Why Software Updates Make Things Worse

Software updates are meant to improve security, stability, and performance, yet they frequently introduce new problems. This episode examines why updates so often make things worse, focusing on software regression, system complexity, dependency chains, and the practical limits of testing at scale. It also looks at the business and security pressures that shape how updates are released. The result is a system where improvement and breakage often arrive together, not because engineers are careless, but because modern software has become too complex to change without risk.

Sources and References
This episode draws on academic research, industry incident reports, regulatory filings, and reporting from major technology and security organizations, including:
*"Understanding and Detecting Software Upgrade Failures in Distributed Systems"* - Purdue, Chicago, Toronto (2021)
https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/yongl...
*2024 CrowdStrike IT Outages* - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Cr...
*Android Fragmentation* - SmartBear
https://smartbear.com/blog/android-fr...
*What Is Dependency Hell?* - Boldare
https://www.boldare.com/blog/software...
*JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem 2020*
https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosy...
*Tidelift Survey*
https://blog.tidelift.com/developers-...
*"A Large-Scale Comparative Study of Beta Testers and Regular Users"* - ACM (2018)
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/2...
*WannaCry cost NHS £92m* - National Health Executive
https://www.nationalhealthexecutive.c...
*Verizon 2024 DBIR* - via CPO Magazine
https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-sec...
*IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report*
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-07-30-i...
*Heartbleed still unpatched* - Malwarebytes
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/new...
*Do Software Updates Slow Down Your Phone?* - CellularPort
https://cellularport.com/blog/softwar...
*Fighting Early Obsolescence: EU Directive* - Skadden (2024)
https://www.skadden.com/insights/publ...
*Change Failure Rate* - Faros AI
https://www.faros.ai/blog/what-is-the...
*Why Windows 10 is the Most Successful Failure* - Analytics Insight
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/tech...

Additional Context
Some figures referenced in this episode reflect synthesis across multiple widely reported sources, including:
20-40% regression rate (general industry figure from research synthesis)
Google Project Zero 90-day/7-day disclosure deadlines (widely reported but no single source linked)
Apple Batterygate $500+ million settlement total (aggregated from multiple lawsuit reports)
Equifax breach: 147 million affected, March 6 patch, March 10 breach start
Sonos May 2024 update and CEO departure
Google Pixel/Samsung 7-year support window

System Drift examines why everyday systems feel harder, slower, more expensive, and less helpful than they used to.
Each episode looks at a familiar experience and explains how incentives, costs, and tradeoffs quietly reshape systems over time.

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