Power Consumption of Autonomous Vehicles

Extremetech reports here on the power requirements of autonomous driving systems.

Autonomous Vehicle Test Track

NBC reports here on the Mcity autonomous vehicle test track at the University of Michigan.

AMD Embedded Radeon GPU

Anandtech reports here on the new Polaris-based embedded Radeon processor from AMD.

Report on GPS Spoofing

Bruce Schneier reports here on apparent incidents of GPS spoofing. GPS spoofing creates concerns for both safety and security.

Qualcomm V2X Chip

Extremetech reports here on a new cellular-based vehicle-to-everything chip from Qualcomm.

Aviation Software

This is a screenshot of the entertainment system rebooting at the start of a recent flight.  Guess what OS they run?

Incompatibility in Leica Camera Equipment

DP Review reports here on an incompatibility between a Leica camera and a Leica viewfinder.  Attaching the viewfinder may cause the camera to stop functioning.

Movidius Neural Compute Stick

Anandtech reports here on the Movidius Neural Compute Stick from Intel. A Caffe convolutional neural network can be compiled onto the Movidius stick for execution.  The stick interfaces to the host via USB.

IoT Shoes That Order Pizza

AV Club reports here on special Pizza Hut shoes with a pizza ordering button.  The report does not the wireless protocol used or the power consumption of the device.

News on Schiaparelli Mars lander failure

Aviation Week reports here on news regarding the failure of the ESA Schiaparelli Mars lander.  They believe that the Inertial Measurement Unit saturated, leading to a bad altitude estimate and premature initiation of the landing sequence.

Do Export Controls on Computer Security Make Us Less Secure?

This post's title is posed as a question, not as a declaration, as is the post itself.  But I think that recent events highlight a conundrum in embedded system security that has been brewing for quite some time: our embedded devices can be used to attack our own computer systems.
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The recent DDOS attacks against DNS provider Dyn were conducted by an army of zombie IoT devices.  IoT devices, simple as they are, have enough capability to play roles in these sorts of attacks. And given that we have many more IoT devices than desktop or laptop computers, they are obvious fodder for attackers.
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It is certainly true that many IoT devices are shoddily designed and constructed, making it easy for attackers to commandeer them. Some simple steps on the part of manufacturers could make these devices more secure. But it is also true that U. S. export control laws make it difficult to export security-related hardware and software that would allow an extra level of protection for these devices. And the vast majority of these inexpensive IoT devices are manufactured overseas.
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If we allowed more computer security equipment to be exported, would it be used against us? Probably. Would the net threat be larger than the one we now face?  I really don't know but I think we should have this discussion.  I think that Congress and technical experts should work together to identify ways to make the United States and the world safer and more secure from IoT-based threats. Everyone should consider guidelines or regulations on how devices are certified at a given level of safety. As part of that process, we will probably end up considering what types of security devices, both hardware and software, we want to see more broadly used and what techniques we want to keep in reserve.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Basis Peak Recall

Intel reports here that they are recalling all Basis Peak recall due to overheating of a small number of watches.  A few users reported burns due to watch overheating.