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[Reelya]

But you've already outlined the fixes there for an entire class of exploits. And those techs are already old tech really. "Smart cars" is not the same as a fully developed robot car, any more than the Wright Brothers plane at kittyhawk is the same as a WWII fighter.

[syvarris]

I think the security and exploits aren't really that massive an issue.  Self-driving cars will be adopted because they're extremely convenient and efficient, much like the MS Word example.  They won't have decent security, at least until someone actually accesses one and uses that access to kill someone.  Even then, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a curfluffle for a couple months, a few patches, and then nothing significant.  They'll fix that particular exploit, and nothing more.

Nobody cares about the ethereal fear of "Oh, people could crash my car!", because it doesn't happen, and probably won't for quite awhile.  They do care about the very real and frequent event of "Oh, my email/gaming/bank account was hacked!" because that actually happens a lot.  I suppose if ISIS starts crashing teslas as a terrorist attack, then people will care--I just doubt that'll happen, as there's plenty of comparatively easy hacks terrorists could use to worsen their attacks, but they just don't.

[PTTG??]

We'd need to compare car security to a comparable issue with contemporary cars, such as mechanical tampering. An all-electric computer control system would preforce run diagnostics on startup, and thus would likely detect if someone cut the brakeline or something. And it could start up remotely, rendering classical carbombs less of a threat.

Of course, this all falls in the category of deciding whether it's safer to go to the beach and risk getting shot by a dog swimming with a gun in its mouth, or go to the museum and risk a statue falling on you.

[Max™]

It hurts my soul seeing people talking about Word as a comparison with something else using terms like "convenient" and "efficient" in any situation, but "secure" should not be allowed in a world where people cling to old ass operating systems and thus there are still people using shit like Word 2000~2010 with all of the vulnerabilities in place. I mean, holy fuck, the automotive comparison would be using windows xp for the vehicle operating system with the username being something like ThePwIsabc123 and the password actually being abc123 while it has always on wifi, 4g, and since keys are annoying it's permanently unlocked!

[Sheb]

How about we cut the middle man out and you live in a hover pod that attaches itself to a central cluster? Then when it's time to get up and go somewhere your hover pod drops you off in a "just in time" fashion.

But there's one good thing about all this: automated driving etc will give people who have money a lot more free time to kill. That will increase the amount they spend on digital content such as games and movies, so there will be more job growth in those areas.

That's not clear. We're already producing enough content to leave people entertained 24/7, and with all being digital, it doesn't take more people to serve the same content to more people. There is a nice report in this week's economist on this if you're interested.

[Helgoland]

Ah, but you go ahead and try and find me a decent new TV show that I'll like. It's harder than you'd think.

[Reelya]

Uhuh, if the amount of content consumed spikes up, by e.g. 30% then yes, more content will be made. Maybe not the full 30% extra, but how much is a question for debate. e.g. right now there are a lot of shows that get made but get cancelled because they don't have quite enough viewers to keep them profitable.

So in a "30% more shows watched" scenario, then you might see e.g. the average show getting an extra 2 seasons to it, meaning the shows you already like are getting more love. A lot of shows that are marginal or just hanging on now would become economically viable, so it's wrong to say a big increase in consumption wouldn't change patterns. Also, the type of shows will shift if people watch more on-demand stuff. e.g. "reality" type content that works on a weekly TV show basically hasn't translated at all to Youtube culture, despite Youtube's attempt to become "the new Television". The reality TV gameshow format just doesn't work outside of the weekly TV slot format.

[Max™]

I would never admit it because part of my "thing" is a broad hatred of most forms of media, especially anything on tv which isn't animated (or Jeopardy/educational?) and anything on youtube which is supposed to be music--but ends up with some shmuck talking-- or car/animal sounds--but ends up with some shmuck putting music over it--yet I can't help wonder when or if tv will ever end up joining the crowdfunding game.

We've got examples of stuff that kinda ended up migrating back to tv from the internet, One Punch Man going from webcomic to Murata-redrawn manga to ending up on Adult Swim was pretty cool, giving people the option to go throw money at ONE and Murata can only help that sort of thing, but tv still seems stuck in the "how many eyes can we get viewing our ads which we still call commercials" model.

