
Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System - swalsh
https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376
======
ddevault
I used to work at SpaceX on the team that did a piece of software called
"WarpDrive". It was a _massive_ monolithic ASP.NET application, with large
swaths done with ASP.NET WebForms and a slow frontier of ASP.NET MVC gradually
growing when I was working there. This application was responsible for
practically everything that ran the factory: inventory, supply chain
management, cost analysis, etc. Elon is a big Windows fan and pushed hard to
run the whole shop on Microsoft tech. Thankfully the rockets fly with a
heavily customized Linux install.

~~~
8_hours_ago
> the rockets fly with a heavily customized Linux install

My jaw hit the floor the first time I heard this. Why Linux instead of an
RTOS?? Apparently Tesla's autopilot also runs Linux, which seems like a huge
accident waiting to happen (pun intended).

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
As a person who used to write navigation and control software for autonomous
vehicles who occasionally gets downvoted for telling people that you really
don't need a fancy RTOS for this stuff, you really don't need a fancy RTOS for
this stuff. Linux is a very common platform for highly responsive robotic
systems. I promise that their pid control isn't an Electron app.

~~~
mlaretallack
Agree completely. Hard real time is possible with Linux, we use it for sub
millisecond control of Traffic Lights. The only issue we ever hit is proving
that the code running is the stuff we expected to run.

~~~
coldtea
> _we use it for sub millisecond control of Traffic Lights_

Why would anyone need "sub millisecond control of Traffic Lights"?

Traffic lights are mission critical systems, of course, but even millisecond
precision should be more than enough, and possibly even 0.5x-1 second
precision...

~~~
Cyph0n
The real question is: why do you need an entire OS kernel to control traffic
lights?

~~~
noselasd
To communicate with all the other traffic lights and sensors at the other
intersections on the road to optimize traffic flow.

~~~
Cyph0n
Yeah, I still think that's overkill, simply because the bulk of the
computation is done on a remote server anyways. All you really need on the
frontend is a TCP/IP stack to send telemetry and receive commands.

If the connection is lost, the exchange can just fallback to "naive" mode.

~~~
manmal
I guess using off-the-shelf mass market hardware combined with a software
stack anyone can design, setup, and implement is way easier and cheaper than a
customized solution.

------
sz4kerto
Why is this interesting or surprising? Of course almost all challengers have
hacky tech under the hood because they don't have the resources. Winning from
that position is possible not because of generally better tech but by
delivering something that the incumbents don't.

Remember the demo of the first iPhone (vs the huge expertise of Nokia). Or how
Microsoft won the desktop starting from a single user, cooperative
multitasking system (vs all the sophisticated Unix-based systems). Or Facebook
running on despised MySQL and PHP.

These hacks are part of the strategy. It's risky but probably doing these
'properly' would increase the risk even more.

~~~
dswalter
Cars weigh thousands of pounds and routinely drive upwards of 60 miles per
hour.

The success of the first iPhone or Facebook app didn't depend on using it to
navigate through life-and-death situations not only for the users but also for
everyone around them.

There are places for 'move fast and break things'. But cars move fast already,
and they can really break things.

~~~
mikeash
Tesla’s infotainment and IT infrastructure is unrelated to their safety. If
this guy worked on motor control or braking system firmware then that would be
scary, but he didn’t.

~~~
devy
If the infotainment system caused the MCUs to reboot while someone traveling
"130mph on San Mateo Bridge" and that caused the break system to segfault due
to unconventional way of loading parts firmware, it might be a life&death
situation, easily. Examples in that threads go on, literally hundreds!

~~~
vvanders
Well, you can reboot the system while driving(both console and dash), nothing
special happens other than the AC turning off for a brief period of time.
Brakes, wheel, throttle all respond normally.

Source: Done this a few times to clear bad map data or occasional glitch.

~~~
rrcaptain
AC should be considered mission critical.

~~~
vvanders
Definitely, I'd put it on the mission criticality list right below inflight
wifi.

