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Tesla Now Watermarks Software Update Release Notes for Employees

Posted on by darion

Watermarked release notes

Recently, quite a few employees and internal testers have leaked images of Tesla release notes. Tesla prefers to keep its software releases and release notes a secret, and now it is taking the step of watermarking the release notes to prevent further leaks.

Watermarks

Release notes on the vehicle will now be watermarked with the vehicle VIN numbers. This will prevent quick and easy release note images from being easily leaked. The presence of a VIN watermark means that the employee or tester who shared the image can be quickly and easily identified and then removed from the testing program.

Tesla also applies a watermark to release notes in the Tesla app, in addition to those in the vehicle.

Tesla hopes this will reduce information sharing and prevent leaks, but there are a few workarounds that are likely to be used in the future – expect photos to be edited after being taken to remove or blur VIN numbers, or for notes to be completely transcribed into text.

Wave 1 workers

Tesla Wave 1 employees receive updates several weeks before they are released to the general public. Wave 1 employees serve as an additional internal testing stage and enjoy the employee benefit of early access to new features and improvements. This provides Tesla with a tangible benefit to its employees, as well as the opportunity to test outside of the dedicated employee and vehicle quality assurance group.

This is a pretty crucial role – Wave 1 workers act as a safeguard against buggy updates. By catching potential issues with different combinations of vehicle hardware or edge cases, Tesla can nip these issues in the bud. For example, update 2024.20 already had a revision – 2024.20.1 – before it started rolling out to Tesla owners. FSD V12.4 is the same – V12.4.1 is likely the version that will be rolling out to owners.

It’s a safety-conscious approach that allows Tesla to test for bugs across its widely varying hardware and fix any bugs as they’re discovered by employees. Once no major issues are found in the Wave 1 group, either through employee reporting or automated bug reports, the update gradually begins rolling out to the public in small quantities.

After recently releasing V12.4.2 to employees and early access testers, Tesla has now released V12.4.3 to employees, according to user X Farzad. The update is numbered 2024.15.15.

While we didn’t get a full set of release notes to compare it to, it looks like this update won’t bring anything beyond bug fixes. We recently took a closer look at the new features coming to version 12.4.2 here .

Update: As expected, the release notes remain the same as FSD v12.4.2. The update contains only bug fixes.

Given how quickly Tesla has been rolling out updates to internal testers, employees, and early access customers, it seems like there could be a few more versions of V12.4 released before it hits customers as Tesla fine-tunes FSD.

Why are there so many versions and delays?

While no one is happy about the delays, it is important to remember that Tesla must prioritize safety when it comes to FSD releases. If a release involves hundreds of thousands of unsafe vehicles, it could have a significant impact on people’s lives.

Beyond that, each subversion is Tesla tweaking its AI model, fine-tuning it to drive better in both normal and extreme cases. As such, seeing these subversion releases is a good thing – at the end of the day, we’ll end up with a better, safer product.

Each release must first be tested internally among dedicated ADAS testers, then with employees, and finally with Tesla’s early access customers. Once all of those people give the green light, and most of the bugs and major issues have been fixed, will the release be given the green light to go wide.

So stay tuned, because this information will gain wider publicity than this leak and maybe it will find its way to your car with FSD without any problems.

Tesla FSD V12.4.2 has landed in the wild – at least among Early Access customers this week. A few videos have surfaced, and some people have started providing feedback on the X, the update, and how it’s going.

It hasn’t reached customers yet and only Early Access testers and employees have it in their vehicles. FSD 12.4.2 is update 2024.15.10 and is expected to be available to everyone in update 2024.14 who owns or subscribes to FSD… eventually.

Consistent, confident

Early Access testers have found FSD V12.4.2 to be much more confident and consistent when making decisions. V12.4.2 feels more confident when making unsafe left turns and encountering construction or complicated road junctions.

Users also noted greater consistency and reliability in the Auto Speed ​​feature, which automatically adjusts vehicle speed based on road conditions, and also noted improvements in lane selection, which was a bigger issue in version 12.4.1.

Users have also noticed that the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System is more confident and has better night vision. In version 12.4.1, the Vision-Based DMS was unavailable at night, and the naked eyes still appeared – but in version 12.4.2 this limitation seems to have been removed.

Regressions

There are still some regressions to be seen, with @DirtyTesLa on X noting that V12.4.2 apparently fails to make the left turn on an unmarked dirt road that it did before.

@WholeMarsBlog also noted that he had one critical safety intervention and that FSD missed a turn onto the highway, noting that this was a regression from his experience with V12.4.1. Overall, he had many drives without interventions.

General conclusions

It looks like aside from a few minor regressions, V12.4.2 is shaping up to be a good update. There are improvements to the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System, as well as improvements to decision-making and lane selection.

It is very likely that version 12.4.2 could be the release that unleashes the floodgates of complaint-free FSD.