4 ms·

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 ^^ I won't editorialize much, but this is the first thing I thought of. It was

by ghotli 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 ^^ I won't editorialize much, but this is the first thing I thought of. It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation. Because of concurrent programming errors (also known as race conditions), it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were hundreds of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Chemotherapy radiation is not x-ray radiation.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  "The machine had three modes of operation... A "field light" mode... Direct electron-beam therapy... Megavolt X-ray (or photon) therapy, which delivered a beam of 25 MeV X-ray photons" So, still x-ray radiation, but at much higher voltages than diagnostic x-rays. (The accident was indeed overexposure to the electron beam, not to the x-rays, but the electron beam was part of the process for producing the x-rays in normal operation)
- habi 5y ago
  Chemotherapy is fighting cancer with drugs, not radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy Often, the fight does involve radiation therapy in addition, though!
- ghotli 5y ago
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hope you enjoyed the link regardless
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  What is "chemotherapy radiation"?
AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
interesting thing to see a week before my concurrent programming course finals! I hate race conditions. I don't blame those programmers 1 bit. It is extremely hard to find race conditions, and 10x harder to fix them.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  I blame them. Yes, it’s hard.
  - AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
    Do you work in concurrent programming? If yes, then considering that you can get a race condition after 10,000 times you run that program, you shouldn't blame the programmers. It's not like they hire the best of the best, because they simply cannot afford to. We want software in medical devices to be very safe, but we also want cheap competition there. We can't have both.
    - ghotli 5y ago
      I get where you're coming from and why you might suggest that. However I do happen to work on those kinds of codebases and if there was even a .00000001 percent chance of _death_ by using my software I'd make sure it didn't go out the door. No question. It's possible to work smart not hard and avoid entire classes of issues like manifested in the link I posted above. As-is Medicine / Aviation and other such "mission-critical" real-time / life threatening industries do take this sort of thing very seriously. Programming has come a long way since the 80s and at least in aviation I'm aware that code undergoes audits to ensure that things like dynamic allocations / malloc aren't done at all in critical sections of the code. Lots of limitations are placed on software run in those environments and it's justified and warranted.

by ghotli 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Chemotherapy radiation is not x-ray radiation.

roywiggins 5y ago
"The machine had three modes of operation... A "field light" mode... Direct electron-beam therapy... Megavolt X-ray (or photon) therapy, which delivered a beam of 25 MeV X-ray photons" So, still x-ray radiation, but at much higher voltages than diagnostic x-rays. (The accident was indeed overexposure to the electron beam, not to the x-rays, but the electron beam was part of the process for producing the x-rays in normal operation)
habi 5y ago
Chemotherapy is fighting cancer with drugs, not radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy Often, the fight does involve radiation therapy in addition, though!
ghotli 5y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hope you enjoyed the link regardless
Rebelgecko 5y ago
What is "chemotherapy radiation"?

AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago

interesting thing to see a week before my concurrent programming course finals! I hate race conditions. I don't blame those programmers 1 bit. It is extremely hard to find race conditions, and 10x harder to fix them.

machiaweliczny 5y ago
I blame them. Yes, it’s hard.
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
  Do you work in concurrent programming? If yes, then considering that you can get a race condition after 10,000 times you run that program, you shouldn't blame the programmers. It's not like they hire the best of the best, because they simply cannot afford to. We want software in medical devices to be very safe, but we also want cheap competition there. We can't have both.
  - ghotli 5y ago
    I get where you're coming from and why you might suggest that. However I do happen to work on those kinds of codebases and if there was even a .00000001 percent chance of _death_ by using my software I'd make sure it didn't go out the door. No question. It's possible to work smart not hard and avoid entire classes of issues like manifested in the link I posted above. As-is Medicine / Aviation and other such "mission-critical" real-time / life threatening industries do take this sort of thing very seriously. Programming has come a long way since the 80s and at least in aviation I'm aware that code undergoes audits to ensure that things like dynamic allocations / malloc aren't done at all in critical sections of the code. Lots of limitations are placed on software run in those environments and it's justified and warranted.