~~~
blub
It's not mission critical, but it's important: in cold weather the windshield
can fog up to the point of 0% visibility.

In hot weather it can become very uncomfortable or even impossible to drive
without AC.

~~~
mikeash
There’s a distinction between safety critical equipment and essential
equipment. If the former fails, it could kill you. If the latter fails, you
can’t drive anymore but you won’t die if it happens on the road. Brakes are in
the former category, while things like HVAC and instruments are in the latter.

Safety equipment must not fail, but essential equipment can fail as much as
your customers will tolerate.

------
bradleybuda
At DEF CON 23 there were two car-hacking talks that made an impression on me:
one about hacking a Tesla [1] and one about hacking a Jeep [2]. FWIW, I came
away thinking that the software architecture of the Tesla was light-years
ahead of what Jeep (and presumably many other legacy manufacturers) was
shipping:

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX_0c9R4Fng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX_0c9R4Fng)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OobLb1McxnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OobLb1McxnI)

~~~
gascan
Honestly I care a lot more about reliable function than security, at least as
long as attackers can't get in wirelessly.

Having both would be nice, of course.

~~~
jethro_tell
>at least as long as attackers can't get in wirelessly

Do you not have bluetooth, satellite, or LTE in your car?

------
Jtsummers
Re QA: To quote Dodge (via Deming), "You can not inspect quality into a
product."

This poster seems to think well of the QA team they had. However,

It doesn't matter how great your QA team is, if the quality isn't in the
system the QA team can't put it there. All they can do is tell you that you're
making poor quality products, and attempt to inform management (as QA rarely
has real authority) who should then act on that and work to improve the
system. If quality isn't part of the corporate ethos, then they (QA) will make
little difference in the end.

~~~
Retric
QA done well is more than testing. It's managing risk and ensuring the process
matches your risk tolerance. Car entertainment systems and Car breaking
systems can be handled differently because the results of failure are
different.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
This is OK if you can guarantee 100% separation of concerns, but the news
reports where hackers were able to take over control systems in the car
through bugs in the entertainment system should be a huge note of caution.

~~~
sjg007
I mean the entertainment system ideally should not be connected to the
engine/drive train systems. That would be a risk management strategy.

~~~
dfox
There is difference between entertainment system and infotainment system.

Infotainment systems are increasingly used as primary UI for almost anything
on car that is not controlled by steering wheel and pedals and thus has to be
able to communicate with almost everxthing that is in the car. Tesla is pretty
extreme example of this, but it works this way for most manufacturers.

~~~
Retric
That’s true, but only part of the story.

If the only interaction between the automated systems and the braking system
is to apply _more_ braking power and the cars breaks can significantly
overpower the engine then nothing the infotainment system can do would prevent
the car from coming to a complete stop.

Similarly, if the power steering was limited to applying say 5lb of force to
the steering wheel (as felt by someone holding the outer edge) a driver could
overpower any steering adjustments with minimal effort.

With just those two choices the risks associated with hacking the car
dramatically decrease. Yes, the car could prevent someone moving, but that’s
also an inherent risk from engine failure.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Check out the 20/20 report (or maybe it was 60 Minutes) where researchers who
hacked into a car brought it to a complete stop on a busy highway (quite
idiotically, IMO). Yes, other failures can cause this, but it can still be
extremely dangerous.

~~~
Retric
I am not sure what you mean.

Referring to an event where nothing happened does not support a ‘very
dangerous’ argument. If you simply mean it’s possible and after that it’s then
possible that something bad would then happen then I agree.

I am simply saying it’s vastly lower risk than a car that’s impossible to
steer or slow down without causing massive mechanical failure.

------
amluto
I have a Model S, and Tesla pushes buggy firmware to it last week. It causes
the entire instrument cluster, including the speedometer, to disappear
periodically while driving. Tesla knows about the bug and it’s apparently a
“high priority”. It’s not entirely clear to me that they are capable of
rolling back the update.

~~~
Shivetya
I join the III family this coming week. I am really interested in how well the
updates are managed as the idea of cratering my car isn't something anyone is
keen about.

can you as an owner delay updates?

