Verizon’s 5G Tests Show it to be Faster than Google Fiber

As reported by 9to5Mac: Early tests of Verizon‘s 5G technology show that it can achieve connection speeds 30-50 times faster than 4G/LTE – above the speeds offered by Google Fiber’s gigabit wired broadband. Even better, the company expects to have “some level of commercial deployment” by 2017, some three years earlier than expected, reports CNET.

To put that speed difference into perspective, the movie Guardians of the Galaxy would take around six minutes to download over a good LTE connection – while 5G would have it downloaded to your device in just 15 seconds …

There is, of course, a big difference between beginning commercial deployment with a select number of clients and you or I being able to get our hands on all that tasty, tasty bandwidth. There will also be the usual chicken-and-egg situation with faster data speeds: carriers waiting until there are enough devices capable of using it before they make it widely available, and manufacturers like Apple waiting until the network capacity is sufficiently widespread to make it worth adding to devices.

But Verizon does look to be upping the pace, moving tests out of the lab and into the field during the next 12 months. That could encourage others to speed up their own plans. South Korea had been expected to be first to launch, with a trial 5G network in place for the Winter Olympics in 2018, Japan aiming for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.

“It’s a very aggressive timeline,” said Rima Qureshi, chief strategy officer of telecommunications equipment supplier Ericsson. “It’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is.”

Trials have so far been limited to Verizon’s own innovation centers in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Francisco. It will need the government to release more radio spectrum before it can go beyond field tests.

For technical trials themselves, we have what we need,” said Roger Gurnani, chief information and technology architect for Verizon. “Beyond that, 5G will require big bands of spectrum.”

Apple generally adopts a wait-and-see policy with new technology, having waited until the iPhone 5 in 2012 before adding LTE capabilities to its iPhones – almost two years after carriers began offering the faster connection speeds. It did, however, move more swiftly with LTE Advanced (LTE-A), adding support for the 150Mbit/s fast-track LTE service in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Toyota Investing $50M Over 5 Years with Stanford, MIT for Autonomous-Vehicle Research

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Toyota is investing $50 million with Stanford and MIT for autonomous-vehicle research that it says will focus on things like learning how to drive from humans, how to anticipate what people or other vehicles will do on the road, and how best to interact with people.

The Japanese automaker said Friday that it’s investing the money over five years, and it will be split evenly between the two universities. The project will be led by Gill Pratt, a roboticist and former program manager at DARPA who had organized the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

The auto maker has lured the organizer of the DARPA Robotics Challenge to lead its new AI research effort.

Pratt said safety and autonomy—of people, more than cars—are the overall goals of the artificial-intelligence research. Stanford plans to study topics such as decision making, reasoning, sensing, and perception, while MIT researchers will work on things like smart user interfaces and collecting and analyzing data from humans in hopes of figuring out how we drive.

Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, known as CSAIL, said her group’s priority is “building a car that is never responsible for a collision.”

Toyota reiterated on Friday that even as cars get smarter and more capable, it wants to keep drivers involved in the act of piloting them—a different tack from the one Google is taking with its fully autonomous vehicles that are roaming the streets in Silicon Valley (see “Toyota Unveils an Autonomous Car, But Says It’ll Keep Drivers in Control”).

Kiyotaka Ise, senior managing officer at Toyota and chief officer of the company’s research and development program, said Friday through a translator that he thinks it will “take quite a long time to have a driverless car.” But he also said that the company will continue to pursue the goal of an autonomous vehicle and, along the way, apply technologies developed for cars to help people drive.

Researcher Hacks LIDAR Self-driving Car Sensors

As reported by IEEE Spectrum: The multi-thousand-dollar laser ranging (lidar) systems that most self-driving cars rely on to sense obstacles can be hacked by a setup costing just $60, according to a security researcher.

“I can take echoes of a fake car and put them at any location I want,” says Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, a software security company. “And I can do the same with a pedestrian or a wall.”

Using such a system, attackers could trick a self-driving car into thinking something is directly ahead of it, thus forcing it to slow down. Or they could overwhelm it with so many spurious signals that the car would not move at all for fear of hitting phantom obstacles.

In a paper written while he was a research fellow in the University of Cork’s Computer Security Group and due to be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, Petit describes a simple setup he designed using a low-power laser and a pulse generator. “It’s kind of a laser pointer, really. And you don’t need the pulse generator when you do the attack,” he says. “You can easily do it with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. It’s really off the shelf.”

Petit set out to explore the vulnerabilities of autonomous vehicles, and quickly settled on sensors as the most susceptible technologies. “This is a key point, where the input starts,” he says. “If a self-driving car has poor inputs, it will make poor driving decisions.”

Other researchers had previously hacked or spoofed vehicle’s GPS devices and wireless tire sensors.

