As a programmer, watching the latest Some More News episode on the cyber truck broke my heart. All the support forum titles read like an old Linux forum. Its software bugs all the way down. I’m not a car person but between that and spending $2000 on sensors for my car that the car ran perfectly fine without (for inspection purposes), I’m beginning to think we’ve put too much sentient sand into these cars. Oh, and fuck the tendency to replace knobs with touch screens. Horrible design.
Whenever I go shopping for appliances I tell the salesperson, “I want a dumb appliance, nothing smart, nothing that needs to connect to an app or wifi.”
I’m gonna guess there was already a lot sentient sand in trains, planes, and cars, and good design principles to make sure it (almost) never fails and stuff like the entertainment system doesn’t break the whole vehicle. I’m gonna also guess Musk fired anyone with that sort of background because they said no to some harebrained idea.
Is this way. The train have separate system for control. Nothing may touch. Car is the same. Have only simple connection of entertainment to CAN bus. Only control basic thing. Can not touch driving.
Plane use separate wire for every thing.
For all three the safety critical software is formally verify.
I remember a tesla teardown that was like “they simplified the cabling reducing how many cables are needed” and every engineer in the replies was like “ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THAT WTF”
I read that they daisychained each module and controller using ethernet cabling which could cause cascading failures. I don’t know if this was a rumor or if it was corrected or what
Imagine your microwave goes funny and blows a fuse. You’re upset but it’s a minor issue because the fuse is either in the socket or in the plug, or in the fuse board. The rest of the circuit or circuits continue to work. The lights still work. The other sockets still work. The kettle works.
Now imagine they’re all on one circuit with one fuse. If that first blows because you were a bit too ambitious with the microwave porridge, all the electrics will fail until you swap the fuse.
A fuse is one of the simpler things to fix, too. With code as well as other fail-points in the system, it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing breaks and becomes unfixable because (i) the fault cannot be found (ii) the fault can be found but the part can’t be replaced (iii) the fault is a minor issue but it’s prohibitively expensive to fix due to its place in the system but it can’t just be removed because it’s been designed as a critical element in the system, etc.
Reducing the cabling in a car means putting more things on fewer circuits, leading to the issues above. Problems become harder to diagnose and fix. Additional things are like if in an old car if the radiator breaks, you might be able to drive it slowly to a garage but if there’s a sensor that won’t let you drive with a faulty rad, you aren’t moving and if that sensor is on a circuit that can’t just be disconnected because it’s also tied in to the ignition, you’re still not moving. Multiple circuits let’s you minimise the kinds of faults that can bring the whole thing to a standstill.
A lot of tech used in applications like vehicles are old. There’s a reason people complain all the time about slow and clunky infotainment systems in their cars, and that’s because the manufacturers go with older, more reliable, and less failure prone versions of various technologies
It’s shit like Musk trying to stay on the bleeding edge that causes problems. When an eight year old version of Android crashes in your car, it’s going to crash in a way that’s predictable from the last eight years and thus easier to diagnose and fix. When an eight day old version of Tesla X OS or whatever the fuck he’d call it crashes, you bet your ass it’s gonna crash in spectacular new ways nobody knows how to fix
And those damn capacitive buttons, give me a mechanical click!! I love that my car has mech buttons that can override the touch screen stuff, especially a volume knob that can pause audio.
I love all the posts complaining about this and watching them result in nothing. Touchscreens will still be everywhere with as much built in surveillance eating cpu cycles so it’s every is super slow. Data is the last frontier and it’s a mad race to the bottom for the new feudal lords.
Big fan of Mazda keeping a knob and buttons to interact with the infotainment and climate control, but I think they may be drifting towards tablets in their recent designs
As a programmer, watching the latest Some More News episode on the cyber truck broke my heart. All the support forum titles read like an old Linux forum. Its software bugs all the way down. I’m not a car person but between that and spending $2000 on sensors for my car that the car ran perfectly fine without (for inspection purposes), I’m beginning to think we’ve put too much sentient sand into these cars. Oh, and fuck the tendency to replace knobs with touch screens. Horrible design.
