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Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#171

Post by bumby »

jjfoooo6 wrote: post #118
nightski wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not pissed and I am a stockholder. To me it makes a lot of sense. I doubt they are reviewing the entire code base. It seems like Elon is particularly interested in the automated systems that control content and detect bots. To that end, Tesla has a lot of expertise in AI systems.

AI as practiced in self driving cars is dramatically different than what is practiced in bot detection. Self driving has a well defined, static problem space, with inputs that don't change often (how often do they come out with a new street sign?). Twitter is combatting distributed adversaries who are constantly adjusting their approach in evading detection.

They are certainly different domains, but can you justify the claim "Self driving has a well defined, static problem space"?

One of the things that makes safety critical applications like self driving so hard is they have such an abundance of low probability, high severity cases that it is very difficult to define/test them all.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#172

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Aeolun wrote: post #125
jstx1 wrote: post #3

> One former Tesla engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the matter but was not involved, said Tesla engineers would have trouble capably assessing Twitter’s code. Distributed systems, the large-scale and spread-out network that Twitter is composed of, are not the automaker’s specialty, the person said. > The “idea of Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code is…

What a weird thing to say. I can evaluate any code. If it’s code I’m unfamiliar with it takes longer, and the result is more variable, but it’s far from impossible. It’s certainly more reliable than the evaluation of the person whose job depends on it being evaluated as correct.

> If it’s code I’m unfamiliar with it takes longer, and the result is more variable, but it’s far from impossible.

Yeah, I'm sure it's of value to have Tesla engineers come in and spend the 3 months to a year getting enough context with the code base to be be able to produce useful and informed critiques.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#173

Post by davewritescode »

jeffbee wrote: post #129
lawgimenez wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Twitter was run incompetently since its founding. We wouldn't be in this shit show if Twitter wasn't a disaster to begin with. Edit: Grammar

Twitter just took itself private for 42 billion dollars. I'd say it was run very, very competently. Hall-of-fame leadership, really.

I totally agree, Twitter’s old management pulled off one of the greatest moves in the history of corporate America.

They dumped a falling asset, at peak price and got Musk to sign terms that completely fucked him.

Honestly, it was completely brilliant and the only thing anyone learned is that Musk isn’t the business genius he claims to be.

He’s going to destroy that platform with utter stupidity and I’m looking forward to watching.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#174

Post by squidbeak »

seydor wrote: post #124
ipqk wrote: post #65

I'd be pissed off if I were a TSLA stock owner. Is Twitter paying Tesla to contract out these employees for their work? Otherwise, it's tons of thousands of dollars Tesla is pissing away on behalf of the CEO's side-hustle.

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#175

Post by Aeolun »

jeffbee wrote: post #129
lawgimenez wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Twitter was run incompetently since its founding. We wouldn't be in this shit show if Twitter wasn't a disaster to begin with. Edit: Grammar

Twitter just took itself private for 42 billion dollars. I'd say it was run very, very competently. Hall-of-fame leadership, really.

Their strategy was to piss really rich people off enough that they’d just buy the company outright?

I dunno, that seems like a pie in the sky.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#176

Post by moooo99 »

slaw wrote: post #89
cbeach wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla Model S owner here. The software on iOS and car is several years ahead of the competition. It embarrasses luxury German automakers. It’s made with the user in mind, it is elegant, and it is innovative in many surprising ways. For balance, there have been bugs - the linking of key fobs to driver profiles has always been glitchy, and Tesla’s decision to use an inadequate eMMC chip was shortsighted given the volum…

Not a Tesla owner. I sat in a demo Tesla. Infotainment UI looked clumsy. There was no Apple CarPlay. The most basic things didn't have knobs and required touch screen to use. Usability was years behind everyone else.

This was my impression as well (although I just sat on the passenger seat for 150km).

The cockpit is all nice and shiny, but not having any haptic feedback for any kind of regular controls you'd use (switching media, A/C control, etc) is a very questionable choice and a worrying trend among automakers in General. The center screen in the Model 3 to get something as basic as your current traveling speed seems equally questionable from a safety perspective.

I've also seen my fair share of Tesla summon close calls on the neighboring parking lot.

When it comes to the app, Tesla owners seem to have a broad spectrum of opinions. Personally for a car as expensive as a Tesla, the quality of the app would be the last thing I'd care about as I would consider it absolutely unnecessary.

The main thing where I totally agree Tesla is absolutely ahead are OTA updates for car firmware. However, looking at it from a security standpoint, bad security practices could really backfire and from a privacy point of view I'm not a fan of permanently internet connected vehicles either.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#177

Post by jahewson »

jstx1 wrote: post #3

> One former Tesla engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the matter but was not involved, said Tesla engineers would have trouble capably assessing Twitter’s code. Distributed systems, the large-scale and spread-out network that Twitter is composed of, are not the automaker’s specialty, the person said. > The “idea of Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code is…

In fairness there’s plenty of Tesla engineers that used to work across the bay at Twitter.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#179

Post by ryandrake »

Waterluvian wrote: post #21

I’m still looking for a concise term for “someone who claims to be an expert but immediately reveals beyond any doubt that they have no clue what they’re saying, simply by opening their mouth on the subject.” Having Tesla engineers over to review Twitter code is definitely that. It’s ridiculous.

A lot of senior execs, CxOs and founders have built multi-million dollar careers around their ability to speak at length with complete confidence about topics of which they are clueless. This works because the people who actually know what they are talking about tend to be powerless worker-bees and the people who are fooled by confidence projection tend to be investors and powerful career kingmakers.

The people rolling their eyes when they hear bullshit are not the people writing the checks.

Re: Tesla engineers were on-site to evaluate the Twitter staff’s code, workers said

#180

Post by ctvo »

Aeolun wrote: post #125
jstx1 wrote: post #3

> One former Tesla engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the matter but was not involved, said Tesla engineers would have trouble capably assessing Twitter’s code. Distributed systems, the large-scale and spread-out network that Twitter is composed of, are not the automaker’s specialty, the person said. > The “idea of Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code is…

What a weird thing to say. I can evaluate any code. If it’s code I’m unfamiliar with it takes longer, and the result is more variable, but it’s far from impossible. It’s certainly more reliable than the evaluation of the person whose job depends on it being evaluated as correct.

Given 24-48 hours in a gigantic tech company’s code base made up of dozens of teams and hundreds (thousands?) of logical services? No, I couldn’t tell you the “quality” of the code.

Someone who doesn’t understand engineering at that scale would presume it’s the structure of the if statements. And sure, if that’s what you’re looking for, print out some lines and let a person lacking all context take a look.

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