Drone Wars

Drones are everywhere in the media. Personal drones fitted with cameras are getting cheaper, meaning more people will use them to take pictures or even maybe spy on other people,  and this leads in turn to . . . anti-drone drones.   . . . . which will undoubtably be followed by defence drones, and then . . . . and then I'll be waiting nearby to pick up some expensive technotrash I can turn into something more fun.  As if there weren't enough stupid surveillance going on already.
Go here to see Ed Snowden saying "Spying is necessary  - but it needs oversight and should not be conducted against all of us" (paraphrased) - nice idea Ed, but I can't see that happenning soon.
Quote:
"Snowden pointed out that mass surveillance is “one of the few places in the global political debate where we have a choice.” If you don’t want a dystopian hellhole where governments around the world can see everything you say or do, there’s something you can do about it: use end-to-end encryption."
Uh . . . . can anyone else see the fault in this? Assuming that end-to-end encryption works, We need to ask what exactly we are going to be encrypting, and ask what the hell is the point of it.

Recently I had a mysterious contact who only ever talked to me via email disappear.  I never for a moment thought that this contact was anything other than a scammer trying to get information but I didn't care, mainly because I didn't give the person any useful information as far as I know: in fact, over the time I spent in contact with Mr. "S" I accumulated details that suggested to me who that person was simply because a person's language and knowledge can't help but leak. (Everything leaks, see elsewhere).
For me, that really  the point: Why should I care if some corporate computer knows my favourite flavour or my long-dead pet's name? It won't give anyone even the slightest hint as to passwords or where I keep some valuable item.  Only on a collective, "blah-blah percent of people in South Park like to eat Brand X Chocolate Icecream" type basis will collecting that information have any value.  Yes, I am concerned about huge multinational corporations bullying nations for thie own gain, but the honest truth is I can't think of anything I do online that would require me to encrypt my messages or other data because I just don't do much of that - the only exception to that is money transfers and guess what? that is already protected and encrypted.

If you are dumb enough to give Farcebook or any other online "service" all of your personal data such as your email password, where you went to school, who all of your friends are etc. etc. you will just have to live with the results.  There is no escape, Big Data already has you, running and hiding won't help you any - you still need to live.
Yes, a big pile of S**t may be coming down the turnpike but that is nothing new. We live under the threat of nuclear war right now, climate change is already here and those Big Players want us to ignore it because that might damage their profits. 
When I was a boy, I noticed that outside the classroom boys formed into gangs around the biggest mouths and the biggest fists.  I learned to hang out in the library at lunchtime and that helped both my health and education - but I imagined that when those kids grew up things would be different: how wrong I was. The same tribalism, thuggery and blatant stupidity I saw on the playground just transferred to the business world . . . . .
Sorry folks, enlightenment has been postponed. Come back in another century, maybe things will be better then.

Safety bad for profits?

Have a read of this article.  In short, it reveals that insurance companies are concerned because they believe self-driving cars will reduce the number of motor accidents and thus adversely affect their bottom line. Also mentioned is auto parts makers with a similar concern.
The article also claims that full self-driving cars probably won't be on the market until at least 2030.

Please note that the following is only my opinion.

Humans love to drive their cars. Even though the car may become pretty much self driving and certainly have a safety awareness and crash prevention system that can override the driver input, I fully expect that many people will still want to "drive" their cars because it satisfies a human desire for power and control. 

Next we have the technical side of things: how close are we to a fully self-driving door-to-door autonomus car? We are not there yet, there are still some serious challenges to be overcome: mainly the ability to self-navigate in less-than-ideal conditions such as unfamiliar roads, rain, snow, at night and any combination of them - in short, computer vision and sensing. Much of the autonomous driving currently being talked about uses an already existing digital map of the roads that the system can refer to: if the computer needs to create its own on the fly the car will need to drive slowly.  In short, the technology is not there yet for full autonomy despite all the hype and sales pitches.
Maybe by 2030 it will be around but I'm not holding my breath: the computer industry will need some impressive new tech to boost system power and squish a lot more processing power into a smaller space to make it work, and that is not even mentioning the software required: remember, this needs to be small, cheap and energy effficient enough to fit in an average car and not price the car too high for people to buy. 