~~~
rgrove
Yeah, you can choose to postpone an update. The car may occasionally prompt
you again, but I don't think it will force you to install it if you really
don't want to. I've never postponed for more than a day or two though.

I have a Model 3 and so far haven't had any problems with updates. Installed
the most recent one (2018.32.2) last night.

~~~
twblalock
If you really need to prevent updates I assume you could find the wireless
antenna and unplug it.

------
rsync
The most disturbing part of this, for me, is this line in the very first
tweet:

"... caused almost the entire fleet to reboot loop ..."

I am not interested in being part of someone's _fleet_. The fact that they use
this language at all to describe an end-user who has purchased an automobile
suggests that their expectations and my own - of what it means to purchase and
operate a car - are in deeply (possibly dangerously) mis-aligned.

~~~
mfarris
"Fleet" is longstanding car industry lingo. Not something Tesla dreamed up to
keep you under their boot.

Source: Father worked in car industry. All of my neighbors, too. Pretty much
everyone I knew and then, eventually, me... albeit tangentially.

~~~
rsync
""Fleet" is longstanding car industry lingo. Not something Tesla dreamed up to
keep you under their boot."

I am aware of that and I hear that terminology used by rental car companies
and equipment dealers, etc.

My objection is to what I hear as a subtle difference - the post-sale
automobile to a private, end-user is still referred to as belonging to their
fleet - as if one's ownership and use of the car were a minor detail.

I dislike this subtle shift in language and attitude.

~~~
monocasa
It's not a shift.

It's the language used by the rest of the industry including manufacturers,
not just private owners.

~~~
coatmatter
What's being scrutinised here is the difference of being forced to be a part
of a fleet as opposed to separately owning and controlling your own fleet.

If you buy a Tesla, you will not be able to control access to it without
limiting its normal set of features.

If you buy a normal bicycle, you always have full direct control of it. No
software updates, no data uploading, no tracking.

Normally fleet is reserved to meaning ownership in the management sense, not
the micromanagement sense. Even a Navy fleet has autonomy within. Not so with
Tesla software by default.

This could be rms territory. Free vs non-free, or even Airbus vs Boeing, etc.

~~~
kalleboo
Do you prefer the alternative where after you bought the car, Tesla tells you
to screw off if there's something wrong? "it's your car now, no more bug
fixes"

As long as they still have responsibilities, they also have partial ownership.

~~~
yuhong
I think they are talking about how they can control the number of cars that
have free supercharging for example.

------
aleksi
Thread in a easier to read form:
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1032939617404645376.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1032939617404645376.html)

~~~
tozeur
Thank you!

------
luma
I found this post [1] interesting:

> ol' musky isn't totally paranoid - we did catch bad actors doing stuff and
> they were nailed to the wall. finding a real apt in your network can be some
> next level shit

That looks like confirmation that there really were internal threats found as
claimed by Elon.

[1]:
[https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862643&userid=20544#post487316145)

------
haberman
Is there any corroboration of this? Like that this is even someone who worked
at Tesla? I'm certainly not discounting that it could be real, but with so
many people shorting Tesla, any uncorroborated information should be looked at
with a high degree of skepticism.

~~~
jethro_tell
I think people are shorting the company because it's bankrupt and way behind
no fulfilling orders + having major rework problems in factories.

Elon likes to push that narrative that there's this epic battle between
himself and people with short positions in a good vs. evil way.

In fact, it seems pretty apparent that the company is in trouble and the
people saying that have put their money where their mouth is. They also
probably aren't obsessing over it every last minute or pushing narratives to
try to get the stock to tank, it'll do that on it's own. In fact, I bet the
majority of people who are holding tesla shorts aren't sneaky oil execs, but
hedge fund guys who want a pickup/hedge for the market as a whole. It's pretty
common to short stocks that look weak to protect against general market
volatility for when your main portfolio takes a little dip

The conspiracies and the cult of personality surrounding a company in moderate
financial trouble with problems delivering their product is pretty strange to
me. Startups fail all the time, they also over promise and under deliver all
the time.

There haven't been any real claims of people trying to influence the tesla
stock price other than Elon. If he has this kind of info, he should send it to
the SEC since they should be able to track down the nefarious bastards that
hold a short position.

This is one of those situations that is probably exactly what it looks like.
Elon is learning that hardware is much tougher to build than software.

