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The $242 Million Software Error

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#11

Post by juiceandjuice »

While software risks should ideally not be included in part of those risks, investing has some inherent level of risk.

Once society finally grasps that, we'll hopefully be better off. Not condoning what these guys did by any means, but caveat emptor for sure.

Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#12

Post by sp332 »

thwarted wrote: post #8
sp332 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My failing hard drive would like to have a word with you.

A failing harddrive is a hardware problem.

Software is a property of hardware. I can yell at my computer all day and it won't do a thing. Sometimes, there is a software error. Sometimes, there is a programmer error. The computer doesn't "know" or "care" the difference.

Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#14

Post by jcromartie »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #11

While software risks should ideally not be included in part of those risks, investing has some inherent level of risk. Once society finally grasps that, we'll hopefully be better off. Not condoning what these guys did by any means, but caveat emptor for sure.

I can't wait until the finance industry is subject to risk. I mean, yeah, you can lose your job... but you'll always retire on piles and piles of money as a finance exec.

Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#16

Post by jarek »

moxiemk1 wrote: post #9

This site is inaccessible on mobile browsers (or at least iPhone) It "helpfully" redirects to the IEEE Spectrum mobile homepage. If you are making a mobile version of a site, please don't redirect blindly. I followed a link, I expect to go there. EDIT: thankfully, the article was recent and a link to the mobile story shows up on the page we get redirected to.

Yeah, hate it when the websites do that. It's even more fun when you're on a desktop and they 'detect' you're on mobile anyway!

Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#17

Post by jplewicke »

According to their SEC filing, the source of the error was that they were using both percentages and decimals in the software, and someone thought that a decimal was a percentage. It's surprising how little your risk model does for you when you multiply it by 0.01.

Re: The $242 Million Software Error

#18

Post by thwarted »

sp332 wrote: post #12
thwarted wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A failing harddrive is a hardware problem.

Software is a property of hardware. I can yell at my computer all day and it won't do a thing. Sometimes, there is a software error. Sometimes, there is a programmer error. The computer doesn't "know" or "care" the difference.

Software and hardware have significantly different risk mitigation strategies. No matter how much high quality code you write, you can't keep a harddrive from failing. And when a harddrive fails, you don't immediately blame it on software (of course, software can drive hardware beyond its limits and cause a failure of the hardware, but that is software abusing the hardware or not knowing the limits of the hardware, and thus a software problem).
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