| ▲ | Eduard 7 hours ago |
| Theryq - why would they go with this name when everyone in the field knows about the Therac-25 radiation overexposure incidents? |
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| ▲ | accrual 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Therac-25 is a great case study for software engineers too, recommend reading the Wikipedia article for anyone who hasn't, it's not too long. > Previous models had hardware interlocks to prevent such faults, but the Therac-25 had removed them, depending instead on software checks for safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 Another interesting part of the story is the user element. The issue was most often triggered by fast, experienced technicians who were able to key commands more quickly than Therac engineers anticipated: > After strenuous work, the physicist and operator were able to reproduce the error 54 message. They determined that speed in editing the data entry was a key factor in producing error 54. |
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| ▲ | hinkley 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Therac is the first one I list and Knight Capital is the second. It is in fact possible to bankrupt your company by misusing feature toggles. | | |
| ▲ | throwyawayyyy 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I learned about Therac at college in the 90s. Some years later, I interviewed at Knight Capital, just a couple of weeks before their blowup. (Dreadful interview at which I did dreadfully, being asked to write C _over the phone_ by a supremely uninterested engineer. Quite a red flag in retrospect.) | | |
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| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Therac-25 is a great case study for software engineers too, recommend reading the Wikipedia article for anyone who hasn't, it's not too long. I re-read the original paper every few months, more frequently if I'm working on Safety-of-Life-Critical equipment. Which, given my day job, means I'm re-reading it every couple of weeks at most. Keeps you sharp, doesn't it? |
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| ▲ | elromulous 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The audience of this website is disproportionately aware of the Therac-25 compared to the general public. For the obvious reason, engineering, but also geographically: The Therac-25 being a North American incident that affected Canada and the US. Whereas Theryc is a French company. |
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| ▲ | tjoff 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | While I do agree with your point, as a Swede not even born when the incidents happen I still knew about it, was brought up in a computer science class. | |
| ▲ | torginus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I feel like I have heard about this in a million different management anecdotes in my corporate trainings about management stuff/QA. | |
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The Therac-25 being a North American incident that affected Canada and the US CGR who provided the accelerators and basic PDP11-based computing platform were a French company. > Whereas Theryc is a French company. I have been a Citroën enthusiast for about 30 years. I love French cars. I have repaired lots of Valeo electronics modules for vehicles. I'm not sticking my head in a French fucking particle accelerator. |
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| ▲ | bobmcnamara an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Saw at the podiatrist that someone named a shoe company Kuru, presumably not after the prison disease affecting gait. |
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| ▲ | deadbabe 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Redemption arc. |
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| ▲ | bilbo0s 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Exactly what I thought as soon as I learned the name. It's like, man, how to kill a product? No pun intended. It could even work? But you put yourself behind such a poorly placed 8 ball when you do these things. Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this. It's always in the back of everyone's mind. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this. Being superstitious is not common in the medical treatment world, where weird product names are common. A doctor isn’t going to include the device’s brand name in their decision process for treating a cancer patient. The Therac-25 case study is noted in the medical world but not to the same extent as in engineering. The case was a tragedy of bad engineering, but the doctors involved in directing the treatments were not at fault for the radiation over exposures. | |
| ▲ | leptons 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I doubt any of that is valid. Therac-25 happened 44 years ago, that's a very long time, and many people involved in cancer research today weren't even alive when it happened. "Theryq" and "Therac" are not quite the same either. The word "therapy" and derivatives of it using "thera" are still used widely across the medical industry. So I'm not really sure why anyone here is making a big deal about the name of the company being "Theryq". | | |
| ▲ | hinkley 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s an s-tier case study for UX research though. Maybe the doctors don’t remember but we do. |
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| ▲ | like_any_other 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It's like, man, how to kill a product? "This name makes me uncomfortable. I think I'd rather die of cancer." |
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| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| First thing that leapt out at me. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [deleted] |
