Forget Equifax, Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
September 12th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
Just for a minute, imagine that hackers have gained access to a database containing sensitive information about hundreds of millions of people. In this totally hypothetical scenario, the theft would be comprehensive—including enough details to do real damage to those whose data had been exposed—and would involve a company that wasn’t widely recognized as a security risk. This large company would’ve exposed you, and everyone you know, to possible financial ruin.
No, I’m not talking about Equifax, the Atlanta-based credit reporting agency that disclosed a massive hack late last week. Think of a comparable breach at Google, Facebook, or Amazon.com.
Those companies, plus Slack, Tinder, and a half-dozen others, possess more than enough financial and personal data for hackers to steal our identities and, possibly, rack up fraudulent charges. They also have private messages, photographs, and most of our secrets. A large-scale attack on any one of these companies could make the Equifax hack, the theft of some 143 million Social Security numbers, look like petty larceny.
Volkswagen Spends Billions More on Electric Cars in Search for Mass Market
September 12th, 2017Via: Reuters:
Volkswagen is stepping up its shift to electric cars and plans to invest more than 20 billion euros ($24 billion) in zero-emission vehicles by 2030 to challenge pioneer Tesla in creating a mass market.
The world’s largest automaker by sales said on Monday it would roll out 80 new electric cars across its multi-brand group by 2025, up from a previous goal of 30, and wanted to offer an electric version of each of its 300 group models by 2030.
The German company had previously said it would spend more than 10 billion euros by 2025 on a move to electric vehicles.
Until it admitted two years ago to cheating on U.S. diesel emissions tests, Volkswagen (VW) had been slow to embrace electric cars and self-driving technology.
But the “dieselgate” scandal has prompted a strategic shift, while major advances in batteries and a global fight against pollution in the wake of VW’s scandal have raised pressure on carmakers to speed up development of zero-emission alternatives.
Irma Devastation, Image Galleries
September 12th, 2017After 15 Die in Hepatitis Outbreak, San Diego Begins Sanitary Street Washing
September 12th, 2017Via: Los Angeles Times:
Sanitary street washing will commence in downtown San Diego and will continue every other week to combat the city’s deadly hepatitis A outbreak, Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s office said Friday.
The city responded to a letter sent by San Diego County Thursday, asking the city to move forward with a list of specific sanitation actions designed to help control the spread of the disease, which has killed 15 people and hospitalized nearly 300, many of them homeless and living on streets without adequate access to restrooms or showers.
The county gave the city five business days to respond with a plan for remedying what it called a “fecally contaminated environment” downtown. The county will soon expand its efforts to other cities in the region, where the outbreak has now produced nearly 400 confirmed cases.
The county moved forward last weekend with its own contractor, who installed 40 hand-washing stations in areas where the homeless often gather. There are plans, according to the city’s letter, to add more stations next week.
In addition to regularly pressure-washing dirty city right-of-ways with chlorinated water, the county also asked the city to “immediately expand access to public restrooms and wash stations within the city limits that are adjacent to at-risk populations.”
Japan Trials Driverless Cars with Rural Elderly
September 12th, 2017Via: Reuters:
As the annual rice harvest begins this month in the Japanese town of Nishikata, the combines that usually putter along the sleepy roads lining its rice fields are giving way to a vehicle residents have never before seen, a driverless shuttle bus.
Japan is starting to experiment with self-driving buses in rural communities such as Nishikata, 115 km (71 miles) north of the capital, Tokyo, where elderly residents struggle with fewer bus and taxi services as the population ages and shrinks.
The swift advance of autonomous driving technology is prompting cities such as Paris and Singapore to experiment with such services, which could prove crucial in Japan, where populations are not only greying, but declining, in rural areas.Japan could launch self-driving services for remote communities by 2020, if the trials begun this month prove successful.
The government plans to turn highway rest stops into hubs from which to ferry the elderly to medical, retail and banking services.
Cruise Automation/GM: “How We Built the First Real Self-Driving Car (Really)”
September 12th, 2017Via: Medium:
The car we’re unveiling today is actually our 3rd generation self-driving car, but it’s the first that meets the redundancy and safety requirements we believe are necessary to operate without a driver. There’s no other car like this in existence. In a few weeks, these cars will be a part of the fleet that carries Cruise employees anywhere in San Francisco using our app. For now, there will still be a human behind the wheel.
In the near future you’ll see these cars on the road, and they’ll look like regular cars, but they’re actually some of the most technically advanced robots on the planet. They don’t need drivers, and there might not be anyone inside at all. They’ve been designed to emulate human driving behavior but with the human mistakes omitted. They don’t drink and drive, they don’t text while driving, and they don’t get tired. It has taken the collective effort of over two thousand people to create this product, and we believe that together we’ve managed to create something that will one day drive significantly better than any individual.
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All of these new systems are important, because a driverless vehicle can’t rely on a human as a backup system. If something on a vehicle fails while there is an attentive human in the driver’s seat, they can yank the wheel or stomp on the brake pedal to avoid an incident. This isn’t the case for a car with no driver, so we built backup systems. And in some cases we built backups for the backups?—?and backups for those systems, too. Safety and validation teams have carefully considered plausible failure modes for all critical systems and fed changes back into the design. Our newest self-driving car might look like a regular car on the outside, but the vehicle’s core system architecture more closely resembles that of a commercial airplane or spacecraft.
U.S. National Debt Hits $20 Trillion
September 11th, 2017Via: CBS:
The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation’s debt limit for three months.
While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill’s completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.
The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using “extraordinary measures” to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.
The $318 billion increase raised the U.S. national debt to $20.16 trillion by Friday. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the debt has increased about $215 billion from around $19.94 trillion.
California Bans Drones from Delivering Marijuana
September 11th, 2017Via: The Verge:
Drones delivering hamburgers, beer, and Amazon products might be right around the corner, but don’t get your hopes up if you want your weed sent to you via robot. That’s because California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control has recently unveiled new regulatory rules that will ban drones from delivering marijuana, as spotted by Ars Technica. The Bureau is currently developing regulation surrounding weed use and sales under the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA) after recreational marijuana was legalized in California.
Eat, Pray, Live: The Lagos Megachurches Building Their Very Own Cities
September 11th, 2017Be sitting down for this one!
Via: Guardian:
Redemption Camp has 5,000 houses, roads, rubbish collection, police, supermarkets, banks, a fun fair, a post office – even a 25 megawatt power plant. In Nigeria, the line between church and city is rapidly vanishing.
Irma: Over 5 Million Homes and Businesses Without Electricity in Florida
September 10th, 2017Via: Reuters:
Hurricane Irma knocked out power to about 5.8 million homes and businesses in Florida, even as the storm’s power waned as it crept up the state’s west coast, according to state officials and local electric utilities.
