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A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

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Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#131

Post by unityByFreedom »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #129
unityByFreedom wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crap. There will be more programmers in the future who will write defeat code for fun while learning, or pursue it as a business. That's obviously not great for the environment. Does anyone else feel our current government is not prepared to handle the changes pervasive software will create in the future?

If you think defeat code/devices are the worst of it, you've obviously not seen the people on YouTube "rolling coal"...

Haha, you're right that I am out of touch with American youth. Just this last year I realized I've aged and I'm only 35. I won't attempt to understand people who are staunchly anti-environment. I will continue to believe they are on the fringe until I'm convinced otherwise.

I do wonder though if our way of achieving civilization will require significant change in the near future, since regulating code and encrypted code is going to be damned near impossible.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#132

Post by d0mine »

obstinate wrote: post #16
avar wrote: post #8

I may be missing something here, but if you take a step back this just seems like a tragedy of misaligned economic incentives. Both the US & EU would have wanted this information from day one, and this whole fiasco cost VW billions in fines. There would have been any number of engineers at VW and Bosch that knew exactly how this worked, but there was nothing in it for them to come clear about it. They were never goin…

I don't know for certain whether the concept of a bounty was considered, and if so why it was rejected. But I can think of a few possibly good reasons to not do this. For one thing, it could be thought of as rewarding the engineers who wrote the evil code, maybe even creating an incentive for engineers to add such code in the future. There are precedents for enforcement actions having the unintended consequence of ca…

Why do think the notion of whistleblowers or witness protection exists?

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#133

Post by dubyah »

kadavero wrote: post #110
dubyah wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US auto lobby was the reason the US NOx diesel emission requirements are more stringent than EU in the first place No, that was a result of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 for the reduction of acid rain. Though it was targeted towards industrial emissions of SO2 & NOx, but stricter regulation for vehicles were an additional effect. >specifically disadvantaging European diesel cars That's a weird argument gi…

>but stricter regulation for vehicles were an additional effect Surely car manufacturers didn't have a say, which is why US and EU emission standards look like this https://longtailpipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/us-europ... . >same standard as gasoline ones Well duh, let's keep diesel cars to petrol standards so that their benefits don't matter and their disadvantages are prohibitive!

>Surely car manufacturers didn't have a say, which is why US and EU emission standards look like this

As per the source of the image says, "On the other hand, American regulators are focused on smog and health impacts of air pollution." Which the graphic you provided well indicates.

Look, California was probably the first governmental entity to regulate tailpipe emissions. Such so that it's written in the Clean Air Act by name to run its own regulatory scheme to enact stricter regulation(with federal waivers, but that's another issue). The reason being, that LA's unique geography makes smog worse. Heck, in the 1940s, they had an episode severe enough they thought they were under chemical attack by the Japanese. As such, CARB's emission standards were focused on reducing the more directly harmful pollutants like hydrocarbons, ozone, NOx & PM. So, given California's influence on the original 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1988 California Clean Air Act's influence on the subsequent amendment in 1990, I don't see how that graphic would support your argument. I mean, had they such hypothetical power, they could have also blocked the banning of leaded gasoline that was in the same amendment.

>Well duh, let's keep diesel cars to petrol standards so that their benefits don't matter and their disadvantages are prohibitive!

Emissions vs fuel economy. You're being facetious, but if that argument was true, why bother importing diesel passenger vehicles into the states? They didn't even start reintroducing diesels in America until they thought they could harmonize emissions from Euro 5 with Tier II Bin 5.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#134

Post by koonsolo »

mabbo wrote: post #9

While I certainly don't support the 'rogue engineer' excuse that VW originally gave everyone, the idea does bring up an interesting point. An engineer did write this code. Almost certainly, many of them, working together. Now, their managers told them it was okay to do this, maybe that legal had given the go-ahead or that they had to do it to keep their jobs... But it's still pretty clear that this was not right. The…

What is unethical? Engineers make guns, missiles, drones to bomb people, warheads, nuclear submarines, ... .