Finally, and by far most crucially, the issue of system faults and failures is the elephant in the room: I once wrote a short story where a misbehaving teenager hacks the autodrive system of a car to go for an illegal joyride (he is killed of course): so far we have computers flying commercial airliners but that is still far from the prospect of having cars drive people everywhere on a daily basis. The roads are already packed with cars and trucks and that will not decrease in a hurry, so what happens when those cars either have their selfdrive system fail, or (worse still) get attacked or hacked by malicious operators, be they human or otherwise?
Don't give me any bull about hackerproof systems, there is no hackerproof system and at this rate probably never will be: unless somewhere like Iceland takes over the world in a peaceful revolution, we will all continue to be watched by paranoid secret agencies and they will demand and get "backdoors" into every electronic gadget we have, which means that non-official hackers can and will find those same backdoors and bend them to their own criminal uses. (Hey there's a story or two in there already! - oh wait, who needs fiction? It's already really happenned!)

I'm guessing that by 2030 most of this won't matter anyway: other things will come that will make the whole issue trivial or at least secondary, for instance the endless increase in the price of oil because it really IS running out and only a few people with power and influence are doing anything about the boatload of **** coming down the turnpike towards us.

Keep fighting over those deckchairs on the Titanic, guys. You deserve the best view.  

CLEAN ENERGY, ANYONE?

No-one ever needs to mine coal, drill for oil or gas, dig up and refine uranium or anything else to burn or react: all the energy we could ever need is below our feet.

If people want to have electricity made in big installations that can run 24 hours a day seven days a week that do not emit any pollution, burn anything or create toxic or dangerous waste material there is only one answer: Geothermal power stations.

All of the technology needed to make this work almost anywhere on the Earth's surface has already been tried and proven.

All we need to do is drill a deep enough hole, pump water down it and steam will return which we can then use to generate electrical energy. The only “waste product” is heat, which every other type of power plant (apart from hydroelectric) creates too.

The drilling might cost something but the hole does not close up or “run out of heat” (unlike an oil well) and the water we sent down the well to heat up and drive the generators can be cooled in radiators and sent back down again so there is no need for a continuous supply of water or heat pollution of rivers. It is cheap in terms of generating systems and safer than any other power system (apart from maybe solar panels). All of the generator parts are available off the shelf.

So why isn't this happenning? Why aren't all of the countries of the world installing geothermal power plants? 

There is no technical reason why not.

Not a Bad Network after all

Oh yes: I'm now connected to our NBN and contrary to the previous claims, my service is plenty fast enough. It varies depending on the number of users, of course, but right now I'm getting 23.6 Mb/sec down and 35.3 up which is quite sufficient for anything I have in mind, and as the hour gets later and folks go off to bed it gets faster : I have spotted 1 GB/sec on occasion.
Pretty good, even if they gave us no choice.

I hear rumours that a new, more draconian regime relating to content is coming so the message to you, dear reader is this: get rid of anything that might be considered "copyright infringement" on your computer now, andsave yourself misery later.  Make sure that you secure erase that nasty stuff too: regular trash delete only removes the first few bits of a file and it can be recovered again.
It might sound a bit paranoid, but this is result of laws bieng passed in other countries who then bulldoze local governments to follow along if they want to trade with them.
Personally I think the whole thing is getting way out of hand. Consider a simple theoretical situation: years ago an overseas friend of mine sends me an ebook as a gift. I don't kow if it was purchased legally - how can I find out now? The person who sent it is not there any more.  If I hold onto it I may suddenly get walloped with a court case even though I have not read the thing for years and have forgotten that I had it . . . . . . so as I said above, just delete anything that even might be illegal now and save yourself a whole lot of trouble. I wonder if someone steals my own work and I have a "C" symbol on it, will they police my work for me with the same rigour? Somehow i doubt it.
See here for more on this issue.

