DID YOU KNOW THIS??Google's robo-cars mean the end of driving....!!

How Google's robo-cars mean the end of driving as we know it

Why waste your drive time doing the actual driving, when technology can be your chauffeur? The century-old auto culture is on the verge of radical change, and you can thank Google for where it's headed.

Google's self-driving Lexus RX450h

(Credit: Google)

Google's self-driving car initiative is moving into a new phase: reality.
Three years after first showing the world what it was up to -- rolling out a Toyota Prius with laser-scanning hardware awkwardly perched on the roof -- Google is moving its big idea out of the lab and into the real world.
Consider recent developments: A spokesman confirmed to CNET that the company was in what were described as productive talks with automakers involving Google's self-driving technology. Separately, Google is reported to be crafting a partnership with auto supplier Continental. And there's even the possibility of Google-powered robo-taxis sometime in the future.


The computerization of cars
Motivation aside, a big change is unde way, and it requires us to start thinking of cars very differently. Vehicles that drive themselves are the clearest example of what happens when cars transform into full-scale, general-purpose computing systems. But it's not the only example. Self-driving and connected cars will bristle with sensors, negotiate with traffic lights, talk to each other about safety conditions, join into train-like platoons, and become members of intelligent urban transit networks.
Historically, the car industry has focused on passive safety -- items like seatbelts and airbags. With the arrival of active safety technology that lets vehicles take pre-emptive action, cars will use data to help them decide what to do when drivers aren't paying attention or don't know what to do.

A lot of this boils down to communication. Sure, cars are getting more computing smarts, but so much of what's promised requires more data, and that requires ways to transmit it. How will that happen? As with personal computing, it will be a bit of a mess, with multiple networking technologies for multiple needs.
Computing today uses a handful of networks for different circumstances -- Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, and Bluetooth among them. When automotive computing becomes a facet of personal computing, you can expect those standards to carry over. But then you can add some new network technologies designed to serve vehicles. The biggest are the 802.11p and the accompanying higher-level dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) standards, which govern how vehicles communicate with each other (V2V) and with infrastructure (V2I).
That technology, which rides the 5.9GHz frequency range for radio communications, can be used for things like collision avoidance, managing traffic at intersections, and linking cars into coordinated, fuel-efficient groups called platoons. Carmakers, however, are worried about interference on the 5.9GHz band if the US Federal Communications Commission permits other uses of the spectrum.

SOURCE:CNET

Read More

Academic banned from publishing car-hacking paper

A computer scientist at a UK university has been banned from publishing an academic paper that reveals the codes used to start luxury cars.
Flavio Garcia from the University of Birmingham received an injunction from the UK high court after he managed to identify the unique algorithm that cars use to verify the identity of the ignition key, The Guardian reported.
German car manufacturer Volkswagen appealed for the injunction when it realised that Garcia and two other cryptography experts from a Dutch university had figured out how to crack the security system on several luxury car brands under its ownership, including Porsche, Lamborghini or Audi.
Volkswagen wants the research to remain unpublished because it fears that it could "allow someone, especially a sophisticated criminal gang with the right tools, to break the security and steal a car".
The cars are protected by an algorithm that works out the codes that are sent between the key and the car known as the Megamos Crypto system.
The scientists were planning to publish their paper – Dismantling Megamos Crypto: Wirelessly Lockpicking a Vehicle Immobiliser – at the Usenix Security Symposium in Washington DC next month before the court imposed an interim injunction.
Volkswagen asked Garcia and his team to publish an amended version of the paper without the secret codes but the scientists declined, claiming that the public has a right to see holes in the security system it relies on and insisting that this wasn’t an attempt to give criminals a hand in stealing cars.
Garcia and his colleagues from the Stichting Katholieke Universiteit, Baris Ege and Roel Verdult, said they were "responsible, legitimate academics doing responsible, legitimate academic work".
Mr Justice Birss said he recognised the right for academics to publish their work but it would mean, "that car crime will be facilitated".

Read More

Opera 16 Next is out

Opera Software, just like Google or Mozilla, decided to make available three different Opera release channels to provide developers and enthusiasts with options to test new features before they reach the stable build, and get some data and bug reports from the community in return.
We are currently still waiting for Opera Dev to be released, while both stable and next builds of the browser are already available. Opera Dev will be what Chrome Dev is for the Chrome browser, and Aurora for Firefox. It won't be like Firefox Nightly though which may get updates several times a day depending on how active Mozilla is.
For now, Opera Next is the cutting edge version of the Opera browser, and it is this browser that got upgraded to version 16 today. This would not really be important but it is the first release with a 16 in front, which makes it somewhat special.
The release is not officially announced yet and it is not clear if it ever will be. If you are running Opera Next, you may receive it via auto-update. If you do not want to wait that long, you can head over to the Opera ftp server and download it from there.
Note: There is no "check for updates" feature built-into Opera (yet). What this means is that you will get the update when it is your turn to get it. The only way to speed things up is to download the latest version manually and install it. The reason behind this apparently is to avoid the servers being hammered by user requests.
A change log has not been posted (yet) and you will be hard pressed finding any changes to previous versions of the browser. There is one that I was able to find out about, but it is not the long awaited bookmarking feature or other features of Opera 12.x that are still missing in Opera 16.
You can enter opera:flags into the address bar to display experimental features that you may enable or disable here. This is similar to Chrome's experimental flag (chrome:flags).

It allows you to enable several interesting features, including:

1. Synchronization (it is not clear how enabling this differs from the sync feature that is build into Opera)
2. Enable Download Resumption which adds a context menu to Opera to continue or restart interrupted downloads.
3. Enable extensions to run on opera:// urls.
4. Disable hyperlink auditing (pinging).
5. Smooth scrolling (Windows only).
6. Enable Opus and VP8 playback in video elements.

There are 56 experiments in total listed on the page, of which some may not be available for the platform you are using. For Opera Next on Windows 7, 53 of the 56 were available while three were not. Changes take effect after a restart of the browser.
Opera Next is a beta version that is still in development. It is very likely that we will see the missing bookmarking capabilities land in Opera 16 before it reaches stable status. (via Deskmodder)
Update: The official announcement has been posted on the desktop team blog. The release includes a number of changes according to it:

• W3C Geolocation API support.
• Form auto-filling.
• Jump List support on Windows 7 and 8.
• Presentation Mode support on Mac OS X.
• Based on Chromium 29.

Read More