Prison. Bankruptcy. Suicide. How a software glitch ruined lives

Re:Prison. Bankruptcy. Suicide. How a software glitch ruined... by jimmydddd on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @09:19AM (#39013482)

I previously worked in factory automation back when computers were first getting introduced into factories. After I spent a day tracking down and correcting some software glitch that was causing a problem, the factory manager would ask what the problem had been. I was instructed to say "bad valve, we replaced it," which I noticed they found far more satisfying to hear than "software writing to wrong register."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Prison. Bankruptcy. Suicide. How a software glitch ruined... by shagie on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @10:25AM (#39014275)

In one of the books I got on technology (early '00s?) there was an anecdote about a computer at a military facility crashing each night (probably in the 70s or 80s). They brought in a consultant to look at it and after an extended period of time looking for the problem in the code, the consultant was staying late in the data center wracking his brain over the problem.

At 10pm, a janitor came in, unplugged the computer, and plugged in his floor clearer, cleaned the floor, and then when done, unplugged the floor cleaner, and plugged the computer back in.

The consultant then suggested using the outlet on the other wall that had a free outlet (and got a 'difficult to unplug' cover for the outlet with the computer).

The next night he stayed late again and the janitor used the outlet on the other wall.

The consultant then told management that the problem had been solved and it was a buffer problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Prison. Bankruptcy. Suicide. How a software glitch ruined... by atombender on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @06:43PM (#39020831)

There's a book called The Devouring Fungus: Tales of the Computer Age [1] that features a story like this, was that the book?

Apparently there are tons of these stories [2] [3], many of them probably urban legends.

But there was one last year that was definitely real [4], when a cleaner removed power to a freezer holding decades of samples, apparently because they were annoyed by an alarm sound it was making.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3227607-the-devouring-fu...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/5yrs1...

[3] https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-techn...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/27/cleaner-coll...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Prison. Bankruptcy. Suicide. How a software glitch ruined... by shagie on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @10:15PM (#39022801)

That was the book. It's been a few years since I've dug it out... and looking it up on Internet Archive...

https://archive.org/details/devouringfungust00jenn/page/96/m... (pages 97 to 98) is the proper telling of the story.

[ Parent | on HN ]