UBS Is Using Ethereum Technology To Soften The Impact Of MiFid II

After devising blockchain-based systems to help facilitate equity and bond trading (remember Goldman’s cryptocoin?) as well as derivatives clearing, some of the leading banks in the blockchain space are banding together to build a system that they hope will help banks streamline another essential function: Compliance.

According to CoinDesk, UBS is leading an Ethereum-based project designed to make it easier for banks to reconcile a wide range of data about their counterparties. Barclays, Credit Suisse, KBC, SIX and Thomson Reuters have also signed on to the project. The project is meant to soften the impact of MiFid II, a set of new European banking regulations that will go live shortly after New Year’s.

Traditionally, regulated firms use what are called "legal entity identifiers" that are stored in a global data system to execute transactions on behalf of clients, even if those clients themselves don"t have one of the codes. But as part of a sweeping regulatory change called the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II, scheduled to go live in the EU on Jan. 3, 2018, all eligible legal entities will be required to have and use these codes.

 

Instead of mandating that each of these institutions perform these checks independently, though, the banks built Madrec to mutualize much of the effort in a potentially industry-wide reconciliation process hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Peter Stephens, the head of UBS’s blockchain research and development efforts, explained how the system was designed, and to what end. Surprisingly, out of the many blockchain or distributed ledger projects that UBS is involved with (R3, Hyperledger etc.), Stephens said he expects the compliance project to be the first to go live.

Built over a six-month period, the platform evolved into a smart contract-powered network designed to integrate with identifiers endorsed by The Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC) and others. The reconciliation of the LEI reference data includes industry classification and information from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

 

Instead of each company checking the information independently, and reconciling the results periodically, the blockchain smart contracts will ensure accuracy in almost real-time.

 

To do this, the anonymized reference data is hashed to the Ethereum blockchain, while the source data itself remains within the institution. The smart contracts then reconcile the data, letting users quickly identify anomalies and reconcile them.

 

Since every eligible entity will be held to those same standards, Stephens argues that helping one another ensure the accuracy of their work will only positively impact their respective bottom lines, leaving room for competition elsewhere.

UBS is hardly the only major European bank that’s investing heavily in blockchain technology. In a presentation obtained by CoinDesk, Christian Nolting, also the bank’s global head of wealth, and Marcus Muller, global head of the CIO office, explained digital currencies and blockchain to their fellow bankers.

In the presentation, the bankers asserted that the  “opportunities associated with blockchain technologies are huge,” and could be fully put into practice within the next few years.

And in what"s possibly one of most grandiose predictions about blockchain"s impact on the global economy, the bankers predicted that roughly 10% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) would be tracked or otherwise "regulated" by a blockchain by 2027.

Read the presentation in its entirety below:

 

Cio Insights Reflections - Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains - Emea - Client Ready by zerohedge on Scribd

 

New York City Processed a Fake Property Deed. THIS Innovative Country Won’t Have that Problem.

Via The Daily Bell

Imagine having the power to declare something legitimate with the stroke of a pen, the press of a stamp, or the enter button on your keyboard.

The government has that power. But it is part of the magical myth of government legitimacy. That is the main service government provides: legitimacy.

It can make stealing legitimate. It can make kidnapping legitimate. It can make assassinations, genocides, and wars legitimate.

And the government can also make housing deeds legitimate. They do the official processing to make sure that everything is in order. In their sacred temple of city hall, they bless the official papers with holy stamps, and all is right.

Except when it’s not.

New York City approved fraudulent papers which allowed a man to “officially” steal a woman’s house.

The forged deed was homemade, but the city government still processed it. They said stopping the fake deed from being processed would have been like finding a needle in a haystack. It sounds pretty easy to steal someone’s property with forged documents using the government’s system of verification.

After years of effort, the woman, Jennifer Merin, was finally able to hold the man accountable. He is now serving a year in prison.

But holding the city accountable is another story.

Merin, 74, had sued the city for not catching the forgery when the paperwork was first filed, but lost on appeal when the court backed a judge who said she couldn’t prove the city was negligent.

The feisty homeowner is fuming and has vowed to fight the decision.

“I find it absolutely astonishing and sickening that the city that gave away my property without due process by registering an obviously fraudulent deed, while it was still charging me for taxes on that property and water usage on that property, is now insisting that it has no accountability for those actions,” Merin told the Daily News.

Big governments are a lot like big corporations in some ways. They are dinosaurs. They can not maneuver and change with the times. In business, these megacorporations usually end up being upset by small startups with innovative business models.

And the same could happen with government.

The country of Georgia has less than half the population of New York City. Much like Estonia, and other small countries, Georgia is embracing technology and innovation in its governing structure.

This year, Georgia became the first country to use the blockchain for property transactions.

In April last year, the government and bitcoin hardware and software firm Bitfury Grouplaunched a project to register land titles via a private blockchain, which is a tamper-proof ledger, and then to make those transactions verifiable using bitcoin’s blockchain, which is public…

In a blockchain-based ledger, records are time-stamped, as are subsequent changes to those records. This would allow people interested in a specific property to see and verify the date of past transactions.

Additionally, data on blockchains can be made private or public. In this case, the details of the real estate transactions are placed on a private blockchain network run by known computers, and then, in order for citizens to verify the authenticity of certificates, that data can be turned into a cryptographic “hash” that’s made public on the bitcoin blockchain which is run by thousands of computers worldwide. The hash is a type of digital fingerprint that enables anyone to verify that the data matches what’s on the blockchain without seeing the data itself.

Finally, blockchain technology brings security to real estate transactions because there’s no central point of failure. The ledger is distributed among many computers, so a would-be hacker would need to simultaneously attack at least 51% of the network in order to fraudulently alter records.

Whether or not you believe Bitcoin is a real currency or a big bubble, the underlying technology is legitimate.

The blockchain is legitimate because it hosts independently verifiable information. It is legitimate because it cannot be tampered with, and holds a permanent record of transactions. It is legitimate because it is decentralized, and can be used by individuals without trusting in government competence.

Blockchain legitimacy has nothing to do with the myth of magical government action. And that is why its future is bright.

Amazon Awarded Patent For "Self-Destructing Drones"

Amazon has just been granted patent number 9,828,097 for drone technology that allows the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to self-destruct in a sequence in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The abstract of the patent describes the process as “directed fragmentation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)”, which basically means the craft will strategically disassemble itself in the air during an emergency.

The patent describes how an onboard computer called the “fragmentation controller” would override the traditional flight systems in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The computer would then quickly analyze the future flight path, taking in calculations for weather conditions and terrain, before initiating a “fragmentation sequence.”

Amazon provides an illustration of the self-destructing drone in motion dropping the heaviest components of the craft on a tree and a body of water.

The abstract of the patent reads:

Directed fragmentation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is described. In one embodiment, the UAV includes various components, such one or more motors, batteries, sensors, a housing, casing or shell, and a payload for delivery.

 

Additionally, the UAV includes a flight controller and a fragmentation controller. The flight controller determines a flight path and controls a flight operation of the UAV. During the flight operation, the fragmentation controller develops a fragmentation sequence for one or more of the components based on the flight path, the flight conditions, and terrain topology information, among other factors.

