from Hacker News

UK legal system assumes that computers don't have bugs

by idw on 12/23/20, 3:59 PM with 24 comments

• by Meph504 on 12/23/20, 7:06 PM

  How is this not reasonable?

  "in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical instruments were in order at the material time... The principle has been applied to such devices as speedometers and traffic lights and in the consultation paper we saw no reason why it should not apply to computers."

• by waspentalive on 12/25/20, 11:48 AM

  Babbage supposedly said something like "I cannot rightly understand how this question came to be, a politician asked me once: "If one enters the wrong information into the engine, will it still provide a correct answer?". "

• by gjvnq on 12/23/20, 8:31 PM

  Why not make a compromise?

  Assume that software has no bugs if there is a publically available machine-checkable proof of the program correctness.