Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

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But "recall" means "calling back"; normally it means having to actually send a physical replacement. Consider three possible problems with autopilot:

1. There's a structural issue that affects camera systems which can't be fixed in a shop; for instance, something which may cause the camera to come loose which results in blind spots, that's due to the structural issue of the car itself. Tesla has to replace 2 million customer's actual cars, destroying the old ones (or perhaps selling them as "refurb but no autopilot").

2. There's an issue that affects camera systems which can be fixed in a shop; Tesla has to pay for repairs for 2 million cars.

3. There's an issue which affects Autopilot which can be fixed in software. They push an over-the-air update automatically and everyone is fine.

These each have very different properties in terms of costs to Tesla and hassle for owners; so it makes sense that there be a different word for them. "Recall" literally means "call back"; I'd argue for only using it in the case of #1.

Just like “bit” is a term of art in computer science that means something different than “bit” in vernacular language, “recall” has a specific meaning in the automotive industry.

A recall is a mandatory fix that the manufacturer is obligated to provide at no charge and to proactively notify customers of. It comes with reporting obligations and long term warranty implications.

It might be that industries should not reuse common words, but IMO it’s a little silly to insist that they only use the most literal and etymologically correct terms for each individual action rather than defining categories that have clear meanings even if a specific action doesn’t perfectly match the most literal reading of the name of the category.

> A recall is a mandatory fix that the manufacturer is obligated to provide at no charge and to proactively notify customers of. It comes with reporting obligations and long term warranty implications.

This does make sense; but I would nonetheless suggest to the auto industry that they change the wording somehow. Fifty years ago any such mandatory fix certainly did mean making manual modifications to each individual car, whether in a service shop or by replacing the whole thing. That's no longer the case, and risks significant public misunderstanding.

Here in the UK they have loads of "archaisms":

- pavement: A place for pedestrians to walk on the side of a road; what Americans call a "sidewalk". Named because 200 years ago, the roads were dirt but sidewalks were paved. Now the roads are paved too, but they kept calling it "pavement"

- public school: A very posh private school; e.g., Eton. Named (as I understand it) because your children were taught in public, rather than in the home by a private tutor / governess / whatever.

> It might be that industries should not reuse common words, but IMO it’s a little silly to insist that they only use the most literal and etymologically correct terms for each individual action rather than defining categories that have clear meanings even if a specific action doesn’t perfectly match the most literal reading of the name of the category.

I am not so sure. Take Linux kernel log levels:

0 = emergency

1 = alert

2 = critical

3 = error

4 = warning

As soon as I saw this I showed it to multiple people, and none of them understand how a log level of "alert" can be more severe than "critical". Now, there is probably some greybeards that decided these words way way back and we decided to stuck with them. But if you tell someone "damn, the kernel is giving off alerts", their thought will be "well, at least the system isn't in a critical state or erroring out, right?".

Intuition matters.

>But "recall" means "calling back";

Writing means to carve but you wrote this post without a metal stick and a hammer.

>hassle for owners

"Recall" is used to signify the severity of the flaw not the inconvenience fixing it caused owners. I feel "software update" doesn't do it justice at all and "recall" is appropriate.

In this context, recall also means "Tesla is doing this as a result of regulatory action".

That it is straightforward is nice for them I guess, but it's less relevant to describing it than it being ordered by the government.

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