 

The fragmentation controller can also detect a disruption in the flight operation of the UAV and, in response, direct fragmentation of one or more of the components apart from the UAV. In that way, a controlled, directed fragmentation of the UAV can be accomplished upon any disruption to the flight operation of the UAV.  

The order in which components are discharged from the craft could be based on their value, said the patent. The process of detachment is said to use “springs, small explosive charges, compressed gas charges, or similar mechanisms”.  Even though Amazon has been granted the patent, it doesn’t make the development of a self-destructing drone inevitable.

According to The Verge, the company has applied for various patents including: “parachutes built into shipping labels, drone beehives for distribution in big cities, and drone-carrying blimps.” Further, the article believes Amazon’s style is to “aggressively throw ideas at the wall” in the form of patents and see what sticks.

Nevertheless, all these wild and wonderful inventions have yet to be approved by government regulators, thus making it a pipeline for now.

Perhaps in a preview of things to come, Amazon delivery drones self-destructing in the sky might not be the best idea, as per the video below:

Army Tests New "AI-Controlled-Exoskeleton" Super-Soldier

Lockheed Martin’s Fortis Knee Stress Release Device (K-SRD) – an AI controlled exoskeleton is designed to turn U.S. soldiers into super-machines. The Army is currently testing the technology at Fort A.P. Hill running it through normal tasks of combat infantry– in order to see if productivity increase.

The Fortis exoskeleton, which weighs 85-pounds, looks like a piece of tech from Iron Man’s suit, works with AI to analyze and replicate individual walk patterns, provide additional torque, and add more power to combat infantry personnel. Attached to the exoskeleton are independent actuators, motors and lightweight conformal structures, powered by a 3-pound lithium ion battery that allows soldiers to complete tasks while expending less energy.

According to Scout.com,

It is built with a conformal upper structure that works on a belt attached to the waist.

 

The belt connects with flexible hip sensors throughout the systems. These sensors tell the computer where the soldier is in space along with the speed and velocity of the movements.

Keith Maxwell, senior program manager, exoskeleton technology, Lockheed Martin said, “we’ve had this on some of the Army’s elite forces, and they were able to run with high agility carrying full loads. We were showing a decrease in the metabolic cost of transport, the measure of how much energy is required to climb uphill.”

The technology is designed to help soldiers, run, maneuver, carry injured comrades and perform a wide range of combat tasks, while exerting minimal energy said Scout.com. Engineers report that AI systems working in sync with motors on the exoskeleton can reduce about nine percent energy per task.

The machine “knows what you are trying to do when you are trying to do it,” Maxwell said. 

Just yesterday, we explained how self-driving cars decide who lives and dies indicating AI is starting to have a much larger presence in human decision making.

A few weeks ago, we reported on Ford - wrapping its workers in exoskeleton suits (Non-AI) to improve worker productivity, as the company recognizes the ugly demographic shift in the western hemisphere will produce lower productivity. The push for the exoskeleton through corporations and government points to a transhumanist approach to evolve the human race through technology, with human-beings currently hitting physical and mental limitations.

You may not already know it, but the transhumanist agenda to condition the American people in the acceptance of merging humans and technology is well underway in the media.

A recent, independently-funded study from University of Michigan’s Human Neuromechanics Laboratory found the exoskeleton significantly improved mobility of the test subjects. International Business Times provides a brief overview of the study, 

four trained experts wore the Fortis exoskeleton and carried as much as 40 pounds (around 18kg) of weight on their backs while walking on a treadmill inclined at 15 degrees.

 

The subjects kept varying their speeds in order to demonstrate real-life situations, which could sometimes require troops to walk fast or run over rough terrains. They also performed the same physically-demanding task without any gear.

 

Ultimately, the results of the test showed significant differences between both scenarios. When wearing the exoskeleton, participants conserved energy and witnessed a significant reduction in exhaustion, while without it, they were quick to suffer from fatigue.

In a preview of things to come, Lockheed Martin’s AI controlled exoskeleton identifies the transhumanist trend of evolving the human race through technology. This is not science fiction, as  it’s already happening today in corporations and government who are actively testing wearable robots for practical applications. At first, it seemed great, using AI exoskeletons to improve productivity, but what happens when AI becomes self aware? We already seen this story before– just rewatch The Terminator.

Cash-Hemorrhaging Uber Announces Plans To Drop $1 Billion On Driverless Volvos

Earlier this summer we noted Uber"s staggering 2Q cash burn of $600 million which equates to roughly $7 million in net cash outflows every single day.  The staggering, and consistently growing, cash burn figures resulted in several mutual funds announcing they would slash their valuations of the struggling rideshare company by up to 15%. 

Of course, if cash burn was a concern before for Uber investors before then they should probably take note of the company"s newly announced decision to drop roughly $1 billion on driverless Volvos.  According to Bloomberg, Uber has just penned a deal to pick up 24,000 brand new Volvo XC90"s in their push to flood the U.S. market with self-driving taxis.

Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to buy 24,000 sport utility vehicles from Sweden’s Volvo Cars to form a fleet of driverless autos, Bloomberg News reports.

 

The XC90s, priced from $46,900 at U.S. dealers, will be delivered between 2019 and 2021 in the first commercial purchase by a ride-hailing provider, Volvo said in a statement Monday. San Francisco-based Uber will add its own sensors and software to permit pilot-less driving.

 

“This new agreement puts us on a path toward mass-produced, self-driving vehicles at scale,” Jeff Miller, Uber’s head of auto alliances, told Bloomberg News. “The more people working on the problem, we’ll get there faster and with better, safer, more reliable systems.”

 

“The automotive industry is being disrupted by technology and Volvo Cars chooses to be an active part of that disruption,” Chief Executive Officer Hakan Samuelsson said. “It’s a new market that’s emerging and we’re the first to be delivering into that segment.”

Of course, as we"ve pointed out multiple times before, to the extent the technology works consistently, avoiding the nasty consequences of death and mayhem in the event of failure, autonomous vehicles are worth big money to Uber and consumers...though not so much for the automotive OEMs (see "Ford Announces Plans To Self-Destruct Starting In 2021").  As we"ve pointed out, the cost of paying drivers is a substantial portion of the roughly $1.00 per mile charge paid by Uber riders.  To the extent that cost can be removed from the equation then fares charged by companies like Uber will decline materially.

Unfortunately, for the auto OEMs the story is the exact opposite.  In theory, truly autonomous cars could result in substantial increases in passenger car utilization rates and, therefore, declines in annual car sales.  But apparently, Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson isn"t worried (yes, we can sense the pure optimism in the quote below):

“That could be seen as a threat,” says Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson. “We see it as an opportunity.”

But still, even if the technology works, the question remains how quickly consumers will adopt it, if at all. Certainly there certainly has been no shortage of videos hitting Youtube lately of driverless cars plowing through red lights and getting into accidents...which seems less than ideal.

Goldman: Automated Trucks To Cost 300k Jobs Per Year

Authored by Jon LeSage via OilPrice.com,

While Google’s Waymo company has taken center stage for bringing self-driving cars to roads, autonomous trucking may make it to the mainstream first. 