~~~
haberman
I have nothing against shorts -- they're betting on what they believe and I
respect that. I can't even say I disagree, though I hope the longs are right.

My point was only that when there's a lot of money on the line, we should be
skeptical of uncorroborated info (good or bad).

------
beltex
While were on the topic:

 _USENIX talk from VP of software at SpaceX (2016)_

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa16/conference-
program/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa16/conference-
program/presentation/hosein)

(Speaker was concurrently interim VP of Autopilot at Tesla for a bit as well)

Few interesting bits:

\- Speaker’s background is SRE at Google

\- Engineering culture: Authority, autonomy, accountability. Blameless
postmortems

\- High Integrity C++ & MISRA coding standards

\- The spacecraft has multiple onboard computers, all running Linux

\- _Tripe String Architecture_ , 3 redundant computers, whose results are
cross checked with majority voting before being applied in real time, given
radiation tolerant over radiation hardened hardware

------
toomuchtodo
Source:
[https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862643&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=62)
(Pages 62 through 68)

Left as a reference, citation. Mods: Wouldn't suggest changing to this URL, UX
is pretty ick, easier to read the Twitter screenshots.

~~~
Scaevolus
Here's just the ex-Tesla engineer:
[https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862643&userid=20544)

~~~
ahmedalsudani
Thank you! Wayback link for time travelers:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180824205834/https://forums.so...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180824205834/https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862643&userid=20544)

------
Animats
Tesla can _SSH into a customer 's car?_ What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
TimTheTinker
More than anything else, this makes the SSH keys a very high-value target.

I may trust Tesla not to crash my car or violate my privacy, but I also have
to trust them to sufficiently secure the SSH keys from bad actors who would
(or sell them on the black market where they almost certainly would arrive in
malevolent and capable hands). The latter is what scares me.

~~~
majewsky
Sometimes, when I consider the quality of the software/systems engineering
work that we do, I wonder how everything is _not_ crashing and burning _all
the time_.

------
lx3459683
> "the interior is a disaster, there's no instrument cluster which takes your
> eyes off the road"

This is the most WTF aspect of the model 3 to me and seems to confirm that
there isn't going to be some last-minute mitigation. I know it was done
because autopilot was expected to be mature by the time model 3 rolls out, but
I don't see how it can even be street-legal when you need to look away from
the road to determine your speed.

~~~
bobsil1
I’ve driven a P3D and it was fine. Currently driving a Toyota which also has
speed in center. So do Minis.

~~~
lx3459683
I'll take your word for it. From the pictures I've seen the vertical distance
between the screen and the windshield looked big enough to block most of your
view of the road when looking at the screen. Unlike a Toyota where the display
is vertically positioned the same as any other dashboard.

There's an entire generation of traffic safety cameras that detect people
looking down away from the road and it looks to me like they'd be tripped by a
model 3 driver just reading their speed...

~~~
bobsil1
I see what you're saying, but the P3D's speed was top left on the screen, felt
like a non-issue. Maybe driving it longer I'd feel differently, was a test
drive.

------
ryandrake
Content aside, what is the deal with images of screenshots of a forum, then
posted to Twitter? Why not include a fax machine in there while you’re at it?
Just link to the forum and we can all read the text.

~~~
Apocryphon
They periodically have times when the forum or at least some subforums are
viewable by registration only.