One of my previous favourite sites (Ars Technica) that provided good info on personal computer security and tech news has recently become a strong supporter of GE with ongoing articles about GE's latest developments. I do hope this does not mean they are now owned by GE and will only provide plugs for them. Yeah, yeah, journalistic integrity is a nice idea but who pays the bills, right? Tell that to Woodward and Bernstein.  I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with GE, (although I think GE Money is evil  - but no worse than any other payday loan sharks) - I just like to imagine that my sources of information are more of a rainbow of viewpoints rather than just one shade.

Who's the coolest robot of all?

Sometimes I look at robots on the net:  I mean real, physical robots, mainly because they are expected to have a big impact on our future lives . . . . . but also because they are great toys, and I freely admit that I love good technotoys.
First, of course, there is Nao. The creators of Nao got one thing right: it looks cute.
Then there is the T8.  I first learned of it from a Youtube video by Adam Savage, and since his video the company who made the original 3D printed version have been hard at work making an injection moulded version with various improvements including a big drop in price.

Here is the T8X:

Yup, it's a spiderbot. There is room inside for a camera and around the "eye" window is a colour changing LED so you can either use it to light your way at night or express moods.
The technology used for it to walk with eight legs and 26 servos is all done inhouse and when you see it walk (see videos on the website) it looks really impressive. The controller will be software you can load onto either an iOS or Android device.  The makers don't yet have a camera for it but I am sure one will be coming just as soon as they get this thing finished.
I am just hugely impressed that they squished three servos per leg into this thing: that is engineering artistry. 
Nobody pays me to do this, of course, but some folks deserve to be promoted for excellent work.
go here for more info at ROBUGTIX.

Anybody seen Dean Kamen lately?

I reccently posted about the "Solowheel" one-wheeled vehicle.  It has a range of about ten miles (hey they are Americans and haven't quite caught up with everyone else and gone metric) - and I can buy one locally for . . . . . about $2,500 Au.
Google search that name and you will see a number of Chinese made knockoffs at about $450. 
Folks, I know what goes into the Solowheel and it ain't rocket science: you could probably buy most of the parts for one for about $150 bucks and cobble your own together if you were really keen . . . . . but just think, look at what it is: motor, batteries and a single wheel and tyre , and a board of electronics that has accelerometers and gyros on it  - hardly worth two and a half big ones. If the Company really want to sell it they better do something about that price, it's crazy.
Now ignore that, and consider the point of the thing: personally I would rather walk since I consider it the best exercise for humans, especially over such a relatively short ranges, it is too small to carry shopping and with a full backpack you might exceed it's load limit . . . . . almost as good as a segway.
Anybody seen Dean Kamen lately? I thought not.

The Heisenberg Compensator Already Exists !

In Star Trek, the writers neatly evaded a major objection to the possibility of the "transporter" working as claimed by introducing the "Heisenberg Compensator" - according to the Quantum Physics I learned, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle firmly stated that at a quantum level, the process of measuring the state of a particle would collapse it's state from an uncertain or "superposition" state to the fixed one as measured.
Fine and good . . . . .  but I have just learned that in 1996 scientists found a way around this by Interaction-free measurement.  (Yes, I know, it does seem preposterous but it is true)
Check out the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester and go down the page to the "experiments" heading for the heavy stuff.
In short, this means that the uncertainty has been sidestepped - it still exists though.
We are still a long way from building a transporter or extracting all of the information about a mass of atoms in an object in sufficient detail to recreate it somewhere else - and I am not sure it is practical, but I am sure physiscists will find other uses for "Interaction-free measurement".  

Barclay and O'Brien check the Heisenberg Compensator. Image from Memory Alpha website

Hand me the three sixteenths polarised quantum spanner, Igor. No, I don't need to take off my glasses, just because I can't see it does not mean I can't  fix a loose quantum !