Silicon Valley startups, technologists, and venture capitalists see great potential in the technology - even more than most traditional trucking companies are supporting.

For months, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has put out teasers that the electric carmaker will soon reveal an electric semi-truck with autonomous capabilities. That announcement may take place this week, on November 16.

Embark, a Silicon Valley start-up, is scheduled to release details next week on its self-driving technology for trucking. The automated system has tested in partnership with truck-leasing company Ryder and Electrolux, an appliance manufacturer. Trial runs are exploring the potential of transporting trailers to Electrolux’s California warehouses with autonomous trucks.

CB Insight, which tracks venture capital, reports that companies will place about $1 billion in commercial truck autonomous systems this year, 10 times the level of spending three years ago.

The $700 billion trucking industry continues to be an integral part of the U.S. economy, and that of other economic giants and developing countries around the world. With more manufacturing happening overseas in places like China, trucking is part of making sure everything from automobiles to packaged food products make it to warehouses and end users on time.

Trucking companies and giants who invest heavily in logistics—like Amazon and Walmart—see great potential in cutting costs and speeding up delivery times. That will come via cutting labor costs when truck drivers no longer become necessary, and by extending the hours that commercial trucks can be kept in operation.

Companies also believe that traffic accidents will be reduced when autonomous vehicles become widely adopted for passenger and cargo transport.

Insurance premiums are expected to go down, along with collision repair costs. Autonomous driving is expected to be much safer than what’s delivered by human drivers.

Waymo and other tech companies and automakers currently testing out self-driving cars are preparing to play a part in developing cities around the world. Government officials, employers, and residents in these cities hope that self-driving cars will eventually reduce the number of cars on the streets and make them safer with less car crashes.

Self-driving cars face tougher challenges navigating through crowded, chaotic city streets—and face even tougher regulatory hurdles to cross. Cargo trucks spend most of their time traveling down broad, open highways with much less traffic.

There’s also the practicality of several trucks “platooning” together on highways that simplifying the equation over companies like Waymo dealing with crowded cities and higher risk for collisions.

Volvo Trucks sees great potential in utilizing platooning systems for cost savings and achieving more efficiency in freight hauling. One autonomous truck can lead a platoon with two or more trucks following close behind, taking advantage of the aerodynamic efficiency.

The company successfully demonstrated on-highway truck platooning in California during March 2017. An alliance was set up for the trial run with Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) at the University of California, Berkeley, to test three Volvo VNL 670 model tractors hauling cargo containers at the Los Angeles Port complex and along Interstate 110.

Volvo sees opportunities in achieving fuel savings, improving highway safety, and increasing the capacity of transportation systems.

Daimler AG’s truck division is following a similar path, announcing in September that it will test platooning technology on U.S. roads. The German company’s U.S. division gained approval from Oregon’s transportation regulatory agency after completing a successful trial run in the state.

US Xpress, one of the largest trucking companies in the U.S., added autonomous braking and collision-avoidance systems to its 7,000-plus truck fleet. Next, the company will add automated lane steering for deployment within the next three years.

The 7,000-plus trucks owned by US Xpress, one of the nation’s largest trucking companies, were updated with autonomous braking and collision-avoidance systems. Max Fuller, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, plans to upgrade them to have automated lane steering in three years.

“I’m putting building blocks into my trucks that each year gets us closer and closer,” said Max Fuller, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman.

Another Silicon Valley company, Peloton Technology, is developing a platooning system that will make it easier for trucks to travel within a platoon. That means they’ll save large volumes of gasoline and diesel typically consumed by work trucks.

Peloton’s system uses cameras, sensors, and networking equipment for trucks to communicate with each other. It can avoid disasters such as a second truck ramming into the first after a sudden stop.

Goldman Sachs economists predicted that trucking will shed about 300,000 jobs per year starting in about 25 years. That may begin sooner than anticipated if automated trucking clears government hurdles and technology innovations—and becomes widely adopted by trucking companies.

"Fully Self-Driving Cars Are Here" - Waymo To Begin Testing Driver-Free Autonomous Taxis In Phoenix

From here on out, if you see a car without a driver meandering around suburban Phoenix, don’t be alarmed: It’s just Google"s Waymo division testing its new driverless taxis - the first of their kind to be tested on US roads without the supervision of a “safety driver."

Wayno has revealed that - effective immediately - it will begin testing the driverless taxis - referred to in technologist parlance as a “level 5” driverless vehicle - in Chandler, Arizona. Thew news represents an important milestone that establishes Waymo as the leader in automated driving technology. Waymo CEO John Krafcik made the announcement Tuesday during in a speech at a web summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

“We want the experience of traveling with Waymo to be routine, so you want to use our driver for your everyday needs,” John Krafcik, Waymo’s chief executive officer, said at the Web Summit conference in Portugal. “Fully self-driving cars are here."

According to Ars Technica, for the last year, Waymo has offered free taxi rides to ordinary people who live near the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Until recently, the company"s modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans had a Waymo employee in the driver"s seat ready to take control if the car malfunctioned.

One reason the company is so confident in its techonology, as Bloomberg points out, is the Alphabet subsidiary has racked up more autonomous test miles on roads than others developing the tech, including Ford Motor Co., General Motors’ Cruise Automation unit and Uber. However, Google’s rivals have certain advantages that may ultimately help them beat Waymo to market. For example, Uber has a massive customer network that depends on its drivers for rides. And Ford and GM have the manufacturing capabilities to crank out new units with very little delay.

And by the looks of it, Waymo is gearing up to challenge Uber by using its service to begin offering rides. Krafcik, a former Ford executive, said that an on-demand service would be the first commercial use case for Waymo. During his appearance at the summit in Lisbon, he also discussed how the vehicles may replace personal car ownership, a nightmare scenario for OEMs like Ford and GM.

“Because you’re accessing vehicles rather than owning, in the future, you could choose from an entire fleet of vehicle options that are tailored to each trip you want to make,” Krafcik said, according to a transcript of his remarks. People could claim the cars for a day, a week “or even longer,” he said. He ticked off the ways driverless cars could be redesigned if the vehicle didn’t need space for a driver: to ferry groceries, as a “personal dining room” or for naps.

Waymo began testing its taxi service in Phoenix back in April. It’s progress shows how Google has played to its strengths by building the best technology available. However, the question of scalability still remains.

As the New York Times points out, driverless cars are regulated by a patchwork of state laws. Arizona, like many states, has no restrictions against operating an autonomous vehicle without a person in the driver’s seat. On the other hand, California, where Waymo is headquartered, requires any self-driving car to have a safety driver sitting in the front.

However, just because Waymo can legally test these cars, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been optimized for safety. In December, Waymo published a report for California’s Department of Motor Vehicles about how frequently its driverless cars “disengaged” because of a system failure or safety risk and forcing a human driver to take over. In the report, Waymo said this happened once every 5,000 miles the cars drove in 2016, compared with once every 1,250 miles in 2015. While that’s certainly an improvement, these types of incidents are hardly rare.

