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Just because VW might have more motive to do this doesn't automatically mean that they're lying when they say it was the fault of individual engineers. Guilt is
by eridius 11y ago
Just because VW might have more motive to do this doesn't automatically mean that they're lying when they say it was the fault of individual engineers. Guilt is not determined by "who has the most motive", it's determined by who actually did it.
Now it may very well be true that VW is lying and it was a corporate decision. But it's not completely implausible that this really was the decision of a few individual employees.
Other commenters here are expressing surprise that engineers could "slip through arbitrary code" to do this. But isn't that kind of the job of software engineers, to write code to do things? I would hope they have code review going on at VW, but code review doesn't always catch everything, or maybe several engineers who were working together would review each other's code.
- karlkatzke 11y agoIf there's three or more engineers, said engineers could have colluded to put the code in.
- randcraw 11y agoLike NASA, auto companies like VW produce a TON of documentation on all phases of design and engineering. This is especially true when it comes to regulation-sensitive processes like emissions testing. As someone who has worked in a comparably highly regulated industry (pharma) I can state with full confidence that Mr Horn is a lying bastard.
- sheepmullet 11y ago> Like NASA, auto companies like VW produce a TON of documentation on all phases of design and engineering. This is especially true when it comes to regulation-sensitive processes like emissions testing. Bingo! A lot of HN is acting like "it could slip through the processes we have at work so I can see how it could happen here" without realising that the processes, documentation, and independent review requirements are 100x more involved and thorough for critical car firmware than they are for a basic software shop.
- billforsternz 11y agoYes and no. Remember the Toyota firmware fracas and the bizarre coding practices (100s of global variables anyone?) that were eventually revealed. Adding heavyweight process doesn't necessarily solve more problems than it creates.
- ams6110 11y agoI'm not sure emissions controls are considered "critical firmware" in the same sense as systems that could actually kill the occupants of the vehicle if they fail. Or rather, I hope they aren't.
- jerf 11y ago"But it's not completely implausible that this really was the decision of a few individual employees." Oh, I fully believe it was the decision of a few individual employees. I just don't believe those individuals were the actual coders. Coders will code to the spec they are given; problems are far more likely to lie in the spec layer. It is possible it will turn out the coders should have known better. But it isn't even that hard for me to create plausible circumstances in which the coders didn't have any reason to believe they were doing anything wrong. Remember, we're only seeing the end-results, but it's not hard to imagine a combination of specifications where the programmers are assured each little step is legal and OK, and a combination of other optimizations combining together to produce this result, with no one person quite understanding the interactions. And just to be clear, I work a lot in security, on the defense side. I'm familiar with taking the possibility that coders will be actively hostile seriously. But I'm also very familiar with seeing five intelligent people each acting according to their own best info and with their own best interests at heart interacting to produce blithering stupidity. It's not always as simple as it looks when you're just looking at the outcome.
- eridius 11y agoThe article did say > The German automaker has suspended 10 senior managers, including three top engineers, as part of its internal investigation. So it could be a few engineers and their managers that colluded together on this.