
An Unnamed Source Who Shouldn’t Be Anonymous - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/reader-center/breathalyzer-drunk-driving-reporting.html
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dang
The main article was discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433217).

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danso
fwiw I thought this behind-the-scenes article was interesting from an IT
perspective (even though the headline and subhed don't mention it):

> _“When you find a problem in the source code, it’s very difficult to explain
> the consequences of that problem to a judge or jury,” he told me. “It’s
> written in a foreign language, and the effects are hard to trace. We’re
> rarely able to say, ‘Aha, here’s this person’s breath test and here’s the
> problem that caused it to be wrong.’”_

> _Mr. Workman’s mind worked a lot like the computer systems into which he
> delved: He had a mental index of more than 15 years of legal battles and
> civic investigations into problems with breath-testing programs, and he knew
> exactly where to find the incendiary bits. When I dug into flawed test
> results in Washington, D.C., for example, he sent me a video recording of a
> police officer turned whistle-blower testifying at an oversight hearing._

> _With Mr. Workman’s help, I traversed my giant pile of records and filed
> dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests to fill in blanks. For
> research on Massachusetts — where more than 36,000 breath tests had been
> ruled legally inadmissible — Mr. Workman gave me a login to a database he
> had created containing nearly every one of those tests._

(In fact, the headline, while completely accurate, can be misleading because
an unnamed/anonymous source very often refers to a whistleblower or insider,
which Mr. Workman is not)

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Quekid5
Quoting the person you quoted

> > “When you find a problem in the source code, it’s very difficult to
> explain the consequences of that problem to a judge or jury,” he told me.
> “It’s written in a foreign language, and the effects are hard to trace.
> We’re rarely able to say, ‘Aha, here’s this person’s breath test and here’s
> the problem that caused it to be wrong.’”

This is the true power (and 'problem') of Turing Completeness. The effects of
any small change are so absurdly non-linear that it's _really_ hard to predict
without systems (types, etc.) to constrain us.

Most non-trivial theorems about TMs are un-provable[0], so this should
probably come as no surprise, but I find that it's very hard to explain to
lay-people just how hard it is to predict what a program will do.

[0] There are some very important and very general ones that are, but that
doesn't really matter wrt. predicability in terms of small changes.

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jimws
> Most non-trivial theorems about TMs are un-provable[0]

Did you mean "conjectures"? Theorems need to be provable by definition, don't
they?

~~~
Quekid5
Yeah, conjectures. I think I got mixed up because there's a theorem about the
non-trivial-conjuectures-are-unprovable thing :)

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hermitdev
Is it just me, or did it end abruptly? Like they were going somewhere and
stopped halfway.

~~~
danso
The story ended on a classic technique of feature writing: an anecdote that
both sums up the theme of the article and leaves a memorable impression of the
subject:

> _“Does that sound about right?” I asked Mr. Workman. Pretty much, he
> responded. And then he started on a half-hour description of the latest
> “edge-case” mistake — the kind of flaw that only shows up in extreme
> circumstances — that he was trying to investigate and prove._

I think the gist of the ending paragraph is to show both how complicated the
investigation is, and how Mr. Workman was so intellectually devoted to the
underlying technical issues that he'd spend 30 minutes describing an extreme
edge case.

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paulddraper
From the title I had figured this was about a certain CIA whistleblower.

On a more on-topic note, I feel like there's some holes in this article. Like
why exactly didn't they name their source in the report?

~~~
danso
Because the primary documents are better, more definitive evidence than his
expertise. But his expertise helped guide reporters during the course of the
investigation:

> _My colleague Jessica Silver-Greenberg and I published the results of our
> investigation today. The first draft we filed had quotes from many of the
> dozens of lawyers and other sources who spent hours, sometimes days,
> assisting us. But the strongest sources for our months-long reporting were
> the primary documents themselves — court rulings and testimony. Once we had
> those, the voices of the people who led us to them were no longer needed._