So, the question is, how will Waymo handle these situations when they inevitably start cropping up (indeed, if they haven’t already)? We imagine given all the publicity around several high profile cases of deadly car accidents involving Tesla’s autopilot software, that the company has planned for these risks - or at least, we hope they have.

And we’re not the only ones. Consumer Watchdog, a frequent critic of Alphabet, said that data demonstrated that the cars are not ready to drive without any human intervention and that Waymo was following the Silicon Valley model of “beta testing” a new technology on the public - to a potentially dangerous end.

“It’s the wrong approach when you’re dealing with self-driving cars,” said John M. Simpson, a director at Consumer Watchdog. “When things go wrong with a robot car, you kill people."

To be sure, researchers believe self-driving cars can be safer than cars operated by human drivers because they are programmed to adhere strictly to traffic laws, they don’t get distracted, and they don’t take unnecessary risks.

But that reality is a long way off.

Then again, who are we - the public - to stand in the way of progress? The tech gods of Silicon Valley have spoken, and they’ve said we will have autonomous vehicles commercially available by 2025 - which is ludicrously soon, considering where the technology is right now. Because the reality is this technology needs to function flawlessly by the time it’s put in the hands of the consumer.

Of course, regardless of the cost in lives and damage, once the technology is ready, the world will understand that it was all worth it.

In a bit about driverless cars, Stephen Colbert once joked that they’re “a high tech alternative to dropping a brick on the gas peddle and jumping in the back seat.”

Given Waymo’s safety record. That bit might prove eerily prescient.
 

Introducing Cryonics: Putting Death On Ice

There is a potent thread winding its way through generations of human culture. From Ancient Egyptian rituals to Kurzweil’s Singularity, many paths have sprung up leading to the same elusive destination: immortality.

Today, as Visual Capitalist"s Nick Routely notes, the concept is as popular as it’s ever been, and technological advances are giving people hope that immortality, or at very least radical life extension, may be within reach. Is modern technology advanced enough to give people a second chance through cryonics?

Today’s infographic, courtesy of Futurism, tackles our growing fascination with putting death on ice.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY

Robert C. W. Ettinger’s seminal work, The Prospect Of Immortality, detailed many of the scientific, moral, and economic implications of cryogenically freezing humans for later reanimation. It was after that book was published in 1962 that the idea of freezing one’s body after death began to take hold.

One of the most pressing questions is, even if we’re able to revive a person who has been cryogenically preserved, will the person’s memories and personality remain intact? Ettinger posits that long-term memory is stored in the brain as a long-lasting structural modification. Basically, those memories will remain, even if the brain’s “power is turned off”.

DESCENDING INTO THE DEEP-FREEZE

There are three main steps in the cryogenic process:

1) Immediately after a patient dies, the body is cooled with ice packs and transported to the freezing location.

 

2) Next, blood is drained from the patient’s body and replaced with a cryoprotectant (basically the same antifreeze solution used to transport organs destined for transplant).

 

3) Finally, once the body arrives at the cryonic preservation facility, the body is cooled to -196ºC (-320.8ºF) over the course of two weeks. Bodies are generally stored upside-down in a tank of liquid nitrogen.

THE ECONOMICS OF CRYOPRESERVATION

At prices ranging from about $30,000 to $200,000, cryopreservation may sound like an option reserved for the wealthy, but many people fund the procedure by naming a cryonics company as the primary benefactor of their life insurance policy. Meanwhile, in the event of a death that doesn’t allow for preservation of the body, the money goes to secondary beneficiaries.

Even if we do eventually find a way to reanimate frozen humans, another important consideration is how those people would take care of themselves financially. That’s where a cryonics or personal revival trust comes into play. A twist on a traditional dynastic trust, this arrangement ensures that there are funds to cover costs of the cryopreservation, as well as ensure the grantor would have assets when they’re unthawed. Of course, there are risks involved beyond the slim possibility of reanimation. The legal code in hundreds of years could be vastly different than today.

If you created a trust for specific purposes in 1711, it is unlikely it would function in the same way today.

 

– Kris Knaplund, Law Professor, Pepperdine University

COLD HUMANS, HOT MARKET

At last count, there are already 346 people in the deep freeze, with thousands more on the waiting list. As technology improves, those numbers are sure to continue rising.

Time will tell whether cryonically preserved people are able to cheat death. In the meantime? The cryonics industry is alive and well.

"He's Full Of Crap": GM Exec Slams Musk As Car War Breaks Out

Elon Musk says the upcoming Tesla Model 3 has the hardware to enable full-self driving capability. But GM’s self-driving car czar thinks he’s full of crap.

GM"s director of autonomous vehicle integration Scott Miller told a group of Australian journalists in Detroit on Thursday that Musk was “full of crap”, explaining that a “level 5” – that is, fully autonomous – vehicle would require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sensors. Even for a company like Tesla, which investors have practically encouraged to burn through large sums of cash, offering such an advanced vehicle for between $30,000 and $50,000 would be an impossibility.

"I think he"s full of crap," Mr Miller said. "To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous car [full self-driving] with cameras and radar, I don"t know how you do that."

Tesla and a handful of other car companies are testing autopilot in Australia, according to the Leader.

The company is planning to price the Model 3, which just started rolling off the production line at Tesla’s California factory, at $50,000 in Australia. The car reportedly incorporates cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors for self-driving.

However, as the Leader points out, the Model 3 won’t be able to use Tesla’s controversial autopilot feature until the company’s engineers perfect the software. A Tesla driver in Florida became the first person to die in an accident involving Autopilot. Eventually, the NHTSA ruled that Tesla wasn’t at fault in the crash. But since then, other customers have complained that they found the way in which autopilot was marketed to be misleading.

With this in mind, perhaps Musk should consider the consequences before exaggerating the functionality of a feature like autopilot.   

Despite Spike In Accidents, California Allows GM To Expand Self-Driving Car Fleet

California regulators have largely acquiesced to General Motors’ requests to expand its fleet of self-driving robot cars. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few, uh, bumps in the road for GM’s Cruise Automation division.

Reuters reported Thursday that the number of accidents involving GM’s self-driving cars has continued to climb, even as California and one powerful Senate committee have done everything in their power to hasten advances in the technology by allowing companies broad remit to increase the size of their fleets, while simultaneously green lighting a bill that would allow automakers to expand testing programs across the US.

To wit, GM’s self-driving cars were involved in 6 accidents during the month of September – a month where the company finished expanding its fleet of self-driving cars from around 30 or 40 cars to more than 100.

As the company increases the size of its test fleet, it has also reported more run-ins between its self-driving cars and human-operated vehicles and bicycles, telling California regulators its vehicles were involved in six minor crashes in the state in September.

“All our incidents this year were caused by the other vehicle,” said Rebecca Mark, spokeswoman for GM Cruise.

We’re not certain the unsuspecting cyclists, drivers and pedestrians who comprised the other party in many of these incidents would agree with GM"s characterization of events.

The company has been testing the automated cars on busy San Francisco streets as part of its effort to develop software capable of navigating congested and often chaotic urban environments, an effort that one might expect to be fraught with complications given that the slightest error on the car’s part can be easily amplified given the volume of traffic.

