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Cryptographers Held an Election. They Can’t Decrypt the Results. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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So secure was the annual contest to fill three director and four officer positions that when one trustee lost his cryptographic key to unlock the results, the error made it impossible.

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[–] 50 points 11 months ago (5 children)

in complex systems design, you never blame human error. humans are fallible, and if the system doesn’t account for human error then it’s just a matter of time until failure occurs. look for a way to make the system tolerate or eliminate human error

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Normal error theory even takes the view that errors are inevitable in complex systems and that you need to design them so that the effects of those errors can't escalate.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    literally the same concept as a comment i just wrote about russian hypersonic missiles breaking apart mid flight because they didn’t put limits on how fast they can change course when going mach 5 aha

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    look for a way to make the system tolerate human error

    Ah, if only managers understood this principle.

    My motto is that "all failures are management failures." But I'm not far enough up the chain to really implement that 😅

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