4 ms·

This reminds of the joke about how the ethical programmer cannot write a function to nuke a particular city, instead they write a function that takes the city a

by hsn915 4y ago

This reminds of the joke about how the ethical programmer cannot write a function to nuke a particular city, instead they write a function that takes the city as a parameter. > It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

nasfench 4y ago
I did some searching, and I believe that a footnote in this article, by Nathaniel S. Borenstein, is the origin of that quote. https://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/CSCW-ATOMICMAIL.txt https://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/CSCW-ATOMICMAIL.txt
rusk 4y ago
Yeah read up on where the B in cyclon B came from.
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  Can you tell us? From my googling it just says B was the second version
  - rusk 4y ago
    What I heard, and I’m sorry I’m too lazy to further substantiate, was that the original revision had a potent smell or something, so that it could be detected by humans with the basic idea being it wasn’t expected to be used on humans by those that developed it. It was a simple matter then for bad people to remove this smelly element and bump the version number.
    - hnbad 4y ago
      That seems to be an urban legend. Zyklon B had a distinct smell of bitter almonds but a fraction of people can't perceive it. It also contained an irritant to avoid accidental inhalation. The death from suffocation was also slow and painful. Zyklon B was simply the second version of the product, which was intended as a delousing agent. Zyklon A was apparently less stable. One of the changes in Zyklon B seems to be that the gas was released from pellets, making it safer to use. Zyklon C apparently caused discoloration on metal, making it less useful for delousing. There also seem to have been variants D through F. There's nothing nefarious about Zyklon B itself. It was simply found to be a very cheap way to kill a lot of people because prussic acid is apparently an order of magnitude more toxic to vertebrates than to insects. Of course at a certain point the company that produced it knew what it was being used for, but that doesn't seem to have influenced the development of the product itself. To be clear: the reason the smell was irrelevant is that by the time you could smell it, you were already locked in a room with other people. The victims tried to tear down the walls and break the door with their bare hands, climbing over each other fearing for their lives as they slowly and painfully suffocated because every cell in their lungs sealed shut. You can still see the marks in those walls to this day. There was no need to hide what the gas was doing. The victims were unarmed, they were surrounded by armed guards behind bars and barbed wire. They would often be sent directly to the "showers" upon their arrival at the camps, especially if they were children or too old to work. Even if they could have disarmed one of the guards they wouldn't have had anywhere to escape to. Even if they had somehow made it to the border, no country would have taken them.
      - rusk 4y ago
        I don’t think anyone would debate the futility of the situation the victims found themselves in. I guess the main thrust of this “urban myth” is that the people that developed it didn’t realise the intent. You’re obviously far better read on this topic than I so I will defer to your assertion that they did. EDIT I remember my source it was that news show with the English guy .. John Oliver … he was doing a special on how brutal death by lethal injection was. That it wasn’t humane and it wasn’t developed scientifically because you could never get medical scientists to develop such a thing, and he drew parallels to cyclon B. He could well have been perpetuating that myth or his researchers could have been.
        hnbad 4y ago
        It's possible. I can't find any sources claiming Zyklon A was ever used in this way prior to Zyklon B and the first "test" killings of POWs seems to have used Zyklon B. Most sources don't explain the differences between the various versions though, if they mention them at all. As I understand it, lethal injections are designed in such a way to paralyze the victim but the actual process is actually quite grueling, the victim just loses the ability to indicate the level of distress and pain they are in. This is unlike the euthanasia vets typically administer, which start with a sedative so the animal is unconscious, which seems not to be desired for executions. So I guess there are parallels, the Zyklon B story just doesn't serve as a contrast but rather another example: it was designed as a delousing agent but its ease of use, storage ability and relative safety enabled the industrial scale mass murder even if none of the engineers would have agreed to that. Of course to the company producing it, it was just another big government contract.
- dijit 4y ago
  Just did. It was the second variant of the poison, nothing to do with people, ethnicities or locations. Just a revision character.
AniseAbyss 4y ago
I read an interesting article on the Russians programming the cruise missiles that fall on Ukraine. They're former game and software developers drafted into the military.

by hsn915 4y ago

nasfench 4y ago

I did some searching, and I believe that a footnote in this article, by Nathaniel S. Borenstein, is the origin of that quote. https://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/CSCW-ATOMICMAIL.txt https://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/CSCW-ATOMICMAIL.txt

rusk 4y ago

Yeah read up on where the B in cyclon B came from.

