ETHIK Logs

Because it amounts to a comprehensive economic embargo, and comprehensive embargoes cause huge humanitarian harm to the civilian population, hitting the weakest and most vulnerable groups hardest. If every company leaves, the effect is the same as a total economic embargo. Such e...

Quiz: ETHIK / Companies in Aggressor States: Stay or Leave? | updated: Sep 25, 2026

A situation in which a professional must choose between competing values, such as personal against professional ones; naming the recurring patterns raises awareness and so makes them happen less often. Berenbach and Broy (Professional and Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering,...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Because ethics is context-dependent, not a clear matter of right and wrong, and hard to recognise; ethical aspects are not rules or requirements that can easily be checked, so they need a continuous analysis process instead. Software-intensive systems can promote, support, underm...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

A core value is one that stakeholders name or describe again and again and so carries special weight; value qualities are the concrete aspects in which the core value shows itself, and each one can strengthen (+) or threaten (−) it. VbE handles the many values stakeholders mentio...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Digital paternalism: personalisation that goes so far that algorithms decide what we want or need better than we do, and so erode our capacity for free choice. Obligation to incompetence: the idea that developers should deliberately hold back a technology's full capability to pre...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Comprehensive sanctions hit a country's economy as a whole; targeted sanctions burden only the state representatives responsible for the war or the human-rights violations. The shift came because comprehensive sanctions harm civilians, which violates the principle of discriminati...

Quiz: ETHIK / Companies in Aggressor States: Stay or Leave? | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Someone creates or accepts a project plan they know cannot be met, because of pressure or other reasons; the result is burnt-out staff and lost revenue. The dilemma lies in the moment of accepting the schedule: objecting feels like refusing an order, so the plan gets signed. Cons...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

A methodology by Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn, built on the principle that technology is never value-neutral; it combines conceptual, empirical and technical investigations. Every design decision can promote or hinder values such as privacy, fairness or autonomy. VSD makes this...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Because stakeholders' feelings are usually not enough to capture a core value completely; experts extend it with qualities stakeholders did not name, including legally recognised ones such as protection against unauthorised recording. Stakeholder dialogue is bottom-up and context...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026

Faults in Horizon, the accounting system Fujitsu built for Post Office branches from 1999, created false cash shortfalls; on that basis hundreds of subpostmasters were convicted of fraud and theft, and thousands had to repay money that had never gone missing. Horizon: a counter...

Quiz: ETHIK / Software Engineering Ethics and Value-based Engineering | updated: Sep 25, 2026