Ford and GM have been richly rewarded by investors for their pioneering efforts in the world of self-driving car technology (Wired, the tech bible, even published a story proclaiming that “Detroit Is Stomping Silicon Valley in the Self-Driving Car Race”). GM shares are up 17% this year.

However, California’s permissiveness has raised hackles with some vehicle safety groups, who claim the state is giving too much latitude to automakers.

In filings to California regulators, Cruise said the six accidents in the state last month involved other cars and a bicyclist hitting its test cars.

The accidents did not result in injuries or serious damage, according to the GM reports. In total, GM Cruise vehicles have been involved in 13 collisions reported to California regulators in 2017, while Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo vehicles have been involved in three crashes.

Last year, a Tesla owner died in a fatal crash while the company’s autopilot feature was engaged. Excuse us for being morbid, but much longer until a car with no driver is involved in a deadly crash?

And what will happen to GM’s share price when that happens?
 

How The Wall Street Journal Turns the Truth On its Head

Via The Daily Bell

And the award for most misleading headline goes to the Wall Street Journal.

What do you think an article entitled, Unlike Most Industries, Drone Makers and Operators Clamor for Federal Regulation, is all about?

If you guessed it is about drone makers and operators clamoring for more regulations, you are wrong.

Exactly the opposite is true. The drone industry is being stifled by overbearing regulation. Because of one size fits all federal regulations, all across America, it is almost impossible to use drones for commercial purposes.

That is why drone makers, operators and many of their would-be customers are bucking the governmentwide trend toward looser oversight. Additional regulations are their sole means of getting a green light for a much broader array of promising uses.

…these contrarian voices argue that swift federal action is essential for the technology to flourish.

They want a green light. Who put up the red light?

…the Federal Aviation Administration has given limited approvals for small, remotely piloted aircraft weighing up to 55 pounds.

With some exceptions, the initial package of rules permits operations only during daylight hours, up to an altitude of 400 feet and within sight of operators on the ground.

Clearly trying to get rid of those regulations is still trending towards looser oversight. The swift federal action they are clamoring for is to undo previous federal action!

The Wall Street Journal says drone operators see more federal regulations as the only way to get rid of tough federal regulations.

That’s like reporting that the marijuana industry needs federal regulations in order to grow. Marijuana growers see federal regulation as the only way to move their industry forward! Yes, because the government made their industry illegal!

A more honest assessment would say that drone operators would prefer a higher number of less stringent regulations, to a handful of all-encompassing terrible regulations.

While the FAA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies struggle with legal, technical and public safety challenges unlike any in the past, industry officials increasingly are frustrated. They worry that a prolonged regulatory stalemate threatens to stifle innovation, sacrifice potential American jobs and hand other countries the lead in evolving market segments.

The real story: federal regulations are so draconian that they are destroying an entire sector of business. People in the industry would likely prefer no regulations. That is clearly not a very likely reality, so instead, they prefer less strict regulations. The government is dragging its feet on repealing their old regulations and replacing them. Annoyed, people in the industry are putting pressure on the government to stop ruining their business.

The Wall Street Journal casts this as an industry excited to work with the government! They are just tickled pink to get more regulations, and that is why they are lobbying so hard!

It is absurd. Why are they framing this in a way that casts federal regulations as a solution when they are so clearly the problem?

It almost seems like the WSJ are trying to trick people into thinking more regulations mean more freedom.

What will people assume from this reputable news source if they only read the headline? It took some great journalist-gymnastics to frame an entire article about how regulations are stifling the drone industry as the drone industry being pro-regulation.

But this is the classic way that government operates.

They ban something, and then as they slowly loosen their restrictions, it seems like the government is handing out freedoms left and right.

A couple years ago gays across the country celebrated the Supreme Court decision which struck down gay marriage bans. The government was the only entity restricting them! And marriage wouldn’t even matter if the government didn’t give special privileges and tax incentives to married couples. The whole thing was a non-issue until the government made laws about marriage, and laws banning marriage, regulations about hospital visits, and regulations about financial partnerships.

It was the same thing with black slaves being freed. Then it was repeated with Jim Crow Laws. Is the government the great freer of slaves? No! The government simply reversed their own policy of giving legal protection to people to enslaved certain other people. Did the government give blacks more rights by repealing Jim Crow Laws? Nope! They simply undid the harm that was previously legally enforced.

Basically, all the “progress” society makes is simply undoing stupid things the government has implemented in the past. And they say we need government in order to move society forward. The only good thing government does is undo previous bad things the government has done!

Don’t get me wrong, it is great when the government reverses their terrible policies. But why are they given credit for moving society forward? All they do is reverse their own terrible policies!

Instead, the fact that governments so often have to undo their terrible laws and regulations should make us clamor for them to stop making them in the first place! We should be taking power away from the government to make sure they can never again legally protect slaveholders. We should be making sure the government cannot outlaw or incentivize certain types of consensual adult relationships.

Comparably, drones are a small issue. But the way the Wall Street Journal words the headline and makes their arguments is ridiculous.

Regulations are the problem, not the solution.

In a world where people can’t do their own thinking, the WSJ is handing them a thought pattern. Did you hear that more regulations are required in order to make drones more popular? Oh yes, if we want widespread drone usage, we need the government to regulate the hell out of the industry. Yay government! They are so progressive.

Don’t trust the media to give it to you straight. Even The Daily Bell should not be considered the final word on anything. We certainly hope to present a worthwhile perspective and useful information. But if an individual is not adding their own analysis they are better off not reading the news at all.

News can help you get information about the world outside your immediate knowledge. News can help give you another perspective to consider. It can provide intellectual exercise.

But it seems like too many people these days are simply taking in the unfiltered news–or headlines–as truth. The Wall Street Journal is a big respected name in news. But all they are doing with articles like this is serving up propaganda for the government.

Visualizing The Future Of Food

The urban population is exploding around the globe, and, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins explains below, yesterday’s food systems will soon be sub-optimal for many of the megacities swelling with tens of millions of people.

Further, issues like wasted food, poor working conditions, polluted ecosystems, mistreated animals, and greenhouse gases are just some of the concerns that people have about our current supply chains.

Today’s infographic from Futurism shows how food systems are evolving – and that the future of food depends on technologies that enable us to get more food out of fewer resources.

THE NEXT GEN OF FOOD SYSTEMS

Here are four technologies that may have a profound effect on how we eat in the future:

1. Automated Vertical Farms

It’s already clear that vertical farming is incredibly effective. By stacking farms on top of another and using automation, vertical farms can produce 100x more effectively per acre than conventional agricultural techniques.

They grow crops at twice the speed as usual, while using 40% less power, having 80% less food waste, and using 99% less water than outdoor fields. However, the problem for vertical farms is still cost – and it is not clear when they will be viable on a commercial basis.

2. Aquaponics

Another technology that has promise for the future of food is a unique combination of fish farming (aquaculture) with hydroponics.

In short, fish convert their food into nutrients that plants can absorb, while the plants clean the water for the fish. Compared to conventional farming, this technology uses about half of the water, while increasing the yield of the crops grown. As a bonus, it also can raise a significant amount of fish.

