Sheriffs Crash $250k Drone They're Not Supposed To Be Flying

As reported by Chron: Divers scoured the bottom of Lake Conroe in the hope of recovering a controversial $250,000 police drone that crashed into the water Friday.  

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office confirmed the remote-controlled helicopter drone, which was bought in 2011 with a federal grant, suffered a malfunction and went down during an exercise over the lake.  

The drone is equipped with a camera and an infrared scanning device and is used by MCSO for emergency management, missing-person recovery and operation overwatch, for example filming above SWAT team activities, spokesman Brady Fitzgerald said.

"Divers did go down to look for it. They are still looking. It went down in deep water where there is a rocky bottom. Visibility is also a problem because of sediment at the bottom of the lake," Fitzgerald said.

The mini helicopter, which weighs around 49 pounds, and, in a military setting, could be fitted with a single- or multiple-shot 40mm grenade launcher, 25mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun, according to Vanguard Defense Industries.

Civil liberties organizations were critical when the ShadowHawk drone was purchased from Vanguard just over two years ago.

At the time, Kirsten Bokenkamp, spokeswoman for the Houston-based American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the drones raise concerns because there are not enough safeguards in place to protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure.

"It's just another example of technology that is outstripping our lives," she said. "What we mean by that, is the technology moves so quickly and the interpretations of the Fourth Amendment are failing to keep up with the technology. That brings privacy concerns."

MCSO officials emphasize that the drone is not used for surveillance.  

Drones or unmanned aircraft are governed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which first authorized their use in the national airspace in 1990.

Fitzgerald said deputies were confident the drone would be recovered and further investigation into the crash would follow.

The Drone is reportedly over the FAA's 25 pound weight limit, so it's likely they shouldn't have been flying it in the first place.  Recently passed Texas Legislature (House Bill 912) also restricts the use of drones to observe private property.

FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate

From the FCC: "An individual who had been jamming cellphone traffic on interstate 4 in Florida was located by FCC agents with the assistance of Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputies. The individual had reportedly been jamming cellphone traffic on I-4 for two years.

The FCC is now proposing a $48,000 fine for his actions. They say the jamming 'could and may have had disastrous consequences by precluding the use of cell phones to reach life-saving 9-1-1 services provided by police, ambulance, and fire departments.'"  

While the fine is large, it is not unprecedented: last August (2013) a New Jersey man named Gary Bojczak, who worked for a construction company in Northern New Jersey was fined $32K for an illegal GPS jamming device that disrupted the Newark airport system on multiple occasions.  The FAA and FCC spent two years (March 2009 to April 2011) locating the source of the jamming at Newark Airport.

Wireless jamming is considered to be more than an inconvenience or nuisance, and is treated as a significant threat since it can disrupt critical and emergency communications, terrestrial and satellite communication such as GPS tracking systems that are required for everything from aircraft, personal or vehicular location to systems requiring financial trading.  It can also potentially affect military operations.

As GPS can be negatively impacted over a wide area by a relatively small jammer, alternative technologies such as eLoran and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) are being investigated as a secondary location signal provider.  This will only continue to be more critical as self driving vehicles, commercial drones and intelligent highway system usage continues to expand.

Despite “Framily” Push, Sprint Continues To Bleed Customers

As reported by GigaOm: In January, Sprint launched a major new campaign to lure in new mobile subscribers and keep old ones loyal, but the potential benefits of its “Framily” program didn't show up in its first quarter results. The company shed nearly 400,000 subscribers as it struggles to get its LTE network rolled out nationwide and faces off against mega-carriers AT&T and Verizon as well as a newly resurgent T-Mobile.

Sprint lost a net total of 231,000 postpaid subscribers (which includes contract and non-contract subscribers who aren’t on a pay-as-you-go plans) and 364,000 prepaid subscribers. The bright spot was a gain in 212,000 wholesale subscribers, reflecting Sprint’s growing business in connecting mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Tracfone, FreedomPop, Ting and Republic Wireless. The revenue it brings in from an MVNO subscriber, however, is a fraction of what it sees from a customer who buys mobile service directly from Sprint.

Sprint executives blamed the subscriber loss on the tumult created by its ongoing network overhaul. Sprint isn't just trying to bring its LTE network coverage on par with its competitors, but it’s also rebuilding its 2G and 3G CDMA networks from scratch. Service disruptions caused by that upgrade work are causing disgruntled customers to leave, Sprint said.

Still, there are some glimmers of light at the end of this tunnel. Sprint’s LTE network now reaches 225 million people in 443 cities, so it’s within spitting distance of its mid-year goal of 250 million people covered. And while Framily didn't stem customer losses this quarter, nearly 3 million subscribers signed up for the new friends and family plan last quarter. That’s significant but those customers are not only more likely to stick with Sprint in the future, but they’re likely to recruit new subscribers into the Sprint fold.

Framily’s incentive structure offers an increasing discount as more people join a particular plan. Since Sprint will bill each subscriber separately, Sprint can use Framily to target customers outside of a traditional family plan. These customers aren't on contract, so they’re free to leave when they pay off their phone, but they’ll lose their accrued discounts. So if a “Framily” loses members it has a lot of incentive to replace them. At a separate event Tuesday, Sprint attempted to amplify the benefits of Framily by offering members discounts on Spotify’s subscription music streaming service.

Sprint now has 54.9 million total subscribers, making it half the size of AT&T and Verizon. It reported a first quarter net loss of $151 million, compared to a $643 million loss in Q1 of 2013, off of revenue of $8.88 billion.

Saudi Arabia Joins the Drone Arms Race

As reported by The Verge: Last week, Saudi Arabia bought its first drone fleet, according to a dispatch from Tactical Reports. Saudi Crown Prince Salman met with Chinese General Wang Guanzhong to sign a contract for a shipment of Chinese Wing Loong drones, also known as Pterodactyls. The drones that make up the shipment are designed to mimic America's Predator drone, with surveillance capabilities and enough lift to carry two matched air-to-ground missiles.

If the report is true, it means Saudi Arabia may have joined an exclusive club, one of the few nations with armed, unmanned aircraft. It's a group that, to date, includes just the US, Britain, Israel, China, and (depending who you ask) Iran — but beyond those countries, the capability is increasingly available to whoever can pay for it. At the Singapore Air Show earlier this year, both Israel and China were showing off their wares to would-be clients, including the Pterodactyl drone named in the report, and you could find similar displays at dozens of other air shows. With American counterterrorism efforts providing an ongoing test of how valuable the machines can be, there are lots of countries willing to buy.

The US is still responsible for the vast majority of drone strikes, but that may have more to do with politics than capability. A GAO report from 2012 found that more than 75 countries have some form of drone system. Most are unarmed but some, like the systems used in Australia, Japan, and Singapore, could be retrofitted for military purpose. More importantly, the US’ use of drones — more than 50 strikes in 2013 alone — seems to have whetted a global appetite for combat drones. "If you think of this as part of a broader trend of the proliferation of military robotics, then the idea that we were going to have a monopoly on this kind of technology was always a bit far-fetched," says University of Pennsylvania political scientist Michael Horowitz. "The American monopoly on drones is over and probably never really existed."

International trade barriers have slowed down the spread, but they haven’t stopped it. For US companies, combat drones are controlled under the same agreement as cruise missiles, through an association called the Missile Technology Control Regime. But China and Israel aren't part of the group, and the two countries have begun aggressively marketing drone systems to outsiders eager to keep up with US capabilities. One report from the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that Israel had exported $4.6 billion in drone systems between 2005 and 2012.

Experts also say Saudi Arabia has previously demonstrated both the interest and the budget for this kind of purchase. "Saudi Arabia and smaller countries like the UAE are trying to get their hands on whatever they can, and the US has pretty restrictive export policies," says Cornell University professor Sarah Kreps, who studies drone proliferation. The result leaves China as one of the only sources available in town.

One of the biggest questions is whether the new generation of foreign drones can match US capabilities. "We don't know at all about the quality of the pterodactyl," Kreps cautions, "these aren't combat-tested." Since unmanned aircraft rely so heavily on satellite and communications infrastructure, it’s hard to tell from the craft alone how well it will perform in the field. The Pterodactyl is also typically sold for a fraction of the price of the Predator, which has only fueled skepticism.

But even if China needs help to bring its drones up to US standards, that expertise may not be hard to find. UAVs are built on mostly commercial technology, drawing from the robotics and aviation industries. That’s much harder to keep under wraps than military tech like warheads or missiles. As long as there’s a market, there’ll be an incentive to build cheaper and more powerful drones, and the club of drone-armed countries will continue to grow. As Horowitz puts it, "What we know about the history of military technology suggests it will be really difficult to keep a lid on this."

Google’s Self-Driving Car Logs 700,000 Miles Navigating City Streets

As reported by GigaOm: Google says its self-driving car is now proficient at navigating the hazards of city driving.

In a blog post, Chris Urmson, director of the company’s self-driving car project, wrote that the Google cars have successfully completed 700,000 miles of city driving — around Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters — without incident:

“We’ve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously — pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t — and it never gets tired or distracted.”

As of the last status update in August, the cars had completed 300,000 miles of service without an accident, at least under computer control — an actual person also sits in the car — but those miles were logged in a variety of conditions. Now Google seems to have doubled down on city driving, which presents more variable conditions than highway driving.

While this post is interesting, the comments are even more intriguing. One commenter predicted an increase in unsafe driving practices by human drivers who will now be tempted to cut off the Google cars, if they’re so darned accurate. Another requested  an “On-Board Missile Launcher” option, perhaps to deter or punish such cutoffs and counter road rage.

While negotiating Mountain View roads may be tricky, Google needs talk to me after the cars have mastered the potholes, rotaries and creative drivers of Boston. Now that would really be something.

Developing A Self-Cleaning Car Finish Using Nanotechnology

As reported by Tech Times: Drivers may soon be able to put away their buckets and cleaning rags after Nissan announced that it has developed a car that can clean itself instantly using a special kind of paint.  

Engineers at Nissan's European Technical Center in Bedfordshire, England applied a "super-hydrophobic" and "lipophobic" paint finish called Ultra-Ever Dry, which was developed and patented by UltraTech International, on the new Nissan Note supermini. The ultra-resistant paint can repel water and oils, as well as dirt, dust, mud and grit.

Although Ultra-Ever Dry has been used in other fields, Nissan claims that this is the first application of the special paint on automotive bodywork.

The paint uses nanotechnology to create a thin air shield above the surface of the car that makes rain, road spray, frost, sleet and standing water roll off the car without tainting its surface at all.

"By creating a protective layer of air between the paint and environment, it effectively stops standing water and road spray from creating dirty marks on the car's surface," explains Nissan in a press release.

So far, initial tests conducted on the self-cleaning Note were effective. Nissan engineers used Ultra-Ever Dry to paint one side of the car and regular paint on the other side. A video below shows how the side of the Note coated with Ultra-Ever Dry did not accumulate mud or dirt.

"The Nissan Note has been carefully engineered to take the stress out of customer driving, and Nissan's engineers are constantly thinking of new ways to make families' lives easier," says Nissan chief marketing manager Geraldine Ingham.

"We are committed to addressing everyday problems our customers face and will always consider testing exciting, cutting edge technology like this incredible coating application," she continues.

Nissan says it has no plans of making the special paint job a standard on factory models. It will, however, consider offering the self-cleaning paint as an aftermarket option. The company also promised to continue testing the technology in its European testing center.

This is not the first time Nissan introduced a self-cleaning function. The company has already developed a smart rear-view mirror that provides a better back view using a camera piped on the rear windshield. This camera is equipped with its own "wash and dry" function that uses water and air to keep the lens free from dust and dirt, allowing the driver a clear view of what's behind the car at all times.

Scale Is Increasingly The Name Of The Game In Cloud Computing

As reported by GigaOm: Resistance to cloud computing might not be futile, but it’s at least beginning to look foolish — especially as services from the top providers such as Amazon Web Services keep getting cheaper while their performance gets better. It’s also looking like smaller-scale or “enterprise” cloud platforms will have to promise some serious differentiation in order to justify their higher costs.

To highlight this trend, here’s a chart from publishing analytics startup Parse.ly graphing its IT spending from inception until early 2014.

The long story made short — you can read the whole thing up through September 2013 here — is that Parse.ly started off using Rackspace primarily and AWS for backup and a variety of ad hoc workloads (e.g., Hadoop jobs). In 2012, it opted to cut costs by switching its primary analytic database to physical servers in a co-location center while continuing to run its cloud workloads primarily in Rackspace. In late 2013, it began transitioning more workloads to AWS and completed an entire transition to AWS in late February 2014.

After paying double (to both Rackspace and AWS) during the transition, Parse.ly is now paying less than monthly than it was before making the move. Its spending patterns might be unique because of the workloads it’s running, but they’re compelling nonetheless.

And, Parse.ly Co-founder and CTO Andrew Montalenti told me, there’s icing on this cake, as well: “What’s crazy is we got a speed-up and saved money.” The company’s primary analytics database is now running significantly faster on AWS SSD-backed instances than it did on bare metal (albeit hard-disk-backed) servers.

If recent claims from Google about adjusting its pricing in accordance with Moore’s Law come true — and if its unique strategy around price reductions on long-running instances catches on — we should be in for continually lower prices on basic cloud computing services. AWS is the cloud king, but Google and Microsoft are positioned as strong contenders, and if low costs are what wins users, they’ll all play along to ensure no one else owns that story. The same goes for improved performance and rapid feature updates.

More and more, it looks like the future of cloud computing will be renting the infrastructure that lets users operate like, well, Amazon, Google and Microsoft but at a fraction of the cost (and scale). We’ll hear a lot more about where the industry is heading at the Structure conference, which takes place June 18 and 19 in San Francisco, and features, among many others, Google’s Urs Hölzle, Amazon’s Werner Vogels and Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie.