this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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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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[–] Technus@lemmy.zip 105 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Assuming they were using threshold cryptography, they could have easily configured some redundancy into the system, e.g. by requiring 3 out of 5 people to decrypt it instead of 3 of 3.

It's easy to blame the one guy for losing the key, but he could have gotten hit by a bus or lost the hard drive in a house fire and they would have been equally as screwed. This is more of a system design failure than a PEBKAC failure.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 49 points 1 week 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

[–] SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 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 😅

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

idk i fuck up and release buggy code at least 10% as much as management makes dumb ass decisions

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

And the 10% when you do… you were mismanaged!

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