[ahmedfromtunis]

Not necessarily irresponsible madmen; just curious.

Because I bet you if I buy a new car and discover that I can access its internal components via an API, I will be toying with it.

On any other platform that would never be a problem: found a bug? Just restart the container!

But with a car, this might mean a bug in my code manifesting itself while I'm driving 120 kph. And maybe there's a pedestrian crossing the road and I can't stop in time because the bug makes the brake 60% weaker.

This time however, there's not a restart docker button.

I'm sure if this happens people would be attacking Ferreri viciously the way they pile up on Tesla whenever a douche sleeps at the wheel going 100 kph, even though the company said before that that's not safe.

[jacquesm]

Then we should all go back to security-by-obscurity and trust in the man behind the curtain for computer security as well. And we all know that that doesn't work, so why is there this conviction that the embedded programmers at car companies are made from magic?

It's precisely because cars are so dangerous that the code should be open to scrutiny. And of course - at least in the past - the argument has been made that more eyes do not make the bugs more shallow, but in practice if there is an incentive (such as personal safety) people will expend a lot of effort to figure out why stuff goes wrong.

What it would do is to take away any kind of excuse that manufacturers have in those cases where their gear is suspect to claim that their wares are perfect and that it must have been user error. Because I can pretty much guarantee you that if you were to inspect your average automotive code-base that you'd find errors, and not just minor ones. From accidental erroneous emergency braking, untended acceleration to outright malicious ones such as planned obsolescence drivers, emission controls defeat code and so on.

[adhesive_wombat]

Open to scrutiny, absolutely. Anything safety-critical should be freely available to those it can harm. Cars, trains, planes, nuclear reactors, lathes, the lot. I hope your code and schematics is fully provided to worker relying on it being correct. I indeed don't have faith in regulators auditing it properly.

That said I still don't want someone to plonk some GitHub code into the brake controllers, take it for a spin and turn me and mine into meat salsa.

On private land, surrounded by informed and consenting people, sure, go nuts.

[jacquesm]

> That said I still don't want someone to plonk some GitHub code into the brake controllers, take it for a spin and turn me and mine into meat salsa.

The chances of that happening, versus brake fluid contamination, bad lines, seized rotors, rusted rotors, rotors and pads with grease on them and a thousand other mechanical failures are nil. Because brake controllers are always backed up by a mechanical system and the worst thing about a brake is that it could fail.

The bigger problem is that manufacturers that could barely create functional entertainment systems are now actually creating software and hardware combos that can override driver input to the steering wheel and the brakes and in my own experience they are absolutely not qualified to do this. Car software is crap, you can take my word on that. Very, very few manufacturers have software as a core competency.

[elzbardico]

Please define car software.

You have user facing functions, and you have engine control functions, ABS, transmission, and so on.

The first one, I agree, is generally crap.

For the second one, in a lot of models, your manufacturer haven't even written the code, because they buy it from some OEM manufacturer like Bosch.

And I am pretty sure that Bosch is pretty good at writing this kind of software.

[jacquesm]

> Please define car software.

The totality of all code running on a particular vehicle that was part of that vehicle when it was sold to the end user.

> You have user facing functions, and you have engine control functions, ABS, transmission, and so on.

Yes.

> The first one, I agree, is generally crap.

Ok.

> For the second one, in a lot of models, your manufacturer haven't even written the code, because they buy it from some OEM manufacturer like Bosch.

That depends. If they buy a whole unit there is a chance it is 'stock', there is a chance that the firmware was modified by the manufacturer or there is a chance that development of the software is insourced. All of that depends on volume, cost, licensing, purpose.

> And I am pretty sure that Bosch is pretty good at writing this kind of software.

Based on what evidence?

[elzbardico]

The fact that I've been driving cars with ECUs since I was a teenager and never got stranded in the road because of a firmware bug, neither nobody else I know.

Compared with Amazon/Google/MSFT, this is a remarkable feat.

[mikrotikker]

Why do we even need computers in cars. The woz said never trust a computer you can't throw out a window. The only computer in my car is the radio.

It's just excessive consumerism and marketing crap. It's not needed.

[jacquesm]

The initial reason was emissions, but now that we have them all kinds of other stuff gets tacked on.