Bloomberg (October 2)
For an entire trading day, a “piece of hardware took down Japan’s $6-trillion stock market,” marking the longest shutdown “since the exchange switched to a fully electronic trading system in 1999.” Besides drawing criticism, the malfunction “shone a spotlight on a lesser-discussed vulnerability in the world’s financial plumbing — not software or security risks but the danger when one of hundreds of pieces of hardware that make up a trading system decides to give up the ghost.”
Tags: Danger, Financial plumbing, Hardware, Japan, Malfunction, Security risks, Shutdown, Software, Stock market, Trading, TSE, Vulnerability
Website Magazine (September 14)
“By and large, the Web is now a gigantic global software platform. And by extension, modern Web design is no longer Web design; it’s product design.”
Tags: Global, Internet, Platform, Product design, Software, Web design
The Economist (March 12)
“Now after five decades, the end of Moore’s law is in sight.” This might not prove a bad thing as the quest for improvement will turn to more promising areas, such as the “deep learning” technology that recently beat Go legend Lee Sedol. “Huge performance gains can be achieved through new algorithms. Indeed, slowing progress in hardware will provide stronger incentives to develop cleverer software.”
Tags: Algorithms, Deep learning, Gains, Go, Hardware, Improvement, Moore’s Law, Performance, Progress, Promising, Software, Technology
Chicago Tribune (October 5)
“Computer software now governs virtually every aspect of our lives, from cars to kitchen appliances…. But computer software can deceive us, and this was the disturbing message from the recent Volkswagen scandal, where the German carmaker fitted millions of cars with software that could outsmart emission-control testing.” This new era demands “a code of ethics, a Hippocratic oath, for our computer engineers and the software they create.”
Tags: Appliances, Cars, Computer engineers, Emissions, Ethics, Scandal, Software, Volkswagen
New York Times (August 9)
“It’s important that regulators develop security rules for cars, which are becoming computers on wheels.” In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should “start writing basic security standards that require automakers to test the software and make sure a car’s wireless system cannot be used to control the engine and brakes. The agency’s regulations on airbags, seatbelts and crash testing have helped save countless lives. New rules for software that operate cars could prove just as important.”
Tags: Airbags, Automakers, Cars, NHTSA, Regulators, Seatbelts, Security, Software, U.S., Wireless
Los Angeles Times (April 13)
“The upside of the Heartbleed bug is that it reminds the world of the need not just for coders to plug the security holes in their software but for websites and services to stay on top of the changes.”
Tags: Bug, Coders, Heartbleed, Security holes, Services, Software, Upside, Websites
Washington Post (February 8)
The results of the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration into sudden acceleration found no link to a supposed software flaw in the Toyota Prius. “In short, human error, mechanical errors that Toyota repaired and a dose of politically induced hysteria were to blame.” The hearings by Congress lacked restraint and placed Toyota officials “in an impossible situation, since blaming Toyota customers – though this was true in many cases – would have been a public relations disaster.”
