7 ms·

This seems like the kind of end-run around the system that tech folks tend to think is a clever life hack, only to find out that legal/regulatory bodies aren't

by akerl_ 10y ago

This seems like the kind of end-run around the system that tech folks tend to think is a clever life hack, only to find out that legal/regulatory bodies aren't fooled. Like trying to convince the judge that you weren't speeding because if you set your frame of reference inside the car, it was the road that was speeding, backwards! I only hope that the folks hand-rolling this onto their cars don't injure too many people in their attempt to "disrupt" cars.

trome 10y ago
Yeah, I doubt that this code dump will stimulate a community to form in a legally safe way similar to the Linux kernel or GnuPGP, the choices of BSD and CC-ShareAlike-NonCommercial are likely to encourage manufacturers to pull a Sony and take the code, build their own training data and contribute nothing back.
pjmlp 10y ago
It is also a reason that as engineer (real degree, not self named), I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. Thankfully at least EULAs are void in most European countries and companies can be accounted for.
- di4na 10y ago
  Sadly, despite 50 years of work on it (and there are still lot ot work on it), we have no idea on what to regulate. Which is the culprit here.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  How would that work practically? I am sometimes for regulation but I cannot fathom what it would look like.
  - siddboots 10y ago
    ANAE, but one form it could take is via a government or independent expert body with a mandate to inspect and certify code in some meaningful way before it reaches the consumer.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      All code? I'm pretty sure you just ground the industry to an halt, if even Flappy Bird must be inspected and certified. If it's just code used in critical situation, then you're not really talking about the same thing as pjmlp.
      - pjc50 10y ago
        Self-driving car code is a critical situation, surely? Isn't that what we were talking about?
        bcook 10y ago
        The code is likely useful in many other ways than just self-driving cars.
        cowsandmilk 10y ago
        Ancestor in this thread said: > I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. Maybe there is a line that is "critical", but not "life critical", but ancestor's statement was pretty damn broad.
  - cnvogel 10y ago
    People seem to be under the impression that regulation inevitably means "someone has to review/audit every single change that was made to any aspect of a product". But in practice there can be all kinds of provisions, from the weak to the strong. A weak provision may be that at least a minimum of development and testing has to take place, with requirements on record-keeping and naming of responsible persons: For a simple device, or a simple software, this might take the form of a checklist or a questionnaire which you have to take before uploading code to the App-Store. Yes, this seems very straightforward to fake, but at least then you have deliberately cheated a system designed to catch errors, and not "just written shitty code" (or built a flimsy mechanical device... when applying this scheme to non-software world). Which, I think, would already help a lot to make people accountable for their products/inventions/... {for, example: with CE certifications, you, as a producer only state that you have built your products according to some harmonized standards, but the conformance itself is not tested by a third party} With increasing security/privacy requirements, the mandated measures can could then be ramped up. Maybe scaled by permissions of an application (accesses otherwise protected data?), the ability to process sensitive date or maybe number of users? The extremes measure would be a full line-by-line review on every change, when software is life-sustaining or a fault may have catastrophic (death of people, like running a pacemaker or steering a huge plane).
