I have been working on the same statistical problem since 2020. I am now a PhD student in CS. The problem has not changed, but my understanding of it has, and the tools I have built around it look nothing like what I started with.

The problem: a series system fails when any component fails. You observe system-level failure times. But you often cannot tell which component caused the failure (masking). Some systems are still running when testing ends (censoring). Given this incomplete data, estimate component reliability.

This is not a tutorial. It is a map of where things stand and where they are going.