241–250 of 259 posts
Still assuming this is true: If a few rogue individual engineers can do this, imagine what else could be lurking in that codebase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 do…
> Welcome to the world of embedded RTOSs, where
> everything is running within a single application.
> There's certainly no memory protection.
But in the end the important consequence is: Having everything in one address space encourages people to violate the concepts that memory protection between tasks on your PC typically enforces, e.g. tasks reading from, and writing to other tasks' data structures without proper synchronization; instead of using proper IPC mechanisms like queues. Which is probably what these 10'000 global variables were used for.
I think VW gets a bit of an unfair beating. Yes, your car probably looses in value, but
- the cars could be upgraded (which VW seems to be willing to do for free) and
- no one was physically hurt (not like the General Motors ignition that actually killed drivers).
Also when seeing the top 3 bestselling cars in the US being sheer gas guzzlers (Ford F, Chevrolet Silverado and the Dodge Ram), the word 'hypocrisy' seems like a fair description to the public reaction in the US.
That being said:
Companies being social constructs and thus complex in their decision making process, framing this scandal as an orchestrated scheme by VW's complete management is ridiculous. What impresses me is, that this Scandal was in the making for months and they did not do anything in advance. Somehow, to me this proves the statement, that they weren't involved in this.
VW's old leadership was notorious for being hands-on on even slightest car details. Specifically Ferdinand Piech - who was nicknamed "Fugen-Ferdi" because of him insisting that VW car's "Spaltmaße" (clearance?) be the industry's best - is very unlikely to not have known about this.
IMO some did know, and choose to not inform those that didn't know - not even when it was clear to them what this would cause to the company.
(edited for formatting)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
In that case it would probably be "The system shall pass all emissions tests"
Nope, definitely systemic within the company. The engine is a system that must meet certain requirements. The standard way of meeting those requirements is to have a urea injection system. That's what the competitors in the US do; it's also what Subaru, for example, don't do, and they don't sell into the US market. In order to pull off this little 2-person hack that Horn alleges, those couple of software engineers wo…
It's also what another VWAG member, Audi, does on the TDI's in America.
These were also very high level engineers.
I can also totally believe that, in order to not seem like a they wasted billions on engine development that they literally would not be able to sell without significant changes, that people in charge of the project would just figure out a way to make it seem like a success.
Contrary to what you say, this doesn't require an entire corporate culture be rotten. It's like branches of a tree. The fact that one branch is diseased does not mean the entire tree is bad.
I've seen this happen in other companies before just in my little open source licensing world.
(some group head and his group lie to me about what they are doing, skirt the rules, etc. right up until i catch them. His boss then asks him what the fuck he was thinking and demotes or fires the group head)
As you get higher up, one of your biggest problems is, fact, people don't want to tell you bad things. My VP used to have a sign on his desk that said "no surprises". Because he wanted to know everything, whether it was good or bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making an awful lot of assumptions there. >those couple of software engineers would have to have a major say over the entire engine design. I call bullshit. The two people they're mainly talking about are head of R&D group and engine development. Yeah I'd imagine they have major say over engine design.
Having a lot of say in design, and keeping secret an intentional violation of government regulations from your entire international company are two pretty different things. I'm making assumptions, and I believe this story is pure, unadulterated bullshit from top to bottom. Is it likely that the heads of R&D and engine development at VW are hands-on and writing code themselves? No, its extremely unlikely. Having worke…
But the difference between intentional benchmark optimization (which the whole industry is doing) and illegal certification manipulation is a rather subtle one. The former would a perfect front for the latter and the intersection of all employees who sufficiently understand the legal situation and those who sufficiently understand the engine could theoretically even be the empty set. (in which case blame would default to those high enough in the org-chart to have members of both groups under them)
"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…
They will blame some small man to avoid prosecution of higher staff. I bet this was done off the records - so the Software Engineer manager have no proof this was ordered or suggested by upper management. At worst they will get 1-2 engineers arrested while they will move quietly to other companies that will be willing to use their experience and connections.
Mental note, never buy a VW car again. Cheating on emissions is bad, but passing the buck down to the rank and file is deplorable.