While the short-range radars used by many self-driving cars for navigation operate in a frequency band requiring licensing, lidar systems use easily-mimicked pulses of laser light to build up a 3-D picture of the car’s surroundings and were ripe for attack.

Petit began by simply recording pulses from a commercial IBEO Lux lidar unit. The pulses were not encoded or encrypted, which allowed him to simply replay them at a later point. “The only tricky part was to be synchronized, to fire the signal back at the lidar at the right time,” he says. “Then the lidar thought that there was clearly an object there.”

Petit was able to create the illusion of a fake car, wall, or pedestrian anywhere from 20 to 350 meters from the lidar unit, and make multiple copies of the simulated obstacles, and even make them move. “I can spoof thousands of objects and basically carry out a denial of service attack on the tracking system so it’s not able to track real objects,” he says. Petit’s attack worked at distances up to 100 meters, in front, to the side or even behind the lidar being attacked and did not require him to target the lidar precisely with a narrow beam.

Petit acknowledges that his attacks are currently limited to one specific unit but says, “The point of my work is not to say that IBEO has a poor product. I don’t think any of the lidar manufacturers have thought about this or tried this.” 

Sensor attacks are not limited to just robotic drivers, of course. The same laser pointer that Petit used could carry out an equally devastating denial of service attack on a human motorist by simply dazzling her, and without the need for sophisticated laser pulse recording, generation, or synchronization equipment.

But the fact that a lidar attack could be carried out without alerting a self-driving car’s passengers is worrying. Karl Iagnemma directs the Robotic Mobility Group at MIT and is CEO of nuTonomy, a start-up focused on the development of software for self-driving cars. He says: “Everyone knows security is an issue and will at some point become an important issue. But the biggest threat to an occupant of a self-driving car today isn’t any hack, it’s the bug in someone’s software because we don’t have systems that we’re 100-percent sure are safe.”

Petit argues that it is never too early to start thinking about security. “There are ways to solve it,” he says. “A strong system that does misbehavior detection could cross-check with other data and filter out those that aren’t plausible. But I don’t think carmakers have done it yet. This might be a good wake-up call for them.”

SpaceX Falcon Heavy set to Launch in Spring of 2016

As reported by Engadget: We've heard quite a bit about the SpaceX Falcon Heavy spacecraft since it was first announced. What we haven't seen is a launch. However, it's now planned for next spring. 

Earlier this week, SpaceX vice president of mission and launch operations Lee Rosen said that the company is aiming for a "late April early May time-frame" for that first launch. Rosen also explained that the crew is finishing renovations to the Falcon Heavy's launch pad for the initial test flight. 

That's the Pad 39A that's designed to handle launches of both the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9. The rocket was first announced back in 2011 with a launch planned for 2013 that didn't pan out. And this summer's Falcon 9 disaster pushed things back even further. 

After the first test launch, the Falcon Heavy is scheduled to carry a load of satellites for the Air Force in September 2016 under the Space Test Program (STP-2): an Integrated Payload Stack (IPS) consisting of two co-prime space vehicles (SVs), with up to six auxiliary payloads (APLs), and up to eight separate Poly-PicoSatellite Orbital Deployers (P-PODs) and cubesats.

As a refresher, the spacecraft uses 4.5 million pounds of thrust to launch and is capable of carrying a payload of 53,000 kg (116,845 lbs.) into low Earth orbit. 

NYC Teacher Arrested for Flying Drone at the U.S. Open

As reported by the Wall Street Journal: A New York City public school teacher was arrested after he flew a drone into the stands at the U.S. Open on Friday, police said.

Daniel Varley, 26 years old, was charged with reckless endangerment after he crash-landed the device in the upper stands at Louis Armstrong Stadium of the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing just before 9 p.m., police said.

He was also charged with reckless operation of a drone and operating a drone in a New York City park outside of a prescribed area for doing so.

Mr. Varley had flown the device from a nearby park, where he was found a short time later, police said.

The drone incident happened during the second-to-last match of the night between Flavia Pennetta and Monica Niculescu.

“A little bit scary, I have to say,” Ms. Pennetta told the Associated Press, saying she initially thought it was a bomb.

Play briefly stopped while the device was inspected by police and fire personnel.

“The chair umpire just wanted to wait for an OK from the police to be able to continue, even if, truthfully, I don’t think even they knew what it was,” Ms. Pennetta told the AP.

Mr. Varley was released and issued a desk appearance ticket, police said. He could not be reached for comment.

No one was injured in the incident, officials said.

