[dragonwriter]

> Random bitflips (aka hardware that doesn't work) are a relatively new thing.

I thought they (from cosmic rays, etc.) were always a thing, but so rare that you needed a very large system (in scope or time or both) to have a substantial chance of encountering one (outside of noisy comm channels, which use error correction protocols for exactly that reason.)

[defrost]

Some event (unknown) triggered multiple spikes in the "tell me three times" redundant three ADIRU units of Qantas Flight 72 causing a WTF unscheduled sudden and dramatic pitch down

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72#Conclusion

Cosmic rays were suspected but unconfirmed (kind of hard to confirm after the fact).

"All the aircaft in the world" for sixty years is kind of a large system given that currently there are on the order of one million people in the air at any moment.

[heisenbit]

There are lot‘s of thing that can go wrong beyond cosmic rays. Like timing on the bus or signals from close wires. Digital is an abstraction of an analog and chaotic reality.