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If the programmers of a multimillion dollar satellite can't guarantee that their patches won't break anything, I'm sure as hell not willing to risk my life on t

If the programmers of a multimillion dollar satellite can't guarantee that their patches won't break anything, I'm sure as hell not willing to risk my life on the possibility that an automaker's programmers can. No remote updates for me; if it is my car then it is my car, and I will decide if, when, and how I will upgrade it. If a carmaker won't accept that, I won't drive their car.

hyperbovine 11y ago
Is it possible that satellites are more complex than cars?
- IMTDb 11y ago
  Or that car maker actually have the ability to test their software in real-life situation before pushing the update to the intended client
  - ganeshkrishnan 11y ago
    If it's a self driven car then an controlled environment with hundreds of cars with new patch will test for couple of weeks before the patch is released. Chances are mitigated and the cars can be observed physically unlike satellites. Also every technological advancement we are reducing fatality. We are not bringing it to complete zero but we are definitely reducing it.
- mathattack 11y ago
  There's also many more cars to test software on.
Tycho 11y ago
You know this could give the FOSS movement a new lease of life. Realistically only nerds care about whether they can install/configure exactly what they want on their computer hardware, but when it comes to safety things like this many more people are going to care deeply.
- rconti 11y ago
  2016 is the year of Linux on the dashboard!
danielrhodes 11y ago
It stands to reason it will eventually happen, but compared to a satellite there is a much lower liklihood that as an individual you will experience harm because of such an update. Some mitigating factors: - they can do slow releases. So if a serious anomaly does occur it is unlikely to be with your car. - the conditons of space make errors much more catosptrophic. Although I can imagine similarly catosptrophic scenarios with a car, there are also more opportunities to safely rectify the situation (like the car pulling over and refusing to drive if things are not ok). In space, the satellite cannot just stop and wait for a tow truck to arrive. - there is only one satellite to test the update on. If they screw it up, it's gone. With cars, there are many to test on, so errors will turn up and be fixed faster. But back to the issue of risk: Just like with drunk driving, you are at risk of somebody else's car going haywire as well, so it's a risk regardless of whether you yourself updated or not. At that point, the difference between your existing risk and the risk you take on from the update is probably not that great, so might as well just do the update.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  It's the loss of control that bugs me. When I buy a car I am not buying an ongoing relationship with the car's maker; I'm buying a physical object, which is then mine, and I'll choose when and how it will be serviced. The over-the-air auto-update thing is as though... well, it's like some mechanic from the automaker shows up at your house unannounced a year after you took your car off the lot; without a word, they haul your car away on a trailer for an hour, then bring it back and park it. Ta-da, hope you like what we did to "your" car, because it's done now whether you wanted it or not!
  - danielrhodes 11y ago
    When that car is a computer on wheels, you kind of do want that relationship. I imagine an open source car will one day be a thing, but like the personal computer, it's going to be a niche market.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
mathattack 11y ago
By this logic - you wouldn't want to drive any car since no satellite programmer could guarantee no bugs in their initial software either. I think it's a tradeoff. If self-driving cars can save tens of thousands of lives in the US every year, how many should we be willing to risk to enable this? Eventually your insurance company may force this on you due to higher premiums, or government may make injuring someone in a manual car accident a crime like assault.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  Perhaps. I'll worry about such things after self-driving cars actually exist. Right now they are an engineer's fantasy, or a salesperson's exaggerated way of describing semi-automatic assistance features; who knows what the reality will eventually be.
  - nsgi 11y ago
    It's not only self-driving cars that use software.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      Self-driving cars only exist as research prototypes. They are as speculative as flying cars. Tesla is the only offender I know about when it comes to real cars that actually exist and have obnoxious over-the-air update systems, because normal car companies are constrained by their contracts with dealer networks, so any software updates they might want to push on us would have to be done through the normal vehicle service program. This can easily be avoided by choosing a different mechanic. One can't very well choose a different mechanic if you are stuck a Tesla-like system that pushes diffs at you via radio, and that's what concerns me.
elevensies 11y ago
I think they already have the ability to push upgrades during routine service, so the only difference here is the frequency. I don't know what their testing regimes look like, but it may not even be different.

hyperbovine 11y ago

Is it possible that satellites are more complex than cars?

