In this series we have been discussing the metaphor of hackers being like the Cuckoo bird's biology nomenclature description 'brood parasitism' of which it is said:
"Brood parasitic birds lay their eggs in the nests of others, sparing themselves the expense of rearing their own young ... Avian brood parasitism, or the laying of one's eggs in the nest of another individual, is a reproductive strategy whereby parasites foist the cost of rearing their offspring onto another individual, the host"
(Nature) . A more humorous 'scientific' description is:
"Being a parent is hard. Raising a family takes a lot of energy and time. If you have kids, you know what I’m talking about.
I mean, I don’t have kids, but I do have some pet chickens. I imagine that’s pretty close to the same thing.
When you’re an exhausted parent and you wish you had some time to just live your own life, you might secretly fantasize about taking your kids over to your neighbor, dropping them off, and saying, 'Here. These are YOURS now. I’ve got better things to do… like sleep.' ”
"1a(1): the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war; a(2): the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions; b: a variety of or instance of the use of strategy
2a: a careful plan or method: a clever stratagem; b: the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal
3: an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success"
A recent post at Tom Dispatch has the title "Engelhardt, Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Suicidal Act", but that post goes further by pointing out that voting for him alone is only one part of the suicide pact:
"And unfortunately, Donald Trump is anything but alone ... In fact, according to a recent Guardian report, almost one-quarter of this country’s congressional representatives (100 members of the House and 23 senators) deny the very existence of climate change — and be shocked, very shocked, but every last one of them is a Republican!"
(ibid). This is the despotic minority Dredd Blog has alluded to as the image of the group think dynamics of civilizations past researched by notable historians:
"Toynbee wrote volumes about two dozen or so civilizations that we only think about when we are in a history class or a library, however, unlike us he didn't just skim the surface, no, he followed ugly all the way to the bone:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). What? Suicide? Murder? ... He was no ordinary historian was he?
That is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, as a world famous encyclopedia points out:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.
(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). Previous posts in this series have zeroed in on the question of what "tyranny" and "despotic minority" meant to him."
"If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy?In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. [p. 39]" ... "Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this——hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. [p. 40]"
(ibid, quoting Sigmund. Freud). Note that I am not saying that there is no hypothetical solution to this existential threat.
II. It's US Too
But I am and have been saying that the existential threat is not given the weight that the economy is given, and until that changes 'a solution' is only an imagination.
A politician running for president of the USA has recently chanted Drill Baby Drill ("We will do it at levels that nobody's ever seen before") even as the President of the USA has stated in public that the USA produces more oil now than any other country.
Both statements are in reference to 'oil' a.k.a. petroleum.
An expert on oil production indicates what the reality is:
"McNally, a former energy official to former President George W. Bush, said there isn’t that much presidents can do about US oil production, short of taking drastic emergency powers.
Unlike OPEC nations, the United States oil output is largely set by the free market.
'It’s not like President Biden or any president has a dial in the Oval Office to increase production,' McNally said."
(CNN). Meanwhile, a 'United' Nations official statement warns:
"Climate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly.
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures."
"The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. The unplanned fossil fuel boom reflects an uncomfortable truth for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris: It is difficult for any president to stop the spigot of U.S. oil production, a leading driver of both the economy andclimate change.
'If you were to show someone who came from Mars the line of U.S. oil and gas production over the last 15 years, they probably would not be able to tell whether a Republican or Democrat was in the White House,' said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University."
In other words, the disease is not being treated adequately by mere elections:
"Every person, in every country in every continent will be impacted in some shape or form by climate change. There is a climate cataclysm looming, and we are underprepared for what this could mean.
Climate change is caused by human activities and threatens life on earth as we know it. With rising greenhouse gas emissions, climate change is occurring at rates much faster than anticipated. Its impacts can be devastating and include extreme and changing weather patterns and rising sea levels.
If left unchecked, climate change will undo a lot of the development progress made over the past years. It will also provoke mass migrations that will lead to instability and wars."