3. In Vitro Meats

Meat is costly and extremely resource intensive to produce. As just one example, to produce one pound of beef, it takes 1,847 gallons of water.

In vitro meats are one way to solve this. These self-replicating muscle tissue cultures are grown and fed nutrients in a broth, and bypass the need for having living animals altogether. Interestingly enough, market demand seems to be there: one recent study found that 70.6% of consumers are interested in trying lab grown beef.

4. Artificial Animal Products

One other route to get artificial meat is to use machine learning to grasp the complex chemistry and textures behind these products, and to find ways to replicate them. This has already been done for mayonnaise – and it’s in the works for eggs, milk, and cheese as well.

TASTING THE FUTURE OF FOOD

As these new technologies scale and hit markets, the future of food could change drastically. Many products will flop, but others will take a firm hold in our supply chains and become culturally acceptable and commercially viable. Certainly, food will be grown locally in massive skyscrapers, and there will be decent alternatives to be found for both meat or animal products in the market.

With the global population rising by more than a million people each week, finding and testing new solutions around food will be essential to make the most out of limited resources.

Uber CEO's Texts With Engineer Revealed: "Let's Start @faketesla...About Stupid Shit Elon Says"

If nothing else comes of Google suing their former autonomous driving engineer Anthony Levandowski (refresher: he"s the guy that split with 14,000 proprietary Google documents, used them to start a new self-driving tech company called Otto and then promptly sold it to Uber for $700 million), the following text messages exchanged between Levandowski and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, disclosed as part of the discovery process, will have been well worth the millions in legal fees. 

In one text from September 2016, Levandowski texted Kalanick to suggest that they should setup a fake twitter handle called "@faketesla" specifically to "give physics lessons about stupid shit Elon says..."  Per Recode:

"Yo! I"m back at 80%, super pumped... we"ve got to start calling Elon on his shit. I"m not on social media but let"s start "faketesla" and start give physics lessons about stupid shit Elon says like this: "we do not anticipate using lidar. Just to make it clear, lidar essentially is active photon generator in the visible spectrum – radar is active photon generation in essentially the radio spectrum. But lidar doesn’t penetrate intrusions so it does not penetrate rain, fog, dust and snow, whereas a radar does. Radar also bounces and lidar doesn’t bounce very well. You can’t do the “look in front of the car in front of you” thing. So I think the obvious thing is to use radar and not use lidar."

"The photons stop acting like photons at 77Ghz we at least need the geeks on our side and start calling the BS out. Any objections?"

Clearly Levandowski doesn"t subscribe to society"s widely observed texting guidelines which clearly mandate extreme brevity be utilized at all times...

But it didn"t end there.  In a series of text messages that clearly demonstrate an extreme obsession with Musk, Levandowski and Kalanick contemplate calling out Tesla on its safety record...

Watch first 45seconds... Tesla crash in January which implies Elon is lying about millions of miles without incident. We should have LDP on tesla just to catch all the crashes that are going on. Got this from ford who"s debating call him out on his shit

...and also seemingly sought out spies from within Musk"s management team...

“I"m still with the tesla guys and will try to get more info,” Levandowski texted Kalanick.

(Levandowski was at a dinner with 80 or so industry representatives and regulators, including Tesla’s former head of Autopilot, Sterling Anderson. Other attendees included Paul Hemmersbaugh from General Motors; Stefan Heck, CEO of auto tech startup Nauto; and James Kuffner of the Toyota Research Institute.)

Of course, Levandowski and Kalanick also kept close tabs on Google"s progress in the self-driving car space and at one point even discussed a meeting between Kalanick and the head of Google"s self-driving arm, Waymo.

Separately, Kalanick and Levandowski talked about someone they refer to as “JK.” Kalanick said JK agreed to meet him and Levandowski said to ask him about Waze and self-driving cars. Uber could not provide clarity on who JK is, but based on context, it appears they are referring to John Krafcik, the CEO of Alphabet’s self-driving arm Waymo.

The conversation occurred a few months before Uber announced it was acquiring Otto in August 2016, but three months after Levandowski left Alphabet and founded Otto.

With that, tune in next week for an all new episode of Silicon Valley...

LAPD Prepares To Unleash Drones Amid Public Outcry

The LAPD first toyed with the idea of ramping up its public spying safety program with the introduction of drones back in May 2014.  At that time, the LAPD announced it had acquired two "unmanned aerial vehicles" as gifts from the Seattle Police Department, Draganflyer X6 aircraft to be exact, after a public outcry in Seattle grounded the controversial program.  Unfortunately, or perhaps not, LA"s drone efforts quickly met the same fate as Seattle"s.  Per the Los Angeles Times:

The LAPD’s dance with drones began in 2014, when the department received two Draganflyer X6 drones from police in Seattle — drones the Washington agency unloaded after heavy criticism from the public. Although the LAPD said it would deploy the drones for “narrow and prescribed uses,” civil liberties advocates questioned their use in even a limited fashion.

Less than a week after getting the drones, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said he would not fly the unmanned aircraft until the department had sought public feedback as well as approval from the Police Commission.

“I will not sacrifice public support for a piece of police equipment,” Beck said at the time.

The drones were then locked away in the office of the LAPD’s inspector general. Department officials said the move was a response to public perception and federal laws limiting use of the unmanned aircraft.

Now, some three years later, it seems that the LAPD is ready to give it"s mass public spying effort another try... 

On Tuesday, the LAPD will again wade into the heated debate, as department brass are slated to present details to the Police Commission about a possible pilot program for an “unmanned aerial system.”

The commission’s agenda said the pitch was for “limited tactical deployment” of a drone, but did not elaborate.

Earlier this year, L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell announced his agency’s plans to use a $10,000 drone to help deputies responding to arson scenes, suspected bombs and hostage situations. McDonnell said the drone would not be used in surveillance but could provide critical information from previously inaccessible vantage points.

But, while populations do tend to become more comfortable with technology over time, apparently 3 years hasn"t been enough time for the citizens of LA to decide they"re now willing to give up their civil liberties.

Before the meeting, roughly three dozen activists from various groups — including the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Black Lives Matter and Los Angeles Community Action Network — stood outside the LAPD’s downtown headquarters, denouncing the use of drones by police.

The Police Commission should “completely reject LAPD’s latest attempt to revive its drone program,” said Hamid Khan, founder of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an anti-surveillance group that frequently criticizes the LAPD.

”L.A. does not need further militarization by the LAPD,” said Paula Minor, an activist with Black Lives Matter.

Civil liberties advocates expressed concern over privacy as well as what they described as a lack of public input in the sheriff’s abrupt announcement. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition staged a protest blasting the department’s use of drones.

Of course, as the LA Times notes, drones are already used by some 350 municipal agencies around the country...though we would be intrigued to know whether or not the public was asked for their opinion on those programs before they were deployed...

Drones have been hailed by law enforcement across the country as a crucial technology that can help find missing hikers or monitor armed suspects without jeopardizing the safety of officers. But efforts to adopt the unmanned aircraft have frequently drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates for whom the devices stir Orwellian visions of inappropriate — or illegal — surveillance or fears of military-grade, weaponized drones patrolling the skies.

Almost 350 public safety departments in the U.S. have acquired drones, nearly half of them last year, according to a study Gettinger’s center published earlier this year. Many of those drones are no more advanced than those used by hobbyists, he said.

Some agencies have adopted the technology without much public reaction. Still, Gettinger said, skeptics have expressed apprehension not just about how police use drones today, but how they might use the technology in the future.

“We’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The systems are going to evolve, and that’s going to bring with them questions about how they’re going to be used.”

But we"re sure it"s fine, people in positions of power rarely abuse their power...

Iranian Drone Flies Within 100 Feet Of U.S. F-18 In Persian Gulf

While the US government is busy deciding how to tag and track the millions of drones flying over populated areas, potentially jeopardizing aircraft as they take off and land, the US military just had a close encounter in the Persian Gulf, where Reuters reports that an Iranian drone came within 100 feet of a U.S. Navy warplane as it prepared to land on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier off the coast of Iran in the Gulf. The officials said the drone forced the US aircraft to take evasive action.

As AP adds, the drone came within 100 feet below the aircraft and 200 feet to the side of the aircraft. The F/A-18 was in a landing pattern several thousand feet off the deck of the ship waiting to land.

The F/A-18 maneuvered repeatedly to avoid the Iranian QOM-1 drone. The drone did not appear to be armed.

The officials said the drone encounter was considered unsafe and
unprofessional. The US used an emergency radio frequency in the
immediate area to warn those operating the drone to back away. It did
eventually move off.

Since there is no rain over Bedminster, NJ today and Trump is out golfing, we will have to wait at least 3-5 hours before there is an official White House tweet response.

Secret Service Tests Security Drone For Use At Trump Properties

President Donald Trump’s frequent trips to his resort properties like Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey are forcing the Secret Service to find creative new ways to safeguard a president who is spending more time away from the White House than most of his predecessors.

In a document released Wednesday, the agency revealed that it plans to test a small tethered unmanned aircraft system during Trump"s visit this month to his New Jersey golf club, one of his “favorite weekend spots” where he is expected to stay for an extended period later this month. While the Secret Service shared only a handful of basic details about the drone, it said the test this weekend in New Jersey would determine its effectiveness in helping guard the president, according to Reuters.

A “tethered” drone operates using a microfilament tether that helps power the unmanned aircraft. It will also be equipped with electro-optical and infrared cameras to look for potential threats.

“The drone will fly autonomously at an altitude of 300 to 400 feet (90 to 133 meters), focusing on the outer perimeter of the protection zone around the golf club. Any images or video recorded will be overwritten within 30 days or become part of a law enforcement investigation.”

In the past, the Secret Service has relied on manned aircraft provided by local, state and federal governments, but said they’re often “limited in scope, too loud and cannot provide consistent coverage” in the ways that a drone can.

Given that the aircraft will be deployed in a densely populated New Jersey suburb, privacy of area residents is something the agency needs to consider.

“The agency said the drone may be within range of private residences, which could lead to unintentional privacy violations. It will notify people at the club that the premises are being monitored by a drone.”

“The Secret Service said there is a risk that some people in range of drones may not be aware of their presence.”

According to Reuters, the government estimates that by 2021, the commercial drone fleet will increase tenfold to about 442,000. Regulations passed by the FAA during the Obama administration opened the skies to low-level small drones for education, research and routine commercial use. The Trump administration is considering expanding drone use for deliveries and other purposes where the aircraft would fly beyond the sight of the operator.

The Massachusetts State Police used a tethered drone to provide security during the Boston Marathon this year.
 

Why the Government Hates Your Car

Via The Daily Bell

How could The Daily Bell be so clueless and naive about autonomous vehicles? A lot of you pointed out in the comments of a recent article called 5 Huge Benefits of Self Driving Cars, that the government and their media are in favor of anything that takes control away from the individual.

You raised a lot of good points. Among them was a strong theme that since we know the government spies on us, self-driving cars will just add to their knowledge of our whereabouts.

Sure, police won’t be able to pull us over, but they could have the car drive us directly to jail, as one commenter put it.

You are right. The government is engaged in a war on cars. Autonomous vehicles are a piece of that puzzle.

The War on Cars

PragerU points out what car ownership means to Americans culturally. Cars are synonymous with freedom for many Americans, allowing them to spontaneously go wherever they please.

On the other hand, buses, trains, and airlines have pre-planned routes. Somebody controls where public transportation takes you, and it is not always the consumer. The government sees it as their job to shape the citizen to their standards. Getting people to use public transportation validates the need for government services, and increases dependence on government institutions.

There is an inherent freedom on the open road, in being able to pick up and go. The government sees it as their job to crush this freedom. And to them, it doesn’t actually matter how free cars really make you. What matters is destroying the idea of freedom. Don’t encourage them! They seem to think. The battleground is in the mind.

To increase their control and relevance in transportation, the government and media take a multifaceted approach. They start by crushing the pride car owners have felt since the Ford Model T. They replace that pride with guilt, fear, and anxiety.

The meme is that cars are dangerous and dirty. You must not care about the safety of yourself and others if you drive a car. You must hate the environment if you drive a car, and the bigger the car, the worse you are.

So if you want to be environmentally conscious, you need to get a car with better fuel economy, which means it is lighter weight, and less safe. Driving an unsafe car increases the anxiety of dying or being seriously injured in a car accident; stats the government and media are happy to hammer home.

But government standards, and environmentalists pressure, to drive more fuel efficient cars also significantly raises the costs of those vehicles–another source of anxiety. At some point consumers are supposed to just throw their hands in the air, give up, and use public transportation.

You should also be ashamed if you peel a banana while stopped at a red light. A British woman was given a citation and fine for doing so. But the worst part of the story is how the police, her peers, and even she herself responded to the situation.

Anna Mellors added: ‘I think it needs to be a blanket rule so debates like this don’t need to take place, just don’t eat or drink behind the wheel.’

…

[The motorist said] ‘Understandably, it is illegal to take both hands off the wheel but I didn’t think I was a danger to anybody.’

Really, is that understandable? You can’t turn the lights, windshield wipers, or turn signal on without taking your hand off the wheel. Are you really supposed to keep two hands glued to the wheel the entire time you are driving or is that an unrealistic and unnecessary standard which increases the stress of driving?

The police said:

‘The driver slipped up when they declined the offer of a course and elected to challenge the case in court. However the driver entered a guilty plea and received three penalty points and fines totaling £145 [instead of £100].’

A driving course for eating a banana.

The clear message the government wants to get across is to not fight their authority, and you will not be punished further.

Washington state has introduced a similar law, which doesn’t outright ban things like eating burgers and drinking lattes while driving. Instead, it outlaws distracted driving, so police can make a case out of just about anything, even fixing your hair in the mirror.

Seattle even admitted to reducing parking spaces in a concerted effort to drive citizens crazy enough to abandon their vehicles in favor of public transport.

The fear and anxiety of driving around are mostly caused by the government. Your commute driving to work may be cheaper than the train if you don’t get pulled over. This will be a fun road trip if you don’t get pulled over.

