This week, the Senate passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, which, among other things, renews funding for the Federal Aviation Administration and introduces new rules for airports and aircraft. But the bill, which now just needs to be signed by the president, also addresses drones. And while parts of the bill extend some aspects of drone use — such as promoting drone package delivery and drone testing — it also gives the federal government power to take down a private drone if it’s seen as a “credible threat.”
The wording comes from another bill, the Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018, which was strongly supported by the Department of Homeland Security and absorbed into the FAA Reauthorization Act. In June, as part of its argument as to why it needed more leeway when it comes to drones, the agency said that terrorist groups overseas “use commercially available [unmanned aircraft systems] to drop explosive payloads, deliver harmful substances and conduct illicit surveillance,” and added that the devices are also used to transport drugs, interfere with law enforcement and expolit unsecured networks.
However, the bill’s vague language and lack of oversight measures attracted criticism from groups like the ACLU, which said earlier this year that the proposed law contained “insufficient protections to ensure that such authority is not used arbitrarily, abusively or unnecessarily, and would permit conduct that raises privacy and due process concerns.”
The bill says that when a “credible threat” is posed by a drone to a “covered facility or asset,” the federal government can “disrupt control” of that device, “seize or exercise control” of it, confiscate it or “use reasonable force, if necessary, to disable, damage or destroy the unmanned aircraft system.” In the bill, “credible threat” is left undefined.
The EFF expressed concern over the bill, telling TechCrunch, “If lawmakers want to give the government the power to hack or destroy private drones, then Congress and the public should have the opportunity to debate how best to provide adequate oversight and limit those powers to protect our right to use drones for journalism, activism and recreation.”
The ACLU reiterated its objections as well. “These provisions give the government virtually carte blanche to surveil, seize or even shoot a drone out of the sky — whether owned by journalists or commercial entities — with no oversight or due process,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
President Trump is fully expected to sign the bill into law.
It’s not easy being a bee these days. Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee, is crucial to agriculture worldwide but faces a growing number of pests and pathogens against which beekeepers have few weapons.
But the bees themselves may be showing us the way forward: New research suggests the foraging insects may obtain protection against some viruses by consuming fungi, then returning to the hive to spread its medicinal value.
Honey bees contribute more than $15 billion annually to U.S
Back in February, I got very excited about the Cadillac CT6 sedan. It didn’t handle better than its competitors. It wasn’t faster or better put-together. But it did come with Super Cruise; a cutting edge semi-autonomous driving assist that combines HD mapping and a proper driver monitoring system. Super Cruise is geofenced, so it only works on divided lane highways. And only when it knows you’re looking at the road ahead, thanks to that driver monitoring system. That made it the best such system on the market—yes, even better than Tesla’s Autopilot—and it seems Consumer Reports agrees. On Thursday it published its first-ever ranking of semi-automated driving systems, putting Super Cruise in at the top.
The proliferation of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) across the auto industry has been quite a thing to watch. Some features are there for driver convenience, like adaptive cruise control and lane keeping. Others—collision warning or emergency braking for example—are more consciously safety features. But the rollout can also be a bit bewildering, particularly when it comes to relative performance. The problem is that comparative testing is easier said than done, at least without the right resources.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is one of the few groups to have been doing this with some rigor. Now Consumer Reports joins the fray. Like IIHS, its first results are from a rather limited sample—in this case, it tested Super Cruise in a Cadillac CT6; Autopilot in Tesla Models S, X, and 3; ProPilot Assist in an Infiniti QX50 and Nissan Leaf; and Pilot Assist in a Volvo XC40 and XC60. (With regard to software versions, Consumer Reports says it evaluated the systems as they were operating in September 2018.)
“We have been evaluating these systems on a case-by-case basis for a few years, but we are at a tipping point where they are now going mainstream,” says Jake Fisher, director of Auto Testing at Consumer Reports. “Stacked up against each other, you can really see significant differences. The best systems balance capability with safeguards—making driving easier and less stressful in the right situations. Without proper safeguards, over-reliance on the system is too easy, which puts drivers at risk.”