Google/Waze Sued for Allegedly Stealing Map Data

As reported by Slashgear: 

Waze, the navigation app that Google bought and cops hate, is facing a lawsuit for allegedly copying a proprietary navigation database. The lawsuit is being brought by San Francisco law firm Kronenberger Rosenfeld, LLP, and was filed on behalf of PhantomALERT, Inc., which is described as a “GPS navigation technology company.” Waze wasacquired by Google, but before that happened, according to the lawsuit, it copied PhantomALERT’s database without authorization. This data was then reportedly used in Waze’s own Android and iPhone apps

According to the lawsuit, PhantomALERT has spent more than seven years curating a database that includes a “systematic process” designed to identify nearby law enforcement officers, road conditions (hazards and traffic) and points of interest. Waze’s CEO reportedly approached PhantomALERT in 2010 regarding a deal in which the two companies would share database information.

PhantomALERT states it declined the offer, partly because Waze hadn’t yet developed “a substantial database” of its own. This, according to the lawsuit, lead to Waze “repeatedly [copying] its Points of Interest database”; the copied information is said to still be in use by Google.

Map makers of old would determine if their maps had been stolen by inserting small fictitious cities and roads. PhantomALERT is said to have done something similar, identifying Waze’s alleged copying by locating fake points of interest that had been inserted into its database - the same database that is reportedly being used in Google’s navigation app.

Said PhantomALERT’s CEO Joseph Scott Seyoum in a statement:

The financial and reputational damages we have incurred from having our unique and carefully built database stolen are staggering. While we cannot undo the past, we can ensure that those who took our intellectual property no longer profit from it at our expense … I started PhantomALERT seven years ago as an entrepreneur with a dream, and now that dream has been crushed by companies that are profiting from the years of blood, sweat and tears our team put into our product.

Google acquired Waze for $1 billion.

Fuel Ships Take 4,000-Mile Africa Detour as Oil Prices Plunge

As reported by Bloomberg: Slumping oil prices are spurring 4,000-mile (6,400-kilometer) diversions of tankers filled with diesel and jet fuel as the price of ship fuel plunges, opening up trading opportunities.

At least five tankers will deliver refined products to European ports in August and September, sailing around South Africa rather than using the normal shortcut through Egypt’s Suez Canal, ship tracking data show. The falling cost of fuel oil, used to power ships, has made longer voyages viable at a time when there are advantages for traders to keep cargoes at sea. Long-distance shipments between continents have increased this year, according to Torm A/S, world’s second-biggest publicly traded product-tanker owner.

Plunging oil opens up new trades as product tankers take the long route to Europe

Brent crude futures plunged about 50 percent since August last year as OPEC nations kept pumping more than the market needs. Across oil markets, the rout triggered what traders call contango, a price pattern that lessens the need for speedy oil deliveries because future fuel prices are higher than immediate ones.

“There’s massive demand to move oil products over very long distances,” Erik Nikolai Stavseth, a shipping analyst at Arctic Securities ASA in Oslo, said by phone Aug. 27. “These shipments tell me that there are very good times ahead for product-tanker owners,” he said, referring to ships that carry refined fuels like gasoline and diesel.

Scorpio Tankers Inc. and Torm are the biggest and second-biggest publicly traded owners of product tankers worldwide, according to data from Clarkson Plc, the world’s largest shipbroker.

Rates Surge

Rates for hauling these fuels are surging. The sort of long-range tankers being used to sail around Africa will earn $28,375 a day this year, according to a survey of shipping specialists compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the most since at least 2010 and 19 percent more than anticipated at the end of last year.

The Baltic Clean Tanker Index, an overall measure of the cost of moving gasoline, diesel and other fuels, averaged 695 points since the start of January, the highest in four years, data from the Baltic Exchange in London show.

The journey around Africa only works occasionally, when fuel prices are low and trading conditions are right. The normal route remains through the Suez Canal, which is what most vessels are doing now, according to lists of charters and tracking compiled by Bloomberg. 

Each long-range tanker is designed to deliver about 80,000 metric tons of cargo.

Extended Journeys

Extended journeys help owners because they keep ships employed for longer, effectively cutting fleet supply. As well as lower fuel prices, traders also like the option of selling cargoes en route, to West Africa, for example, where demand is rising, and to other regions including Latin America, according to Erik Broekhuizen, the head of tanker research and consulting at Poten & Partners Inc. in New York.

The trend to sail around Africa could intensify if the price slides to new lows, reducing fuel costs further and as more export refineries come on stream, in particular in the Middle East and countries like India, Broekhuizen said. That would increase demand for long-range product carriers.

A widening of the contango-- where a near-term oversupply makes gasoline and other products cheaper today than in future months -- could also spur demand.

"Low fuel prices make the longer route around the Cape increasingly competitive relative to the Suez Canal," Broekhuizen said. “Another advantage of taking the longer route is that it gives traders more options of where to sell their cargoes.”