Thursday night I am heading off to CES, and it's become the main show it seems for announcing robocar news. There's already a bunch.
Yesterday's post about the flaws in the so-called "popular vote" certainly triggered some debate (mostly on Facebook.) To clarify matters, I thought I would dive a little deeper about what the two types of Presidential elections in the USA are so different they can't be added together in a way that isn't misleading.
The common statistic reported after the US election was that Clinton "won the popular vote" by around 3 million votes over Trump. This has caused great rancour over the role of the electoral college and has provided a sort of safety valve against the shock Democrats (and others) faced over the Trump victory.
The California DMV got serious in their battle with Uber and revoked the car registrations for Uber's test vehicles. Uber had declined to register the cars for autonomous testing, using an exemption in that law which I described earlier. The DMV decided to go the next step and pull the more basic licence plate every car has to have if based in California. Uber announced it would take the cars to another state.
Everybody should have off-site backup of their files. For most people, the biggest threat is fire, but here in California, the most likely disaster you will encounter is an earthquake. Only a small fraction of houses will burn down, but everybody will experience the big earthquake that is sure to come in the next few decades. Of course, fortunately only a modest number of houses will collapse, but many computers will be knocked off desks or have things fall on them.
To deal with this, I've been keeping a copy of my data in my car -- encrypted of course. I park in my driveway, so nothing will fall on the car in a quake, and only a very large fire would have risk of spreading to the car, though it's certainly possible.
The two other options are network backup and truly remote backup. Network backup is great, but doesn't work for people who have many terabytes of storage. I came back from my latest trip with 300gb of new photos, and that would take a very long time to upload if I wanted network storage. In addition, many TB of network storage is somewhat expensive. Truly remote storage is great, but the logistics of visiting it regularly, bringing back disks for update and then taking them back again is too much for household and small business backup. In fact, even being diligent about going down to the car to get out the disk and update is difficult.
A possible answer -- a wireless backup box stored in the car. Today, there are many low-cost linux based NAS boxes and they mostly run on 12 volts. So you could easily make a box that goes into the car, plugs into power (many cars now have 12v jacks in the trunk or other access to that power) and wakes up every so often to see if it is on the home wifi, and triggers a backup sync, ideally in the night.
I have some dark secrets. Some I am not proud of, some that are fine by me but I know would be better kept private. So do you. So does everybody. And the more complex your life, the more "big" things you have done in the world, the bigger your mistakes and other secrets are. It is true for all of us. This is one of the reasons the world needs privacy to work.
For a few months, Uber has been testing their self-driving prototypes in Pittsburgh, giving rides to willing customers with a safety driver (or two) in the front seat monitoring the drive and ready to take over.
When Uber came to do this in San Francisco, starting this week, it was a good step to study new territory and new customers, but the real wrinkle was they decided not to get autonomous vehicle test permits from the California DMV. Google/Waymo and most others have such permits. Telsa has such permits but claims it never uses them.
Google's car project (known as "Chauffeur") really kickstarted the entire robocar revolution, and Google has put in more work, for longer, than anybody. The car was also the first project of what became Google "X" (or just "X" today under Alphabet. Inside X, a lab devoted to big audacious "moonshot" projects that affect the physical world as well as the digital, they have promoted the idea that projects should eventually "graduate," moving from being research to real commercial efforts.
On the lighter side, the other day I was daydreaming how a conversation about her family might go with a famous character... You'll probably guess who fairly early in, but it's pretty strange to read it like this:
Therapist: So, I'm told you have had some serious issues with your family? I'm here to help.
Patient: You might say that.
T: Did something painful happen recently?
P: My son murdered his father, my ex.
T: You son murdered his father! Is he in prison?
P: Not going to happen, he's too highly placed.
T: Why did he do it?
P: It's a long story. And a bit of a pattern.
T: Others in your family have done this?
P: You might say that. There are bad stories about everybody in my family.
T: Surely you had a good relationship with your mother?
P: I never met my mother. She died just as I was born.
T: How terrible. Death in childbirth is so rare in the modern era.
P: She didn't die in childbirth. I am told my father choked her.
T: Your father! So he went to jail?
Robocars are broadly going to be a huge boon for many people with disabilities, especially disabilities which make it difficult to drive or those that make it hard to get in and out of vehicles. Existing disability regulations and policies were written without robocars in mind, and there are probably some improvements that need to be made.