It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industrY at large) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentiallY with a machine' s time since first use (that is, until the relativelY distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cYcling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new sYstem' s first few weeks such failures are often referred to as "infant mortalitY" problems (or, occasionallY, as "sudden infant death sYndrome"). See bathtub curve, burn-in period. [Jargon File] (1995-03-20)