Consumer Reports says it tested “not only how well the technology works but also how well it monitors driver engagement and reacts if drivers don’t respond to warnings.” For that reason alone I’m not surprised Super Cruise won, as it remains the only system to take driver monitoring more seriously than using a torque sensor to measure steering input. It also rated GM highly for making it clear when it was safe to use the system.
Tesla got good marks for Autopilot’s capabilities but did not do well when it came to monitoring or alerting its driver. ProPilot Assist came third, with Volvo coming last, in part because its displays can cause mode confusion. I don’t do this job for validation, but it’s always nice when another august publication comes to the same conclusion I have—and I agree entirely with Consumer Reports’ take.
Super Cruise is the most complete system on the market, and anyone who is serious about offering this level of driver assist needs to provide proper driver monitoring. (GM also needs to hurry up and make it available in more models.) Autopilot is extremely capable but doesn’t have your back the way Super Cruise does. ProPilot Assist is indeed very good about avoiding mode confusion. And Pilot Assist is the only system with which I’ve experienced mode confusion, assuming it was engaged when it wasn’t. Twice.
As a responsible arbiter of information, Consumer Reports also stresses that these kind of assists are really there for convenience and that operating them introduces new safety risks. As we stress every time we cover the topic, no matter what a car calls its combination of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, it’s not responsible for situational awareness: that responsibility lies with the human in the driver’s seat.
In early August, Boeing’s Leanne Caret and SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell took the stage at Johnson Space Center to announce the first astronauts who will fly on their commercial crew spacecraft. It was a significant moment to see two of the most powerful women in aerospace alongside one another—two fierce competitors coming together for the good of the country.
As president and chief executive officer of Boeing’s Defense, Space, & Security unit, Caret said the company took pride in working with NASA and the aerospace industry to bring a human space launch capability back to America. ”All of us are here today because we stand for something new and profound,” Caret said. “It is personal for all of us in this room, together, returning American astronauts on American rockets from US soil and creating endless possibilities for generations to come.”
Around this time, half a dozen newspapers across the country—several in key space markets—began publishing an op-ed that criticized the process by which Boeing competitor SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rocket. The first op-ed appeared in a Memphis newspaper a week before the commercial crew announcement. In recent weeks, copies of the op-ed have also appeared in the Houston Chronicle, various Alabama newspapers, Albuquerque Journal, Florida Today, and The Washington Times.
Who placed the op-eds?
All of these op-eds were bylined by “retired spacecraft operator” Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program and now lives in Tennessee. (Based upon his limited social mediapostings, Hagar appears to be more interested in conservative politics than in space these days). Each op-ed cites Hagar’s work on NASA’s recovery from the Apollo 1 fire and the hard lessons NASA learned that day about human spaceflight.
The pieces then pivot to arguing that SpaceX’s load-and-go fueling process—in which the crew will board the Dragon spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket before it is fueled—ignores the lessons that Hagar’s generation learned during Apollo.
“It’s concerning to learn that some of the newer private space ventures launching today don’t appreciate the same safety standards we learned to emphasize on Apollo,” the op-ed states. “I suppose for Mr. Musk, inexperience is replacing the abundant safety protocols drilled into us after witnessing the Apollo 1 disaster. Astronaut safety is NASA’s number one priority on any space mission. There is no reason it should not be for private space travel, but commercial space companies like SpaceX play by different rules.”
There are some factual inaccuracies here. For one thing, SpaceX does play by the same rules as Boeing for commercial crew—astronaut safety rules that NASA itself wrote. Moreover, NASA has already provisionally cleared load-and-go for Falcon 9 launches that will send the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.
To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds.
In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as “associates” at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. We reached out to multiple editors at papers that ran the op-eds, and they confirmed that no LMG affiliation was disclosed to them. Attempts to reach Julian Epstein, the chief executive of LMG, by phone and email were unsuccessful.
Who funded the campaign?
According to the LMG website, the 15-year-old firm “develops and executes public-, Hill-, and agency-facing issue advocacy campaigns that shift the narrative in a changing world.” More bluntly, the SourceWatch website calls LMG a “secretive Washington DC public affairs firm” with a history of placing op-eds, and it seeks to mask the op-eds’ financial sponsors.
