the
         | pegs because the wiring harness only allows them to line up
         | with the correct plugs.
         | 
         | Even the three high-current screw terminals that feed the body
         | ECU under the driver's seat have got little lugs sticking out
         | so you can't mix them up, although since they're all unswitched
         | feeds fused at 60A it kind of doesn't matter.
         | 
         | There are a lot of nice little bits of design like that. Shame
         | they didn't extend that to the ignition coil connectors on
         | later V8s, which are the same for both pairs of coil packs. See
         | if you can guess what causes a lot of "crank, no start" faults
         | when people have been in at the back of the engine.
         | 
         | [1] https://bparts-eu.s3-eu-
         | west-1.amazonaws.com/images/62538/bi...
        
         | esafak wrote:
         | Funny you say that. As I was using it at a hotel, I was just
         | reflecting on how poorly designed the average kettle is, with
         | the stationary handle on the top and a spout guard:
         | https://stock.adobe.com/video/hot-cup-tea-kettle/189747353
         | 
         | Once the water is boiled, you flip the guard, and get your
         | first scalding. Pour the water and get a nice splash of steam
         | due to the fixed position of the handle as it rises up past
         | your hand. And refilling the kettle is yet another opportunity
         | to get scalded, as the handle gets in the way of your efforts
         | to remove the lid.
        
           | graypegg wrote:
           | Electric kettles are much better designed, and are what the
           | parent comment is talking about. This [0] is the canonical
           | white-labeled kettle that you can have for 30 of your hard-
           | earned canukistanian kopeks, and are the average kettle
           | around here. No scalding since the lid's handles are deep
           | enough that you can open it on an angle to direct the steam
           | away from you. Big handle on the side instead of the top.
           | Switch on the bottom away from hot metal casing. And the
           | kettle just lifts off the base, so you're not futzing around
           | with a cable while pouring hot water.
           | 
           | No idea why these aren't common everywhere.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/black-decker-cordless-
           | ele...
        
           | xboxnolifes wrote:
           | Thats certainly an iconic kettle look, but I'm not sure I'd
           | call it the average kettle. I don't think ive ever seen
           | someone actually use a kettle like that. Maybe many decades
           | ago.
        
       | donut wrote:
       | Sometimes a pop-up appears that I blindly accept because I happen
       | to be typing something with spaces. Wish that button was
       | protected somehow.
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | Such pop-ups should _never_ automatically get focused. The
         | increase of them was why I switched away from Windows many
         | years ago, and why I like to root my Android devices. It
         | baffles me that focus-stealing notifications cannot be turned
         | off in most OEM Androids.
        
           | csullivannet wrote:
           | I think with power tools on Windows 11 at least it forces the
           | privilege escalation window to pop under.
        
       | buf wrote:
       | Fun random fact, Eventbrite was first a security company called
       | Molly Guard. I spent years cleaning out the 'mg-' prefixes from
       | the code.
        
       | davidshepherd7 wrote:
       | That page is copied verbatim from
       | https://unsung.aresluna.org/molly-guard-in-reverse/ (which is
       | linked at the top). The original page also has much better
       | formatting.
        
         | batisteo wrote:
         | ...and Google-hosted.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | Sorry about that.
           | 
           | Typepad, which hosted my original blog since August 24, 2004,
           | on September 1, 2025 gave me 30 days notice that it would
           | shut down at midnight September 30, 2025, making my roughly
           | 40,000 (not a typo) past posts inaccessible.
           | 
           | I spent a frantic month trying about 10 blog hosts seeking
           | one I, a card-carrying Technodolt, could actually use without
           | a lot of pain.
           | 
           | The only one that came close was Google's Blogger.
           | 
           | Alas, it's horrible: janky, confusing, and always changing
           | something I thought I'd finalized.
           | 
           | Oh well...
        
