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Ask HN: What life or death systems rely on Windows?
We recently had a debate about the use of Windows for truly life and death applications. There are stories of Worms infecting Windows computers running nuclear power plants, but it's hard to tell whether these are employee/generic systems, or truly mission critical appliances.
Does anyone have any anecdotes about the use of Windows to run truly life or death systems - like air traffic control, medical tools, military systems, elevator and traffic control, and so on?
- d4m45cuz 16y agoThere are SCADA systems which use Windows to run some logic/graphical front-ends to the system. Unfortunately, some of these systems are misconfigured in that individual PLC's cannot adapt to changing conditions without first getting confirmation from the services running on the Windows boxes. If Windows crashes, whatever state the system was in at the time persists! It's a shame configuration issues arise in systems like these...