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Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

reuters.com

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Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#31

Post by droithomme »

How is Volkswagen's US head, who lives and works in the US, able to issue proclamations with such certainty about the non-existence of private conversations and directions taking place among the engineering staff and management in Germany, where he spends almost no time?

It is as if a US diplomat stationed in New Zealand used his authority to declare that Bush had never authorized any torture, and it was rogue individual interrogators who did it. How would he know given he was on the other side of the world when the conversations would have taken place.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#32

Post by a-dub »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #3

"This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason," Horn said Except when obviously true, companies that make public statements like this will have difficulty recruiting the best engineers.

QUIT READING HACKERNEWS AND GET BACK TO WORK, EL KEVIÑO. PAPERS DON'T WRITE THEMSELVES...

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#33

Post by scott_karana »

theli0nheart wrote: post #19
somebodyother wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it implies a couple of engineers could slip through arbitrary code to be executed under selective conditions. That's terrifying.

And, supposing this is true, would you actually be surprised by this? This is a car company, not a CI and code-review obsessed software company in Silicon Valley.

> This is a car company, not a CI and code-review obsessed software company in Silicon Valley.

I read that as:

> This is a company whose products are high-velocity 1500kg chunks of steel zooming around in public, not a company that sells an intangible virtual good/service

---

Yes, I know software is historically poor with car companies, but we should still expect better. Let's not just lower our standards because of cynicism :-)

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#36

Post by cmiles74 »

somebodyother wrote: post #7
taylodl wrote: post #2

"This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason," - I'm not buying it. What would be their motive compared say to VW's motive? VW has a heck of a lot more motive for falsifying emissions than do "a couple of software engineers." Even if you were to argue the engineers were somehow fearful for their jobs that's still VW's problem because they're the ones who created that work environment i…

Also, it implies a couple of engineers could slip through arbitrary code to be executed under selective conditions. That's terrifying.

The code might even have been outsourced. I'm not trying to disparage outsourced developers, I know what I might do if the user story was something like "Needs to pass emissions when attached to test system."

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#37

Post by mfoy_ »

a-dub wrote: post #29

That's like blaming an illegal addition to your house on rogue contractors. It's such a poorly conceived lie that it is actually insulting.

"On tonight's episode of Punked: watch as we add a second floor and backyard porch to this man's bungalow while he's away for the weekend! You won't believe his reaction!"

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#38

Post by ohpea »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #26
tedmiston wrote: post #8

I've always wondered how something like this plays out legally: Can the engineers be somehow held accountable for writing something they were forced / asked to by their managers?

Yes, they can. Most engineers (in the US) have to take an ethics course that covers this. Just because your boss says do something, doesn't give you a pass.

Do you have a source for ethics education and engineering? I've never heard of this being something that most engineers are taught (in the US).

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#39

Post by kps »

Retra wrote: post #6

"For whatever reason" indeed. They must have just flipped a coin on the issue. Really, it's just bad luck at work here. /s

"Some people have made the wrong decisions in order to get away with something"

Some people; he doesn't actually say it was the programmers. Both statements are perfectly consistent with the cheating being orchestrated from the top. This looks like a very careful attempt to mislead without actually risking a visit to Club Fed.

Re: Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating

#40

Post by cnvogel »

bcantoni wrote: post #23

I'm assuming the development process for embedded auto software like this would be pretty rigorous, meaning it would be fairly difficult to sneak in code like this. I also assume that testing of emissions software like this would involve a lot of lab/road testing with the vehicles against the EPA test profile and therefore a lot of people would be involved. Suggesting this is the stealthy work of just a couple of sof…

The investigations regarding Toyotas(?) unexplained/unintended acceleration suggest otherwise. The code was apparently pretty bad, halfheartedly reviewed and just unmaintainable. While there the software seemed to have (a huge number of) errors put in by mistake, of course most independent reviews should also spot intentional mischief.

I don't claim that VW had comparably crappy code, but "industry practice" likely wouldn't have caught it either way.

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