         | clbrmbr wrote:
         | @dang Can a moderator update the link? The original is much
         | better and we shouldn't promote the copyposter.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | Full disclosure: I posted the original and it disappeared
           | from HN so fast it made my head spin.
           | 
           | Isn't it better that someone gave it a second chance, even if
           | only by clicking a link?
        
             | albedoa wrote:
             | No, your behavior is weird and hostile actually. Does
             | Marcin even know that you lifted the content?
             | 
             | A traditional link blog would highlight a short excerpt so
             | that the reader might be encouraged to click through to the
             | full piece.
        
               | bookofjoe wrote:
               | Yes. I just emailed him, in fact, and he responded with
               | details, no hostility!
               | 
               | >your behavior is weird and hostile actually
               | 
               | Look in the mirror.
               | 
               | >A traditional link blog would highlight a short excerpt
               | so that the reader might be encouraged to click through
               | to the full piece.
               | 
               | Mine is not a "traditional link blog" nor has it ever
               | been since its inception on August 24, 2004. You're the
               | first person I've known to use the phrase "traditional
               | link blog." I like it! Maybe you should start one.
        
             | MYEUHD wrote:
             | You made 94 posts in the past 10 days...
        
               | bookofjoe wrote:
               | What is your point? As a rule I post to HN around
               | 10x/day, pretty much hourly.... Judging by how regularly
               | my posts appear at the top of the HN homepage, others
               | appear to welcome my contributions.
        
           | bookofjoe wrote:
           | I just emailed a screenshot of this discussion to @dang.
           | 
           | I await his response.
        
         | bookofjoe wrote:
         | BTW I agree about the formatting being much better. Alas, I'm
         | limited to Google's primitive Blogger as a host so that's the
         | best I can do.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Changed now from https://bookofjoe2.blogspot.com/2026/02/molly-
         | guard.html above. Thanks!
        
       | wibbily wrote:
       | Fun: the "Molly" in question is Ed Krol's daughter - he's the guy
       | who wrote the _Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog_.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Krol
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | I was almost that kid.
         | 
         | My dad worked for Sperry Univac. For a while he was working on
         | a ground-support trailer for the Sergeant surface-to-surface
         | missile. He went in to work one Saturday for some kind of a
         | major test. For some reason, he brought my mother and I along
         | (maybe to give my mom a break). So this four-year-old (yours
         | truly) goes into the trailer, and sees this bright red
         | button...
         | 
         | It was not the launch button. It was the emergency shutdown
         | button, which would have cost them an hour to bring the trailer
         | back online. Someone stopped me before I actually pushed it,
         | but still, this did _not_ make me popular. What I remember from
         | that day is actually the parking lot, because I spent far more
         | time in the parking lot than in the trailer.
        
         | canucker2016 wrote:
         | The wikipedia entry lists a reference explaining the history of
         | mollyguard, along with a pic of Ed and little Molly, but an HN
         | comment has the relevant text excerpt. see
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26633835
        
       | meelford wrote:
       | I personally know a guy who shut down an oil factory by pressing
       | the molly guard button, just because the button looked
       | interesting.
        
       | TiredOfLife wrote:
       | Does the disk drive or sim card slot ejector really qualify as
       | Molly Guard?
        
         | pocksuppet wrote:
         | The guard is it being a tiny hole you have to find a tool to
         | reach into, instead of a button.
        
       | RadiozRadioz wrote:
       | > There is no worse feeling for a programmer than waking up,
       | walking up to the machine that was supposed to work through the
       | night, and seeing it did absolutely nothing, stupidly waiting for
       | hours for a response to a question that didn't even matter.
       | 
       | No, there's one worse feeling. Walking up to the machine that was
       | supposed to work throughout the night, and seeing it had a
       | surprise update that rebooted the system.
       | 
       | One of my favorite things about ditching Windows.
        
         | bityard wrote:
         | This is no longer just a Windows feature. The same thing
         | happened to me the other day on MacOS. They recently shipped a
         | "background" update to fix a security issue and it quite
         | unceremoniously rebooted the machine to apply the update.
        
