So those systems didn't fail when a bitflip happened?

> The root cause is that somebody engineered something life-critical that mistakenly assumed hardware can not fail.

The systems I am aware of were designed with bitflips in mind. NO software can handle arbitrary amounts of bitflips. ALL software designed to mitigate bitflips only lower the odds via various forms of redundancy. (For context, I've written code for NASA, written a few proposals on making things more radiation hardened, and my PhD thesis was on a new class of error correcting codes - so I do know a little about making redundant software and hardware specifically designed to mitigate bitflips).

By claiming a bitflip didn't kick off the problems, and trying to push the cause elsewhere, you may as well blame all of engineering for making a device that can kill on failure.

So your argument is a red herring

>On the whole, you fail to make a case that preventing bitflips is the solution to a problem

Yes, had those bitflips been prevented, or not happened, those fatalities would not have happened.

>Ya, I'm not buying that biyflips are a problem.

If bitflips are not a problem then we don't need ECC ram (or ECC almost anything!) which is clearly used a lot. So bitflips are enough of a problem that a massively widespread technology is in place to handle precisely that problem.

I guess you've never written a program and watched bits flip on computers you control? You should try it - it's a good exercise to see how often it does happen.

I guess you define something being a problem differently than I or the ECC ram industry do.