from Hacker News

Therac-25

by wazbug on 9/12/23, 1:22 PM with 15 comments

• by elromulous on 9/12/23, 2:43 PM

  It's worth noting that we don't know for sure how many people this killed, we only have a lower bound.

• by rakenodiax on 9/12/23, 2:01 PM

  The Causality episode on this is really good: https://engineered.network/causality/episode-39-therac-25/

• by orf on 9/12/23, 9:41 PM

  > 1986, the programmer left AECL. In a lawsuit, lawyers could not identify the programmer or learn about his qualification and experience.

  I find this hard to believe: how? Are there no records?

  Edit: apparently the identity is known, but the lawsuit was settled before a deposition was required. Also:

  https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/mzht1/comment/...

• by mc32 on 9/12/23, 3:22 PM

  So they took components from a previous system, didn't test properly on the new system and today we inherit a whole lot of regulation for medical equipment because of this. Not that it's a bad thing that we ensure proper testing has occurred but there are so many cases where legally this applies even if it's very peripheral (like say a UI change in a menu item of something not related to medical equipment but is never the less under compliance)

• by solumos on 9/12/23, 2:53 PM

  Perhaps one of the best case studies in software ethics