Cory DoctorowThis profile of me in *The New Yorker* came out really well, if I do say so myself:
Boris Builds 
@pluralistic I talked to a german boiler manufactuer once about IoT. "And then they covered all physical functions with code - like turn on/off gas, start ignition. I asked how they prevent errors. They said with the firmware. You software guys think you can solve all with an update." ... 1/2
@pluralistic 2/2 "What if the firmware gets hacked? We are producing some 10k pcs of the boilers each year. If they all blow up at once, the fire departments would face a nightmare at a scale never seen before." He was right!
jack the nonabrasive@borisbuilds @pluralistic This is exactly the reasoning McDonnell Douglas used to bypass acceptance testing and source code access to dozens of embedded programs in the F-15, 40-60 years ago. “It’s firmware.”
I don’t know if the USAF, in particular Warner-Robins Air Logistics Center, ever got access to that code. Engineering Change Proposal 339, which detailed every processor we *knew about*, was still in limbo when I left the USAF in 1989.
Morin@pluralistic @borisbuilds Formal methods can definitely help https://www.adacore.com/papers/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-new-era-in-security-critical-software-development