    - pjc50 10y ago
      As a producer, CE certification is very disconcerting. I started out with the mindset of "how can I be certain that I'm compliant?", and the best answer is that it simply doesn't work like that. It's more of a question of whether you have enough paperwork to cover yourself in the (pretty unlikely) event of litigation. There's some testing you can do, and you can sort of guess which product categories fit you exactly and apply those, but if your product is really innovative this is vague. You end up just putting a declaration of conformity in the box and a sticker on the product and hoping for the best.
      - Gracana 10y ago
        I liked the CE process and thought it was pretty clear. You need to identify hazards and classify them according to probability of occurance and severity, then take appropriate measures to reduce the risk of harm. It's all spelled out pretty well without being a precise code (like NEC or UL 508A or something), so it's flexible enough to apply to whatever domain you're in.
- patcheudor 10y ago
  This may very well be the future text-book example of how to not handle life critical systems and software, unfortunately it may well take people being killed. At this point we have no idea how this software handles pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorcyclists. We have no idea how it handles unanticipated situations like black ice or even construction zones. It has not been tested or certified by anyone. Clearly anybody who thinks they can download this, compile it and run it in their car likes playing with fire.
- slavik81 10y ago
  > I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. That would be the death of free software. I'm also a P.Eng., but if we're going to require professional licensing, it should only be for safety-critical uses. Shared tools and knowledge have made software systems better and more affordable for countless people. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.
stale2002 10y ago
This isn't some "clever trick". It is genuinely not illegal to release a bunch of code open source on github. The Government asked him to not sell his product, so he complied with the government's request.
- chillydawg 10y ago
  It is an ethically shitty move, though. The software is not properly tested. People will run it thinking it's legit and probably some will get hurt or die. The law doesn't matter.
  - diggan 10y ago
    It's ethically shitty to release open source software now? People who pull down some source from Github that has 4 commits, thinking it's legit and rely on it to drive your car are probably not too many. Those that do, are generally hard to protect from themselves in any area of life.
    - nzjrs 10y ago
      7 years ago I completed a PhD developing the first control software for quadrotor drones. I mention this only to give a sense of time. Now every idiot with an arduino and a github account can crash one into my family at the park. Do you think the adoption of shitty self driving technology by unequipped amateurs will follow a different path?
      - tbrake 10y ago
        The cost of both entry and failure for hacking on quadcopter vs car is orders of magnitude apart? Unless you know something about the upcoming price of cars that you'd like to share ;).
        nzjrs 10y ago
        Really? In 5 years how many cars will be equipped with the basal level of sensors that make these sorts of hacks possible? My guess is more people will have compatible cars in their house than qudrotors.... Cost and chance of failure is poorly (or not at all) evaluated by the kinds of dangerous beginners likely to crash their car-pilot into a bridge.
cptskippy 10y ago
It didn't really strike me as an end-run but more like his interest was in solving the self driving car problem and when faced with solving the regulatory problem he said "no thanks" and walked away.

