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Software is eating the car

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Re: Software is eating the car

#261

Post by finolex1 »

Aperocky wrote: post #230
jacquesm wrote: post #181

Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse than the systems they replace or augment. The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors. Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming o…

lol that is crazy. Just leave the control to the person behind the wheel, but somehow that's too stretched of an idea. I hope the F150 E truck will not have those 'automatic' features. but then again, I kind of wanted lane keeping and follow so maybe that's just the necessary evil. Maybe 'modes' where it gives all controls to me when I wanted it?

Counterpoint: My Subaru has averted at least 2 collisions till date by applying an emergency brake (admittedly not in any life threatening situation, though it did save me a considerable amount in potential repairs). Though yes I agree, the option to turn off features is certainly helpful.

Re: Software is eating the car

#262

Post by varjag »

_benj wrote: post #214
scarier wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you didn't mean it quite so bluntly, but characterizing the history of aviation safety as a triumph of computer control systems over analog ones misses the mark by a pretty wide margin--even if we're just talking about the advances that only computers have provided. Probably the only way a modern car is technologically less sophisticated than a passenger aircraft is its inability to substantially steer itsel…

> One of my perennial frustrations with current tech is the idea that putting a computer in the control loop necessarily makes things safer. I completely agree with you! A simple electronic component is a lot more fragile that a mechanical counterpart that is unfazed by ESD, vibrations or whatever other things that can kill a electronic component, or a circuit board for that matter. My point is more along the lines t…

> A simple electronic component is a lot more fragile that a mechanical counterpart that is unfazed by ESD, vibrations or whatever other things that can kill a electronic component, or a circuit board for that matter.

No, not really.

Re: Software is eating the car

#263

Post by amelius »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #3

Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…

> I just want a car with as FEW knobs/buttons/levers as necessary.

With more software you can have a car with just one button. You press it and say the name of the place you want to go to.

Re: Software is eating the car

#264

Post by Judgmentality »

kiba wrote: post #250
Judgmentality wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience, lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear. Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm sure they'r…

Actually people lost. But it doesn't matter anyway because the RIAA can't collect it, and the debt was basically the lowest priority.

Do you have a link? I'm trying to dig up stories on it, but it's so stale. As far as I can tell almost everybody settled, and the few that fought in court eventually won.

https://www.wired.com/2010/05/riaa-bump/

Re: Software is eating the car

#265

Post by HellDunkel »

jacquesm wrote: post #181

Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse than the systems they replace or augment. The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors. Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming o…

Frightening. My friend had a similar incident (but he drives like a complete nutcase).

Is there no „code of conduct“ what automotive software must not do in any case?

Re: Software is eating the car

#266

Post by Judgmentality »

_jal wrote: post #259
Judgmentality wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience, lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear. Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm sure they'r…

I am not. I work with lots of them. I think we're talking about two different things. Yes, the RIAA was running an intimidation campaign. By and large they didn't care about any particular case. That's quite different than a plaintiff coming at a car manufacturer over sketchy click-wrap agreements.

Your comment was about lawyers. I gave a random anecdote. We're not talking about different things at all, unless your comment was only about specific lawyers which you failed to mention.

Anyway, I don't care enough to comment anymore.

Re: Software is eating the car

#267

Post by duped »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #219
duped wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm the dark pattern developer I'm not logging when the EULA is accepted or how many times they declined it.

> If I'm the dark pattern developer I'm not logging when the EULA is accepted or how many times they declined it This cuts both ways. If the user can show one case of their rejecting the EULA without it being logged, they can then make the claim--correctly or not--that they repeatedly rejected it. If the car refuses to work without the EULA being accepted or rejected, proof of its movement would be sufficient to show…

There is hiding information and not collecting it to begin with.

    void handleEula()
    {
      auto eulaAccepted = readEulaAcceptedFile();
      if (!eulaAccepted)
        eulaAccepted = promptForEulaAcceptance();
      writeEulaFile(eulaAccepted);
    }
This function reads a file from disk and writes back to it every time. If filesystem write audits aren't enabled there is no way to determine if the most recent write of "true" was the only write.

> If the car refuses to work without the EULA being accepted or rejected, proof of its movement would be sufficient to show repeated rejection.

If the car refuses to work without the EULA being accepted then it wouldn't move. If some functionality was enabled or disabled by accepting the EULA then you would have to show that the functionality was never enabled based on secondhand sources... which would be difficult. Proving something didn't happen is infinitely more difficult than proving something did. Many systems are not designed to handle that level of introspection.

All I'm saying is that the cute legal theory of "I rejected this N times therefore that one time I accepted it is invalid" falls apart for me when I consider that the user would have to prove they never did something, except that one time. Good luck.

Re: Software is eating the car

#268

Post by potta_coffee »

GuB-42 wrote: post #194
vannevar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wants a dumb car. Unfortunately, the idea of electric cars has become bound up with the notion of software-driven cars. I want an electric car with analog controls, no touch screens or over-the-air updates, and minimal software. A car that I feel like I own, rather than one I'm getting a click-through license to use.

So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... The problem with that dumb car is that it is missing that very convenient feature. So you want a dumb car but with feature X, because feature X is really great. But the other guy will not care about X and will think it is bloat, but Y is really important, while for someone else, it will be al…

Since when is power steering a "smart" feature? Power locks and windows are mechanical devices, solenoids powered by the car battery. The only computerized feature you listed is cruise control and we've had that for years and years. I don't think that this is an "either / or" proposition where we have either a car running off bloated software or a car limited to 1950's features. As far as I'm concerned, cars from the mid 1990's to mid 2000's are peak.

Re: Software is eating the car

#269

Post by drdavid »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #225
GuB-42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... The problem with that dumb car is that it is missing that very convenient feature. So you want a dumb car but with feature X, because feature X is really great. But the other guy will not care about X and will think it is bloat, but Y is really important, while for someone else, it will be al…

> So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... I think an extremely small minority of people who want a "dumb" car don't want those features. I feel like you're just making up a strawman here. It's pretty clear (at least to me), that the people who want a dumb car are talking about things integrating with your phone or being displayed o…

It has been a long time since you could get a truly bespoke car from a major manufacturer in a reasonable price segment.

But, you used to be able to order all sorts of stuff - or not order it. For example, you could save a few hundred bucks by not having a rear bumper, not having a radio, opting for manual windows and transmission, opting for no cruise control, etc...

There were a multitude of options and you could add/delete most anything you wanted.

These days, it's down to packages and colors. Often, you can't even mix packages and trying to get manually controlled windows will usually get you laughed at.

Re: Software is eating the car

#270

Post by amelius »

HellDunkel wrote: post #265
jacquesm wrote: post #181

Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse than the systems they replace or augment. The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors. Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming o…

Frightening. My friend had a similar incident (but he drives like a complete nutcase). Is there no „code of conduct“ what automotive software must not do in any case?

Probably these companies ignore any existing legislation to have more disruption powers. Lawsuits from fatal accidents are just the cost of doing business.
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