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US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

reuters.com

661–670 of 1001 posts

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. If you write software that people rely on with their lives, and it fails, you should be held liable for that criminally.

Software requires hardware that can bit flip with gamma rays.

Which is why hardware used to run safety-critical software is made redundant.

Take the Boeing 777 Primary Flight Computer for example. This is a fully digital fly-by-wire aircraft. There are 3 separate racks of equipment housing identical flight computers; 2 in the avionics bay underneath the flight deck, 1 in the aft cargo section. Each flight computer has 3 separate processors, supporting 2 dissimilar instruction set architectures, running the same software built by 3 separate compilers. Each flight computer captures instances of the software not agreeing about an action to be undertaken and wins by majority vote. The processor that makes these decisions is different in each flight computer.

The power systems that provide each flight computer are also fully redundant; each computer gets power from a power supply assembly, which receives 2 power feeds from 3 separate power supplies; no 2 power supply assemblies share the same 2 sources of power. 2 of the 3 power systems (L engine generator, R engine generator, and the hot battery bus) would have to fail and the APU would have to be unavailable in order to knock out 1 of the 3 computers.

This system has never failed in 30 years of service. There's still a primary flight computer disconnect switch on the overhead panel in the cockpit, taking the software out of the loop, to logically connect all of your control inputs to the flight surface actuators. I'm not aware of it ever being used (edit: in a commercial flight).

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. If you write software that people rely on with their lives, and it fails, you should be held liable for that criminally.

Software requires hardware that can bit flip with gamma rays.

You can control for that. Multiple machines doing is rival calculations for example

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until I ride in one and feel safe, I can't have any faith that this is a reasonable system This is probably the worst way to evaluate self-driving for society though, right?

Why would I be supportive of a system that has actively scared me for objectively scary reasons? Even if it's the worst reason, it's not a bad reason.

How you feel while riding isn’t an objective thing. It’s entirely subjective. You and I can sit side by side and feel differently about the same experience.

I don’t see how this is in any way objective besides the fact that you want it to be objective.

You can support things for society that scare you and feel unsafe because you can admit your feelings are subjective and the thing is actually safer than it feels to you personally.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point the risk of going to prison overtakes family loyalty.

There is no risk of going to prison. It just doesn’t happen, never have and never will, no matter how unfair that is. Board members and CEOs are not held accountable, ever.

https://fortune.com/2023/01/24/google-meta-spotify-layoffs-c...

As they say, they take "full responsibility"

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. If you write software that people rely on with their lives, and it fails, you should be held liable for that criminally.

What a laugh, would you take that deal? Upside: you get paid a 200k salary, if all your code works perfectly. Downside: if it doesn't, you go to prison. The users aren't compelled to use it. They can choose not to. They get to choose their own risks. The internet is a gold mine of creatively moronic opinions.

Need far more regulation of the software industry, far too many people working in it fail to understand the scope of what they do.

Civil engineer kills someone with a bad building, jail. Surgeon removes the wrong lung, jail. Computer programmer kills someone, “oh well it’s your own fault”.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#667
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your take is understandable and not surprising on a site full of software developers. Somehow, the general software industry has ingrained this pessimistic and fatalistic dogma that says bugs are inevitable and there’s nothing you can do to prevent them. Since everyone believes it, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and we just accept it as some kind of law of nature. Holding software developers (or their companies) li…

Punishing individual developers is of course absurd (unless intent can be proven) the company itself and the upper management on the hand? Would make perfect sense.

You have one person in that RACI accountable box. That’s the engineer signing it off as fit. They are held accountable, including with jail if required.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#668

Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous. - It failed with a cryptic system error while driving - It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene. - In my opinion, the default setting accelera…

> I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year. I'm curious, what is the alternative that you are considering? I've been delaying an upgrade to electric for some time. And now, a car manufacturer that is contributing to the making of another Jan 6th, 2021 is not an option, in my opinion.

I also went into car shopping with that opinion, but the options are bleak in terms of other carmakers' software. For some reason, if you want basic software features of a Tesla, the other carmakers want an extra $20k+ (and still don't have some).

A big example is why do the other carmakers not yet offer camera recording on their cars? They are all using cameras all around, but only Tesla makes it available to you in case you want the footage? Bizarre. And then they want to charge you an extra $500+ for one dash cam on the windshield.

I even had Carplay/Android Auto as a basic requirement, but I was willing to forgo that after trying out the other brands. And not having to spend hours at a dealership doing paperwork was amazing. Literally bought the car on my phone and was out the door within 15 minutes on the day of my appointment.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it how about why apply the same standard to coal and natural gas plants? For some reason when we start taking about nuclear plants we all of a sudden become adverse to the idea of unfunded externalities but when we're talking about 'old' tech that has been steadily irradiating your community and changing the gas composition of the entire planet it becomes less concerning.

I think it is a matter of perceived risk. Realistically speaking, nuclear power is pretty safe. In the history of nuclear power, there were two major incidents. Considering the number of nuclear power plants around the planet, that is pretty good. However, as those two accidents demonstrated, the potential fallout of those incidents is pretty severe and widespread. I think this massively contributes to the perceived…

During power outages, having natural gas in your home is a huge benefit. Many in my area just experienced it with Helene.

You can still cook. You can still get hot water. If you have gas logs you still have a heat source in the winter too.

These trade offs are far more important to a lot of people.

Re: US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

#670

Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous. - It failed with a cryptic system error while driving - It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene. - In my opinion, the default setting accelera…

Same here, but I tried the new 12.5.4.1 yesterday and the difference is night and day. It was near flawless except for some unexplained slowdowns and you don't even need to hold the steering anymore (it detects attention by looking at your face), they clearly are improving rapidly.
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