           | masfuerte wrote:
           | And it's why I don't use Ubuntu any more. I don't know if it
           | still automatically updates and reboots, but neither do I
           | care.
        
             | amarant wrote:
             | When did Ubuntu do that? It's been my main OS since 05 and
             | I can't recall that ever happening?
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | It has never done that.
        
       | clbrmbr wrote:
       | I once was a communications contractor for the major NJ power
       | utility. One of their long time field techs (let's just refer to
       | him as Mr. T) was giving a tour of a substation that was built
       | from the looks of it in the 50s. I have, you see, this bad habit
       | of leaning on things... well Mr. T, without missing a beat, slid
       | his forearm between my hip and a faded green Bakelite knob, the
       | kind that goes in and out rather than twisting. He informed me
       | that if I had leaned any further I would have shut off half of
       | Newark.
        
         | 6031769 wrote:
         | Certainly sounds like he pitied the fool.
         | 
         | (sorry)
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | I feel like modern tv remotes are the opposite of this principle.
       | It is often the case that almost every single button will when
       | pushed in some way interrupt the current program, often jumping
       | out to a different menu or changing to a different program or
       | something. It makes handling the remote or trying to change the
       | volume a fraught experience.
        
         | bookofjoe wrote:
         | OMG you hit my third rail when it comes to the brain-dead-
         | designed Apple TV remote. After using one for many years I
         | STILL press the wrong button many times every day, and in the
         | dark, since the buttons are NOT backlit, I routinely press an
         | unintended button. I think the user interface designer was
         | promoted to create the Vision Pro UI/UX which is even more
         | dreadful.
        
       | canucker2016 wrote:
       | Samsung learned about molly guards the hard way - recall of
       | millions of products after accidental fires from people/pets
       | activating the front-panel dials.
       | 
       | see https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/08/samsung-
       | recalls-...                 Luckily, there's an easy solution
       | recently devised that can prevent this safety hazard in homes
       | across America, Samsung said. Customers concerned about
       | unintentional activations can request free knob locks and covers
       | that Samsung confirmed made it much harder to accidentally turn
       | on the stove.            During the meeting, the CPSC shared data
       | showing that across 338 incidents between January 1, 2018, and
       | May 30, 2024, stoves from "ten specific manufacturers" were
       | involved in fires causing 31 injuries and two deaths.
       | Additionally, the CPSC had recorded "two other fatal incidents
       | where a range was accidentally turned on when a knob was bumped,
       | but the manufacturer is unknown."            ...Companies said
       | the CPSC data would help them "fully understand the issues" and
       | "make sure that reasonable and foreseeable circumstances would be
       | addressed" without impacting compliance with the Americans with
       | Disabilities Act.
       | 
       | After mentioning this article to relatives, one said they had
       | nixed buying one product because of the front dials. Then we
       | heard from a relative in another city who bought a house due to a
       | newborn baby - one of the additional purchases was a
       | oven/stove/range with front panel dials.
        
         | 9dev wrote:
         | That's wild. In Europe, we generally only have front-facing
         | dials, but either they have a built-in push to recess function,
         | or they require some force to turn from their off position, and
         | for the most part heat and mode are also two separate knobs
         | where you'd need to turn both to engage.
         | 
         | I never heard of any related injuries over here.
        
       | ogogmad wrote:
       | This sounded at first like a mouth guard, to stop teeth grinding.
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | "Reverse Molly guard" is dead man's switch.
        
       | BubbleRings wrote:
       | Somebody make a keyboard where every key is a molly guard, where
       | only one will open at a time, then make a fun video about it. And
       | credit me for this stupid idea. Even though it wasn't my idea.
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | See also: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/27/final-
       | switch-gold...
        
       | jeremyw wrote:
       | Lest anyone think it's just little kids that are mesmerized by
       | the shiny red button; we were showing a potential graduate
       | student around the compsci labs, and he walks over to an
       | important server and simply turns it off. He could never quite
       | explain his impulse to do so.
        
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