(United Nations). Thus, perhaps A.J. Toynbee was more than a 'mere' historian:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
The Cuckoo's egg phenomenon (The Cuckoo's Egg Hatched Again, 2, 3, 4) presents an opportunity to revisit the genetic constant ~32/35/25/6 phenomenon again.
The gist of The Cuckoo's Egg Hatched Again series was that a human parasite, a human being, could behave like the avian parasite, the Cuckoo Bird.
The human finds a location in networks where it can 'lay an egg' (e.g. a software program) that will extract 'benefits' from that system.
Likewise, The Cuckoo Bird finds a location (another bird's nest) where it can 'lay an egg' which the other bird will hatch and then feed the Cuckoo Bird's chick.
Avian scientists call the bird behavior Avian Brood Parasitism and computer scientists call the human behavior 'hacking', but both fit the description of 'parasitic behavior'.
III. The Genetic Constant ~32/35/25/6 In The Cuckoo Hacker And The Cuckoo Bird
The appendices in the posts in Section II contain data on a variety of species, but today's appendix shows the ~32/35/25/6 constant as it appears only in the Cuckoo Bird (Cuculus canorus) chromosomes (Appendix Cuckoo Chromosomes).
There are links to official databases for each chromosome so that you can peruse the data in .gbff or .fasta formats if you choose to.
The tables in today's appendix are counts of the atoms in the bird's genome.
The variation in the ~32/35/25/6 is not excessive or unusual because there are problems with nucleotide accuracy in terms gathering the data as well as analyzing the data because a lot of the nucleotides are 'N' designations (meaning the researchers who gathered the DNA are not sure if an 'N' designation is actually an 'A' 'C' 'G' 'T' or 'U').
Thus, the uncanny ~32/35/25/6 pattern is like the 1/137 pattern "we have no idea where it comes from" (see first link in Section II above).
How can we relate parasitic behavior in one species to another species in terms of 'does the same behavior in two different species (human, bird) originate from a single source?'
This subject is not ignored in scientific research:
"An entire edition of one journal, for an example of primitive propaganda, concerns how some parasitic species can develop processes for the manipulation of the brains of their host species:
The ability of parasites to alter the behaviour of their hosts fascinates both scientists and non-scientists alike. One reason that this topic resonates with so many is that it touches on core philosophical issues such as the existence of free will. If the mind is merely a machine, then it can be controlled by any entity that understands the code and has access to the machinery. This special
issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology highlights some of the best-understood examples of parasite-induced changes in host brain and
behaviour, encompassing both invertebrate and vertebrate hosts and micro- and macro-parasites. The observation that parasitic infection can
modify specific host behaviours is an old one (see Moore, 2002). The general consensus has been that these parasites have evolved the ability
to manipulate host behaviour in order to advance their own reproductive success (Moore, 2002). Unfortunately, there has been a lack of
information on two key points of this hypothesis. Firstly, it has proved difficult to unequivocally demonstrate that changes in host behaviour
benefit the parasite (i.e. enhance parasitic fitness). Secondly, the mechanisms that parasites use to change host behaviour were completely
unknown for many years, particularly in the case of vertebrate host systems.
(Neural Parasitology). Regular readers will remember that in other Ecocosmology Blog posts we have looked at how that pathogenic behavior can and has been changed whereby the pathogenic and/or parasitic behavior can become mutualistic once again to benefit both host and symbiont (Microbial Languages: Rehabilitation of the Unseen--2)."
(On The Origin of Propaganda - 2). Nevertheless, it is still difficult to imagine that the behavior of humans and birds who exhibit parasitic patterns is from the same source, and it is difficult to form a hypothesis for that eventuality:
The parasite my lab is beginning to focus on is one in the world of mammals, where parasites are changing mammalian behavior... Toxo instead has developed this amazing capacity to alter innate behavior in rodents... If you take a lab rat who is 5,000 generations into being a lab rat, since the ancestor actually ran around in the real world, and you put some cat urine in one corner of their cage, they're going to move to the other side. Completely innate, hard-wired reaction to the smell of cats, the cat pheromones. But take a Toxo-
"Complex" Is An Understatement
infected rodent, and they're no longer afraid of the smell of cats. In fact they become attracted to it. The most damn amazing thing you can ever see, Toxo knows how to make cat urine smell attractive to rats. And rats go and check it out and that rat is now much more likely to wind up in the cat's stomach. Toxo's circle of life completed.
