Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/16 – NHTSA Investigating Tesla’s Autopilot

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Now it’s T-Mobile investigating a data breach that may or may not affect more than 100 million people. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla’s Autopilot. Everybody’s building undersea cables all at once. And new to me at least is the technology that can pull drinking water right from the hot, humid summer air. Sponsors: Streak.com/techmeme Voices.com Links: T-Mobile Investigating Claims of Massive Customer Data Breach (Motherboard) US probing Autopilot problems on 765,000 Tesla vehicles (Associated Press) Huawei Accused in Suit of Installing Data ‘Back Door’ in Pakistan Project (WSJ) Facebook, Amazon seek U.S. approval to operate undersea data cable (Reuters) This Solar Hydropanel Can Pull 10 Liters of Drinking Water Per Day Out of the Air (Brighter) Twitter’s web redesign isn’t as accessible as it should be, experts say (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Monday, August 16th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Now it's T-Mobile, investigating a data breach that may or may not affect more than 100 million people. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Tesla's autopilot. Everybody's building undersea cables all at once. And new to me, at least, is the technology that can pool drinking water right from the hot, humid summer air.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. T-Mobile is investigating claims that hackers stole data from its servers, including phone numbers, names, social security numbers, and driver's license info related to more than potentially 100 million people, quoting motherboard. T-Mobile says it is investigating a forum post claiming to be selling a mountain of personal data. The forum post itself doesn't mention T-Mobile, but the seller told motherboard they have obtained data related to over 100 million people and that the data came from T-Mobile servers. The data includes social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driver's license information, the seller said. Motherboard has seen

samples of the data and confirmed they contain accurate information on T-Mobile customers. Quote, T-Mobile USA, full customer info, the seller told motherboard in an online chat. The seller said they compromised multiple servers related to T-Mobile. On the underground forum, the seller is asking for six-bitcoin, around $270,000. for a subset of the data containing 30 million social security numbers and driver's licenses. The seller said they are privately selling the rest of the data at the moment. Quote, I think they already found out because we lost access to the backdored servers, the seller said, referring to T-Mobile's potential response to the breach.

They said that although it appears T-Mobile has since kicked them out of the hack servers, the seller had already downloaded the data locally. It's backed up in multiple places, they said. T-Mobile said in a statement to Motherboard that, quote, We are aware of claims made in an underground forum and have been actively investigating their validity. We do not have any additional information to share at this time, end quote. T-Mobile repeatedly declined to answer follow-up questions about the scale of the breach, end quote. The N. HTSA this morning announced the opening of a formal investigation into Tesla's autopilot system,

covering 765,000 vehicles, saying autopilot has trouble spotting parked emergency vehicle. quoteing the Associated Press. The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles almost everything that Tesla has sold in the U.S. since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as part of the investigation, 17 people were injured, and one was killed. NHTSA says it has identified 11 crashes since 2018 in which Tesla's on autopilot or traffic-aware cruise control have hit vehicles at scenes where first responders have used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrowboard or cones warning of hazards. The agency announced the Action Monday in a posting on its website. The investigation covers Tesla's entire current

model lineup, the models Y, X, S, and 3 from 2014 through 2021 model years. The National Transportation Safety Board, which also has investigated some of the Tesla crashes, has recommended that NHTSA and Tesla limit autopilot's use to areas where it can safely operate. The NTSB also recommended that NHTSA require Tesla to have a better system to make sure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA has not taken action on any of the recommendations. The NTSB has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations to other federal agencies such as NHTSA.

The investigation will assess the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist, and enforce the driver's engagement with the dynamic driving task during autopilot operation, NHTSA said in its investigation documents. In addition, the probe will cover object and event detection by the system, as well as where it is allowed to operate. NHTSA says it will examine, quote, contributing circumstances to the crashes as well as similar crashes. An investigation could lead to a recall or other enforcement action by NHTSA, quote, NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves, the agency said in a statement. Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state

laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles, end quote. The agency said it has, quote, robust enforcement tools to protect the public and investigate potential safety issues, and it will act when it finds evidence, quote, of noncompliance or an unreasonable risk to safety, end quote. A message was left early Monday, seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations office, end quote. I'm not sure if there's a reason, maybe regulatory, calendar-wise, why everybody decided to make these sorts of headlines all on the same day. But three different internet backbone stories for you.

