Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System • Hacker News Board

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#421

Post by bobsil1 » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 12:59 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #70

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is OK if you can guarantee 100% separation of concerns, but the news reports where hackers were able to take over control systems in the car through bugs in the entertainment system should be a huge note of caution.

I mean the entertainment system ideally should not be connected to the engine/drive train systems. That would be a risk management strategy.

No, the large touchscreen should be single point of vehicle config for most functions. Driving a car right now with totally different screens, controls and designs for audio vs. car settings and it’s nuts.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#422

Post by mrep » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #341

debt wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Do companies really think they are saving money“ Well they landed a rocket on a barge in the ocean so something about that model must be working right

Looking at what's been done isn't a good way of determining whether your process is efficient at doing said thing. You need to be able to compare it to something else. To put it another way: If your method of writing novels is to hire an infinite amount of monkeys and put them to work on typewriters, you can't say "Something about this model must be working right, I came out of it with the complete works of Shakespea…

True, but they also did that while maintaining the lowest launch prices in the industry and presumably they can now decrease that even further if they need to.

So while it may not be the most efficient process, the overall process is much better than their competitors since they can launch for so much less money.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#423

Post by bobsil1 » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

lx3459683 wrote: post #258

> "the interior is a disaster, there's no instrument cluster which takes your eyes off the road" This is the most WTF aspect of the model 3 to me and seems to confirm that there isn't going to be some last-minute mitigation. I know it was done because autopilot was expected to be mature by the time model 3 rolls out, but I don't see how it can even be street-legal when you need to look away from the road to determine…

I’ve driven a P3D and it was fine. Currently driving a Toyota which also has speed in center. So do Minis.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#424

Post by person_of_color » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:06 AM UTC

This guy must have started as a New Grad, because every company has infinite kludges like this.

You would be shocked to find the amount of Perl/Tcl glue in any ASIC company, for example.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#425

Post by coatmatter » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #332

rsync wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""Fleet" is longstanding car industry lingo. Not something Tesla dreamed up to keep you under their boot." I am aware of that and I hear that terminology used by rental car companies and equipment dealers, etc. My objection is to what I hear as a subtle difference - the post-sale automobile to a private, end-user is still referred to as belonging to their fleet - as if one's ownership and use of the car were a minor…

It's not a shift. It's the language used by the rest of the industry including manufacturers, not just private owners.

What's being scrutinised here is the difference of being forced to be a part of a fleet as opposed to separately owning and controlling your own fleet.

If you buy a Tesla, you will not be able to control access to it without limiting its normal set of features.

If you buy a normal bicycle, you always have full direct control of it. No software updates, no data uploading, no tracking.

Normally fleet is reserved to meaning ownership in the management sense, not the micromanagement sense. Even a Navy fleet has autonomy within. Not so with Tesla software by default.

This could be rms territory. Free vs non-free, or even Airbus vs Boeing, etc.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#426

Post by ac0kg » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #302

ygra wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WPF is a huge change from "traditional" UI frameworks like Windows Forms or Swing. It requires some rethinking and to get the most out of it you should really do things the WPF way in many (not all) cases, even though other options appear to work (they're just more work in the end and less flexible). The documentation is actually fairly good in my eyes iff you're only writing applications. As a library and custom con…

I came to WPF having not touched WinForms for nearly a decade and I fell in love immediately. Once you accept that reactive data models are the 'correct' pattern things become so much simpler. Throw in JSON.net and QuickType (amazing if you haven't seen it, feed it JSON or JSON Schema and it outputs correct code to serialize to from JSON in about 25 languages pretty much idiomatically (for C# it uses JSON.net for Typ…

I'd like to know more about this, can you recommend some good places to learn about it?

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#427

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

FrojoS wrote: post #380

jimmaswell wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be particularly bad about running a real time application like that on an Arduino? Isn't that what they're made for?

Arduino is not real time.

Sure it is. It's nothing but a gussied-up libc implementation for 8-bit AVRs. It's as "real time" as you want it to be.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#428

Post by coatmatter » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #325

illumin8 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post conveniently ignores the fact that over the last 20 years cars and trucks have become physical delivery vehicles for software. In fact, the complexity of the software running in any manufacturer's modern car dwarfs the complexity of the hardware in the car itself. So, if you have a car manufactured any time in the last 25 years, you're running software that hasn't likely been patched in years, has a ton of…

This is why I do not have a car that was manufactured any time in the last 25 years. You can't trust software, and you definitely can't trust software developers.

This is probably going to sound outlandish to the majority, but I take it a step further and don't trust any car (+driver), period. Including drivers with massive amounts of experience or skill (even the best have failed spectacularly).

So what do I do instead? I mostly cycle and ride where motorists don't drive and set the largest possible safety margins. I recognise this is not immediately practical for everyone but I'm fortunately set up in the right place with the right knowledge to achieve this.

So far this year, I've been in a car four times, a train twice and a plane twice. Musk is pushing for a world where everyone is dependent upon a form of low-occupancy heavy motorised transportation (including wanting to reinvent the train). Naturally, I recoil at this and so should more. More cars will never save the world.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#429

Post by Cyph0n » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #413

fidz wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such thing does exist? I thought traffict light only time-based on no sensor involved.

Depends on the area but yeah many intersections use sensors (cameras, sometimes under the road pressure sensors, etc) to make anywhere from subtle to extreme changes based on traffic patterns. The under the road pressure sensor has been around for decades. When I was a kid there was one light that, when you drove over the pressure sensor, it wouldn't really do much. But if you backed up and drove over it again it mus…

It's not a pressure sensor, but an induction loop. Basically, there is a coil placed on the road that has a small AC current passed through it. When a car (metal) sits on top of the coil, the two "coils" couple, changing the overall inductance. A simple sensor can detect this change.

Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

#430

Post by samstave » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

Pastrami wrote: post #417

samstave wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. We should all just give up. I mean, heck. If it were that easy to start a unicorn... But seriously - I am not saying its easy , I'm just surprised that we haven't made much (publicly known about/announced) efforts along these lines. I mean, we have TCP down pretty good - if we are simply thinking of cars as packets, a lot of the math should exist to ensure collision-less delivery?

> if we are simply thinking of cars as packets You better hope you don't get any dropped packets.

It's TCPizza delivery! much better than UDPizza - I never know when they cant locate my MAC.