ChrisRR 4y ago
Can you tell us? From my googling it just says B was the second version
- rusk 4y ago
  What I heard, and I’m sorry I’m too lazy to further substantiate, was that the original revision had a potent smell or something, so that it could be detected by humans with the basic idea being it wasn’t expected to be used on humans by those that developed it. It was a simple matter then for bad people to remove this smelly element and bump the version number.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    That seems to be an urban legend. Zyklon B had a distinct smell of bitter almonds but a fraction of people can't perceive it. It also contained an irritant to avoid accidental inhalation. The death from suffocation was also slow and painful. Zyklon B was simply the second version of the product, which was intended as a delousing agent. Zyklon A was apparently less stable. One of the changes in Zyklon B seems to be that the gas was released from pellets, making it safer to use. Zyklon C apparently caused discoloration on metal, making it less useful for delousing. There also seem to have been variants D through F. There's nothing nefarious about Zyklon B itself. It was simply found to be a very cheap way to kill a lot of people because prussic acid is apparently an order of magnitude more toxic to vertebrates than to insects. Of course at a certain point the company that produced it knew what it was being used for, but that doesn't seem to have influenced the development of the product itself. To be clear: the reason the smell was irrelevant is that by the time you could smell it, you were already locked in a room with other people. The victims tried to tear down the walls and break the door with their bare hands, climbing over each other fearing for their lives as they slowly and painfully suffocated because every cell in their lungs sealed shut. You can still see the marks in those walls to this day. There was no need to hide what the gas was doing. The victims were unarmed, they were surrounded by armed guards behind bars and barbed wire. They would often be sent directly to the "showers" upon their arrival at the camps, especially if they were children or too old to work. Even if they could have disarmed one of the guards they wouldn't have had anywhere to escape to. Even if they had somehow made it to the border, no country would have taken them.
    - rusk 4y ago
      I don’t think anyone would debate the futility of the situation the victims found themselves in. I guess the main thrust of this “urban myth” is that the people that developed it didn’t realise the intent. You’re obviously far better read on this topic than I so I will defer to your assertion that they did. EDIT I remember my source it was that news show with the English guy .. John Oliver … he was doing a special on how brutal death by lethal injection was. That it wasn’t humane and it wasn’t developed scientifically because you could never get medical scientists to develop such a thing, and he drew parallels to cyclon B. He could well have been perpetuating that myth or his researchers could have been.
      - hnbad 4y ago
        It's possible. I can't find any sources claiming Zyklon A was ever used in this way prior to Zyklon B and the first "test" killings of POWs seems to have used Zyklon B. Most sources don't explain the differences between the various versions though, if they mention them at all. As I understand it, lethal injections are designed in such a way to paralyze the victim but the actual process is actually quite grueling, the victim just loses the ability to indicate the level of distress and pain they are in. This is unlike the euthanasia vets typically administer, which start with a sedative so the animal is unconscious, which seems not to be desired for executions. So I guess there are parallels, the Zyklon B story just doesn't serve as a contrast but rather another example: it was designed as a delousing agent but its ease of use, storage ability and relative safety enabled the industrial scale mass murder even if none of the engineers would have agreed to that. Of course to the company producing it, it was just another big government contract.
dijit 4y ago
Just did. It was the second variant of the poison, nothing to do with people, ethnicities or locations. Just a revision character.

AniseAbyss 4y ago

I read an interesting article on the Russians programming the cruise missiles that fall on Ukraine. They're former game and software developers drafted into the military.