First, Facebook, China Mobile, and M-TN group plan to expand an undersea cable network in Africa, adding the Seychelles, Comoros, Angola, and Nigeria. for 35 total landings. Then, Google and Facebook say they will participate in a new subsea cable system for 2024, linking Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. And finally, the third story, Amazon and Facebook, asks the FCC for approval for a new undersea data cable between the Philippines and California intending to start operations in 2022. This is notable because that last one, the third story I just mentioned, is only going forward because, because China Mobile dropped out of participating in that particular project, quoting Reuters.

The companies in a joint filing said the new cable will help to support Facebook applications and provide Amazon and its affiliates with capacity to support Amazon's cloud services and connect its data centers. A Facebook spokeswoman said the project parties agreed, quote, the best path forward to complete the construction and bring the cable system into operation was to restructure the system ownership, allowing the parties to deliver on the goal of bringing connectivity to more people and regions, end quote, Amazon and China Mobile did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The United States has repeatedly expressed concerns about China's role in handling network traffic and potential for espionage. Around 300 subsea

cables form the backbone of the internet carrying 99% of the world's data traffic. In September 2020, Facebook, Amazon, and China Mobile withdrew their application to connect San Francisco and Hong Kong as part of the Bay-to-Bay Express cable system. In March, Facebook withdrew a separate FCC application for a Hong Kong to California cable, end quote. So again, interesting that China Mobile is allowed to participate alongside Facebook in that first story, the one about the cable-linking Africa, of which, quoting Bloomberg, to Africa, set to become one of the largest sub-sea cable projects in the world, will cost just under $1 billion, Bloomberg reported last May, citing people familiar with the matter. Manufacturing of the first segments of the infrastructure

has started in the U.S., according to the statement. The Marine Surveys for the new section, of the cable will probably be completed by the end of the year, according to the companies. The 37,000 kilometer or 23,000 miles long cable will connect Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The undersea cable sector is experiencing a resurgence of late, with Facebook and Alphabet's Google behind about 80% of recent investments in transatlantic links. The tech giants are seeking to tap growing demand for fast data transfers used for everything from streaming movies to social messaging and telemedicine. During the 1990s.com boom, phone companies spent more than $20 billion laying fiber optic lines under the oceans, end quote.

In a new lawsuit, a U.S.-based contractor claims that Huawei stole its tech and pressured it to build a backdoor into a sensitive surveillance project in Pakistan, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The contractor, Buena Park, California-based business efficiency. Solution's LLC or BES, says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in California District Court that Huawei required it to set up a system in China that gives Huawei access to sensitive information about citizens and government officials from a Safe Cities surveillance project in Pakistan's second largest city of Lahore. Mohamed Kamran Khan, chief operating officer of the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, which oversees

the Lahore Project, said the authority has begun looking into BES's allegations, quote, our team is examining the accusations and sought an explanation. from Huawei, Mr. Khan said in an interview. We have also put a data security check on Huawei after this issue. So far, there has been no evidence of any data stealing by Huawei, he said. A Huawei spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on ongoing legal cases, but she added, quote, Huawei respects the intellectual property of others, and there is no evidence Huawei ever implemented any backdoor in our products, end quote. Also, by the by from the China tech file, sources are telling the information that the Chinese government took a stake and a board seat in BightDance's Beijing entity back in April.

The move gives Beijing more insight into the inner workings of Bight Dance, the world's most valuable privately held tech company, which owns some of the most popular apps in China, such as Doyenne, To Chow, along with TikTok. The government's right to one seat on a three-person board of directors at Beijing, Bite Dance Technology Company Limited, which holds Chinese business licenses related to Doyenne, and Chachau raises questions about how much more influence Beijing can exert over bite dance as a whole. A year before making the bite dance deal, the Chinese government also acquired a stake and a board seat in a domestic entity of NASDAQ listed Chinese social media firm Weibo, according to China's corporate records and Weibo's regulatory filings. Wibo operates a popular Twitter-like micro blog in China, end quote. I think I've mentioned on here before that I've been going down sort of prepper rabbit holes lately, mostly around emergency generators and backup batteries, hopefully tied to solar panels.