by akerl_ 10y ago

trome 10y ago

Yeah, I doubt that this code dump will stimulate a community to form in a legally safe way similar to the Linux kernel or GnuPGP, the choices of BSD and CC-ShareAlike-NonCommercial are likely to encourage manufacturers to pull a Sony and take the code, build their own training data and contribute nothing back.

pjmlp 10y ago

It is also a reason that as engineer (real degree, not self named), I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. Thankfully at least EULAs are void in most European countries and companies can be accounted for.

di4na 10y ago
Sadly, despite 50 years of work on it (and there are still lot ot work on it), we have no idea on what to regulate. Which is the culprit here.
tluyben2 10y ago
How would that work practically? I am sometimes for regulation but I cannot fathom what it would look like.
- siddboots 10y ago
  ANAE, but one form it could take is via a government or independent expert body with a mandate to inspect and certify code in some meaningful way before it reaches the consumer.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    All code? I'm pretty sure you just ground the industry to an halt, if even Flappy Bird must be inspected and certified. If it's just code used in critical situation, then you're not really talking about the same thing as pjmlp.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      Self-driving car code is a critical situation, surely? Isn't that what we were talking about?
      - bcook 10y ago
        The code is likely useful in many other ways than just self-driving cars.
      - cowsandmilk 10y ago
        Ancestor in this thread said: > I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. Maybe there is a line that is "critical", but not "life critical", but ancestor's statement was pretty damn broad.
- cnvogel 10y ago
  People seem to be under the impression that regulation inevitably means "someone has to review/audit every single change that was made to any aspect of a product". But in practice there can be all kinds of provisions, from the weak to the strong. A weak provision may be that at least a minimum of development and testing has to take place, with requirements on record-keeping and naming of responsible persons: For a simple device, or a simple software, this might take the form of a checklist or a questionnaire which you have to take before uploading code to the App-Store. Yes, this seems very straightforward to fake, but at least then you have deliberately cheated a system designed to catch errors, and not "just written shitty code" (or built a flimsy mechanical device... when applying this scheme to non-software world). Which, I think, would already help a lot to make people accountable for their products/inventions/... {for, example: with CE certifications, you, as a producer only state that you have built your products according to some harmonized standards, but the conformance itself is not tested by a third party} With increasing security/privacy requirements, the mandated measures can could then be ramped up. Maybe scaled by permissions of an application (accesses otherwise protected data?), the ability to process sensitive date or maybe number of users? The extremes measure would be a full line-by-line review on every change, when software is life-sustaining or a fault may have catastrophic (death of people, like running a pacemaker or steering a huge plane).
  - pjc50 10y ago
    As a producer, CE certification is very disconcerting. I started out with the mindset of "how can I be certain that I'm compliant?", and the best answer is that it simply doesn't work like that. It's more of a question of whether you have enough paperwork to cover yourself in the (pretty unlikely) event of litigation. There's some testing you can do, and you can sort of guess which product categories fit you exactly and apply those, but if your product is really innovative this is vague. You end up just putting a declaration of conformity in the box and a sticker on the product and hoping for the best.
    - Gracana 10y ago
      I liked the CE process and thought it was pretty clear. You need to identify hazards and classify them according to probability of occurance and severity, then take appropriate measures to reduce the risk of harm. It's all spelled out pretty well without being a precise code (like NEC or UL 508A or something), so it's flexible enough to apply to whatever domain you're in.
patcheudor 10y ago
This may very well be the future text-book example of how to not handle life critical systems and software, unfortunately it may well take people being killed. At this point we have no idea how this software handles pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorcyclists. We have no idea how it handles unanticipated situations like black ice or even construction zones. It has not been tested or certified by anyone. Clearly anybody who thinks they can download this, compile it and run it in their car likes playing with fire.
slavik81 10y ago
> I support software being regulated just like everything else, not only on life critical situations. That would be the death of free software. I'm also a P.Eng., but if we're going to require professional licensing, it should only be for safety-critical uses. Shared tools and knowledge have made software systems better and more affordable for countless people. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

stale2002 10y ago

This isn't some "clever trick". It is genuinely not illegal to release a bunch of code open source on github. The Government asked him to not sell his product, so he complied with the government's request.

chillydawg 10y ago
It is an ethically shitty move, though. The software is not properly tested. People will run it thinking it's legit and probably some will get hurt or die. The law doesn't matter.
- diggan 10y ago
  It's ethically shitty to release open source software now? People who pull down some source from Github that has 4 commits, thinking it's legit and rely on it to drive your car are probably not too many. Those that do, are generally hard to protect from themselves in any area of life.
  - nzjrs 10y ago
    7 years ago I completed a PhD developing the first control software for quadrotor drones. I mention this only to give a sense of time. Now every idiot with an arduino and a github account can crash one into my family at the park. Do you think the adoption of shitty self driving technology by unequipped amateurs will follow a different path?
    - tbrake 10y ago
      The cost of both entry and failure for hacking on quadcopter vs car is orders of magnitude apart? Unless you know something about the upcoming price of cars that you'd like to share ;).
      - nzjrs 10y ago
        Really? In 5 years how many cars will be equipped with the basal level of sensors that make these sorts of hacks possible? My guess is more people will have compatible cars in their house than qudrotors.... Cost and chance of failure is poorly (or not at all) evaluated by the kinds of dangerous beginners likely to crash their car-pilot into a bridge.

cptskippy 10y ago

It didn't really strike me as an end-run but more like his interest was in solving the self driving car problem and when faced with solving the regulatory problem he said "no thanks" and walked away.