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#135

Post by edejong »

edejong wrote: post #118
crowbahr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that the US Government guarantees that vehicles sold here have met minimum safety requirements. The public relies on the government to have done that legwork. Beyond that you would immediately get into jargon and confusing packaging for insurance and vehicle emissions. I was just buying dental insurance and the 4 different plans provided by a single provider had 30+ different fields each of which was subtl…

Simple solutions: buy sensors to detect emissions or regularly check your car yourself. Spend money on experts, optionally working together with other owners of similar brand (community). Insist on buying models with open software. The point is, regulation here is failing because it is not community led. We need to take matters in our own hands to understand the difficulties, simplify and source it back to the govern…

Downvote why?

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#136

Post by 7952 »

edejong wrote: post #65

An interesting twist to this would be to change liability. Make the driver liable (not the manufacturer) for driving a car breaking the emission standards. This will set in motion the following steps: - Car users will be offered insurance against breaking emission standards - Insurance companies will hire specialists to lower insurance rates of above insurance - Consumers are disincentivized to modify their ECU in a…

Just what we need, more economic hocus pocus. People need to understand that buying toxic cars is wrong. No amount of tax or financial liability makes it OK. This is moral issue.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#137

Post by 7952 »

edejong wrote: post #65

An interesting twist to this would be to change liability. Make the driver liable (not the manufacturer) for driving a car breaking the emission standards. This will set in motion the following steps: - Car users will be offered insurance against breaking emission standards - Insurance companies will hire specialists to lower insurance rates of above insurance - Consumers are disincentivized to modify their ECU in a…

Just what we need, more economic hocus pocus. People need to understand that buying toxic cars is wrong. No amount of tax or financial liability makes it OK. This is moral issue.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#138

Post by Retra »

Sunset wrote: post #49
mabbo wrote: post #9

While I certainly don't support the 'rogue engineer' excuse that VW originally gave everyone, the idea does bring up an interesting point. An engineer did write this code. Almost certainly, many of them, working together. Now, their managers told them it was okay to do this, maybe that legal had given the go-ahead or that they had to do it to keep their jobs... But it's still pretty clear that this was not right. The…

>In my opinion (and I welcome disagreement and debate) engineers have an obligation to say 'no' to wiring unethical code. I respectfully disagree. Engineers have an obligation to do whatever is asked of them by management. If that means building nuke-hand-grenades so be it. Being an engineer( be it software or mechanics ) should be a morally neutral thing. Do the job and keep your morals out of it. This is the only w…

This is stupid. There is no such thing as working without morals, and you aren't going to have 'sanity' by asking engineers to adopt someone else's (also arbitrary) morals rather than their own.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#139

Post by obstinate »

d0mine wrote: post #132
obstinate wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know for certain whether the concept of a bounty was considered, and if so why it was rejected. But I can think of a few possibly good reasons to not do this. For one thing, it could be thought of as rewarding the engineers who wrote the evil code, maybe even creating an incentive for engineers to add such code in the future. There are precedents for enforcement actions having the unintended consequence of ca…

Why do think the notion of whistleblowers or witness protection exists?

I'm pretty sure whistleblower protections are not a get out of jail free card. If you blow the whistle on actions that you took part in, you can still be prosecuted.

Re: A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats

#140

Post by tomhoward »

edejong wrote: post #135
edejong wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple solutions: buy sensors to detect emissions or regularly check your car yourself. Spend money on experts, optionally working together with other owners of similar brand (community). Insist on buying models with open software. The point is, regulation here is failing because it is not community led. We need to take matters in our own hands to understand the difficulties, simplify and source it back to the govern…

Downvote why?

Who knows? Maybe it was by mistake. It really doesn't matter. Everyone gets them. Try to let it go and focus on making your next comment a good one :)
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