Software Update 2023.42.0 is out (⚠️ UPDATE: OTA fix rolling out today 11/15/23)

[sub]

That's a great way to make sure you can never keep good employees. Firing someone for making an honest mistake is a great way to make sure you have no employees or worse ones than the one you got rid of. No one else is going to wind up working for you either because they will quit after getting burned out worrying constantly about being fired for the first slip up they make.

If this was willful and deliberate then yes fire that person. If the person responsible for this has a documented history of carelessness then yeah fired them. What you really should want is Wassym to figure out a policy and put a procedure in place to make sure this never happens again. Maybe separate the completed updates to a dedicated terminal and only update from there, or to develop updates on a virtual server and only move them to the real one after testing is done. Whatever, I'm not a developer so I couldn't say exactly.

What I do know is this, people make mistakes. The job of good management is to write policy and train staff on procedures so that these mistakes never happen again. That way next time the ONLY way to push a bad update would be by disregarding safeguards and that would justify insta-firing someone.

It's not the person who made the mistake this week that should be fired. It is the person who made the series of mistakes 2 years ago that made today's problems possible that should be fired.

I'm not mad that someone upload the wrong file, or someone making a type-o in their coding. I am mad that Rivian doesn't have a process that prevents those sort of mistakes from disabling thousands of customer vehicles. It shouldn't be possible for anyone at Rivian, even RJ, to go live with an update that isn't tested. Not just via a policy, the server software should refuse to deliver it to customer vehicles until the server has verified that it was able to successfully deliver and install the update to a certain number of company test vehicles. And vehicles should be able to automatically recover from a failed update by reverting to a backup.

I would be shocked if this sort of problem was not anticipated long ago and some manager rejected it as too much time/effort to address. That's the person who should be fired.

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However is firing someone who makes an honest mistake that gets people killed acceptable? I'd say that's a bit dramatic, but having people drive around with no speedo probably isn't the best idea either.

Don’t get me wrong, the displays are important, especially to give us error messages or warnings about the vehicle (even if they aren’t valid), but most people don’t need a speedometer to know if they are driving to fast to be safe. I certainly don’t look down and see 75mph in a 65mph zone and think I’m and driving dangerously.

 

[DuoRivians]

Don’t get me wrong, the displays are important, especially to give us error messages or warnings about the vehicle (even if they aren’t valid), but most people don’t need a speedometer to know if they are driving to fast to be safe. I certainly don’t look down and see 75mph in a 65mph zone and think I’m and driving dangerously.

Speedo and cameras work:

 

[Grogu]

I thought this was responding to the speed test in MPH

Sorry to everyone with failed updates, good luck! Thanks for being our guinea pigs this month, we owe you a matchbox truck.

I want one lol

 

[zefram47]

Man, I can’t imagine the feeling of having your stomach drop after realizing what just happened

I had one of those moments. Was running a final software update before testing in the lab on a satellite that was prepping for delivery to the launch vehicle. I'm watching output and suddenly something didn't look right. A latent bug appeared randomly and it wound up wiping the flash. I apparently turned white as a sheet as the realization washed over me. That was a fun one. In the end it was easy to recover, but I'm still damn glad it happened on the ground prior to launch so it could be fixed before debugging on orbit would've been much more difficult.

 

[Dark-Fx]

I would be shocked if this sort of problem was not anticipated long ago and some manager rejected it as too much time/effort to address. That's the person who should be fired.

Not unusual for dev/beta builds to intentionally ignore certificate chain issues. The keys for production are typically very highly guarded because you don't want just anyone to get access to be able to decrypt a working build (or build/sign custom software that functions as production).

This mistake could mean the software is in a state on people's infotainment computers that could be easily decrypted.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Update never popped for me, so I avoided any issues thus far. A question for those who didn't get so lucky though.

Does Alexa still work for voice control? Could be a way to get at the features you'd normally need to use the screen for.

 

[shrink]

My R1T got the failed update. Thankfully my R1S did not.

From Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivian/s/IfTgkzk0U0

 

[ohseedee]

Does Alexa still work for voice control? Could be a way to get at the features you'd normally need to use the screen for.

If Alexa has built in redundancy but climate, mirror adjustment, speedometer, etc. doesn't I got bigger issues with Rivan…

 

[Dark-Fx]

If Alexa has built in redundancy but climate, mirror adjustment, speedometer, etc. doesn't I got bigger issues with Rivan…

It's not redundancy, just that the control might not depend on the display being operable or even existing.

 

[kayabusa]

The best vehicle I ever have. !!! What POS company, How do I suppose to get to my kids to school and work today ?

 

[beyond]

The best vehicle I ever have. !!! What POS company, How do I suppose to get to my kids to school and work today ?

Drive them? The screen still works on the left….

 

[kayabusa]

Drive them? The screen still works on the left….

No thanks, I will not put them at risk or any people on the street.

 

[beyond]

No thanks, I will not put them at risk or any people on the street.

How is there any risk? Speedometer and everything is still fine. You just don’t have the radio / nav / hvac controls. Just trying to figure out how you would risk someone?

 

[Steve A.]

After 33.5+ years of professional software engineering experience, AFAIC, this debacle is simply UNACCEPTABLE! YES, I've made PLENTY of mistakes over the years rolling out new releases but ALWAYS you have a contingency plan for a quick and simple ROLLBACK if need be.

On the bright side, YES I was able to drive it work, but to call Rivian Support on my way to work at 0430 and be told that it's a known issue w/ no resolution and that they recommend not driving it is UNACCEPTABLE!

No, they shouldn't fire the person that was responsible for this debacle, but they should definitely demote their manager who's responsible for overseeing the software release processes or at least put them in public stockade for a while.

To all the Rivian apologists, you can save your excuses (especially if you're not a professional software engineer), since there is no acceptable excuse for not incorporating an automated rollback into your OTA update processes.

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