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Comment by CTDOCodebases | Hacker News Reader

Could this just be a simple case of GPS jamming?

Background: I formerly worked at Cruise and specifically wrote large parts of the GNSS data pipeline.

I would be surprised if that were the cause. Fine localization should be able to resolve without GNSS input (with caveats) and there are specific tested requirements to be able to tolerate a certain number of minutes of outage even in the absence of LIDAR before position accuracy degrades beyond acceptable limits. It may be an edge case in the GNSS pipeline, but I don't think it's that edge case.

Could this be due to bad mapping data at that particular location? Even if it was, wouldn’t they be able to pull over at a safe location with what they perceive in real time?

This account wouldn't be difficult to deanonymize, so I'll refrain from speculating. I don't know the actual cause.

I'd venture to guess the self driving stuff is a lot buggier and a lot less mature than one might think, I'd also venture to guess it's poorly tested. I remember a couple years ago watching a Cruise driver force the car to make an illegal left turn off of Mission a few years back. That was around the time that I noticed they kept struggling to deal with right turns off of Folsom as well.

My guess is that their "fail safe" is to just stop and wait for a human to move the car. I doubt they are capable of safely passing a stopped car so when one goes tits up they all get stopped. The hubris of Cruise to test these things without drivers in a busy city is pretty rich.

What was the stack used to write such a system? Was it a lot of C++? And what storage systems did they use? Sounds pretty cool.

The system as a whole used C, C++, Python, and some Java/JS-family stuff in the infrastructure backends. You can find a long tail of other languages scattered throughout the organization, like Go, Rust, Lisps, and Swift, etc. I wrote a fare-cost-calculator in Mathematica awhile ago, as an example.

As for storage systems, no idea. The stuff I know was all custom, but I was deep in the stack most of the time and don't do much with databases.

>The system as a whole used C, C++

It all makes sense now. Astounding its legal to use C/++ in a safety critical situation.

Uhh... you do realize tons of safety-critical systems in use today were written in C and C++, right? As in _most_ of them, for the past ~30 years?

Airplane systems, telecom equipment, medical equipment, satellite and space launch equipment, railway systems, etc., etc.

There's other languages used as well obviously, and even just assembly in some parts of some systems, but in terms of the majority it's C and/or C++.

Yep, I somewhat agree. The C mostly comes from Linux [1]. For the rest, "there are reasons".

[1] https://ossna2020.sched.com/event/c3QN/there-is-no-store-for...

C and C++ are used pretty extensively in the embedded world. For a lot of safety critical stuff though, typically a safer subset of those languages are used, such as MISRA C and MISRA C++, alongside static checkers and validated toolchains.

I don't know about the GNSS pipeline specifically but I used to work at Cruise, and most things at Cruise are written in C++ (although there's a smattering of Python for data/ML code that runs offboard).

For fine localization, are they using dead reckoning with steering angle and vehicle speed instead of GNSS?

Assume "fine localization" is a synonym for LIDAR throughout the AV industry. There are other sensors that are inputs to the localization algorithms, but LIDAR is typically the most important one.

I'm curious if the vehicles also use an INS system ties to an IGS.

What do you think it is if you had to guess?

Could be but a much more likely cause is a software update that went bad. Likely the cloud rained on them.

> ...the cloud rained on them.

I've yet to hear this expression. Love it! I will be using this!

I don’t update any software I work on without canaries and a slow (order of days) roll-out, you think the bug manifested for a big chunk of the fleet?

Canary deployments in autonomous vehicles? I’m not sure that only sending 1% of customers to fiery deaths is considered a win.

It seems odd they are bunched together in one spot. Maybe these were the canaries?

I would not want a car that's updating during a ride

Future taxis or rentals: Bring Your Own Firmware

Or: Backseat driver via bluetooth, phone to taxi.

Do Teslas update themselves while driving, or only when they're parked?

It seems like a bad idea to deploy an update to a vehicle in traffic.

Only while parked. And they never update "themselves" except in rare specific circumstances. They have to be told to update by the owner.

Except for when Tesla find out you've bought it 2nd hand, and revoke the FSD...

(Or, you know, when you get into a Twitter shitslinging match with Elon...)

It's so tiresome that this (mostly false) story keeps coming up.

The short version of the truth: The original owner did not buy AP. AP was enabled because of a bug. The dealer listed it as having AP included because, at the time, it was enabled. When ownership was transferred, the glitch was corrected, and AP was removed.

The new owner bitched very loudly to the press, and Tesla restored AP to the car, for free, even though it had never been paid for by either owner.

It has nothing to do with FSD, and nothing was revoked because ownership changed.

From the users perspective, they purchased a car advertised with a feature. They could see it functioning. An over the air update removed the feature that they had "purchased" and tested. Yeah, I'd be mad as well.

Good that Tesla resolved the problem but there is reason to be mad about a company retroactively removing features from a product.

There is reason to be mad about a company that builds itself the capability to retroactively remove features from a product.

(/me looks hypocritically at my iPhone and Macbook...)

If a dealer listed something as included, and it was not, I would be beyond livid, and they would be giving me a full refund.

It was a used car and the dealer was not Tesla.

So? If advertised with a feature, it is incumbent on the seller to provide a product with that feature.

"So" it is not the story that people keep repeating. Tesla do not remove AP from resold cars.

Except, as you acknowledge below, that is exactly what they did.

Tesla doesn't have dealers. This sounds like a used car.

> Tesla doesn't have dealers. This sounds like a used car.

And? If I own something (which I do after I've paid for it),the only way the "legal" owner is getting it back is via the courts.

Why is it okay to resolve property disputes by private force?

Cause the post implied that it's right to be mad at Tesla, but that wouldn't help. Feel free to give the car back to the dealer. Although I'd think this would be obvious on the test drive.

Also, being livid is probably bad for your health. Might get high blood pressure.

> Cause the post implied that it's right to be mad at Tesla,

Of course it's right to be mad at Tesla - they resolved a property dispute by force.

> Also, being livid is probably bad for your health. Might get high blood pressure.

I wouldn't be livid in that situation, but I would consider criminal charges against Tesla in my jurisdiction.

After all, the dealer is only on the hook for civil claims, Tesla is on the hook for very obvious criminal claims.

Oh, I missed that AP was enabled at the dealer but then disappeared - thought the dealer had just claimed it was there.

That raises a lot of questions about how it could even happen. I'd understand if it was sold as some kind of "user license", but it's on the car, so I assumed it was a permanent extra hardware addition.

No, all Teslas have the same hardware. (At least, all Teslas made in the past few years. Older ones can indeed lack required hardware.)

Whether you have AP or FSD is a software bit.

>I would consider criminal charges against Tesla in my jurisdiction.

You live in a jurisdiction in which a private person can levy criminal charges?

But something was removed - over the air - from a vehicle that someone had in their possession.

This is a huge deal if it becomes normalized.

This is how supercharger access (revocation) works, by the by. Surprised there hasn't been an investigation and a lawsuit around it yet.

They're only operating from 10pm to 5am so one would expect them to at least update off hours.

My hypothesis is that the software update was done prior to the problem (e.g. off-hours) but that location triggered the bug. This could be as simple as a map update that confused the s/w.

Exploit injection via a specially crafted visual "code" a pedestrian flashed at one car that was then picked up by one of the cameras and executed by their ML system resulting in a take over of the entire server. /f

seems like it was a cellular dead zone or a nearby cell tower was getting maintained. I think these cars rely on constant connection to a central server.

If so, they have a massive design flaw!

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