Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Tag: Evergreen

  • The Argument For a Moral Machine in Autonomous Driving

    The Argument For a Moral Machine in Autonomous Driving

    I have a strong aversion against letting people drag their feet from being responsible for their actions. I feel particularly strongly about this when delegating work to machines, which are not able to act using an appropriate moral value system. Starting a car and letting an autonomous driving unit take over is one such example:…

  • The Argument Against a Moral Machine in Autonomous Driving

    The Argument Against a Moral Machine in Autonomous Driving

    Ever since autonomous driving became a hot topic, I’ve tried to sell to our automotive industry partners the idea of a project to build a moral machine in autonomous driving. My definition of a moral machine (there are others) is: A moral machine (for autonomous driving) is a machine that encodes the driver’s moral value…

  • Too many points of failure (at Theranos)

    Too many points of failure (at Theranos)

    I just finished reading John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood, which presents the story of the rise and fall of one-time Silicon Valley unicorn Theranos through his eyes as the journalist who broke the story. In case you missed it: Theranos was a healthcare company promising to sell a machine that could perform quickly and reliably…

  • Why do episodic volunteers stay in FLOSS communities? [ICSE 2019]

    Why do episodic volunteers stay in FLOSS communities? [ICSE 2019]

    Abstract: Successful Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects incorporate both habitual and infrequent, or episodic, contributors. Using the concept of episodic volunteering (EV) from the general volunteering literature, we derive a model consisting of five key constructs that we hypothesize affect episodic volunteers’ retention in FLOSS communities. To evaluate the model we conducted a…

  • Should The Public Sector Use Open Source Software? 1/4

    Should The Public Sector Use Open Source Software? 1/4

    I was asked several questions by a journalist about open source and the public sector. I’m answering them here in sequence. This is the first of four blog posts and the first question was: Should the public sector use open source software? The public sector and public governments should use the software that lets them…

  • Happy new year, the second amendment, and private messaging

    Happy new year, the second amendment, and private messaging

    There is wisdom in the second amendment of the constitution of the United States of America. A key motivation was to allow people to defend themselves against an oppressive government. Back when it was formulated, self-defense meant bearing firearms, which seems quaint today given that a government could came after you with tanks and drones.…