... part of my lab has been trying to figure out the neurobiological aspects. The first thing is that it's for real. The rodents, rats, mice, really do become attracted to cat urine when they've been infected with Toxo. And you might say, okay, well, this is a rodent doing just all sorts of screwy stuff because it's got this parasite turning its brain into Swiss cheese or something. It's just non-specific behavioral chaos. But no, these are incredibly normal animals. Their olfaction is normal, their social behavior is normal, their learning and memory is normal. All of that. It's not just a generically screwy animal.
You say, okay well, it's not that, but Toxo seems to know how to destroy fear and anxiety circuits. But it's not that, either. Because these are rats who are still innately afraid of bright lights. They're nocturnal animals. They're afraid of big, open spaces. You can condition them to be afraid of novel things. The system works perfectly well there. Somehow Toxo can laser out this one fear pathway, this aversion to predator odors... Toxo preferentially knows how to home in on the part of the brain that is all about fear and anxiety, a brain region called the amygdala... Toxo knows how to get in there.
Next, we then saw that Toxo would take the dendrites, the branch and cables that neurons have to connect to each other, and shriveled them up in the amygdala. It was disconnecting circuits. You wind up with fewer cells there. This is a parasite that is unwiring this stuff in the critical part of the brain for fear and anxiety... It knows how to find that particular circuitry... Meanwhile, there is a well-characterized circuit that has to do with sexual attraction. And as it happens, part of this circuit courses through the amygdala, which is pretty interesting in and of itself, and then goes to different areas of the brain than the fear pathways... Toxo knows how to hijack the sexual reward pathway. And you get males infected with Toxo and expose them to a lot of the cat heromones, and their testes get bigger. Somehow, this damn parasite knows how to make cat urine smell sexually arousing to rodents, and they go and check it out. Totally amazing... So what about humans? A small literature is coming out now reporting neuropsychological testing on men who are Toxo-infected, showing that they get a little bit impulsive... And then the truly astonishing thing: two different groups independently have reported that people who are Toxo-infected have three to four times the likelihood of being killed in car accidents involving reckless speeding... Maybe you take a Toxo-infected human and they start having a proclivity towards doing dumb-ass things that we should be innately averse to, like having your body hurdle through space at high G-forces. Maybe this is the same neurobiology... On a certain level, this is a protozoan parasite that knows more about the neurobiology of anxiety and fear than 25,000 neuroscientists standing on each other's shoulders... But no doubt it's also a tip of the iceberg of God knows what other parasitic stuff is going on out there. Even in the larger sense, God knows what other unseen realms of biology make our behavior far less autonomous than lots of folks would like to think.
(A Talk With Dr. Sapolsky). Bingo, remember that this series is about a hypothesis that microbes may be the source of the toxins of power that corrupt the minds of officials who inhabit offices of power."
The better part of a decade ago Dredd Blog was complaining about a non-existent science called "Abiology" that should exist (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 27, quoting Dredd Blog posts from 2012).
About a year after that post I complained, along with other scientific researchers, about the scientists of the biology persuasion having loose lips:
"Since at least the 17th century (and mostly because of Newton), natural scientists have stopped using formal or final causes to explain natural phenomena ... except in biology. This was first pointed out by Colin Pittendrigh (Pittendrigh, C. S. Behavior and Evolution) (ed. by A. Rose and G. G. Simpson), Yale University Press, 1958), who coined the term "teleonomy" to refer to the kind of teleological phenomena observed in biological processes."
(On The Origin of Genieology - 2). "Abiology" still doesn't exist, and the elite among them still go on
and on about possibly not knowing the difference between bio-(live) and abio-(not live), i.e. biology and abiology (Are Viruses Alive?).
