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Great article, and the best is Musk's response. Just one more example of how, ala Allison and Zeilkow's "Essence of Decision," so much of what happens in indust
by SocksCanClose 11y ago
Great article, and the best is Musk's response. Just one more example of how, ala Allison and Zeilkow's "Essence of Decision," so much of what happens in industrial organizations ("industrial" in the philosophical sense -- meaning organizations with hierarchies, divisions, etc.) is motivated not by the overall interest of the organization (cf. Musk's response), but rather of the more parochial needs of the individual managers. Which is to say someone within the Tesla organization, fearful of an error they made, sought to retaliate against the guy -- even though the retaliation was unauthorized, and even counterproductive. An amazing use case for how Twitter, when optimally utilized as a total free-speech zone, can really help move the world forward, as things like this enable information to percolate directly to the top without winding its way through the "mittelebureaucracy."
- Theodores 11y agoWhat would you do if your latest commits went live and they indeed did have new things in there, e.g. attribute values? You might just roll the whole thing back a release, in the first instance to 'update' the hacker to a 'safe' version. If there were a need to roll everyone back then some type of patched new version would need to be released, or, if speed really mattered, just remote downgrade everyone to something safe. The major version numbers might not be the safe releases, the last release from a previous major version might be safer. Hence back to v.12.x.y for him. No malice be involved, just prudent reaction.
- maratd 11y ago> No malice be involved, just prudent reaction. It's not malice, it's panic and it's profoundly stupid. Only those with root access to the car can access the secret info. There are a handful of people out there who rooted their cars. They are individuals of extraordinary technical ability. You think they don't know how to make a backup? Or how to stop remote access? That's exactly what happened. He blocked them and then deleted the pending downgrade.
- 21 11y agoLet's assume there is a problem caused be the rooting and as a result the Tesla spins out of control and kills a bystander. Would you agree that this extraordinary technical ability individual should be criminally liable in this case?
- maratd 11y ago> Would you agree that this extraordinary technical ability individual should be criminally liable in this case? No. Cars have had software for a while. Tesla is the FIRST and ONLY company to do over-the-air updates. I don't think you should be criminally liable for turning a feature off. Sorry, but once you push to production, the cat is out of the bag. I absolutely HATE this new attitude that it's OK to not thoroughly test code before pushing it to production, because hey, you can always fix it later or roll back, right?
- maratd 11y ago> Would you agree that this extraordinary technical ability individual should be criminally liable in this case? No. There's no mens rea. He should be liable for damages in civil court.
- marme 11y agothere is if he is told the downgrade is for a critical safety bug that needs to be rolled back. Then he has shown criminal negligence for not allowing his car to be fixed
- maratd 11y agoThat's not what the OP said. He didn't say anything about downgrades. All he said was rooting and presumably, messing with the system. Neither qualifies as criminal negligence in my mind. I'm not sure I want to live in a society where gaining access to hardware I own gets me thrown in jail? I would also like to emphasize that this has never happened and is totally hypothetical.
- gutnor 11y agoOr you know, you do it like Apple. You make no comment whatsoever, keep the software and let the rumor machine keep you on top of tech news sites.