~~~
atomicthumbs
yeah i didn't bother finding out whether the paywall was operational or not,
and nobody's gonna read a forum thread in 2018

~~~
creamyhorror
welcome mr funy computer man

------
Nokinside
The really scary part of this is how appears that they apparently run safety
critical updates trough this same crappy system. If someone manages to slip in
a modification that bricks Teslas or worse, makes them do quick left turn in
in the morning rush hour, they can sink the company.

There are lots of people with motivation to pull it off. Either for money or
for some political reason nothing to do with Tesla.

Tesla is not alone. Hardware companies in general don't think about software
security at all. They are security nightmares waiting to happen.

~~~
illumin8
Not likely - he even says they do mTLS (mutual TLS, where both the client and
server verify SSL certificates).

While there is some cringeworthy stuff in there, I've seen way worse in
healthcare when people's personal data and medical history was at stake.
Nothing made me so alarmed that I wouldn't drive my Tesla.

------
kelvin0
Innovation is certainly not always 'clean' and 'pretty' (under the hood so to
speak) ... any company doing bringing in something new to market (product,
service) bears the same type of profile.

I really don't think tesla is the 'worse offender' when it comes to the type
of horror stories we read in this article.

------
blauditore
Is there any way to confirm this is actually legit? I mean, theoretically one
could just make such things up, no?

~~~
symmitchry
Does anything about this thread really surprise you though? As to be
unbelievable? Do you think that other car manufacturers are that much better?
I've read so many insane stories about software in Toyotas (or was it Honda?),
and those are very old, very well established companies. That a company like
Tesla would have rock solid software would be a miracle.

~~~
outworlder
Well, at least other manufacturers aren't trying to pull this SSH over cell
networks crap.

~~~
jkbjotnip
It's noted that they're using OpenVPN, so using cell network is probably a
non-issue.

------
eyeareque
Do NDAs really just expire after three years like this ex Tesla employee
claims? Something tells me that he will be sued very soon.

~~~
extrapickles
They can. Typically they are 2-5 years, but you have to read the specific NDA
to be sure.

I will never sign a NDA that doesn't expire in <10 yrs after cessation of
work, as its just too risky to indefinitely hold any information secret to the
level required in most NDAs. Management changes, and what the current
management is fine with, future management could not, or you do some work that
the company doesn't like 10 years down the road and they dig through the
filing cabinet looking for something to hit you with.

~~~
exikyut
Hmm. Is it possible to include a hard-nonmodification clause in an NDA (so
nobody in the future can change it), or is this kind of implied in the
contractual nature?

~~~
extrapickles
The contract itself doesn’t change, just the interpretation of it.

------
hacknat
Wow, The most revealing thing, I think, is the lack of central server
security. Sounds like it wouldn’t take almost any effor to MitM a Tesla car.

~~~
thsowers
Interesting to note that Tesla's bug bounty program specifically excludes
"TLS/SSL Issues, including BEAST BREACH, insecure renegotiation, bad cipher
suite, expired certificates..."

[0]: [https://bugcrowd.com/tesla](https://bugcrowd.com/tesla)

------
xenihn
I hope this means we get to see YOSPOS referenced in mainstream media as an
actual source.

~~~
java_script
I hope this means HN finds the gazillion-page thread mocking HN there.

~~~
1123581321
I think a lot of HN readers over a certain age have spent time on SA. It’s
easy to code switch and I wouldn’t have trouble mocking my own comments there
in the house style.

~~~
jtmcmc
exactly - i wonder if my old account is still active... probably best to stay
out of SA while at work though...

------
crunchlibrarian
It's so weird to see the same bizarre hacky nonsense I would cobble together
being used to run cars.

~~~
beaconstudios
Hacky cobbled together nonsense runs the modern world.

~~~
atomicthumbs
we are all fucked six ways from sunday

------
ryeguy_24
Based on some of the details within these tweets, I would assume this person
provided enough information to identify himself/herself at this point.

Do software engineers typically have confidentiality agreements that prohibit
releasing proprietary information?

~~~
freeone3000
Yes, but he's already marked as "former", so recovery is limited. See the
Waymo lawsuit.

~~~
ryeguy_24
So, after separating from company, you can release all proprietary information
and you'd have limited liability? I thought there would be larger recourse.
Not familiar with law though.

~~~
gruez
>His NDA has expired.