And I am still pointing out that viruses are discussed in the science commentariat (media) without knowing what microbial host the viruses are replicated by:
A microbiologist wrote: "Easy to see though, plaque assays for counting phages [a type of virus] do not work if you have − or suspect you have − lots of phages in a sample but the host bacteria are difficult or impossible to culture on plates, or − even worse − not known." (Small Things Considered, emphasis added).
The virus commentariat's 'solution' all too often is to ignore "the host bacteria" of the virus ('home' of the virus), and to substitute that location/home with what is actually the "meta-host" or "epi-host".
That is, they substitute the host bacteria of that virus and tell us that the virus is "in a human host", "in an animal host", or in "a plant host".
(Quantum Biology). But let's give them a break because physicists who attempt to analyze behavior by attributing behavior to quantum sources are at times scorned by their peers:
"... Roger Penrose and I have developed a theory of consciousness ... It basically proposes quantum computation in brain neuron microtubules inside neurons. So rather than neuron-to-neuron communication, we're looking at a deeper level inside neurons to give a global sense of consciousness through quantum mechanics, which results in real-time causality and free will ... it gives consciousness real-time control and a potential connection to fundamental space-time geometry, quantum space-time geometry, through Roger's objective reduction. This is consistent with Eastern spiritual traditions. Although Roger doesn't like to talk about it, I've taken the liberty of observing the implications of what he said and what we've said for consciousness, for Eastern philosophy and other spiritual traditions ... if quantum consciousness is correct, for example, if Penrose's idea is correct, we are literally ripples in the fine structure of space-time geometry, which can resonate - levels of consciousness can resonate from the Planck scale, the bottom level of the Universe, multiple hierarchical levels to the brain. This is consistent with Eastern philosophy and also indicates that afterlife, reincarnation, and out-of-body experiences that we've heard about are plausible. The quantum soul."
This series is about a bird that is a parasite but is little known; and is a metaphor for intruders of the hacker type:
"The cuckoo lays her eggs in other birds' nests. She is a nesting parasite: some other bird will raise her young cuckoos. The survival of cuckoo chicks depends on the ignorance of other species."
(The Cuckoo's Egg, p. 21). The following also caught my 'metaphorical eye' since in our western culture history and herstory keep repeating themselves:
"White House urges developers to dump C and C++ ... it named Rust as an example of a programming language it considers safe."
(Info World) ... which brought up these Dredd Blog 'memories':
The quote just above in this post ("White House urges developers to dump C and C++ ... and it named Rust as an example of a programming language it considers safe") and the following quote, read together, are exceptionally instructive:
"How to work with LLVM
The typical way to work with LLVM is via code in a language that supports LLVM’s libraries.
Two common language choices are C and C++. Many LLVM developers default to one of those two for good reasons:
LLVM itself is written in C++."
(Link; The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure; LLVM Wikipedia). In other words the White House assertion that programmers should not use the "C" or "C++" programming languages, instead they should use the "Rust" programming language is less convincing when one considers that LLVM and Rust are essentially written in the C++ programming language.
But I digress.
This series began with some little known historical hacking events:
"For forty years the military has been hackable. If you want a book that documented the current reality 40 years ago, read The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stoll. He had a difficult time convincing the military that it was being hacked as if it was an open book:
The meeting was top secret, so I couldn't listen—someone fetched me when my turn came. In a small room, lit only by the viewgraph machine, there were around thirty people, most of them in uniforms. Generals and admirals, like you see in the movies.
Well, I talked for half an hour, describing how the hacker was breaking into military computers and skipping through our networks. ... I know as little about the military world as the next person. "I guess I'm impressed, though I'm not sure why," I said. "You ought to be," Bob said. "These are all flag officers. General John Paul Hyde works at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And that guy in the front row -- he's a big shot from the FBI. It's a good thing he heard you."
(ibid, The Cuckoo's Egg, p. 200). This took place 40 years ago when a long hair from Berkeley informed the military they were being had, so they gave the long haired hippy astronomer the National Medal of Honor.
But they did not fix the system, because when someone hacks the system they can go to congress yelling "security security" to scare congress into giving them more money not to fix it."
At least read page 21 in "The Cuckoo's Egg" where the author writes:
"Just one problem: there's a [']bug['] in that software."
