Welcome to the this week’s Quotes of the Week: It’s a mix of airlines and car this week with Landrover in the news for it software bug and American Airlines developing a bug bounty programme.
Airline Companies Testing Software to Avoid Turbulence
“Pilots would typically give you the report after the turbulence had abated…now, with this technology, the aircraft reports in real time.”
Des Keany, manager of flight planning and weather support for American Airlines tells the LA Times why this technology could be beneficial to avoiding injury for passengers during turbulence encountered by planes. Read More here.
Everyone is a Software Tester These Days
“It is indeed the age of the software test pilot, or Beta tester. The benefits for consumers can be great (free test software) — but, if you are not careful, so can the risks.”
Chris Griffith examines how beta testing has become so popular with the push by Apple and Microsoft to allow users to trail their new operating systems. But he warns, there are a few risks involved. Read More here.
Land Rover bug cause the Range Rover to have a mind of its own
“The problem has been narrowed down to the keyless entry software, which will be fixed on the recalled models once the recall is underway.”
Range Rovers manufactured from 2014 are being recalled as a software bug has been found that causes the doors of the vehicle to swing open at moment. About 65,000 Range Roves are expected to be recalled. Read More here.
A Software that Fixes Software Bugs
“[It] creates an application-independent representation, and then rewrites that into the name space of the recipient”
Reserachers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have deveoped a software that will identify and fix software bugs. The software, called CodePhage, borrows functionality from other applications to import into and replace the code that causes a crash. The software also assesses how certain tasks are executed. Building a library of checks, the software examines how any programme should perform before automatically writing new code to the recipient programme’s functions. Read more here
Just another day at the office
“United Airlines computers went down, the Wall Street Journal website wouldn’t load — must be a cyber attack. But all the usual authorities said that no, there was no attack. Rather, it was a software glitch. ”
Dave Ross thinks that the excitement about potential cyber attacks at the NYSE has made people forget just how common these software updates go wrong. Read More here
United Airlines Offers A Million Miles to Successful Bug Hunters
“We are committed to protecting our customers’ privacy and the personal data we receive from them. We believe that this bounty program will further bolster our security and allow us to continue to provide excellent service.”
United Airlines this week announced their bug bounty programme this week with two researchers already earning one million air miles through the programme. Untied Airlines became the first company in the transport industry to start the programme which has become the norm in the tech industry. The reason as the article explains is that as much of the company’s processes become automated, software bugs are vital to identify to prevent system crashes. Read More here.
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