Live data from Hacker News

Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

safetyresearch.net

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#21
post #8

Patio11 has talked about how programmers are little respected and paid poorly in Japan compared with the US. Could this have something to do with Toyota's code quality being so poor and causing this issue?

That plus project management philosophies and societally-expected overtime (fatigue buildup) are quite possibly all factors in this.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that a world of coders who would be mulling over the code due to interest and spare time would likely find critical issues and shine light onto them, making it a PR issue for those companies. If those companies ever get around to offering bounties for issues relating to safety or security, even easier to get an army of eyes on the code.

That's the point. We already know it doesn't work. Most recent examples would be Heartbleed, ShellShock, etc.

OSS having bugs is not proof that open sourcing software won't lead to less bugs.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#23

I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…

You feel the same about planes?

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#24
post #8

Patio11 has talked about how programmers are little respected and paid poorly in Japan compared with the US. Could this have something to do with Toyota's code quality being so poor and causing this issue?

Paul Sebastian Ziegler gave a talk at the HITB security conference in 2012 titled "Hacking in the Far East".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouQFu1FDllw

To me it was an eye opener to learn about the different attitudes of tech professionals in countries such as South Korea and particularly Japan.

I highly recommend watching it some time.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#25
post #2

Critical systems should be open source by law.

I love magic bullets! As we've recently seen with things like Heartbleed, open source has no vulnerabilities, no bugs, no errors, and is free from all the problems of proprietary software.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#26

I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…

I drive a 25 year old car that perfectly fits your description, but that's just because I like the way it handles, how it looks, and because it has a little more personality to it than all the dime-a-dozen cars you see on every corner of the street.

What I don't understand is how you can rationalize your preferences by thinking these old cars are safer because they don't have any software-defined points of failure. The chances of dying in a car accident because of driver error (by yourself, or by someone else) or mechanical failure (because of worn-out parts) are infinitely higher than by some kind of electronic failure. And if you end up in crash, your chance of survival will be much higher in a modern car, because of all the safety measures that have been added over the years. So IMO it doesn't make sense to stick with the things you've mentioned if safety is your primary concern.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#27

I'm a retired electronics design engineer and embedded programmer, and I will NEVER own a car with any kind of vehicle/engine management computer. Old cars for me, forever. I flatly refuse anything but fully manual and direct mechanical gears, clutch, steering, brakes and throttle. Curiously the chief engineer I knew at a major car service center, also felt the same way. And that's not even touching on the insanity o…

I love the absurdity of this and arbitrariness. You'll happily drive in a car, one of the most dangerous machines people use regularly. But if it has a computer in it, no siree, that's when things get too deadly to deal with. All of the other thousands of moving parts, like the thing that takes energy-dense hydrocarbons and ignites them several thousand times a second in hot, high pressure tubes - that's fine and totally safe. It's the ECU that makes the car dangerous. The fact that the only thing separating you walking on the sidewalk from death from a two ton metal box is the convention that we'll all stay within the lines painted on the ground. That's fine. It's the ECU that you're afraid of. Absurd.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#28
post #8

Patio11 has talked about how programmers are little respected and paid poorly in Japan compared with the US. Could this have something to do with Toyota's code quality being so poor and causing this issue?

Keep in mind that I live in the country side and don't hang out with the likes of Patio11 ;-) I think he's seeing the best side of it. Where I live (in Japan, if it isn't obvious), the programmers I know have no training in programming, let alone a degree or anything like that. One of my friends was a secretary at an insurance company. One day her boss walked up to her and said, "From today you are going to be a programmer" and that was that!

I do also know a self taught free lancer who makes an absolute killing cleaning up problems in various companies. He does really short contracts (like 2-4 weeks) in Tokyo and Osaka. Then he comes back to Shizuoka and hangs out for a couple of weeks. So there is money to be made ;-)

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason why this pattern hasn't been widely reported? Edit: I mean, -if it was this obvious we should have known it by now?

Is there any reason why this pattern hasn't been widely reported? My recollection is: It was widely reported at the time.

My fault then. HN is my primary source of US news but I guess this was featured in more mainstream news.

Re: Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013)

#30
post #2

Critical systems should be open source by law.

I love magic bullets! As we've recently seen with things like Heartbleed, open source has no vulnerabilities, no bugs, no errors, and is free from all the problems of proprietary software.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed#Discovery

It looks like at least having the source available made it easier for the good guys to discover the bug.

Post reply on HN