~~~
gowld
I've never heard of an NDA that says "after 3 years you can start giving away
trade secrets"

~~~
atomicthumbs
i'm sure "we use fifty different kinds of virtualization and a hundred
different operating systems" is valuable information

------
matthewaveryusa
So basically the code base and politics of any large (successful) company. I
wouldn't want to work with this dude. It's one thing to talk shit with your
coworkers and another to do it online. I'm sure everyone is trying their best
and all I'm reading are rantings from an ivory tower troll that did nothing to
try and change things. I'm no fan of Tesla and I've shorted them so I guess
thanks?

~~~
lx3459683
> So basically the code base and politics of any large (successful) company.

How does that invalidate anything of what he said or vindicate Tesla exactly?
Do you believe that because some large companies are shitty places to work
that everyone should just accept it as the status quo and shut the fuck up
about it? Why are you expecting a single employee to try to 'change things'
and why do you think that him speaking up about the issues is not an attempt
to do just that?

I don't get your attitude at all.

------
dna_polymerase
A company with such an awful engineering ethic is pushing for mass-market
self-driving cars. Given what happened after the Uber incident, I can only
hope those idiots at Tesla don't ruin it for all of the players.

------
altitudinous
Every IT system in the world is the worst in the world according to some tech
who performs firefighting on it. These tweets apply to nearly every system.
Singling out Tesla is pretty unfair!!!

------
person_of_color
This guy must have started as a New Grad, because _every_ company has infinite
kludges like this.

You would be shocked to find the amount of Perl/Tcl glue in any ASIC company,
for example.

------
shpx
> China has a law in place that mandates all electric cars send real time
> telemetry to their government servers - model s/x/3, NIO cars and any other
> electric car if they're driving already complies with that law to be road
> certified. don't be surprised if that becomes a mandate in other countries

Free software cars when?

------
jaclaz
Isn't it on Reddit?

Here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/form...](https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/former_tesla_programmers_anecdotes_about_problems/)

~~~
curuinor
It's on YOSPOS originally.

------
vevoe
They've been going 100mph for years now. It doesn't come as a surprise to me
that they haven't gone back and made it pretty.

While not even remotely on the same scale, I just spent 3 weeks building an
app as fast as possible because my client's old one was causing 75% of their
support calls. The code isn't pretty, but it works and it works a lot better
than the old one. I know deep down that code is going to stay ugly for a while
but that isn't what's important right now.

~~~
blindwatchmaker
They are making vehicles, not apps.

~~~
vevoe
I understand that.

I guess I was commenting more on the general messiness he was describing. I
can empathize with it is all. I can see how quickly and easily it happens in
the small apps I build, I can't imagine how hard it would be to reign it all
in at Tesla scale at the pace they've been going.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Sometimes I miss the carburetor.

~~~
compostable
Did you ever have to stand outside in the winter, in ice and show, with the
hood propped open, spraying starting fluid into the carburetor, and manually
holding the throttle open, so that your engine could get to the proper
temperature?

Did you ever floor a car and have the engine _shut off_ because there was too
much fuel?

No thanks, I don't want to go back to those days!

~~~
tntn
I mean, 'JohnJamesRambo did say _sometimes_.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Like those times you just say "FTW, I'm gonna spew as much unburned fuel out
the tailpipe as possible".

------
njharman
Twitter is a horrible format for this. I has hoping to find a link to
something readable instead it's all epeening over rtos and windows.

------
bestCauliflower
I was not aware that a tesla would need so many backend services as he says,
but I guess that it makes sense. Do you think that someday they could open up
their platform (out of necessity maybe) to third party providers for each of
the services? Some competition would mitigate the broken services issues.

------
mlindner
Welcome to software development? Doesn't matter where I've worked. The
software is always terrible.

------
abledon
This was the most intense and compelling piece of writing I've read all year.
I love hearing this gnarly warts & all reporting from the front lines. Guy
sounded really smart, able to wrap his head around so many types of systems
and roles in the company.

------
IndrekR
Link to the original forum posts:
[https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862643&userid=20544)

------
adreamingsoul
"subforum of a subforum, a little-known place for funy computer forgotten by
time"

Does anyone know what forum they are referring too?

