3 ms·
Every software engineer should be aware of the RISKS digest (aka USENET's comp.risks). The mailing list and digest just celebrated it's 30th birthday in August
by joezydeco 11y ago
Every software engineer should be aware of the RISKS digest (aka USENET's comp.risks).
The mailing list and digest just celebrated it's 30th birthday in August. There's an incredible wealth of history here regarding bugs, related issues, and the overall risks of our dependency on computers in society.
RISKS broke most of the major stories of the day including the Morris Worm, the AT&T Long Distance collapse, the Mars Climate Orbiter unit error, the Mars Pathfinder priority lockup, the Therac-25, the first email spam, the Pentium FDIV bug, and thousands of other interesting, amusing, and/or scary bugs.
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
- anc84 11y agoI had never heard of that, thank you so much for many cozy winter reading sessions.
- joezydeco 11y agoThis is one of my favorite nuggets in the digest, it's from November 1988. It's Clifford Stoll writing at 3:45 am about his discovery of the Morris Worm. The Morris Worm was literally the first internet virus captured in the wild. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.69.html#subj1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.69.html#subj1 Warning - this one email will lead you to multiple rabbit holes (Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg, Robert Morris, etc). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm
- randlet 11y agoThe Cuckoo's Egg is a really fun read!