Automobile drivers, for obvious reasons, often have much less time to react. “When something pops up in front of your car, you have one second,” Casner says. “You think of a Top Gun pilot needing to have lightning-fast reflexes? Well, an ordinary driver needs to be even faster.”
In other words, the everyday driving environment affords so little margin for error that any distinction between “on” and “in” the loop can quickly become moot. Tesla acknowledges this by constraining the circumstances in which a driver can engage Autopilot: “clear lane lines, a relatively constant speed, a sense of the cars around you and a map of the area you’re traveling through,” according to MIT Technology Review. But Brown’s death suggests that, even within this seemingly conservative envelope, driving “on the loop” may be uniquely unforgiving.Clear lanes, constant speed, awareness of cars around you, a good map. That's about as easy as you can make it for the guidance system, and it's still too hard.
But NASA has been down this road before, too. In studies of highly automated cockpits, NASA researchers documented a peculiar psychological pattern: The more foolproof the automation’s performance becomes, the harder it is for an on-the-loop supervisor to monitor it. “What we heard from pilots is that they had trouble following along [with the automation],” Casner says. “If you’re sitting there watching the system and it’s doing great, it’s very tiring.” In fact, it’s extremely difficult for humans to accurately monitor a repetitive process for long periods of time. This so-called “vigilance decrement” was first identified and measured in 1948 by psychologist Robert Mackworth, who asked British radar operators to spend two hours watching for errors in the sweep of a rigged analog clock. Mackworth found that the radar operators’ accuracy plummeted after 30 minutes; more recent versions of the experiment have documented similar vigilance decrements after just 15 minutes.The fallback for the guidance system is to have the driver take over, but it looks like people don't handle this situation very well. And it also looks like people don't want to handle the situation well.
According to some researchers, this potentially dangerous contradiction is baked into the demand for self-driving cars themselves. “No one is going to buy a partially-automated car [like Tesla’s Model S] just so they can monitor the automation,” says Edwin Hutchins, a MacArthur Fellow and cognitive scientist who recently co-authored a paper on self-driving cars with Casner and design expert Donald Norman. “People are already eating, applying makeup, talking on the phone and fiddling with the entertainment system when they should be paying attention to the road,” Hutchins explains. “They’re going to buy [self-driving cars] so that they can do more of that stuff, not less.”This problem (self-driving cars) smells a lot to me like what we've seen in the Artificial Intelligence research community. There have been widely publicized advances on very narrow, specific technology problems, but AI has remained "just 5 years away" for 30 years. The problem there is that we really don't know what Intelligence is (at least in enough detail to specify it for a computer). Likewise, we don't understand how to safely react to the myriad of potentially dangerous driving situations to be able to specify it for the computer.
An airliner circling Heathrow narrowly missed colliding with a drone flying at 7,000 feet – while another aircraft approaching the London airport saw a drone hurtle past just 30 feet from its cockpit.
The first near miss took place in mid-May when an Airbus A319 pilot flying to Heathrow saw a one metre-long drone, painted green and purple, “extremely close” to his aircraft.
The drone, which was flying just above the airliner's level, was only 10 metres (30 feet) from the cockpit. Investigators thought the operator was flying on first-person view using the drone's cameras.
Let's see now: Flying a drone over 1000 feet? Check. Flying a drone near an airport? Check. Flying a drone in the approach path for the airport? Check.The UK Airprox Board graded the risk of collision as Category A, the most severe level.In the second incident, which took place a fortnight after the first, an Airbus A320's first officer saw “a white, twin rotor drone pass by the right wingtip” barely 100m away as the aircraft was descending through 7,000ft over New Malden, south London.
Interesting story.I am pleased to announce a new Citizen Lab report: “The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender,” authored by senior researchers Bill Marczak and John Scott Railton.If you are one of hundreds of millions of people that own an iPhone, today you will receive a critical security patch. While updating your software, you should pause for a moment to thank human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor.Mansoor is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, and because he’s a human rights activist in an autocratic country his government views him as a menace. For security researchers at the Citizen Lab, on the other hand, Mansoor’s unfortunate experiences are the gift that won’t stop giving.
Kaepernick has a disastrously large contract. He signed a 6-year $114 million contract in 2014 that has $61 million guaranteed. He could have used some of that $61 million to quietly become a benefactor to so very many. Instead he's become a lightning rod, complete ingrate prick, salary cap albatross or potential season long distraction depending on your point of view.The 49ers simply cannot win now. If they cut him there will be a huge outcry against them. Remember, this is San Francisco, perhaps the most famously liberal area in the country. While your typical football fan is more patriotic than the average bear, it's Silicon Valley wealthy who fill the stadium in Frisco. They're all to the left of Karl Marx.
From the San Francisco 49er's point of view this is a distraction they didn't need from a player with an almost $20 million cap hit if they cut him. For their back-up QB! And if the team cuts him there will be people who complain that it was because Chip Kelly doesn't like black people ...
I have to wonder if this is some sort of diabolical genius on the part of Kaepernick. Say if he no longer wants to play football but wants to collect all of his guaranteed money. This would be almost the perfect plan. Just sitting during the anthem isn't against the law or even team policy. Sure many people will hate him but this might be a way out of playing football and maybe even into some high paying speaking gigs for clueless kids at liberal arts colleges. I haven't seen anything this diabolical since Al Gore made millions pretending to care about global warming.
