
Debugging Behind the Iron Curtain (2010) - e1ven
http://archive.is/O70Rg
======
mav3r1ck
Wow. I’ve discovered many bugs in my life. But none caused me to fear for my
life.

>There were often significant food shortages in the Soviet Union, and the
government plan was to mix the meat from Chernobyl-area cattle with the
uncontaminated meat from the rest of the country. This would lower the average
radiation levels of the meat without wasting valuable resources. Upon
discovering this, Sergei immediately filed immigration papers with any country
that would listen. The computer crashes resolved themselves as radiation
levels dropped over time.

~~~
tecleandor
Check on the Therac-25 case, whis is particularly scary for me, having worked
for 10 years on medical software (on the sysadmin side).

A race condition which killed people:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25)

> It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which
> patients were given massive overdoses of radiation. Because of concurrent
> programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were
> hundreds of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury.

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jzymbaluk
I love reading these bug-hunting war stories, there's no breakpoint for
radioactive cows in GDB! Another favorite of mine is the 500-mile email
bug[1], if there's a bigger collection of these stories anywhere on the
internet, I'd love to read them

[1]
[http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles](http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles)

~~~
bad_login
[https://github.com/danluu/debugging-
stories](https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories)
[https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems](https://github.com/danluu/post-
mortems)

~~~
kiddico
Well... I guess I didn't need to do much work this morning. Thanks for the
links.

------
planteen
I kind of doubt this story. What kind of radiation would you have from
Chernobyl?

My understanding is that bit flips (SEEs) are typically caused by energetic
particles like cosmic rays. To simulate upset damage on Earth, you typically
need to decap the IC and go to a testing facility that directly hits the wafer
with particles. It seems unlikely that somewhere near Chernobyl that there
would be particles energetic enough that didn't get stopped by the IC
packaging.

Gamma radiation gives total ionizing dose effects that degrade chips until the
point they no longer work. Those shoot right through the chip packaging. But I
don't think it typically causes upsets.

~~~
PoachedSausage
Neutrons from the various fission products?

[https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/ChipIR.aspx](https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/ChipIR.aspx)

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virtuexru
Having issues loading the text on this page. Seems to keep "blinking" out for
me. Is there anyway we can get a printer friendly or text only version? Super
interested in this article.

~~~
cs02rm0
[https://pastebin.com/raw/NR0SzmiL](https://pastebin.com/raw/NR0SzmiL)

------
rouxz
archive.is banned in Russia. Haha, the Irony.

~~~
mtve
allow me to call the parent story bullshit.

~~~
abritinthebay
Why? The error seems reasonable (radiation can and could have flipped bits,
I've done it on sensitive hardware with a camera flash).

~~~
mtve
1\. anonymous Sergey as a story source, without any verificable identity.

2\. "he went drinking with a few military personnel", so it's retelling of
rehearsal, even more trust.

3\. "government plan was to mix the meat from Chernobyl-area cattle with the
uncontaminated meat", that's seems plausible. contamination of meat was "up to
1,0*10-6 Ci/kg" (according to widely cited secret "annex 10 of protocol #32"),
it's 300 times of banana equivalent. from the same scary stories fansites,
there were 34 Кtons of bad meat (it's one thousand of railway carriages btw).
so not so dramatic, definitely not a near nuclear blast.

4\. [computer was] "located in a building close to the railroad tracks".
inverse-square law, walls, exposure time from a moving train etc. i would more
believe in vibration caused by trains as a cause of problems.

5\. the SM-1800 computer: KR580VM80A cpu (8080 clone) is 6 mkm and 2 MHz
(compare to modern 10 nm and 2 GHz), K565RU3A ram (4116 analog, like in ZX
Spectrum), and other components. even the computer case was solid metal. i can
not tell you precisely, but there should be a powerful source of radiation to
crash such computer reproducibly.

so no, i don't buy it. sorry for hurting your radio- and russo-fobias.

~~~
abritinthebay
> sorry for hurting your radio- and russo-fobias.

That's a mighty big chip you have on your shoulder there. Sorry to disappoint
your ego but I was curious as to your objections. They're... not very good.

The inverse square law one is the worst - you make tons of assumptions about
the building and then screw up the basic science. A few inches of lead is
enough to block gamma rays -- which is why you wear a lead apron when you get
x-rays -- but at least 3 meters of concrete are needed to stop them.

Assuming a standard brick or breeze block building and normal computer metal
case plus a meter or two of separation (common at railways in Europe at least,
when stuff is going by slowly) that wouldn't stop much gamma radiation at all.

Other than "it's a semi-anonymous story" you really don't have much in the way
of objection here.

