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I've coded the firmware for a CAN-based communication bus for a medical device with lots of different boards talking to each other. This same company had a war
by haolez 4y ago
I've coded the firmware for a CAN-based communication bus for a medical device with lots of different boards talking to each other. This same company had a war industry department and they used this code in a missile project. It left a weird taste in my mouth.
Btw, they got an early version that had a memory leak, and when I went to warn them, they just said: "It's okay! It's just going to run for about 20 seconds!"
- pests 4y agoThe ultimate garbage collection.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoA missile needing to dynamically allocate memory is already a ridiculous idea.
- haolez 4y agoThere was computer vision stuff in the missile's head (for target tracking), which is where the code was used.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoThat is a good reason to need a non trivial amount of memory, but I don't think it means there needs to be dynamically allocated memory. That basically implies that there is something unknown ahead of time, but specs, limitations, resolution fps, etc. should all be static.
- haolez 4y agoI think it was a slab allocator made in house. It was a long time ago.
- nikeee 4y agoDid you post about this previously? I feel like I've read that part with the memory leak before.
- haolez 4y agoCan't remember, so if I did, it was a long time ago. This story happened around 2010.
- chrisallenlane 4y agoI favorited this post some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542 The Google Groups page is currently in a redirect loop, but if that gets sorted out, you may find the story that you're remembering.
- MacroChip 4y agohttps://archive.ph/DrDI7 https://archive.ph/DrDI7