In a shocking development, smart lock manufacturer August has been caught promptly patching security holes discovered in its product.
At this year's DEF CON, security researcher Anthony Rose gave a presentation where he outlined how a whole range of "smart locks" were hackable.
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But what was surprising was that just 10 days later, August had put out patches that fix the holes. Even Rose was surprised, tweeting: "August just patched their web services to stop guest from being able to insert backdoor keys in homekit locks! Kudos to their engineers."
His conclusions are also pretty interesting. I would add that this situation is very likely to be Game-Theory stable as well - meaning that the only (likely temporary) way out is an external shock, or internal revolt.What you have under a representative, egalitarian, winner take all, democracy is a shifting coalition of about 51% of voters aligned to threaten about 49%.If you’re getting more than 51% of the vote (which is certainly possible) that just means you’re leaving rents on the table. You could take more, and/or give less, and still win the election.Additionally, maximum rent extraction occurs if your coalition comprises the cheapest 51% of voters, in other words, the most useless and parasitic.
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| Image via Der Wik |
I woke up this morning and I took a look around at all that I got
These days I've been lookin' in the mirror and wondering if that's me lookin' back or not
I'm still the apple of my mama's eye
I'm my daddy's worst fears realized
Here of late all this real estate don't seem all that real to me sometimesI'm back out on that road again
Turn this beast into the wind
There are those that break and bend
I'm the other kind, I'm the other kindNow my old buddy, what's his name, says, "Man what the hell are you thinkin' 'bout
Fool, you got two of everything, but you hang your head just like you was down and out";
And I'm damn sure not suffering from a lack of love
There's plenty more where that came from
Ah - but leave it up to me to say something wrong and hurt someone before I'm doneYou see it used to be I was really free
I didn't need no gasoline to run
Before you could say Jack Kerouac you'd turn your back and I'd be gone
Yeah nowadays I got me two good wheels and I seek refuge in aluminum and steel
Aw, it takes me out there for just a little while
And the years fall away with every mile
Rosenband added that four-way junctions with no lights are still a nightmare for the robot cars. An example junction is California and Powell in San Francisco, which has the added bonus of two cable car lines going through it. Human motorists rely on eye contact to know when it's safe to go or just take the initiative and move first. A driver-less car gets stuck trying to safely nudge its way across the box.
This is a great overview of the problems of computer/sensor recognition of what is trivially easy for humans. There are great examples here of the problems that we overcome instantly and naturally, but which flummox the computer: the red balloon next to a green traffic light, the traffic light partially obscured by a bus, a traffic light with the setting sun right behind it which blinds the sensor."At four-way stops, oftentimes cars arrive sorta at the same time and it's a coin flip for who goes first. We have to make it comfortable for the person in the car; you don’t want the vehicle to inch forward and then slam the brakes, and you also want to be courteous to other drivers," Rosenband explained.
You can teach a computer what an under-construction sign looks like so that when it sees one, it knows to drive around someone digging a hole in the road. But what happens when there is no sign, and one of the workers is directing traffic with their hands? What happens when a cop waves the car on to continue, or to slow down and stop? You'll have to train the car for that scenario.
And this is the heart of the problem: you have to define literally every possible failure condition and program those into the software. Even with machine learning, there are too many to be practical. If you miss one and a car kills someone, the lawsuits will be enormous.What happens when the computer sees a ball bouncing across a street – will it anticipate a child suddenly stepping out of nowhere and chasing after their toy into oncoming traffic? Only if you teach it.
Near this Spot are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the virtues of Man
without his Vices.
- Lord Byron's epitaph to his beloved Newfoundland, Boatswain
A plucky German nudist out for a swim at a local lake was left in agony after an angler hooked his worm.
Herbert Fendt - an alias the embarrassed man adopted to spare his family's blushes - was taking a dip in the Kaisersee, near Augsberg in south-eastern Germany, when the tackle-on-tackle action occurred.
Initially the man thought he’d caught his todger on some weeds in the lake - a popular spot for fisherman and nudists - but soon discovered the cause of the pain.
The rest of the article is just as funny. The Germans are indeed very german.“I cried out to the fisherman ashore shouting ‘do not pull, do not pull’. I was terrified he was going to try to reel me in,” Fendt told the local press.
This is the Patriot Guard Riders:Desjardin learned that the 20th Maine veteran’s ashes were in Oregon when he was researching what had happened to each soldier who fought in the regiment. He proposed the state bring Williams home.“I discovered that his remains were in a can on a shelf in a shed out in Oregon and had been there for 94 years, unclaimed,” the historian said. “Back home is better than a shelf on a shed in Oregon.”
And 150 riders met him at the state line, to escort him back to Maine. Bravo Zulu.Williams’ ashes traveled across the country in style, accompanied by a battalion of Patriot Guard Riders who handed the box off from one group of motorcyclists to the next like a kind of modern-day Pony Express. Many of those riders came to Togus on Monday to witness Williams’ cremains being handed over to Maine VA officials, including Neil Wagner of Royersford, Pennsylvania.“When I found out they were bringing a Civil War veteran, I said, ‘I can’t miss this one.’ I could be part of history,” he said. “It was very humbling. Every time he was handed off to a different guard group there were tears shed because he was getting closer to home.”
