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Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

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Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#311

Sometimes I miss the carburetor.

I have never operated a carbeurated vehicle that I did NOT wish was fuel-injected.

I've never operated a fuel-injected vehicle that I wished had a carb.

The truck I learned to drive on would cut out if you turned left abruptly, or hit a slight bump while turning left somewhat less abruptly, while off the throttle. We lived on a really steep hill with a ravine at the bottom which meant if you weren't careful to give it gas on the (downhill!) left turn, you would soon find yourself operating a vehicle with no power steering and no power brakes, trying to use one arm to steer the now-manual steering, while using the other to try to restart it, while stomping on the manual brakes, hoping everything came together and restarted before the ever-increasing downward grade ran you across a busy road and into a ravine.

My first motorcycle had a carb, and fuelling issues on motorcycles are even WORSE because they screw up your balance.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#312
post #8

Why is this interesting or surprising? Of course almost all challengers have hacky tech under the hood because they don't have the resources. Winning from that position is possible not because of generally better tech but by delivering something that the incumbents don't. Remember the demo of the first iPhone (vs the huge expertise of Nokia). Or how Microsoft won the desktop starting from a single user, cooperative m…

"Or how Microsoft won the desktop starting from a single user, cooperative multitasking system (vs all the sophisticated Unix-based systems)."

All of the what? The only competition on the desktop when Microsoft won was QDOS.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#313
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have used RTEMS (was designed for missiles) - on some level, if you design accordingly, you dont need a realtime operating system anymore - you can get by without it, and its easier to find people to design software in my opinion for not an RTOS

How would you design a complex control software for a realtime application so that you don't need an operating system? I don't see how.

The operating system provides a standardized IO API and schedule processes/threads. If you don't have fancy IO (LCD, hard drive, network, etc...) and multi processing, there is no need for an OS.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks can reverse transactions if they want to. Tesla's cavalier attitude towards manufacturing has yielded a 14% first pass through rate on the Model 3 line (which is abysmal and may bankrupt the company along with declining M3 demand) vs. the industry standard of ~80% FPT rate. Source - https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hit-model-3-target-by-... We're at the point in the Tesla story similar to that of 2008 wher…

I don't think the rework rate is a big deal for the customer. Ultimately manufacturing is about increasing the yield rate so that costs are lowered, because rework is expensive. But if you can make money with lots of manual rework on every product, it's no big deal. Something to improve next quarter. I have so many electronic devices, from cheap to expensive, that have some passive component manually bodged on somewh…

"But if you can make money with lots of manual rework on every product, it's no big deal. Something to improve next quarter."

Is Tesla making money?

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#315
post #191

The most disturbing part of this, for me, is this line in the very first tweet: "... caused almost the entire fleet to reboot loop ..." I am not interested in being part of someone's fleet . The fact that they use this language at all to describe an end-user who has purchased an automobile suggests that their expectations and my own - of what it means to purchase and operate a car - are in deeply (possibly dangerousl…

I believe the author meant a server fleet.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#316

Is there any corroboration of this? Like that this is even someone who worked at Tesla? I'm certainly not discounting that it could be real, but with so many people shorting Tesla, any uncorroborated information should be looked at with a high degree of skepticism.

It's certainly not at all at odds with what I would expect to be the prevailing case at Tesla. I have always heard from ex-employees that the company is schizophrenic and unfocused under the micromanagement of Elon Musk. Media reports are beginning to paint a consistent picture of "shitshow" conditions at the company. This also all fits with stories about his earlier ventures like Zip2.

https://nyp.st/2PzI9ih

https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/the-story-of-elon-mus...

I am short TSLA, make of that what you will.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the same thing about the burnout and turnover. Do companies really think they are saving money by paying peanuts, grinding people down to burnout, and then constantly having to rehire/retrain new people as the old ones leave? Meanwhile the code is a mess because nobody has been there longer than a year and there is no architecture or design continuity. Just frantic patches over other frantic patches by burnt…

Capitalism. Need for money and results. I don't think that anybody wants to burnout anybody, it's just the pressure of the whole system I guess. Money pushes to do things fast. Shareholders and clients to keep happy.

I really don't care if they "don't really want to", they're still actively choosing paths that lead to that, and don't really care.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#318

Tesla can SSH into a customer's car? What could possibly go wrong?

More than anything else, this makes the SSH keys a very high-value target.

I may trust Tesla not to crash my car or violate my privacy, but I also have to trust them to sufficiently secure the SSH keys from bad actors who would (or sell them on the black market where they almost certainly would arrive in malevolent and capable hands). The latter is what scares me.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars weigh thousands of pounds and routinely drive upwards of 60 miles per hour. The success of the first iPhone or Facebook app didn't depend on using it to navigate through life-and-death situations not only for the users but also for everyone around them. There are places for 'move fast and break things'. But cars move fast already, and they can really break things.

The iPhone has to reliably connect for emergency calls and provide accurate location. That can be life or death. In fact, "Apple isn't ready to engineer phones at a life-or-death standard" was a fairly common critique of the iPhone in the early days. In response, Apple ran a little PR campaign around their radio engineering efforts--they had a web page that showed all the cool-looking rooms for testing radios, which…

Didn't the iPhone use a dual processor set up like the other manufacturers at the time? One ui/app processor and a separate radio processor stack?

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#320
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re trolling or not. Well played

I have some good news for you - we have invented these things called "jokes", in which people make statements about things that are obviously untrue as a means to elicit a humourous response in the reader. Now you too can go forth with this knowledge and be prepared for a world in which people aren't saying obviously untrue things solely as an attempt to trick the uneducated and gullible into believing falsehoods! Go…

Don't get that worked up my friend! It was meant as a compliment for the sly sleight, I do have a sense of humor... (oblique, but that depends on the crowd's judgement.)
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