Non Forbes

Would Bitcoin fall off a cliff if it dropped to $100 or $150?

Submitted by brad on Tue, 2015-02-03 21:29

Bitcoin's been on a long decline over the past year, and today is around $220 per coin. The value has always been based on speculation about Bitcoin's future value, not its present value, so it's been very hard to predict and investment in the coins has been risky.

Some thinking led me to a scary conclusion. Recent news has revealed that a number of "cloud mining" companies have shut down after the price drop. Let me explain why.

Topic: 
Internet
Tags: 
bitcoin

Will robocars use V2V at all?

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2015-02-02 20:31

I commonly see statements from connected car advocates that vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure communications are an important, even essential technology for robocar development. Readers of this blog will know I disagree strongly, and while I think I2V will be important (done primarily over the existing mobile data network) I suspect that V2V is only barely useful, with minimal value cases that have a hard time justifying its cost.

Of late, though, my forecast for V2V grows even more dismal, because I wonder if robocars will implement V2V with human-driven cars at all, even if it becomes common for ordinary cars to have the technology because of a legal mandate.

The problem is security. A robocar is a very dangerous machine. Compromised, it can cause a lot of damage, even death. As such, security will have a very strong focus in development. You don't want anybody breaking into the computer systems or your car or anybody else's. You really don't want it.

One clear fact that people in security know -- a very large fraction of computer security breaches caused by software faults have come from programs that receive input data from external sources, in particular when you will accept data from anybody. Internet tools are the biggest culprits, and there is a long history of buffer overflows, injection attacks and other trouble that has fallen on tools which will accept a message from just anyone. Servers (which openly accept messages from outside) are at the greatest risk, but even client tools like web browsers run into trouble because they go to vast numbers of different web sites, and it's not hard to trick people to sending them to a random web site.

We work very hard to remove these vulnerabilities, because when you're writing a web tool, you have no choice. You must accept input from random strangers. Holes still get found, and we pay the price.

The simplest strategy to improve your chances is to go deaf. Don't receive inputs from outside at all. You can't do that in most products, but if you can close off a channel without impeding functionality it's a good approach. Generally you will do the following to be more secure:

  1. Be a client, which means you make communications requests, you do not receive them.
  2. You only connect to places you trust. You avoid allowing yourself to be directed to connect to other things
  3. You use digital signature and encryption to assure that you really are talking to your trusted server.

This doesn't protect you perfectly. Your home server can be compromised -- it often will be running in an environment not as locked down as this. In fact, if it becomes your relay for messages from outside, as it must, it has a vector for attack. Still, the extra layer adds some security.

Topic: 
Robocars
Tags: 
v2v

Singularity University summer GSP now free (for those who get in.) Wanna come? Wanna speak?

Submitted by brad on Wed, 2015-01-28 12:05

As some of you may know, I have been working as chair of computing and networking at Singularity University. The most rewarding part of that job is our ten week summer Graduate Studies Program. GSP15 will be our 7th year of it.

Topic: 
Futurism
Announcements

UMich team works on perception and localization using cameras

Submitted by brad on Sat, 2015-01-24 12:24

Some new results from the NGV Team at the University of Michigan describe different approaches for perception (detecting obstacles on the road) and localizations (figuring out precisely where you are.) Ford helped fund some of the research so they issued press releases about it and got some media stories. Here's a look at what they propose.

Topic: 
Robocars

Might the first, supervised robocars be... well... boring?

Submitted by brad on Thu, 2015-01-22 12:13

Let me confess a secret fear. I suspect that the first "autopilot" functions on cars is going to be a bit boring.

I'm talking the offerings like traffic jam assist from Mercedes, super cruise from Cadillac and others. The faster highway assist versions which combine ADAS functions like lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control to keep the car in its lane and a fixed distance from the car in front of you. What Tesla has promoted and what scrappy startup "Cruise" plans to offer as a retrofit later this year. This is, in NHTSA's flawed "levels" document what could be called supervision type 2.

Some of them also offer lane change, if you approve the safety of the change.

All these products will drive your car, slow or fast on highways, but they require your supervision. They may fail to find the lane in certain circumstances, because the makers are badly painted, or confusing, or just missing, or the light is wrong. When they do they'll kick out and insist you drive. They'll really insist, and you are expected to be behind the wheel, watching and grabbing it quickly -- ideally even noticing the failure before the system does.

Some will kick out quite rarely. Others will do it several times during a typical commute. But the makers will insist you be vigilant, not just to cover their butts legally, but because in many situations you really do need to be vigilant.

Testing shows that operators of these cars get pretty confident, especially if they are not kicking out very often. They do things they are told not to do. Pick up things to read. Do e-mails and texts. This is no surprise -- people are texting even now when the car isn't driving for them at all.

To reduce that, most companies are planning what they call "countermeasures" to make sure you are paying attention to the road. Some of them make you touch the wheel every 8 to 10 seconds. Some will have a camera watching your eyes that sounds an alarm if you look away from the road for too long. If you don't keep alert, and ignore the alarms, the cars will either come to a stop in the middle of the freeway, or perhaps even just steer wild and run off the road. Some vendors are talking about how to get the car to pull off safely to the side of the road.

There is debate about whether all this will work, whether the countermeasures or other techniques will assure safety. But let's leave that aside for a moment, and assume it works, and people stay safe.

I'm now asking the harder question, is this a worthwhile product? I've touted it as a milestone -- a first product put out to customers. That Mercedes offered traffic jam assist in the 2014 S-Class and others followed with that and freeway autopilots is something I tell people in my talks to make it clear this is not just science fiction ideas and cute prototypes. Real, commercial development is underway.

That's all true, and I would like these products. What I fear though, is whether it will be that much more useful or relaxing as adaptive cruise control (ACC.) You probably don't have ACC in your car. Uptake on it is quite low -- as an individual add-on, usually costing $1,000 to $2,000, only 1-2% of car buyers get it. It's much more commonly purchased as part of a "technology package" for more money, and it's not sure what the driving force behind the purchase is.

Highway and traffic jam autopilot is just a "pleasant" feature, as is ACC. It makes driving a bit more relaxing, once you trust it. But it doesn't change the world, not at all.

I admit to not having this in my car yet. I've sat in the driver's seat of Google's car some number of times, but there I've been on duty to watch it carefully. I got special driver training to assure I had the skills to deal with problem situations. It's very interesting, but not relaxing. Some folks who have commuted long term in such cars have reported it to be relaxing.

A Step to greater things?

If highway autopilot is just a luxury feature, and doesn't change the world, is it a stepping stone to something that does? From a standpoint of marketing, and customer and public reaction, it is. From a technical standpoint, I am not so sure.

Topic: 
Robocars

Camera mounting -- beyond the tripoid screw and dovetail plate

Submitted by brad on Mon, 2015-01-19 12:38

For many decades, cameras have come with a machine screw socket (1/4"-20) in the bottom to mount them on a tripod. This is slow to use and easy to get loose, so most photographers prefer to use a quick-release plate system. You screw a plate on the camera, and your tripod head has a clamp to hold those plates. The plates are ideally custom made so they grip an edge on the camera to be sure they can't twist.

Topic: 
Photography

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