geek stuff

California rules might make self-driving cars drive for the border

22 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Companies that are developing self-driving cars apparently aren’t happy with proposed new rules floated by California’s department of motor vehicles. There was a public meeting in Sacramento earlier this week to discuss the DMV’s latest plan for opening up California’s road to autonomous vehicles, both for research and development purposes and for actual operation.

The draft would require companies to compile testing data for a year, before applying for permission to run a car without a driver – and without a steering wheel and all the other controls humans need.… More

Patent trolls come in two sizes, FTC says

16 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Watch out for the little one.

It’s the small patent trolls, the kind cultivated by the predatory bar, that cause the most problems for entrepreneurs and other small businesses. Not problems with million dollar price tags or even vaguely legitimate claims. Just the most problems.

That’s the conclusion of a study by the Federal Trade Commission that looked at what it politely calls “patent assertion entities” (PAEs) and what anyone else – at least anyone who’s actually tried to create something – calls patent trolls.… More

Humans follow California rules, robot cars answer to Washington

8 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Guess which one is a federal case?

If a self driving car still needs a human to be ready to take over operation at any time, then that human needs to be a licensed and fully capable driver. But once autonomous vehicles reach a sufficiently advanced level, then no driver’s licence – no human license – is needed in California. That’s the gist of new draft rules floated by the California department of motor vehicles ahead of a public workshop later this month.… More

Niche computer maker Purism turns lack of trust into a selling proposition

12 June 2016 by Steve Blum
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Simple security comes at a cost.

If you want to know what every bit on your computer is doing, I mean really know, then you’re the kind of customer that Purism has in mind. The South San Francisco company makes a range of Linux-based laptops and tablets with 100% open source software not-quite-preinstalled. That includes applications of course, but also device drivers, the boot system and everything else.

Not-quite-preinstalled means that the device comes with all the software and a totally naked hard drive.… More

Wireless charging is still a contact sport

11 June 2016 by Steve Blum
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Closer to reality.

Energous Corporation is walking back claims of wirelessly charging batteries from across the room, but is moving ahead with products that charge on simple contact, without having to plug anything in. That kind of technology is reasonably well established – it’s a common enough demo to see at CES, for example – but the solutions on offer are still fiddly in nature and there’s no generally accepted standard yet.

Last year, at Pepcom’s Mobile Focus event in San Francisco, Energous had a gizmo generally the size and shape of a high end audio speaker on its exhibit table, that a spokesman said could deliver 4 watts of electrical to a suitably equipped device 15 feet away, and 16 watts at five feet.… More

Bell Labs test shows faster speeds on shorter copper

21 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Next generation cable technology – DOCSIS 3.1 – can support symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds over hybrid fiber coax plant, according to a press release from Bell Labs, now known as Nokia Bell Labs. Nokia completed its purchase of Alcatel Lucent earlier this year and Bell Labs was part of the bargain.

Bell Labs is pitching its XG-Cable technology for integration into CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.1 standard, which is undergoing field trials in a few U.S. markets.… More

Security and simplicity keep Sailfish, Tizen hopes alive

14 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Just enough to start the day.

Two alternative, Linux-based smart phone operating systems are still in the game, but might be headed towards greener markets. Version 3.0 of the Tizen OS is due out in September and the Sailfish OS has a new, $12 million lifeline.

Tizen is an open source project that’s largely driven by Samsung. It started out as an alternative to Android and a replacement for Bada, Samsung’s previous in-house OS. So far, it hasn’t found much traction in the mobile phone market, despite Samsung’s dominance of that sector.… More

Logic of self-driving car policy escapes RAND corporation

16 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Control sample.

The RAND corporation published a study about self driving cars that comes to a mathematically obvious conclusion, while completely missing the public policy point. The study starts with the fact that one person dies in a U.S. traffic accident for every 100 million miles driven. Then it dives into a really complex statistical analysis…

Given that fatalities and injuries are rare events, we will show that fully autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries.

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Backdoor to encrypted data required in proposed bill

15 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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California’s senior U.S. senator wants software, hardware and telecoms companies, and pretty much everyone else in the high tech universe to keep a master key to their encrypted products and services. And turn the key anytime a court tells them to do so. The draft of a bill by senators Diane Feinstein (D – California) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) says…

A covered entity that receives a court order from a government for information or data shall— (A) provide such information or data to such government in an intelligible format; or (B) provide such technical assistance as is necessary to obtain such information or data in an intelligible format or to achieve the purpose of the court order.

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Who will secure the securers?

9 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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The FBI is offering the best argument for not giving government agencies back door access to encrypted systems: those same government agencies can’t keep their own stuff locked down. According to a story on Motherboard, the FBI has put out a warning about another massive security breach…

The feds warned that “a group of malicious cyber actors,” whom security experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as APT6, “have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government and commercial networks” since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert obtained by Motherboard.

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