(The Cuckoo's Egg, p.21). I put 'bug' in quotes to illustrate the sense that the intruder from afar considered it to be a feature not a bug.
The bug had nothing to do with the programming language the software was written in.
If you ask someone about the better/best programming languages, the results will vary:
"What is a programming language used in spacecraft?
"The programming languages used in spacecraft vary depending on the systems and tasks performed by those vehicles. Common languages used in spacecraft software development include:
"C/C++: The C/C++ programming language is one of the most popular languages in spacecraft software development. It is used to build control, analysis and simulation systems and to interact with devices and other systems.
Python: Python is increasingly used in the aerospace industry due to its ability to handle a wide range of tasks, such as data analysis, machine learning, and engineering applications.
Java: Java is used in some space applications, especially when it comes to programming applications based on graphical interfaces or cross-platform operational applications.
Assembly Language: In some cases, Assembly Language is used to program specific parts of space systems that require high performance and precise control of the equipment.
LabVIEW: LabVIEW is used in some space applications as a software tool for designing control, monitoring, and data mining systems."
(Hive). Getting more specific, what about the programming language used to write computer operating systems:
8 Programming languages an operating system developer should know
The process of building an operating system is often challenging and complex. Developers use low-level system programming to develop operating systems as it offers them more control over how computer memory is managed and also reduces resource consumption and minimizes latency. Low level enables developers to interface with hardware and ensure that the OS can smoothly communicate with the underlying computer architecture. Though there are many languages that can be used to develop an operating system, there are some languages that the developers prefer more than others for the benefits the languages offer. Here is the list of 8 programming languages that are more commonly used:
Assembly Language:
Kernel is a most critical part of an operating system and assembly language is often used by developers to write it. It is the lowest level programming language that is often used there, where the system requires low-level access to the computers' hardware. Different architectures have their own assembly languages.
C:
C is one of the most widely used when it comes to developing an Operating System. The language was created primarily to develop UNIX. C is capable of working with memory addresses and performing pointer arithmetic. It is a fundamental feature that makes it well-suited for system programming. It allows developers to directly manage and manipulate memory, which is crucial when building operating systems and other system-level software.
C++:
C++ is an extension of C. This programming language caters to a few needs while developing an operating system. It helps in creating more object-oriented modular kernels. The development of C++-based operating systems like Haiku and the kernel parts of the Microsoft Windows operating system demonstrates this. Rust:
Rust has gained some popularity in recent years for offering memory safety, control over low level systems, abstractions, and concurrency support. The language is designed to reduce typical memory-related programming mistakes like null pointer differences, buffer overflows, use-after-free errors, etc. It provides the developers control over memory, interrupts, and CPU registers.
Nim:
Nim is a system programming language. It aims to combine high-level abstractions with low-level efficiency. It's not a traditional choice when it comes to building operating systems but it can be used in niche areas. Nim focuses on simplicity, safety, and performance and it is more suitable for certain user-level components.
ADA:
Ada is a high-integrity language that is typed statically. It is used in safety-critical systems, including certain real-time and embedded operating systems.
Golang:
Golang is also used for specific components of building an operating system. For instance, the Go programming language has been employed to develop various user-level applications, services, and utilities that run on top of the Plan 9 kernel.
Zig:
Zig is designed for low-level development. Besides safety and performance, it focuses on readability. It has gained some attention in the systems programming community. Likewise, Nim, programming language is also not commonly used for complete operating systems building, but it could be employed for writing low-level components, device drivers, or other system-level software.
"Unix distinguishes itself from its predecessors as the first portable operating system: almost the entire operating system is written in the C programming language, which allows Unix to operate on numerous platforms" (Wikipedia).
And those operating systems can have mistakes in them if programmers make mistakes.
Closing Comments
The programming language is not the problem nor the solution, as shown by these infamous programmer mistakes:
1. The Mariner 1 Spacecraft, 1962
The first entry in our rundown goes right back to the sixties.
Before the summer of love or the invention of the lava lamp, NASA launched a data-gathering unmanned space mission to fly past Venus. It did not go to plan.
