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Toyota's Killer Firmware

Posted by Soulskill on from the skynet-draws-first-blood dept.

New submitter Smerta writes "On Thursday, a jury verdict found Toyota's ECU firmware defective, holding it responsible for a crash in which a passenger was killed and the driver injured. What's significant about this is that it's the first time a jury heard about software defects uncovered by a plaintiff's expert witnesses. A summary of the defects discussed at trial is interesting reading, as well the transcript of court testimony. 'Although Toyota had performed a stack analysis, Barr concluded the automaker had completely botched it. Toyota missed some of the calls made via pointer, missed stack usage by library and assembly functions (about 350 in total), and missed RTOS use during task switching. They also failed to perform run-time stack monitoring.' Anyone wonder what the impact will be on self-driving cars?"

7 of 610 comments (clear)

  1. Technology is hard and dangerous by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm convinced. I'll give up my career as a computer programmer now, and go use my bare hands for subsistence farming now. Sorry, I was wrong.

    1. Re:Technology is hard and dangerous by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why the need to push and pull everything to the extreme that they can pushed or pulled to?

      It's kind of the unofficial /. posters motto:
      Ad absurdum, Ad infinitum, Ad nauseam!
      Add Vodka...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    2. Re: Technology is hard and dangerous by jrumney · · Score: 4, Funny

      it still has all the airbags and r

      A shame that manual transmission didn't stop you posting while driving though.

  2. The impact on self-driving cars? Documentation. by wjcofkc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anyone wonder what the impact will be on self-driving cars?

    A longer chapter on debugging in the first edition of "Programming Self-Driving Cars: The Missing Manual."

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  3. Re:If there's no human fall back, I'll never trust by geekoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    "If there's no human fall back or ability to overthrow the computer's control of the car I'll never drive it."
    by definition you wouldn't be driving it.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  4. Re:wtf by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are you sure you are a software engineer, and not some programmer with delusions of grandeur?
     

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  5. Re:"Impact on self-driving cars?" - None by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ada 83 sucked. Ada 95 fixed most of the problems, and I believe that they're up to Ada 2012.

    Wow. From 95 to 2012 - they must be using Chrome/Firefox style version numbering :-)

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .