29 thoughts on “The Trump/Russia “Collusion””

    1. Every vehicle occupant should be required to be strapped into a body helmet like the egg from Mork from Ork. Of course they must buy a new one for each trip (including the trip to the store to buy a new one.)

    2. I applaud any measure that hurts the growing “Internet Of Things” (IOT), or as I call it, Interconnected Distributed Internet Of Things (IDIOT).

      I bitterly oppose connecting cars to the internet, and the V2V standard isn’t merely informational, but hackable. I also absolutely do not want that crap in a car I buy, so I very much oppose a mandate.

    3. “How can you have self-driving cars without vehicle-to-vehicle radio links?”

      By looking where they’re going?

      Anything that relies on external communications to tell it where other cars are is a disaster waiting to happen.

      1. Edward gets it. Consider what happens when, for whatever reason, one of the cars starts reporting bad navigational data. Or the data link experiences interference.

        1. Doesn’t even need to be another car providing bad data. Could be something designed to appear as a car on the ‘net. The opportunities for hacking and mayhem abound. Even something as simple as a jammer could cause chaos.

          The rule is (or should be) simple; if something does not absolutely need to be connected to a network, don’t connect it to a network.

          1. Being someone who likes to entertain, I would go to a junkyard and procure the modules that report a car’s position and status, interface to it, and then put the parts in some old McDonald’s bag and leave it in the middle of a lane on some critical and hazardous piece of roadway. Hours of excitement and amusement for just a few dollars.

          2. Bill Adama knew this. Build a network, and the Cylons win. All of this has happened before. So say we all.

    4. How long does you phone take to connect to wifi when you arrive in a place you’ve been before, (home, work, cafe) or bluetooth to connect to hands free. And that’s with the latest tech and not the old tech mandated.
      Now have all the cars in NY rush hour all trying to connect and talk to each other, or ones on fast roads approaching each other, and that’s without any malfunctioning cars or deliberate hackers (google the mess IoT has become).

      The standard mandated was wofully out of date, and I as one who works in IT would be very concerned with my car having a way of being accessed and ‘talked’ to by someone else.

      I think he has this right, but the ‘socialists’ who want to ‘smart’ you car in the way of ‘smart’ electric meters they can remotely control are complaining.

    5. You’re still the king, Paul. How do you keep your net so dry and still catch so many fish? I thought my egg would give you away.

  1. There’ve been times I’ve wished I could send my car to the supermarket to do the shopping, but all it would do once it got there is sit in the parking lot waiting for somebody to ask it what it wanted, and all it would be able to say is, “Beep!”

    If I have to go with the damn thing to get anything done, I might as well be in charge of how it get there.

  2. Wow, it’s wonderful to see that the Hillary-colluded-with-Russia thing is finally getting some press. Some of us (like me) have been pointing this out for months.

    As a related aside; the “Hack” of the DNC computers, so often reported as fact, is nothing of the sort. The DNC refused to let the FBI look at the servers, so the FBI (in a national security case!) didn’t look at the servers (they did not need the DNC’s okay to do so) and instead relied on Crowdstrike’s report. (Crowdstrike is a Fusion-GPs linked DNC contractor.. you know, like those Pakistani crooks Wasserman-Shultz put in charge of the congressional network).

    What that means is we do not know who, if anyone, hacked the DNC. And “Don’t know” still means “Don’t know”.

  3. Pantagruel, interesting the comment in that article about mandating cell phones in very car in 1995 so we’d all have 1995 cellphones now which would be obsolete.
    Sounds just like ADSB in aviation. A 1995 solution to a 21st Century problem.

    1. The radio link address the problem of “seeing” around corners.

      The most hazardous thing you do in a car is the most hazardous thing you do on foot — crossing a street. Crumple zones, distance and airbags can protect you in a frontal collision. Yes, there are now side air bags, but you are still vulnerable when struck from the side as there is much less structure and distance to absorb the impact.

      The radar, laser or camera is pretty much restricted to what is in front of you.

      The 2018 Camry comes standard with a “Forward Collision Warning with Pedestrian Detection and Automatic Braking” that the IIHS currently rates as the best-available for such a thing. This system does not protect you from being “T-boned.”

      What is the “shade thrown” on ADSB — I scanned the Web and the critiques are not high in Page Rank?

      1. “The radar, laser or camera is pretty much restricted to what is in front of you.”

        Then the car is defective. Would you suggest blocking out all the windows on a car except the windshield, removing the mirrors, and then driving it on the road? Because that’s the equivalent of what you’re suggesting for self-driving cars.

  4. I’m with Paul. I apologize Rand for thinking there was no longer the benefit of doubt that Trump colluded with Russia.

    On the other matter, I’ll just leave this here: TCAS II RA.

    1. I read up on TCAS, and yes, it too has its limitations. The biggest one is Air Traffic Control telling you to descend to avoid traffic and the TCAS telling you to climb.

      There is one thing you can do in a car that you cannot do in an airplane. You can apply the brakes. You might think that avoiding a collision requires some quick-thinking maneuvering, but as my Driver’s Ed teacher told me, “Brake is your friend.” Yes, there is the argument that if you brake you can get rear-ended, but that is almost always less bad than the collision you avoided by stomping on the brakes.

      Cars have airbags in addition to crumple zones and seatbelts as passive safety system so as to not completely rely on alertness, quick reaction, and driver skill to avoid serious injury or worse from a crash. I think of auto-braking as a kind of airbag where if an imminent collision is detected, the system applies full braking power, whether to avoid a collision or to mitigate one.

      Again, how does the auto-braking system see around corners?

      1. There’s an episode of Air Disasters (or Mayday in the original Canadian broadcast) covering a case where this is exactly what happened. An overworked controller was calling on a plane to descend to avoid a collision, right as TCAS was telling the crew to pull up–and at the same time that the other crew was following TCAS instructions to descend. They descended right into each other.

        The resolution was a general order for crews to ignore the tower and follow TCAS in the event of conflicting orders.

        In the case of cars, this has at least been pioneered at DARPA Urban Challenge, where cars had to recognize a vehicle running a stop sign from one side or the other and brake to avoid a t-bone.

      2. I didn’t provide it earlier, but my point about TCAS is that the cars need not be connected to the net. They only need to talk to each other, so the communication can be short range. Some cars are already equipped with radar type systems to help adjust speed. My car is one of them. What they aren’t good at is avoiding T-bone type crashes. That’s where some communication between vehicles would be helpful, such as going through any intersection.

        So yeah: Again, how does the auto-braking system see around corners?

        They need to communicate.

        1. Do they now?
          I don’t know about the auto braking systems from other makers but Tesla’s auto pilot has cameras and radar and other sensors that have a complete view around the car. It is hard for anything to sneak up on it.

    1. An indicator, perhaps, that people are bored with the whole thing. They know there is nothing there as far as Trump is concerned, and they know it is likely HRC will skate by as always, so what’s the point, really?

  5. “Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life,” Wapo.
    Huh. I thought that was just Republican propaganda?

    1. Wapo implied that she feared for her life from “the Russians.” It was a clever interweaving of themes, but if I were her, I’d fear the Clintons.

      1. Over 100 people suiciding themselves (some with two different caliber bullets) and always benefiting the Clintons proves nothing. There isn’t a shred of evidence against them since they know how to shred (unlike the amateurs going after them.)

        Law, unlike reality, no evidence means no crime. Even when the shredding is done publicly.

        Another way to have no crime is to insure your own people do the judging, like for DWS and her brother.

        Corruption used to have to hide in the dark. It’s so bad now they don’t even bother. It’s all just a joke “you mean wipe it with a clothe?”

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