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by home_boi 3379 days ago
The one problem I have with self driving cars is that the software is a single point of failure, so one bad patch (one "mistake") could cause millions of crashes
2 comments

Software bugs haven't been "single point of [entire fleet] failure" for a while. You just need the appropriate processes in place.

- Rolling Deployments

- Feature Flags

- Automated metrics analysis; With automated rollbacks if an issue is detected

Where I work, this has been standard for at least 5 years, and we are just building websites.

Is there any proof that this is standard for Car companies?

Tech companies are bound to have good procedures for tech... that's what they do.

Car companies? They should be good at car stuff... but... tech stuff?

Look at all the angst surrounding the IOT - companies making buggy/hack-able stuff that otherwise make good things - IE Washing Machines, Refrigerators, etc... look at all the stories about how hack-able stuff involving cars is...

Personally? I don't have a lot of faith in "Old" companies getting tech right.

> They should be good at car stuff... but... tech stuff?

Cars are a type of technology too. I don't think there's any company that's good at "technology". Maybe a university would count? Or one of those big appliance manufacturing corporations.

If you're talking specifically about computers, software, and electronics, I think IT seems more accurate.

Presumably you can do canary deployments and things like that. Whether best practices will be followed is another matter.