IMTDb 11y ago
Or that car maker actually have the ability to test their software in real-life situation before pushing the update to the intended client
- ganeshkrishnan 11y ago
  If it's a self driven car then an controlled environment with hundreds of cars with new patch will test for couple of weeks before the patch is released. Chances are mitigated and the cars can be observed physically unlike satellites. Also every technological advancement we are reducing fatality. We are not bringing it to complete zero but we are definitely reducing it.
mathattack 11y ago
There's also many more cars to test software on.

Tycho 11y ago

You know this could give the FOSS movement a new lease of life. Realistically only nerds care about whether they can install/configure exactly what they want on their computer hardware, but when it comes to safety things like this many more people are going to care deeply.

rconti 11y ago
2016 is the year of Linux on the dashboard!

danielrhodes 11y ago

It stands to reason it will eventually happen, but compared to a satellite there is a much lower liklihood that as an individual you will experience harm because of such an update. Some mitigating factors: - they can do slow releases. So if a serious anomaly does occur it is unlikely to be with your car. - the conditons of space make errors much more catosptrophic. Although I can imagine similarly catosptrophic scenarios with a car, there are also more opportunities to safely rectify the situation (like the car pulling over and refusing to drive if things are not ok). In space, the satellite cannot just stop and wait for a tow truck to arrive. - there is only one satellite to test the update on. If they screw it up, it's gone. With cars, there are many to test on, so errors will turn up and be fixed faster. But back to the issue of risk: Just like with drunk driving, you are at risk of somebody else's car going haywire as well, so it's a risk regardless of whether you yourself updated or not. At that point, the difference between your existing risk and the risk you take on from the update is probably not that great, so might as well just do the update.

marssaxman 11y ago
It's the loss of control that bugs me. When I buy a car I am not buying an ongoing relationship with the car's maker; I'm buying a physical object, which is then mine, and I'll choose when and how it will be serviced. The over-the-air auto-update thing is as though... well, it's like some mechanic from the automaker shows up at your house unannounced a year after you took your car off the lot; without a word, they haul your car away on a trailer for an hour, then bring it back and park it. Ta-da, hope you like what we did to "your" car, because it's done now whether you wanted it or not!
- danielrhodes 11y ago
  When that car is a computer on wheels, you kind of do want that relationship. I imagine an open source car will one day be a thing, but like the personal computer, it's going to be a niche market.
  - marssaxman 11y ago

mathattack 11y ago

By this logic - you wouldn't want to drive any car since no satellite programmer could guarantee no bugs in their initial software either. I think it's a tradeoff. If self-driving cars can save tens of thousands of lives in the US every year, how many should we be willing to risk to enable this? Eventually your insurance company may force this on you due to higher premiums, or government may make injuring someone in a manual car accident a crime like assault.

marssaxman 11y ago
Perhaps. I'll worry about such things after self-driving cars actually exist. Right now they are an engineer's fantasy, or a salesperson's exaggerated way of describing semi-automatic assistance features; who knows what the reality will eventually be.
- nsgi 11y ago
  It's not only self-driving cars that use software.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    Self-driving cars only exist as research prototypes. They are as speculative as flying cars. Tesla is the only offender I know about when it comes to real cars that actually exist and have obnoxious over-the-air update systems, because normal car companies are constrained by their contracts with dealer networks, so any software updates they might want to push on us would have to be done through the normal vehicle service program. This can easily be avoided by choosing a different mechanic. One can't very well choose a different mechanic if you are stuck a Tesla-like system that pushes diffs at you via radio, and that's what concerns me.

elevensies 11y ago

I think they already have the ability to push upgrades during routine service, so the only difference here is the frequency. I don't know what their testing regimes look like, but it may not even be different.