Whenever I go shopping for appliances I tell the salesperson, “I want a dumb appliance, nothing smart, nothing that needs to connect to an app or wifi.”
Was the story called Illegal Bread or Unauthorized Bread?
MIL’s oven needed Wi-Fi connection to use the convection option
I’m gonna guess there was already a lot sentient sand in trains, planes, and cars, and good design principles to make sure it (almost) never fails and stuff like the entertainment system doesn’t break the whole vehicle. I’m gonna also guess Musk fired anyone with that sort of background because they said no to some harebrained idea.
Is this way. The train have separate system for control. Nothing may touch. Car is the same. Have only simple connection of entertainment to CAN bus. Only control basic thing. Can not touch driving.
Plane use separate wire for every thing.
For all three the safety critical software is formally verify.
I remember a tesla teardown that was like “they simplified the cabling reducing how many cables are needed” and every engineer in the replies was like “ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THAT WTF”
Do they use CAN for everything?
I read that they daisychained each module and controller using ethernet cabling which could cause cascading failures. I don’t know if this was a rumor or if it was corrected or what
In fairness, all can failures are also cascading and most automakers use can
i’m not an engineer why is that bad?
Imagine your microwave goes funny and blows a fuse. You’re upset but it’s a minor issue because the fuse is either in the socket or in the plug, or in the fuse board. The rest of the circuit or circuits continue to work. The lights still work. The other sockets still work. The kettle works.
Now imagine they’re all on one circuit with one fuse. If that first blows because you were a bit too ambitious with the microwave porridge, all the electrics will fail until you swap the fuse.
A fuse is one of the simpler things to fix, too. With code as well as other fail-points in the system, it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing breaks and becomes unfixable because (i) the fault cannot be found (ii) the fault can be found but the part can’t be replaced (iii) the fault is a minor issue but it’s prohibitively expensive to fix due to its place in the system but it can’t just be removed because it’s been designed as a critical element in the system, etc.
Reducing the cabling in a car means putting more things on fewer circuits, leading to the issues above. Problems become harder to diagnose and fix. Additional things are like if in an old car if the radiator breaks, you might be able to drive it slowly to a garage but if there’s a sensor that won’t let you drive with a faulty rad, you aren’t moving and if that sensor is on a circuit that can’t just be disconnected because it’s also tied in to the ignition, you’re still not moving. Multiple circuits let’s you minimise the kinds of faults that can bring the whole thing to a standstill.
there’s no way anyone like that survived the design phase of the cybertruck. anyone who wasn’t fired surely resigned.
Pretty much
A lot of tech used in applications like vehicles are old. There’s a reason people complain all the time about slow and clunky infotainment systems in their cars, and that’s because the manufacturers go with older, more reliable, and less failure prone versions of various technologies
It’s shit like Musk trying to stay on the bleeding edge that causes problems. When an eight year old version of Android crashes in your car, it’s going to crash in a way that’s predictable from the last eight years and thus easier to diagnose and fix. When an eight day old version of Tesla X OS or whatever the fuck he’d call it crashes, you bet your ass it’s gonna crash in spectacular new ways nobody knows how to fix
Debian chads win yet again B))))
Eat that arch users!!!
And those damn capacitive buttons, give me a mechanical click!! I love that my car has mech buttons that can override the touch screen stuff, especially a volume knob that can pause audio.
I love all the posts complaining about this and watching them result in nothing. Touchscreens will still be everywhere with as much built in surveillance eating cpu cycles so it’s every is super slow. Data is the last frontier and it’s a mad race to the bottom for the new feudal lords.
Big fan of Mazda keeping a knob and buttons to interact with the infotainment and climate control, but I think they may be drifting towards tablets in their recent designs
Honda self corrected from what I’ve seen. Without some national standards on common controls it’s the fucking Wild West
The Dragon capsule does this too