I genuinely wonder if this is going to result in actual legislation that makes gradual rollouts mandatory for all software.
Because if a developer mistake can hobble critical systems like this, it seems like the risks to safety and national security are too great to leave the decision of instant vs. gradual rollouts for companies to decide themselves.
Of course, the twist here is that it was seemingly a kind of routine configuration file that triggered a pre-existing bug in the software. And gradual rollout of config files quite often seems like overkill. I mean, do you need a gradual rollout of a new spellcheck dictionary? Of new screensaver videos?
And if it's configuration information containing new computer virus or malware signatures, that seems like precisely the kind of thing that you might want to get out to everyone simultaneously, not rolled out over the course of days. And yet, because of antivirus/security software's elevated privileges, it's also ironically where a mistake can do the most damage.
I genuinely wonder if this is going to result in actual legislation that makes gradual rollouts mandatory for all software.
Because if a developer mistake can hobble critical systems like this, it seems like the risks to safety and national security are too great to leave the decision of instant vs. gradual rollouts for companies to decide themselves.
Of course, the twist here is that it was seemingly a kind of routine configuration file that triggered a pre-existing bug in the software. And gradual rollout of config files quite often seems like overkill. I mean, do you need a gradual rollout of a new spellcheck dictionary? Of new screensaver videos?
And if it's configuration information containing new computer virus or malware signatures, that seems like precisely the kind of thing that you might want to get out to everyone simultaneously, not rolled out over the course of days. And yet, because of antivirus/security software's elevated privileges, it's also ironically where a mistake can do the most damage.