Take a Selfie Using a NY Surveillance Camera
This site will let you take a selfie with a New York City traffic surveillance camera.
EDITED TO ADD: BoingBoing post.
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Tag Archives: Cars
Texas Sues GM for Collecting Driving Data without Consent
Texas is suing General Motors for collecting driver data without consent and then selling it to insurance companies:
From CNN:
In car models from 2015 and later, the Detroit-based car manufacturer allegedly used technology to “collect, record, analyze, and transmit highly detailed driving data about each time a driver used their vehicle,” according to the AG’s statement.
General Motors sold this information to several other companies, including to at least two companies for the purpose of generating “Driving Scores” about GM’s customers, the AG alleged. The suit said those two companies then sold these scores to insurance companies…
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New Patent Application for Car-to-Car Surveillance
Ford has a new patent application for a system where cars monitor each other’s speeds, and then report then to some central authority.
Slashdot thread.
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Providing Security Updates to Automobile Software
Auto manufacturers are just starting to realize the problems of supporting the software in older models:
Today’s phones are able to receive updates six to eight years after their purchase date. Samsung and Google provide Android OS updates and security updates for seven years. Apple halts servicing products seven years after they stop selling them.
That might not cut it in the auto world, where the average age of cars on US roads is only going up. A recent report found that cars and trucks just reached a new record average age of 12.6 years, up two months from 2023. That means the car software hitting the road today needs to work—and maybe even improve—beyond 2036. The average length of smartphone ownership is just …
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Desktop wind tunnel runs aerodynamic tests at small scale
Ever wonder how effectively your model cars would slice through the air if they were full-scale functional automobiles? Well, a little something known as the Windsible could tell ya (sort of), as it’s touted as being the world’s first consumer desktop … Continue reading Desktop wind tunnel runs aerodynamic tests at small scale
New Attack Against Self-Driving Car AI
This is another attack that convinces the AI to ignore road signs:
Due to the way CMOS cameras operate, rapidly changing light from fast flashing diodes can be used to vary the color. For example, the shade of red on a stop sign could look different on each line depending on the time between the diode flash and the line capture.
The result is the camera capturing an image full of lines that don’t quite match each other. The information is cropped and sent to the classifier, usually based on deep neural networks, for interpretation. Because it’s full of lines that don’t match, the classifier doesn’t recognize the image as a traffic sign…
Long Article on GM Spying on Its Cars’ Drivers
Kashmir Hill has a really good article on how GM tricked its drivers into letting it spy on them—and then sold that data to insurance companies.
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Cheating Automatic Toll Booths by Obscuring License Plates
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a variety of techniques drivers are using to obscure their license plates so that automatic readers can’t identify them and charge tolls properly.
Some drivers have power-washed paint off their plates or covered them with a range of household items such as leaf-shaped magnets, Bramwell-Stewart said. The Port Authority says officers in 2023 roughly doubled the number of summonses issued for obstructed, missing or fictitious license plates compared with the prior year.
Bramwell-Stewart said one driver from New Jersey repeatedly used what’s known in the streets as a flipper, which lets you remotely swap out a car’s real plate for a bogus one ahead of a toll area. In this instance, the bogus plate corresponded to an actual one registered to a woman who was mystified to receive the tolls. “Why do you keep billing me?” Bramwell-Stewart recalled her asking…
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The U.S. auto industry’s dirty little secret: plummeting quality
Manufacturing a car involves choreographing hundreds of parts, most of which are created somewhere else, to be at the same spot at the same time for final assembly. Given the widespread adoption of “just in time” manufacturing methodology, it’s underst… Continue reading The U.S. auto industry’s dirty little secret: plummeting quality
Automakers Are Sharing Driver Data with Insurers without Consent
Kasmir Hill has the story:
Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis [who then sell it to insurance companies]…
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