A natural anxiety while driving would be worrying about the safety of yourself and others. But when I come up to the crosswalk on the bike path down the street from me, I find myself not looking for bikers approaching from the left and right, but watching to see if there is a cop lurking in the parking lot beyond.

But don’t let the government and media bully you into abandoning your freedom to drive a car, even a big old truck if you want to. Certain things you can’t avoid, like the possibility of being pulled over. But the mental fortitude to not let the government stress you out is still in your control.

That, and if all roads were private then the government wouldn’t even have a say…

But that is a topic for another day.

6th-Gen MiG Will Feature Advanced Laser Beam "Protection Systems"

The Russian government announced that it’s sixth-generation fighter jet will be equipped with a range of powerful new features, including laser and microwave weaponry, and advanced radar that will “significantly expand” their ability to detect enemy fighters. The jet, which is Russia’s answer to the US F-35, was first announced in 2016, according to the Washington Times. Complications surrounding the development of the F-35, which was famously plagued with delays and cost overruns, once inspired President Donald Trump to threaten to cancel the US’s order with military contractor Lockheed Martin.

Russian officials said the lasers would allow the MiG-41fighters to disable attacking missiles by destroying their tracking systems.

“We already have laser protection systems installed on aircraft and helicopters, and now we are talking about developments in the field of powered lasers that will be able to physically destroy attacking missiles’ homing heads. … Roughly speaking, we’ll be able to burn out ‘the eyes’ of missiles that ‘look at us.’ Naturally, such systems will be installed on sixth-generation aircraft as well,” said the Adviser to the First Deputy CEO of Radio-Electronic Technologies Group (KRET) Vladimir Mikheyev, reported Russian state news agency TASS.

According to the report, developing drone technology is a “high priority” for Russian engineers, who envision unmanned aircraft flying alongside planes operated by human pilots, armed with a diverse group of weapons.

“One drone in a formation flight will carry microwave weapons, including guided electronic munitions while another drone will carry radio-electronic suppression and destruction means, and a third UAV will be armed with a set of standard weaponry. Each specific task is solved by different armaments,” Mr. Mikheyev added.

The Russian government is also developing microwave technology, which officials say will make the jets lighter and more agile.

“The use of microwave weapons is highly problematic for a plane with a pilot due to the need to preserve his life. But if we develop an additional system of protection against our own microwave weapons, we’ll lose even more space and the weight margin. Besides, even the most complex and effective system can be insufficiently efficient,” he said.

The jet will also feature “advanced radar concepts” that will allow pilots to monitor enemy aircraft with “the highest accuracy.”

“The radio-photonic radar will be able to see farther than existing radars, in our estimates. And, as we irradiate an enemy in an unprecedentedly wide range of frequencies, we’ll know its position with the highest accuracy and after processing, we’ll get an almost photographic image of it — radio vision. … This is important for determining the type [of an aircraft]: The plane’s computer will immediately and automatically identify a flying object, for example, an F-18 with specific types of missile armament,” Mr. Mikheyev said.

Government officials first unveiled plans for the sixth-generation MiG fighter early last year, and expects it to be finished by 2025.  
 

Elon Musk Nightmare Looms: Army Seeks "Internet-Of-Battlefield Things" With "Self-Aware" Bot Swarms

After warning that "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization," the appearance of fully-automated "robot-killers" brought Elon Musk"s apocalyptic vision even close.

As he noted, "until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal," and while that is unlikely in the streets of America (for now), Defense One"s Patrick Turner writes that after nearly two decades of war against technologically unsophisticated foes, the Army Research Lab is reorienting to counter China and Russia - with distributed bot-swarms and an internet-of-battlefield things...

The Army Research Lab is turning more of its attention to fighting land wars against far more technologically sophisticated adversaries than it has in the past several decades. In the coming months, the Lab will fund new programs related to highly (but not fully) autonomous drones and robots that can withstand adversary electronic warfare operations. The Lab will also fund new efforts to develop battlefield communications and sensing networks that perform well against foes with advanced electronic warfare capabilities, according to Philip Perconti, who became the director of the Lab in June.

After nearly two decades of war against determined but technologically unsophisticated foes in the Middle East, U.S. Army tech has, in some ways, fallen behind that of competing states, according to a May report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies on U.S. Army modernization.

For instance, Russia has invested heavily in anti-access / area denial technologies meant to keep U.S. forces out of certain areas.

“There are regions in Donbass where no electromagnetic communications—including radio, cell phone, and television—work,” says the CSIS report.

“Electronic warfare is the single largest killer of Ukrainian systems by jamming either the controller or GPS signals.”

In the coming months, the Army Research Lab will set forth on new research programs to counter these A2/AD systems. One thrust will be equipping drones and other autonomous systems with bigger brains and better networking so that they can function even when an enemy jams their ability to radio back to a human controller for direction. That’s the idea behind the Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology program, which will experiment with robots packed with much more onboard processing.

“Autonomy will play a big role” in future Army concepts of operation, Perconti said. “And it has to be able to function within this contested environment…That’s what ARL is thinking about. More than one network, working together, with as much processing as possible on the node.”

The amount of onboard processing should be sufficient to allow the drone to be highly independent. It would still call home (Perconti, like his peers across the Pentagon, sees no possibility that the U.S. military would allow a robots to kill without a human saying yes.) But the dialogue between the drone and the operator would much more closely resemble an exchange between a commander and soldier, and less a human steering a thing.

Perconti said future Army drones and robots of all types should “be able to function to provide not raw data but information, and, in a sense, decisions about what needs to happen on the battlefield. When you don’t have bandwidth, when you’re under cyber attack, when you’re being jammed. That’s the problem we’re trying to address.”

The Lab will tackle questions such as: when can autonomous systems come together to deliver effects and then disperse? How do you integrate autonomous robots into a war-fighting command?

A second program called the Internet of Battlefield Things seeks to put to military use  “the research that’s going on in the commercial space” on distributed sensors and Internet-connected devices.

The CSIS report says that United States already enjoys asymmetrical advantage over adversaries like China and Russia in the way it deploys  sensors and networks to maintain a view of the battlefield, or situational awareness. But that’s also part of the problem: “Recognizing this threat, the Russians have made targeting and countering U.S. situational awareness systems a high priority of its battlefield [electronic warfare] activities, necessitating co-united U.S. investment to address and stay ahead of Russian counters,” the report says.

The challenge for the U.S. Army now is to rethink battlefield sensor networks in a way that acknowledges that rapidly advancing commercial capabilities are eroding U.S. advantage. The U.S. needs an “understanding of the knowledge gaps are, the voids,” says Perconti.

What exactly is an Internet of Battlefield Things? The program announcement describes it as a group of largely autonomous sensors or even robotic parts (actuators) and robots “capable of adapting to acquire and analyze data necessary to predict behaviors/activities, and effectuate the physical environment; self-aware, continuously learning, autonomous, and autonomic, where the things interact with networks, humans, and the environment.”

Perconti said he expects ARL to announce contract awards for both programs later this year, allowing them to begin in earnest in fiscal year 2018.

*  *  *

Fully-automated, self-directed battlefield drones? What could possibly go wrong? Especially with Russia deploying Terminator 2-style fighting vehicles...