Patch Notes #067 — The Cheat Device Was Software

Volkswagen got caught cheating on emissions tests with code. Eleven million diesel cars shipped with a “defeat device,” software that detected when the car was being tested (steering angle, wheel speed patterns) and switched to clean mode, then polluted up to 40x the legal limit on real roads. The CEO resigned in days; the stock lost a third of its value; criminal probes everywhere.

I can’t stop thinking about the engineers. Somewhere, someone wrote if (isEmissionsTest()) and someone else code-reviewed it. Did they push back? Was there a ticket? An email chain? “I was told to” is now a career-ending, possibly indictable, sentence. We got a whole engineering-ethics lunch talk out of it at work, and the line that stuck: your commit history is your signature. Refuse in writing.

Also this fortnight, cheerier: NASA announced evidence of liquid water flowing on present-day Mars. Streaks on crater walls, hydrated salts. The universe keeps shipping features.

TIL: “defeat device” has a legal definition dating to 1970s emissions law; mechanical cheats predate software ones. The scheme is old; software just made it scalable and grep-able. Auditors now know to read the code. Good.