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Non-twitter link: https://nitter.net/morganherlocker/status/173045572181552742... (edit: I'm not the author) "Notified today that my insulin pump controller has a bug where the leading decimal point will be dropped, ie: changing a dose of .21 units to 21 units. I can reproduce randomly ~1 in 5 times so probably a race condition. Easily one of the worst software bugs I have ever heard of."
wouldn't this put someone into a state of insulin shock?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are, that's why insulin pump firmware is developed using obsolete and error-prone methods by substandard engineers and why you can't get the source for your insulin pump firmware and reflash it with a bug-fixed version
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think letting anyone mess with the equipment keeping them alive is a good idea either. I really love open source IoT stuff for example and I think it's a great that people are trying to take real ownership of their devices. However it's different if the penalty for failure is your lights not working or immediate death. I think a better solution would be if the source was re…
i think you would need an overwhelmingly large number of prevented suicides and avoided foolish accidents to justify such a monstrous evil
the balance of deaths is very likely to work out the other way around, in fact, because people reflashing their own insulin pumps have much stronger incentives to maximize their survival chances than any possible regulatory regime would, much less the one that actually exists
the policy of 'let us make laws and set up regulatory agencies to prevent people from harming themselves' has such an astoundingly bad track record that it always surprises me to hear someone advocating it in apparent seriousness
Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed software" ♫
This is a really really bad bug, but I don't think this is especially related to open vs closed source products.
Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed software" ♫
I am bad at reading this, can you elaborate what you mean? Should we open source life critical software?
It's likely better that way. If the app would allow this, I'd already decompiled the app and tried to reverse engineer the protocol to allow her to set a bolus when she's wearing something that makes it hard to access the pump or carry her phone with her (like a dress). Setting the bolus via e.g. a smartwatch would be really nice, but I'd be very afraid of creating a life-threatening bug.
I'm not familiar with insulin dosing, but I'm guessing a sharp 10x jump should warrant my app telling me to go to the hospital? I'd expect medical devices like this to have a last line of defence safety check against bugs. Basically checking all common sense edge cases like: is this dose lethal to humans, is this dose significantly more/less than historical doses, is this dose below a level in which most humans would…
Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed software" ♫
I think you are missing the point. The point is that with commercial software is that there exists an entity that accepts responsibility for it under threat of severe penalties. You don't want somebody to be killed and then have just everybody shrug "it is not me" and not be able to find a culprit. Personally, I always include a note that my software is offered as is and I do not accept any liability for anything tha…
There is no reason you can't hire a company to support free software.