~~~
astrange
YOSPOS

------
cc-d
Oh no. I happened to see the link to this guy's twitter earlier today in the
HN comments (prob where OP saw it too, judging by timing), read the posts, and
thought to myself "wow, i'm surprised how this has been posted to HN and
seemingly hasn't garnered any response at all".

In the few hours after I stopped procrastinating at work today, every post in
that thread has went to multiple thousands of likes/share/etc. Guess that's my
answer.

------
jpeter
Which "shitty erp" is tesla using?

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I'm pretty sure it's in-house, IIRC what a former employee told me.

~~~
dfox
Which probably implies that it is significantly less shitty than hodgepodges
of SAP, non-standard EDIFACT profiles and other legacy crud being hold
together with CSV-transforming shell scripts started from cron used by most of
automotive industry.

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amluto
Is this all available in some format other than Twitter? Does anyone have a
link to the actual forum?

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a-dub
woah woah woah woah. the computers on teslas are managed?! there are
programmers/sysadmins at tesla that can ssh into any car at any time. these
computers can steer and operate the car.

thanks but no thanks!

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fouc
Does the timing of this seem suspicious? How is the shorting going?

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killjoywashere
GM:William C. Durant:Alfred P. Sloan

Tesla:Elon Musk:?

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digi_owl
This reads like something out of a cyberpunk story...

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claydavisss
I do not want a car that someone I've never met can "ssh" into, or any other
remote access method.

Think I will be holding on to my ten year-old car as long as possible.

~~~
marshray
You're still going to be sharing the highway with them.

~~~
LinuxBender
I thought about that as well. I am looking at a remote part of snow country.
Every time someone says something can't be hacked in to, my coworkers prove
them wrong, using tools that are already installed on the victim hosts.

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GW150914
Well, that was a butter clenching read. It’s not hard to understand why their
chip designers bailed as soon as possible, and they seemed to perpetually
bleed technical talent. Is this a matter of incompetence or the usual
anything-to-win “move fast and break things” approach?

The latter fits better with their marketing vs. reality gap on “autopilot” and
subsequent crashes.

~~~
compostable
>> butter clenching

Excuse me, I am a native English speaker and I do not understand this
reference

~~~
DCoder
When autocorrect meets "buttock-clenching", I'd guess.

~~~
GW150914
You are correct sir or madam! I’m leaving it though, I like the sound of it.

~~~
MBCook
Oh. I figure out what it meant, but I thought it was meant to be a ‘polite’
version. Sort of like saying ‘shucks’ or ‘darn’.

Autocorrect didn’t enter my mind as a possibility.

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abledon
Reddit thread with more info . He goes on to do extra comments

[https://www.reddit.com/user/AccountJustForQuesti/comments](https://www.reddit.com/user/AccountJustForQuesti/comments)

~~~
curuinor
Original thread was on YOSPOS, and that's not the original OP.

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mvpu
Let's look at the facts: a) Tesla is the most shorted stock in history, b)
1000s of hackers are working hard to break things like this, c) if it was
possible to break it and damage the company someone would have done it
already. This just feels like an disgruntled employee.

~~~
GW150914
Counterpoint: when you ignore Musk’s Twitter tirades about shorts, and his
uberfans’ subsequent aping of those tirades a simple truth remains: Tesla is
one of the most overvalued stocks in history, and far from being mustache-
twirling villains with limitless resources and no morals, people shorting TSLA
are doing so in anticipation of reality catching up with the listed price.
They’re not undermining Tesla, they’re not hoping for it to fail, they’re just
waiting for the stock price and the reality of the company to intersect. It
would be a lot less frustrating talking to hardcore Tesla/Musk fans if you
didn’t have to wade through conspiracy theories to do it.