The Mariner 1 space probe barely made it out of Cape Canaveral before the rocket veered dangerously off course. Worried that the rocket was heading towards a crash-landing on earth, NASA engineers issued a self-destruct command and the craft was obliterated about 290 seconds after launch.
An investigation revealed the cause to be a very simple software error. A hyphen was omitted in a line of code, which meant that incorrect guidance signals were sent to the spacecraft. The overall cost of the omission was reported to be more than $18 million at the time (about $169 million in today’s world).
2. The Morris Worm, 1988
Not all costly software errors are worn by big companies or government organizations. In fact, one of the most costly software bugs ever was caused by a single student. A Cornell University student created a worm as part of an experiment, which ended up spreading like wildfire and crashing tens of thousands of computers due to a coding error.
The computers were all connected through a very early version of the internet, making the Morris worm essentially the first infectious computer virus. Graduate student Robert Tappan Morris was eventually charged and convicted of criminal hacking and fined $10,000, although the cost of the mess he created was estimated to be as high as $10 million.
History has forgiven Morris though, with the incident now widely credited for exposing a vulnerability and improving digital security. These days, Morris is a professor at MIT and the worm’s source code has been kept as a museum piece on a floppy disc at the University of Boston.
3. Pentium FDIV Bug, 1994
The Pentium FDIV bug is a curious case of a minor problem that snowballed due to mass hysteria.
Thomas Nicely, a math professor, discovered a flaw in the Pentium processor and reported it to Intel. Their response was to offer a replacement chip to anyone who could prove they were affected by it.
The original error was relatively simple, with a problem in the lookup table of the chip’s algorithm. This could cause tiny inaccuracies in calculations, but only very rarely. In fact, the chance of an miscalculation occurring was calculated to be just 1 in 360 billion.
Although the actual effects of the software error were negligible, when details of the bug hit the international press, millions of people requested a new chip, costing Intel upwards of $475 million.
4. Bitcoin Hack, Mt. Gox, 2011
Mt. Gox was the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world in the 2010s, until they were hit by a software error that ultimately proved fatal.
The glitch led to the exchange creating transactions that could never be fully redeemed, costing up to $1.5 million in lost bitcoins.
But Mt. Gox’s woes didn’t end there. In 2014, they lost more than 850,000 bitcoins (valued at roughly half a billion USD at the time) in a hacking incident. Around 200,000 bitcoins were recovered, but the financial loss was still overwhelming and the exchange ended up declaring bankruptcy.
5. EDS Child Support System, 2004
Back in 2004, the UK government introduced a new and complex system to manage the operations of the Child Support Agency (CSA). The contract was awarded to IT services company Electronic Data Systems (EDS). The system was called CS2, and there were problems as soon as it went live.
A leaked internal memo at the time revealed that the system was “badly designed, badly tested and badly implemented”. The agency reported that CS2 “had over 1,000 reported problems, of which 400 had no known workaround”, resulting in “around 3,000 IT incidents a week”. The system was budgeted to cost around £450 million, but ended up costing an estimated £768 million altogether. EDS, a Texas-based contractor, also announced a $153 million loss in their subsequent financial results.
6. Heathrow Terminal 5 Opening, 2008
Imagine prepping to jet off on your eagerly-awaited vacation or important business trip, only to find that your flight is grounded or and your luggage is nowhere to be seen.
This was exactly what happened to thousands of travelers when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opened back in March 2008, and it was all caused by buggy software. The problem lay with a new baggage handling system that performed well on test runs, but failed miserably in real-life. This caused massive disruptions like malfunctioning luggage belts and thousands of items being lost or sent to the wrong destinations.
British Airways also revealed that problems with the wireless network caused additional problems at the airport. Over the next 10 days, some 42,000 bags were lost and more than 500 flights canceled, costing more than £16 million.
7. NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter, 1998
Losing $20 from your wallet is probably enough to ruin your day — how would it feel to lose a $125 million spacecraft? NASA engineers found out back in 1998 when the Mars Climate Orbiter burned up after getting too close to the surface of Mars.
