3 ms·

That's a... very selective reading of history. The Boeing 737 MAX crashes, for starters, are of far more recent memory.

renewiltord 5y ago
The Boeing 737 MAX crashes were caused by faulty AoA sensors. A rather classic measure by these so-called "professional" engineers: make a broken device and then pass the buck. Does their certification process teach this? In any case, happy to split the difference and call it even. Okay, how about you build a list of software that directly killed people and I'll build a list of non-software that directly killed people in 2021. Then whoever finds more people killed gets $10k from the other? We can agree to terms of what it means for software to kill and non-software to kill. Therac-25 is obvious software, Florida condo collapse is obviously hardware.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The fact that non-software has the capacity to end more lives than software is inherent in one being less plugged into the real-world? Perhaps I should wire you $10k straightaway out of the gratitude that we do not exist in the world where Stanislav Petrov dutifully followed the erroneous computer readings from Soviet early detection systems, sparking global thermonuclear war. Would that be a sufficient kill count to your liking? Besides, few pieces of non-engineering is responsible for massive data breaches that lead to massive indirect consequences, such as Equifax. Perhaps your obsession with death overlooks other consequences of poor software engineering like financial ones, such as Black Monday, 1987. Perhaps bad software kills fewer people because less software engineering is involved with real-world systems- though requiescat in pace to those lost to Tesla Autopilot accidents, or the unfortunate biker in Arizona struck by a self-driving Uber. I am transparently moving the goalposts here because your presumption that fatalities are the only consequence of shoddy software engineering was fallacious to begin with. Pray I do not move them any further.

The Boeing 737 MAX crashes were caused by faulty AoA sensors. A rather classic measure by these so-called "professional" engineers: make a broken device and then pass the buck. Does their certification process teach this? In any case, happy to split the difference and call it even. Okay, how about you build a list of software that directly killed people and I'll build a list of non-software that directly killed people in 2021. Then whoever finds more people killed gets $10k from the other? We can agree to terms of what it means for software to kill and non-software to kill. Therac-25 is obvious software, Florida condo collapse is obviously hardware.

Apocryphon 5y ago
The fact that non-software has the capacity to end more lives than software is inherent in one being less plugged into the real-world? Perhaps I should wire you $10k straightaway out of the gratitude that we do not exist in the world where Stanislav Petrov dutifully followed the erroneous computer readings from Soviet early detection systems, sparking global thermonuclear war. Would that be a sufficient kill count to your liking? Besides, few pieces of non-engineering is responsible for massive data breaches that lead to massive indirect consequences, such as Equifax. Perhaps your obsession with death overlooks other consequences of poor software engineering like financial ones, such as Black Monday, 1987. Perhaps bad software kills fewer people because less software engineering is involved with real-world systems- though requiescat in pace to those lost to Tesla Autopilot accidents, or the unfortunate biker in Arizona struck by a self-driving Uber. I am transparently moving the goalposts here because your presumption that fatalities are the only consequence of shoddy software engineering was fallacious to begin with. Pray I do not move them any further.