I guess it's prepper, or I would like to think of it more as prepared dad rabbit hole spilunking. My thinking such as it is is that I'm increasingly growing afraid of grid blackouts. Some unusually bad heat wave will hit the northeast at some point. The grid might collapse from overuse, and then the fear would be a wet bulb event causing mass casualties and heat stroke, and hey, who wants to be without electricity for weeks at a time in the summer? So this weekend, when going down that same rabbit hole, I learned about this interesting gadget. Solar hydropanels can literally pull liters and liters of drinking water out of the air every single day. That's right. They harvest water vapor from the humid summer air,

condense it into liquid, and boom. I literally did not know this technology existed. Imagine a solar panel array, because that's what this is, with some extra tech for the water, quoting the brighter side. Some water generators, such as the water seer, get a lot of hype and a lot of skepticism, but haven't been able to deliver. Others like the Ecoloblu Blue devices are a bit more costly and complex, but they actually exist and can be bought and put to work. Zero Mass Water's source device is a rooftop solar device that produces water instead of just electricity. The company's source hydropanel arrays are now available in the U.S. where, quote, it works in almost every climate and almost every day of the year, end quote. A standard source array is made up of two hydropanels,

with additional panels added as needed for the water production or the local climate, and this self-contained unit is designed to be mounted onto the roof of a building where it can then produce an average of 4 to 10 liters per day. An onboard 30-liter reservoir holds the collected water and mineralizes it with calcium and magnesium, and the outflow, of the device can be plumbed right to a tap or refrigerator or dispenser inside the building for ease of use. No maintenance is said to be necessary other than the annual filter changes and swapping out the mineral cartridge every five years, which a subscription program delivers when its time. The system will produce the equivalent of 43,800 bottles of water over its lifetime

with no plastic waste. According to zero-mass water, even those in low humidity and arid regions can put source units to work to generate water, which is a question that many skeptics of the system bring up. Quote, our array on the zero mass water headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, makes water year-long, despite low relative humidity. The Phoenix metro area can get below 5% relative humidity in the summer, and source still produces water in these incredibly dry conditions, end quote. Source water generators are costly, at least in terms of the initial investment. A standard array with two panels runs about $4,000, plus another $500 for installation, and is said to be engineered to last at least 10 years. That brings the cost to about $1.23 per day, or between $0.30 per liter,

when averaged out over the life of the unit. Finally, today, Twitter says it is changing the contrast of its new buttons, as users complain about headaches after its redesign last week that some experts say wasn't very accessible. We only talked about this briefly on the Twitter space I shared over the weekend, because as I said to Chris at the time, things like changing fonts and the color of buttons isn't something that generally gets my attention.

And people always hate redesign, so I kind of thought it wasn't that big a story, though they don't often go so far as to say a redesign causes them headaches, quoting TechCrunch. After teasing its new font in January, Twitter made some major changes to its website and app design this week, but while Twitter framed these updates as making the platform more accessible, some accessibility experts say that these changes miss the mark. Most noticeably, tweets now appear

in CHIRP, Twitter's proprietary typeface, and the display has even more visual contrast between the background and text. Other updates made the interface less cluttered, removing unnecessary divider lines. For people with low vision, high contrast design can make websites more legible, but the current contrast level is so high that it's causing strain for some users. Twitter far exceeds the minimum contrast standards set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WC-A-G, which provides recommendations for making websites accessible to disabled people. But web accessibility isn't one-size-fits-all, while some users may need a high-contrast display, others who suffer from chronic migraines might require a more muted experience.

Research has also shown that dyslexic people tend to read faster when presented, with lower contrast texts. Up until last year, Twitter's accessibility team was volunteer-based. Paid employees at Twitter would take on accessibility projects on top of their existing jobs, TechCrunch reported. In September, a few months after Twitter had released an audio tweet feature with accessibility considerations, Twitter introduced two dedicated accessibility teams within its company. But experts emphasize that including disabled people in design decisions from the get-go

is necessary when implementing new features. They talked a good talk about how they were going to change this, that they were going to integrate accessibility and disabled perspectives more into their design process, and from this, it seems they have not done an adequate job with that, said Alex Haggard, a design researcher and founding member at the disabled list. Engaging people from disabled communities as consultants at the high-level stages within the research and conceptualization phase would prevent designers from getting to a point where you're testing something and you realize it's fundamental. problematic and it's too late end quote that's all for today talk to tomorrow