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Showing posts from July, 2020

Podcast: VW Dieselgate and the $33bn b̶u̶g̶ feature

This is the story behind the VW emissions scandal, that so far has cost the company over $33bn.  We look into the technology issues VW faced and the investigations that uncovered the problem. The MP3 (Audio) file is available here .

Podcast: The Therac-25, buggy software that killed.

As part of an ongoing project to learn more about what we've got wrong to help us improve, I look at the Therac-25 incidents, a devastating collection of software failures that often rank in the top 10 of civilian radiation accidents. The Therac-25 radiation therapy device killed or injured 6 people across Canada and the United States. The Therac-25 was a room-sized machine, in this cut-away, you can see the computer terminal in the near-bottom left. I look into two of the most severe bugs. Why the manufacturer didn't fix them and what we can learn from their mistakes. The MP3 (Audio) file is available here .