HISTORY'S WORST SOFTWARE ERROR IS SCARY... | Therac-25

Comments · 219

• ME

  @meaton3805 · 2 months ago

  I know this one! I had a professor who used this as a cautionary tale to never take the speed at which users can type for granted.

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• HO

  @honest_wasp · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCoqUDFYd0&amp;t=1413">23:33</a> Berry explaining the Therac‑25 disaster like it’s a Bethesda bug report had me dying. “Bethesda, why computer kill people?” is the funniest summary of a software failure I’ve ever heard.

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• JO

  @joemck85 · 2 months ago

  I went through college for computer science. They teach the Therac-25 disaster as an example of how things can go very wrong. The biggest take-away was that you should never rely on software checks to prevent a machine from doing something that could injure someone. It&apos;s good to check it in software for added safety, but there should always be hardware interlocks too. The other lesson is that error checking should be thorough and error messages clear for any error that could be bad.

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• PR

  @primrosevale1995 · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCoqUDFYd0&amp;t=1364">22:44</a> &quot;Did YandereDev code this?!&quot; sounds like it belongs in a coding version of MasterChef.

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• SH

  @SharkyShocker · 1 month ago

  Kyle Hill makes so much great content. Extremely terrifying but also so informative. Glad to see this reaction!

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• WY

  @wyrmofvt · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCoqUDFYd0&amp;t=1933">32:13</a> Berry, this has <i>already</i> happened. Not the situation of a medical device malfunctioning from defective code, but businesses have had whole databases erased by vibe coding. Lawyers have used AI to author briefs that have references to cases that do not exist. Being sentenced to capital punishment due to an AI error is definitely on the table.

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• IT

  @itsnoteasy · 2 months ago

  As a programmer, this is a big part of why I write code the way I do. &nbsp;We were taught about that at uni to hammer home that code absolutely can kill people if you mess up. &nbsp;Keep it simple, question everything, don&apos;t let errors go unhandled, and for the love of god don&apos;t flood users with so many warnings and errors that they start to ignore them.<br><br>Don&apos;t get me started on people &quot;coding&quot; using AI.

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• CO

  @courtyardcasual · 2 months ago

  this is like fnaf levels of “oh that contraption killed someone? Yeah just put it in the back for a couple of weeks”

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• DR

  @DrkFire666_dt · 2 months ago

  This level of incompetency and lack of oversite is terrifying!

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• TH

  @TheForsakenEagle · 2 months ago

  Berry was going to be a radiologist, but then she got a real job as a vtuber.

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• AR

  @argon525 · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCoqUDFYd0&amp;t=872">14:32</a> We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.

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• JA

  @JappeSpace · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCoqUDFYd0&amp;t=653">10:53</a> &nbsp;17.000 RATS?!<br>New cancer treatment unlocked, just have tiny rats eat the tumour.

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