
Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code (2013) - charlieegan3
http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintended-acceleration-and-big-bowl-%E2%80%9Cspaghetti%E2%80%9D-code?
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dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Toyota%20Unintended%20Accelera...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Toyota%20Unintended%20Acceleration%20and%20the%20Big%20Bowl%20of%20%E2%80%9CSpaghetti%E2%80%9D%20Code%20points%3E50&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

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kbenson
Is that why it just disappeared from the front page listing?

I can understand tweaking it down in the rating algorithm, but if there's
enough people that want to chime in that it makes it to the front page even
after it's been covered before, removing it entirely seems fairly heavy
handed.

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dang
On HN, a story is considered a dupe if it has had significant attention in
about the last year. We bury those, i.e. move them off the front page. If we
didn't do that, the HN front page would quickly fill up with repeats,
especially the most controversial repeats, which never run short of people
wanting to "chime in".

The present case is especially clear cut because there were two major recent
discussions of the story.

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kbenson
Fair enough, and I actually thought the top result in the search was this
story the first time, so thought it was last discussed six months ago, not
that _and_ just a single month ago.

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huskyhuskie
And yet business folk still probably think it's perfectly fine to outsource
this kind of work because code is code, right?

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jack9
Why do we never hear about programmers ethically challenging the auto makers
when they clearly know about these flaws? It's akin to working on medical
devices. Where is the incentive to not make lethal mistakes?

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wpietri
Part of it, I'm sad to say, is that many, many programmers don't see
themselves as professionals, but rather as mere laborers. If you try to get a
doctor or a lawyer or a structural engineer to do something egregiously wrong,
they'll generally know that they're crossing a line. They see themselves as
having a responsibility for the human effects of their work.

Many programmers, though, will do whatever they're told, even when they know
it's pointless, wasteful, or dangerous. I've read literally hundreds of
stories about programmers working on something that was egregiously fucked up.
But I've heard damned few stories where programmers refused to do something
they thought wrong and either a) got management to back down, or b) got fired
for their refusal to do something unethical.

I don't blame individuals for that. We're not trained as professionals, we
don't have a professional organization that most of us join, and we therefore
don't have a serious professional code of ethics. It's unreasonable to expect
most people to make ethical stands alone while creating a code on the fly. But
I'd love to see the situation fixed.

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goldenkey
It seems wise to have a programmers union. Maybe pg should put some efforts
towards that instead of seed funding. After all, if we have a union, we can
set standards for wages and quality. Certifications. And more. It'd to the
world of professional programming some good.

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wpietri
To me unions solve an asymmetry where companies can fire a worker more easily
than a worker can lose their job. So personally I'm not interested in a union
of all programmers, as that would create a power asymmetry the other way.

I'd more thinking about a professional organization like the AMA, the assorted
bar organizations, the society of professional journalists, or the various
engineering societies. Basically I want an organization that can set forth
reasonable professional ethics, do advocacy and education, and act as our
collective voice to back up individual engineers who refuse to do something
unethical.

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cooper12
> Michael Barr...spent more than 20 months reviewing Toyota’s source code...in
> a hotel-sized room, supervised by security guards, who ensured that entrants
> brought no paper in or out, and wore no belts or watches.

Why the restriction on belts and watches?

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SapphireSun
Clearly you've never been a magician. ;) It's easy to hide things in the band
with invisible slight of hand.

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semi-extrinsic
This is one reason why I will always prefer a manual transmission. Because it
leaves me, the human, with a completely mechanical override. And it's more
fun.

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Redoubts
I suspect cars are more fly-by-wire than you realize. And wasn't this issue
with the throttle control? I suppose you could have downshifted with either
type of transmission, but most drivers aren't prepared for sudden mechanical
failure like this.

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mschuster91
Just kick on the clutch pedal and the power transmission is broken.

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mangix
shutting off the car, setting it to neutral, etc... do the same thing. bad
drivers will be bad.

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mschuster91
> shutting off the car, setting it to neutral

Both of these are no fail-safe measures these days, as both ignition and auto
transmissions are done entirely in software.

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stretchwithme
Some people seem more likely to experience the problem than others.

[http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/04/unintended-
accelerat...](http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/04/unintended-acceleration-
study-blames-older-women-drivers/)

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nwmcsween
IIRC it was generated C from matlab.

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Paperweight
Imagine the recall for this.

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mfisher87
Article dated 2013, not news.

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ams6110
From 2013

