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The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

(thedailywtf.com)
449 points lemper | 2 comments | 27 Aug 25 06:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.453s | source
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napolux ◴[27 Aug 25 08:17 UTC] No.45036831[source]▶
The most deadly bug in history. If you know any other deadly bug, please share! I love these stories!
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1. echelon ◴[27 Aug 25 08:25 UTC] No.45036868[source]▶
The 737 Max MCAS is arguably a bug. That killed 346 people.

Not a "bug" per se, but texting while driving kills ~400 people per year in the US. It's a bug at some level of granularity.

To be tongue in cheek a bit, buggy JIRA latency has probably wasted 10,000 human years. Those are many whole human lives if you count them up.

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2. b_e_n_t_o_n ◴[27 Aug 25 09:23 UTC] No.45037226[source]▶
> To be tongue in cheek a bit, buggy JIRA latency has probably wasted 10,000 human years. Those are many whole human lives if you count them up.

These kind of calculations always make me wonder...say someone wasted one minute of everybody's life, is the cost ~250 lives? One minute? Somewhere in between?