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by staycoolboy 2178 days ago
FTA: "...the LightSpeed bug was fixed in iOS 12 with a patch that didn't address the root cause and instead just turned the race condition double-free into a memory leak. Then, in iOS 13, this memory leak was identified as a bug and "fixed" by reintroducing the original bug, again without addressing the root cause of the issue..."

Ooof. Talk about running in circles. Either this was someone who is swamped with work and spaced out, or a new programmer who wasn't familiar with the original. Oddly, I feel bad for both of them!
3 comments
ehsankia 2178 days ago
Reguardless of how bad the original fix was, this is why testing is important. The original person should've added tests to make sure that specific issue doesn't come up again, and it would've caught the regression.

> Thus, this is another case of a reintroduced bug that could have been identified by simple regression tests.

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thomaslkjeldsen 2178 days ago
> Talk about running in circles.

So maybe writing and reading useful commit logs is not such a bad idea after all :)

Reminds me of this quote: "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it."

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hnick 2177 days ago
Or comments in code. They are very useful when pointing out gotchas.
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userbinator 2178 days ago
...or the more interesting and perhaps less plausible explanation: someone who doesn't toe the line, someone who was trying to "take down the system from within"...

I often wonder what goes through the minds of those whose work helps companies exert more control over their customers. Maybe some of them are not so "obedient" after all...

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pcwalton 2178 days ago
Hanlon's Razor suggests otherwise. People said that the Windows Metafile bug in 2005 was a backdoor, which was obviously wrong.
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