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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • The hero photo for the article shows a camera over a road that likely is likely running number plate recognition software…

    Honestly I’d be more worried about where that data is going than the tracking software in your car. They’ve got the most critical information (where did you drive and when), and they’ve got it for every car instead of just Honda drivers.

    This needs to be fixed with legislation, and it needs to be fixed actively. For example by getting rid of number plates entirely and replacing them with something like the transponders used in aircrafts and ships, but with an encrypted rolling code that only shares your data when authorised to do so (by the owner of the vehicle).

    Apple “Find My” works like that… your location is encrypted, and it’s uploaded without any identifying information. When the user brings up a map looking for their keys, that’s the only time encryption keys are handed over allowing the already stored information to be accessed. The car version of that could be police asking you at every traffic stop to hit a button on your dashboard that unlocks your registration/insurance details so they can run a quick check against their outstanding warrant/etc database.




  • you can’t ignore basic laws of the universe that oil is a finite resource

    TLDR - oil might be a finite resource but gasoline is not oil and it can be renewable. But it’s also a rapidly shrinking market.

    The stuff can literally be grown on trees. It’s cheaper to pump it out of the ground, but it’s actually not much cheaper. Fuel from plants, which we farm in bulk for human consumption, can absolutely be used to create gasoline. It’s also net-zero — because the plant takes carbon out of the atmosphere to create the oil and then it’s simply returned to the atmosphere when your burn it.

    Most gasoline in the USA contains at least 10% biofuel, and some is up to 85%. The latter requires an engine tuned to run on it, however it’s possible (and is an area of active research) if you’re willing to spend a bit more money to manufacture 100% pure biofuel that can run on unmodified engines. Porsche in particular has started selling a biofuel that is specifically designed to run on classic cars that were manufactured decades ago. They plan to produce something like a million gallons a month of the stuff, and it will work in basically any car. And if you have a classic car (designed for gasoline that contained lead) then it will work better than the fossil fuel you can buy at a gas station

    The thing is though, battery powered vehicles are way cheaper than doing any of that. And if you really need a fuel based approach (e.g. batteries are just too heavy for large aircraft), then Hydrogen is a better option than any biofuel.

    So - while gasoline can technically be environmentally friendly and is a usable source of energy for the foreseeable future, in reality it’s destined to follow horse drawn carriages and steam engines, a technology some people only use for their own personally enjoyment or to preserve our history.


  • Everything-but-Windows?

    No. Any device that implements a certain DHCP feature is vulnerable. Linux doesn’t support it, because most Linux systems don’t even use DHCP at all let alone this edge case feature. And Android doesn’t support it because it inherited the Linux network stack.

    I would bet some Linux systems are vulnerable, just not with the standard network packages installed. If you’re issued a Linux laptop for work, wouldn’t be surprised if it has a package that enables this feature. It essentially gives sysadmins more control over how packets are routed for every computer on the LAN.



  • need to be somewhat close to important population areas

    They really don’t. I live in regional Australia - the nearest data center is 1300 miles away. It’s perfectly fine. I work in tech and we had a small data center (50 servers) in our office with a data center grade fibre link - got rid of it because it was a waste of money. Even comparing 1300 miles of latency to 20 feet of latency wasn’t worth it.

    To be clear, having 0.1ms of latency was noticeable for some things. But nothing that really matters. And certainly not AI where you’re often waiting 5 seconds or even a full minute.


  • Yeah I call bullshit on that. I get why they’re investing money in it, but this is a moonshot and I’m sure they don’t expect it to succeed.

    These data centers can be built almost anywhere in the world. And there are places with very predictable weather patterns making solar/wind/hydro/etc extremely cheap compared to nuclear.

    Nuclear power is so expensive, that it makes far more sense to build an entire solar farm and an entire wind farm, both capable of providing enough power to run the data center on their own in overcast conditions or moderate wind.

    If you pick a good location, that’s lkely to work out to running off your own power 95% of the time and selling power to the grid something like 75% of the time. The 5% when you can’t run off your own power… no wind at night is rare in a good location and almost unheard of in thick cloud cover, well you’d just draw power from the grid. Power produced by other data centers that are producing excess solar or wind power right now.

    In the extremely rare disruption where power wouldn’t be available even from the grid… then you just shift your workload to another continent for an hour or so. Hardly anyone would notice an extra tenth of a second of latency.

    Maybe I’m wrong and nuclear power will be 10x cheaper one day. But so far it’s heading the other direction, about 10x more expensive than it was just a decade ago, thanks to incidents like Fukushima and that tiny radioactive capsule lost in Western Australia proving current nuclear safety standards, even in some of the safest countries in the world, are just not good enough. Forcing the industry to take additional measures (additional costs) going forward.


  • the google cars few years ago had the boot occupied by big computers

    But those were prototypes. These days you can get an NVIDIA H100 - several inches long, a few inches wide, one inch thick. It has 80GB of memory running at 3.5TB/s and 26 teraflops of compute (for comparison, Tesla autopilot runs on a 2 teraflop GPU).

    The H100 is designed to be run in clusters, with eight GPUs on a single server, but I don’t think you’d need that much compute. You’d have two or maybe three servers, with one GPU each, and they’d be doing the same workload (for redundancy).

    They’re not cheap… you couldn’t afford to put one in a Tesla that only drives 1 or 2 hours a day. But a car/truck that drives 20 hours a day? Yeah that’s affordable.


  • inspect the inside and outside of the truck before and after each trip.

    This could easily be a full time job for a team of people who working an ordinary 9-5 job inspecting one truck after another all day, basically the way taxis and other car fleets are maintained.

    I’d argue that’s an improvement over driving a truck. Truck mechanics are paid slightly better than truck drivers, and they work far better hours.

    Many of them can fix blown tire or a failed spark plug

    Trucks have 18 wheels. A tire doesn’t have to be fixed immediately. And I can’t remember the last time I encountered a failed spark plug… but even if it were to happen one cylinder being out of action will just reduce your horsepower by 12%. You’d fix it after delivering the cargo.

    But again, roadside mechanics are a thing. And they’re paid even better than workshop mechanics.

    deter theft and vandalism by often sleeping in the truck

    Human truck drivers are only allowed to drive 60 hours a week. Which means for at least 108 hours a week, the truck is parked somewhere. A self driving truck would have no such limit, and would almost always park at a safe location.


  • abhibeckert@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world*deleted by creator*
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    11 months ago

    Here in Australia it’s standard practice to use “how much profit did you make” as the basis for a fine against a corporation.

    Except we normally multiply that number by 3x or 5x in order to make it properly punitive.

    The upside is companies tend to obey the law. The downside is every now and then an honest mistake ends in bankruptcy. And in fact, most people fined are making a mistake, because why would any corporation take on that much risk intentionally?

    I’m OK with all the fines being a bit unfair. If you’re incompetent then GTFO of the market and allow someone who does a better job to replace you.