Volkswagen's U.S. head: individuals engineered emissions cheating • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by eru » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 12:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #218

bpodgursky wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume he is speaking on behalf of Volkswagen, not testifying as an individual on his own experiences. Volkswagen's current story is that it was a couple rogue engineers, so he is conveying that. Congress isn't going to get the CEO in to testify, so it's reasonable to assume he is speaking as a proxy.

When speaking under oath take great care to not exceed the domain of verifiable facts.

As long as you don't enter the domain of falsifiable facts, you should be fine.

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

#222

Post by lawnchair_larry » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 12:59 AM UTC

The "engineers" that these stories refer to are kind of like saying the CTO is an engineer. These weren't rank and file employees.

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

#223

Post by illumen » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #107

illumen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's clear evidence that many cities throughout Europe have too high air pollution, and that it kills close to what smoking does. Cities have been ordered by the EU to clean up by the end of the year, or face harsh fines. Over 80,000 people die in the UK per year (smoking kills 100,000). Mostly from diesel engine pollution. Now try to think how many people it kills in the rest of Europe, the USA and the world? Car…

That's evidence of pollution in general being a problem, which isn't even in the same ballpark as establishing culpability for any amount of deaths for an extra amount of one kind of pollutant by one carmaker over a fixed time period.

See what was published just days before the VW scandal in Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7569/full/nature1...

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

#224

Post by Laaw » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #206

Laaw wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are what I described, though.

> Doesn't it blow your mind that there are no "standards of engineering" or whatever for software? ISO, IEC, etc. > There's no licensure body for software engineers who build software running your car, and therefore no accountability on a personal level. MISRA, SCSC, etc.

Combine my individual sentences, as I did, and try again.

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

#225

Post by dclowd9901 » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:06 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #201

lighthawk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit. I agree. Developers wouldn't take that amount of corporate risk on for such a hack without having significant backing from management. Even if they were completely on their own, which is impossible for me to believe, at some point another developer would have noticed and said something. Developers are s…

The "individuals" VW is claiming are responsible are 10 managers and 3 top engineers, which include the head of R&D, the head of engine design and the head of Audi. The definition of "individual" might be different between what VW claims and what you read, though.

Michael Horn, CEO of VW America: "This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason." That sounds nothing like what you're describing. The article alludes that many were suspended, but it doesn't directly attribute blame to them.

I find it impossible to believe any software engineer at the implementation level would assume that level of risk. This is obviously scapegoating. I really hope they set those engineers up for life, because they'll never be able to find another job again.

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

#226

Post by dclowd9901 » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:15 AM UTC

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…

Even if you look at it from a corporate politics standpoint, a software engineer will much sooner say "car's not passing emissions? Not my problem -- take it back to engineering".

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

#227

Post by tn13 » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:34 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #201

lighthawk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit. I agree. Developers wouldn't take that amount of corporate risk on for such a hack without having significant backing from management. Even if they were completely on their own, which is impossible for me to believe, at some point another developer would have noticed and said something. Developers are s…

The "individuals" VW is claiming are responsible are 10 managers and 3 top engineers, which include the head of R&D, the head of engine design and the head of Audi. The definition of "individual" might be different between what VW claims and what you read, though.

LOL. By that logic almost any decision in the company is essentially individual decision because only humans make decisions in a company.

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

#228

Post by zb » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 1:45 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #198

danielweber wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barr always struck me as something of a charlatan trying to bamboozle a jury.

I remember when this was posted on HN before, what I always wondered about is the discrepancy between the violations that NASA found and Barr. NASA found 7000 and change Barr found over 81,000, I'm not sure whats the size of the code that was reviewed but that's allot, even if you count the fact that half of them might be silly like naming convention violations that still leaves quite an odd number for actual violati…

> there wasn't any mention if they were a) necessary,

They were not. It is never necessary to have 10,000 global variables. If you have 10,000 global variables you are systematically Doing It Wrong. (That's not to say it's uncommon. From my experience I strongly suspect that it's a very common practice.) As one of the witnesses put it, quite correctly IMO:

"And in practice, five, ten, okay, fine. 10,000, no, we're done. It is not safe, and I don't need to see all 10,000 global variables to know that that is a problem,” Koopman testified.

Trying to justify this is like trying to justify not having a bug tracker. Which, BTW, they didn't.

> b) implemented correctly,

There's no way to check 10,000 global variables to see if they're implemented correctly, and that's the entire point.

> and c) out of how many variables in total?

That is completely irrelevant.

> they claimed that every software within the system can access them to me this sounds that your stereo or the rain sensor for the wipers can override data for the breaks,

This was the ECU, it only controls the engine, not the radio or the wipers. It has tasks for stuff like monitoring the engine and wheel speeds, the accelerator and brake pedal positions and controlling the fuel injection. And all of those tasks were only an extra header file and a typo away from stomping on one of the 10,000 global variables belonging to another task, but that isn't even the issue. The issue is that there is no way to trace the flow of data in the system because it's completely unstructured.

> but that might be true only if everything is running within a single application.

Welcome to the world of embedded RTOSs, where everything is running within a single application. It's not a PC. "Applications" aren't a thing. There's certainly no memory protection.

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

#229

Post by lxfontes » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

Bob: Hey guys, we didn't pass emissions tests.

Jay: I think we can adjust the ECU parameters.

Bob: Oh, nice. let's try that.

Mechanic James: By doing this you guys lowered the lifetime of a few components. We might need to re-engineer the whole thing :(

Bob: What if we detect we are undergoing tests and tweak it? This way we still can deliver the project on time.

Some manager: Yeah, do it.

Now Bob and Jay are in trouble.......

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

#230

Post by ams6110 » Fri, Oct 09, 2015, 2:18 AM UTC

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…

VW will not be out of business in 5 year. Nobody will remember this in 5 years. All the major automakers have manufacturing scandals in their past that resulted in actual deaths, not just fudging some arbitrary emissions standard. They are almost all still in business.