Compare Top Gear and The Grand Tour, yeah TGT has flaws but it's fun because people are able to throw money at something they want to see, while TG has people trying to make people want to see something, and I adore Chris Harris, really I do, but I've yet to bother to catch a single episode since it isn't just him being goofy and loving cars with a couple other hosts having fun doing their thing instead of "New and Improved Top Gear Now With Extra Hosts and Jokes!" like they tried to push out last season.

[Reelya]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39032105

Scientists 'solve' the ketchup problem

Scientists in the US may have found a solution to one of the classic dinner table problems - getting every drop of ketchup out of a bottle.

As the BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports, they say it is down to a non-toxic coating that makes the inside of bottles super-slippery.

So basically they've made food-safe hydrophobic coatings now, and you can put stuff in there and get 100% of the sauce which just slides out. There are a lot of benefits here. Saved time, saved money, less water to wash bottles, easier to recycle. Also, I can't vouch for this, but water-repellent plastics might leach less bad stuff into the liquids itself, since the liquids aren't infusing into the plastic's surface.

Maybe in 15-20 years from now we'll be explaining to young adults that there was once a time when sauce got stuck in bottles. Of course, this also saves a lot of food waste, and therefore prevents a lot of CO2 and methane emissions from landfill. The video has a demonstration, and says they already use this stuff in industrial application e.g. anything that comes in contact with paint and you don't want the paint sticking to it. Liquiglide-coated funnels and buckets etc. Any unused paint could just be tipped back into the can.

And of course it's not just food containers. Anything you don't want to get yucked up could have the coating. e.g. create liquiglide plastics for electronics, clothes, cars, tools etc. Having that on your phone's screen would be good for rainy weather too.

[Starver]

Having that on your phone's screen would be good for rainy weather too.

"Hello hardware. It's the App here...  You keep on giving me a lot of <swipe down> signals...   My bloated libraries know what swipe-downs are, but they don't actually mean anything to the rest of my code.  I suppose I could just automatically set up a date with the next teething-age Ood that gets passed to me for display...?"

[Reelya]

TBH if the phone's sensitive to individual rain drops rolling off, then it would treat the "splat" of the raindrop as you tapping the phone.

[Starver]

It does.  Every tablet I've had (is this one the fifth?) appears to have been not significantly affected by light rain egress when left off, and momentarily in the open, but if left on in anything above the lightest of mizzles clearly exhibits the signs of random prods of the screen.

(Not fully wiping the screen dry, and drying the operating finger properly, also leaves a damp streak that seems to be interpreted as a constant finger-contact, when tested with a suitably indicative app.  But then maybe I'm just indistinguishable from rain, rather than vice-versa.)

[Reelya]

IDK, the hydrophobic stuff works by reducing friction between the surface and water so it sort of just falls off, that should in fact heavily reduce the amount that water interacts with the surface.

[Starver]

Considering that (not so much this tablet, but certainly its predecessor) a finger hovering over the screen a good 5-10mm off could still interact (useful when with sticky fingers, not so useful when thumbs were hovering through uncertainty), it'd maybe be enough to confuse matters. But then it'd depend upon use. Maybe ultrafine rivulets just wouldn't accumulate enough local 'capacitance' to trigger (holding the screen at an angle) and only meniscusly-pooled super-drops (when held horizontal or near-horizontal) would cause actual problems.

But as I tend not to try to get the screen rained upon, currently, it's doubtful whether I'd let this affect things if it were so improved.. Just saying.

(Fun fact: my hands don't leave visible changes on most of those thermochromatic surfaces that are supposed to. Perjaps it's a good job it's not heat which my devices tries to detect my input with...  )

[Reelya]

My Samsung tablet doesn't have any of those problems, or react to raindrops. Nor have I ever had any issues with my couple of Android smartphones I've owned. I think hydrophobic coating on a phone is just going to make it interact with water less than it does now, which is basically not noticeable anyway.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/02/21/2020252/ups-develops-rolling-warehouse-system-in-which-drones-are-launched-from-atop-trucks
UPS wants to have trucks with drone fleets on them that do the actual delivery. Basically a truck drone aircraft carrier. Man, that's a step back from Amazon's airships with drones flying warehouse idea. Be more ambitious UPS, orbital drop pods.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/02/21/2350216/college-senior-turns-his-honda-civic-into-a-self-driving-car-using-free-hardware-software
College student creates self-driving car with open source software / hardware instructions made by Comma. So you can already refit vehicles yourself at the individual level. But that poses a lot of questions about legal liability.