It took engineers several months to work out what went wrong. It turned out to be an embarrassingly simple mistake in converting imperial units to metric. According to the investigation report, the ground control software produced by Lockheed Martin used imperial measurements, while the software onboard, produced by NASA, was programmed with SI metric units. The overall cost of the failed mission was more than $320 million.
8. Soviet Gas Pipeline Explosion, 1982
This error is a little bit different to the others, as it was deliberate (or so rumor has it). In fact, the Soviet gas pipeline explosion is alleged to be a cunning example of cyber-espionage, carried out by the CIA.
Back in 1982, at the height of the cold war tensions between the USA and USSR, the Soviet government built a gas pipeline that ran on advanced automated control software. The Soviets planned to steal from a Canadian company that specialized in this kind of programming.
According to accounts, the CIA was tipped off and began plotting some counter-espionage. They worked with the Canadians to place deliberate bugs in the software (also known as a Trojan Horse) to compromise the Soviet pipeline.
The unknowing Soviets went ahead and stole the compromised software and applied it to the pipeline. In June 1982, the explosion occurred with a force which was visible from space. This severely damaged the pipeline, which had cost tens of millions to construct and was intended to produce $8 billion in natural gas revenue.
9. Knight’s $440M in bad trades, 2012
Losing $440 million is a bad day at the office by anyone’s standards. Even more so when it happens in just 30 minutes due to a software error that wipes 75% off the value of one the biggest capital groups in the world.
Knight Capital Group had invested in new trading software that was supposed to help them make a killing on the stock markets. Instead, it ended up killing their firm. Several software errors combined to send Knight on a crazy buying spree, spending more than $7 billion on 150 different stocks.
The unintended trades ended up costing the company $440 million, and Goldman Sachs had to step in to rescue them. Knight never really recovered, and was ultimately acquired by a competitor less than a year later.
10. ESA Ariane 5 Flight V88, 1996
Given the complexity and expense of space exploration, it’s no wonder there are several failed space missions on our list of all-time software errors. However, the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 failure is an even harsher cautionary tale than the rest, as it was caused by more than one error.
Just 36 seconds after its maiden launch, the rocket engines failed due to the engineers reusing incompatible code from Ariane 4 and a conversion error from 64-bit to 16-bit data.
The failure resulted in a $370 million loss for the ESA, and a whole host of recommendations came out of the subsequent investigation, including calls for improved software analysis and evaluation.
11. The Millennium Bug, 2000
The Millennium Bug, AKA the notorious Y2K, was a massive concern in the lead-up to the year 2000. The concern was that computer systems around the world would not be able to cope with dates after December 31, 1999, due to the fact that most computers and operating systems only used two digits to represent the year, disregarding the 19 prefix for the twentieth century. Dire predictions were made about the implosion of banks, airlines, power suppliers and critical data storage. How would systems deal with the 00 digits?
The anticlimatic answer was “pretty well, actually”. The millennium bug was a bit of a non-starter and didn’t cause too many real-life problems, as most systems made adjustments in advance. However, the fear caused by the potential fallout throughout late 1999 cost thousands of considerable amounts of money in contingency planning and preparations, with institutions, businesses and even families expecting the worst. The USA spent vast quantities to address the issue, with some estimates putting the cost at $100 billion.
(Raygun). Remember, the programmer makes the mistakes, the programming language only does what it is 'told' (programmed by the programmer) to do.
So, the White House would have done better to say: "White House urges developers to dump programming mistakes".
Finally, forget about teaching an X president Spanish to stop him from lying, eh?
In the sense that "music" and lyrics are a "language" (way of communicating), the video below is also a parasitic anthem.
It is cuckoo because 'music' is not sentient, can't write songs, can't write anything, and the real writer of this song, like the intruder in the hacking by the cuckoo hacker that Cliff Stoll busted, is also a parasite and the words are parasitic.
Like the Cuckoo bird who initiates a targeted mother bird of another species, and deceives her, causing her to, in effect, assassinate her own chicks, this cuckoo song's words are parasitic (however, the second song is truly instructive).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
"I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said
"Do you come from a land down under
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover"
