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danparsonsontoday at 3:09 AM3 repliesview on HN

We're not speaking about bugs in a verified system so much as writing articles making specific claims about that. Surely if we're at the level of precision of formal verification, it's incumbent upon us to be precise about the nature of a problem with it, no? "Lean proved this program correct and then I found a bug" heavily implies a flaw in the proof, not a flaw in the runtime (which to my mind would also be a compelling statement, for the reasons you describe).


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SAI_Peregrinustoday at 2:27 PM

Or it implies a bug in the specification. The spec differing from the intent is a frequent source of bugs, it doesn't matter what language the spec is written in. Most people have experience with (or have seen news stories about) specification bugs in natural-language specifications: legal loopholes!

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gopiandcodetoday at 3:31 AM

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow. We are talking about bugs in a verified system, that is, in this case, a verified implementation of a zlib-based compression tool. Did it have bugs? yes. Several in fact. I'd recommend reading the article for a detailed listing of the bugs in the tool.

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tpoachertoday at 5:55 AM

You're technically right, but what things are versus how they're promoted or understood by most people (rightfully or not) often diverges, and therefore such "grounding" articles are useful, even if the wording addresses the perceived rather than the factual reality.

By way of analogy, if there was an article saying "I bought a 1Tb drive and it only came with 0.91 terabits", I think if you started explaining that technically the problem is the confusion between SI vs binary units and the title should really be "I bought a 0.91 terabit drive and was disappointed it didn't have more capacity", technically you'd be right, but people would rightfully eyeroll at you.

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