Software can be Evil
Volkswagen’s “diesel dupe” scandal has been in the news for some time now. 11 million cars worldwide have a “defeat device” that could detect when the car was being tested and then change its performance to improve results. The difference? “The engines emitted nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times above what is allowed in the US.” The CEO has resigned; and the company has set aside $7.3 billion to deal with the problem. Marcelo Rinesi wrote this very interesting article wondering whether the cheating technique used by VW (write intelligent software to behave differently under different conditions) is the ticking time bomb that awaits us in the brave new world of the Internet of Things (In case you are wondering, the Internet of Things refers to the network of objects with sensors and software that can collect and exchange data. So yes, basically that covers almost everything in the future). Rinesi points out the fundamental difference between objects and the new soft...