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Re:Practical use of the null garbage collector by pjmlp on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @12:57AM (#42928584)
It works great, until the software gets reused in another hardware configuration and then something goes really bad.
Re:Practical use of the null garbage collector by Brybry on Friday February 07, 2025 @04:15AM (#42970805)
Maybe that could be a feature, for example if an adversary pulls it from a dud?
Re:Practical use of the null garbage collector by elcritch on Friday February 07, 2025 @04:37AM (#42970924)
Or an adversary steals the code and refuses it. Actually pretty sure that's a real thing in the defense industry.

A friend of mine works on F16's. He says they don't really have half the plans to re-create or fix them and another third are just outright wrong, but instead they have to reverse engineer them. I exaggerate a bit. Still it's enough so even if another country stole all the plans they'd not be able to build their own F16s without spending massive amounts to re-engineer half of it and avoid the known issues.

That's long been America's main advantage. We can apparently spend insane amounts of money on this stuff, which would bankrupt other nations.

It's an odd but seemingly effective strategy. I'm not sure if it's planned or really just a happenstance of Washington politics. Also explains the F35 being absurdly expensive, maybe its a "feature" not a bug.

Re:Practical use of the null garbage collector by sgerenser on Friday February 07, 2025 @07:26AM (#42971809)
Buggy software getting re-used in another hardware configuration (with no physical safety interlocks) was one of the root causes of the Therac-25 disaster.
Re:Practical use of the null garbage collector by SubjectToChange on Friday February 07, 2025 @02:37PM (#42976592)
Ariane 501 as well.