Good Morning! First up, we've got a $457 million bug – a high-frequency trading bot went haywire and nearly bankrupted a company in just 37 minutes! Next, Unity's playing financial Tetris, boosting profits despite a revenue dip – looks like their strategy shake-up might be paying off. Lastly, Moxie Marlinspike's stirring the pot at Black Hat, claiming Agile development is suffocating innovation.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

The $457 Million Bug: A Cautionary Tale of High-Frequency Trading Gone Wrong

Context: On August 1, 2012, a leading stock trading firm experienced the costliest software bug in history. Their high-frequency trading (HFT) bot, which was supposed to be an upgrade, went rogue and started buying stocks at breakneck speed. The result? A whopping $457 million loss in just 37 minutes!

What Went Wrong:

1. Death march coding: The team rushed to meet a tight 33-day deadline.

2. Same method signature: They kept the old PowerPeg::trade() method, which was actually test code.

3. Manual deployment: A sysop's typo left one server running the old test code.

4. Communication breakdown: The dev team was unreachable during the crisis.

Lessons Learned:

1. Always change method signatures when updating critical functionality.

2. Implement proper CI/CD practices, even if it means ruffling some feathers.

3. Never, ever leave your team incommunicado during a major release.

4. Have a well-practiced emergency shutdown procedure that doesn't involve fireaxes.

The firm lost all its clients and went out of business within weeks. Goldman Sachs swooped in to minimize the damage, but the incident remains a stark reminder of how a single bug can topple empires.

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Plugged In

David Baiye: 15 Year Old from Nigeria Making the Crypto World Safer

Now featuring our third article for PluggedIn! In case you don’t know, PluggedIn is a blog where we interview and write about the brightest young tech minds around the world with the goal of bringing attention to the youth and connecting them with industry professionals. In the crazy world of cryptocurrency, where opportunity and risk often intertwine, a 15-year-old Nigerian developer is helping to create a safer space for investors. Meet David Baiye, a core member of the isitsafe.io team, who began his journey at just 13 years old. Despite his young age and limited resources, David has played a crucial role in developing a platform that aims to provide thousands of unbiased cryptocurrency reviews, potentially saving countless investors from falling victim to scams. From building the landing page to tackling complex app features, David's story is a testament to the power of curiosity, perseverance, and supportive mentorship in tech. Click the link to dive into David's inspiring journey and discover how this teenage coder is making the crypto world safer, one line of code at a time.

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Unity’s EBITDA Surges Despite Revenue Decline

Unity's been navigating choppy waters lately, with a controversial pricing change leading to a CEO swap last year. Now, under new leadership, they're focusing on execution and accountability.

The Numbers:

• Revenue: £358 million (down 2% QoQ, 16% YoY)

• Net loss: £100 million (improved from £232 million in Q1)

• EBITDA: £89.8 million (up 45% QoQ)

What's New:

1. Unity 6: Coming this fall with major stability and performance upgrades.

2. Leadership Shuffle: New CEO Matthew Bromberg at the helm, plus a fresh CPO for advertising.

3. Beyond Gaming: Unity's flexing its muscles in other industries, partnering with big names like Audi and Bosch Rexroth.

Tech Tidbits:

• 3.7 billion Unity-powered app downloads per month in 2023

• 65 billion ad impressions monthly, reaching 1.5 billion gamers

While revenue's down, Unity's tightening its belt and seeing EBITDA gains. They're doubling down on product innovation and expanding beyond their gaming roots. For devs, this could mean better tools and more diverse applications for Unity's tech.

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Agile Under Fire: Moxie Marlinspike Blames It for Stifling Innovation

At Black Hat 2024, Marlinspike dropped a bombshell: our current software development practices are killing innovation. Those black box abstraction layers we've all come to know (and maybe not love).

Marlinspike argues that Agile methodologies have us working in silos, cut off from the bigger picture. We're churning out code, sure, but at what cost? According to him, we've sacrificed the deep understanding that fuels real breakthroughs.

Marlinspike thinks the infosec crowd might just save the day. Because security pros are the ones peering through those abstractions, understanding systems at their core.

Window Snyder of Thistle Technologies backs this up, noting that many programmers these days lack low-level language skills and machine code knowledge. It's all high-level languages and smooth sailing – until you need to debug something at the bare metal level.

Read More Here

🔥 More Notes

• "20% for tech debt" doesn't work

• The Great npm Garbage Patch

• Turning unused signals such as Wi-Fi into energy for electronics

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