geek stuff

No secrets in California's self driving car race

22 April 2017 by Steve Blum
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Autonomous cars will be networked cars, manufacturers will maintain constant contact, and make themselves and onboard data available to the cops. That’s one of the takeaways from a draft set of new rules for testing them on California’s public streets that was published by the department of motor vehicles. If – when – manufacturers get to the point that self-driving vehicles can be tested on the open road without someone on standby in the driver’s seat, or even without a steering wheel or other old school controls, then they’ll have to make sure that…

There is a communication link between the vehicle and the remote operator to provide information on the vehicle’s location and status and allow two-way communication between the remote operator and any passengers if the vehicle experiences any failures that would endanger the safety of the vehicle’s passengers or other road users, or otherwise prevent the vehicle from functioning as intended, while operating without a driver.

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Apple goes public with self-driving car plans. Sorta

15 April 2017 by Steve Blum
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Apple has finally admitted that it has a self-driving car project in the works, but isn’t saying much else. It now has a permit from the California department of motor vehicles to test autonomous vehicles, which was issued, or at least posted, yesterday. According to the Wall Street Journal, its fleet consists of three Lexus SUVs which will be driven by six registered test drivers.

According to a story by Oscar Raymundo in Macworld, Apple’s business model might have shifted from making self-driving cars to developing software that’ll be offered to other manufacturers…

In 2016, however, Apple seemed to have pivoted the initiative, opting for creating just the self-driving software to license to established car-makers instead of assembling an entirely new Apple vehicle.

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Wikileaks' CIA dump plugs massive Cisco security hole

25 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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If you look into the core of the Internet or just in a typical corporate or institutional data center, you’ll see rack after rack loaded with switches, routers and other gear made by Cisco. A vulnerability in even one of their products can leave a lot of networks and data open to attack. So you might come to the conclusion that spotting that kind of flaw and fixing it as quickly as possible is matter of national security.… More

Wikileaks shows there's no such thing as a top secret hack

11 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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Not the latest version.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s guide to cracking is getting bad reviews from the tech community. Published earlier this week on Wikileaks, the thousands of files of internal documentation maintained by the CIA’s engineering development group are mostly openly available cook books and mundane advice on how not to get caught.

A story by Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica steps through some of it and concludes it amounts to an outdated “Malware 101” textbook…

It’s not clear how closely tool developers at the CIA followed the tradecraft advice in the leaked document—in part because they realized how dated some of the advice was.

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Artificial intelligence naturally ignores bicycles

18 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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As someone who regularly spends several hours a week on a bicycle, wondering if the diesel rumble of a truck coming up behind me is the last sound I’ll ever hear, I was sorely disappointed to read that help, in the form of robotic vehicles, might be a long time coming.

A story by Peter Fairley on the IEEE Spectrum blog looks at the successes that self-driving car companies have had in developing software and sensors that can recognise other cars and predict their movements, and contrasts it with the failure to do the same with bicycles…

Nuno Vasconcelos, a visual computing expert at the University of California, San Diego, says bikes pose a complex detection problem because they are relatively small, fast and heterogenous.

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Google floats an operating system for geeks who can't dance without a beat

26 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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What else does a boy need?

If you’re reading this, it’s courtesy of one of two operating systems that were born in the Rhythmless Void between the break up of the Beatles and the Great Disco Awakening: UNIX or CP/M. (Unless you are truly an uber geek and still rocking your Commodore 64 or pre-OS X Apple or something even more esoteric – I genuflect in abject admiration. Or unless you’re a masochist and you’re reading this on a Blackberry: I salute your embrace of pain and humiliation).… More

Gratitude, and warm holiday wishes to all

25 December 2016 by Steve Blum

Take it for what it’s worth, but I am truly thankful.

Merry Christmas and a happy Hanukah to all. I don’t think today is Kwanza or Festivus or the winter solstice or whatever holiday I might be forgetting, but if that’s what rows your boat, then by all means have a joyous one of those too.

I want to thank everybody who has read this blog over the past eight years. It’s you, Gentle Reader, who makes this enterprise worthwhile and enjoyable, and I very much appreciate it.… More

Arizona scores a victory as DMV vanquishes Uber

23 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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So what if Acme got a permit?

Angry taxi drivers couldn’t do it. Stroppy city councils couldn’t do it. But California’s department of motor vehicles did it. The DMV has, um, driven Uber out of California, and into the arms of Arizona. The fight over Uber’s (sorta) self-driving car test in San Francisco ended with the offending vehicles being loaded onto a truck and hauled across the Colorado River. According to a story on SFGate.com, Arizona is happy to see them…

“Our cars departed for Arizona this morning by truck,” an Uber spokeswoman said Thursday afternoon in a statement.

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Uber's DMV showdown is a make or break for self-driving cars in California

18 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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Uber and the California department of motor vehicles appear headed to court in a dispute that could add some needed clarity to the state’s position regarding regulation of self-driving cars. On Friday, the head of Uber self-driving car team, Anthony Levandowski, said that they didn’t need the DMV’s permission to run their vehicle on San Francisco streets because it wasn’t really autonomous…

From a technology perspective, self-driving Ubers operate in the same way as vehicles equipped with advanced driver assist technologies, for example Tesla auto-pilot and other OEM’s traffic jam assist.

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Mobile OS security gains strength as a selling proposition

4 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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They mind their own business.

A reason for Sailfish’s existence, and perhaps even for the $12 million investment it received earlier this year is becoming clearer. It’s an alternative mobile operating system – a competitor to Android and iOS – that arose from the ashes of Nokia’s MeeGo operating system, which was scrapped when Microsoft bought the company.

But it didn’t buy everything and the Finnish engineers who stayed behind started a new company, Jolla, and kept working on it.… More