Ars could not confirm the ultimate sponsor of the op-eds, but there are some potentially pertinent facts. For one, Boeing is touted on the LMG website as a client, and it is listed as one of LMG’s three main “featured narratives” on its homepage. (LMG says, as part of its campaign for a Boeing tanker plane, that it “developed and executed an aggressive ‘outside game’ campaign working with dozens of major grassroots organizations, labor unions, suppliers and vendors and national security experts to make the case for Boeing’s bid. We developed messaging… and helped manage a newly developed social media campaign amplifying our nationwide chorus of genuine American voices supporting Boeing.”)
Boeing, which is not mentioned in the op-eds, is also the only competitor to SpaceX in the commercial crew program. Could Boeing be the client behind the anti-SpaceX op-eds? A spokesman for Boeing, Jerry Drelling, told Ars, “We have no comment.”
Boeing and SpaceX are now in the midst of a heated race to become the first private company to fly astronauts into orbit. Although NASA and the two companies are focused on safely flying people to the International Space Station, considerable prestige will accrue to the first company that launches humans from Florida into orbit. This achievement will return to the United States a capability that has not existed since July 2011, when the space shuttle stopped flying.
There is little love lost between SpaceX and Boeing based upon their competition for federal and commercial contracts and across a variety of aerospace ventures. As part of this competition, Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have clashed publicly over who will land humans on Mars first.
In the last year, there have been dozens of negative op-eds that have sought to stir discontent about SpaceX practices, though it has been unclear if a coordinated campaign was behind them.Until recently, these op-eds appeared primarily in conservative publications. One novel element of the Hagar op-eds is that they were published in mainstream newspapers—and in the home states of NASA’s three main human spaceflight field centers in Texas, Florida, and Alabama.
Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who directed Paranormal Activity 3 and Paranormal Activity 4, are writing and directing the Mega Man film, which is tentatively titled “Mega Man.” Planet of the Apes studios 20th Century Fox is distributing the movie; Chernin Entertainment is producing.
Heroes actor Masi Oka is producing as well.
“Based on the influential and globally beloved Mega Man franchise, Capcom aims to appeal to a diverse audience, including not only game players but action movie fans as well, with an adaptation that maintains the world of the Mega Man games, while incorporating the grand production and entertainment value that Hollywood movies are known for,” Capcom said in a news release.
This will be the first Mega Man movie, but the franchise already came to TV in the form of the animated show Mega Man: Fully Charged. There is no word on when the movie will be released or who will star in it. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more.
WASHINGTON — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is moving ahead with plans to revise safety rules that bar fully self-driving cars from the roads without equipment like steering wheels, pedals and mirrors, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The auto safety agency, known as NHTSA, “intends to reconsider the necessity and appropriateness of its current safety standards” as applied to automated vehicles, the U.S. Transportation Department said in an 80-page update of its principles dubbed “Automated Vehicles 3.0” being made public on Thursday.
The department disclosed that in an upcoming rulemaking, NHTSA wants public comment “on proposed changes to particular safety standards to accommodate automated vehicle technologies and the possibility of setting exceptions to certain standards — that are relevant only when human drivers are present” for autonomous vehicles.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who will release the report at event at the department’s headquarters on Thursday, said in the report self-driving cars have the potential to dramatically reduce traffic crashes and road deaths, but added the “public has legitimate concerns about the safety, security, and privacy of automated technology.”
Automakers must currently meet nearly 75 auto safety standards, many of which were written with the assumption that a licensed driver will be in control of the vehicle.
General Motors in January filed a petition seeking an exemption for the current rules to deploy vehicles without steering wheels and other human controls as part of a ride-sharing fleet it plans to deploy in 2019.
NHTSA has not declared the GM petition complete, a step necessary before it can rule on the merits. NHTSA said it plans to propose modernizing procedures to follow when reviewing exemption petitions.
Alphabet Inc’s Waymo unit plans to launch an autonomous ride-hailing service for the general public with no human driver behind the steering wheel in Arizona later this year. But unlike GM, Waymo’s vehicles will have human controls for the time being.
In March, a self-driving Uber Technologies vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian, while the backup safety driver was watching a video, police said. Uber suspended testing in the aftermath, and some safety advocates said the crash showed the system was not safe enough to be tested on public roads.
‘A more fundamental revamping’
The stepped-up regulatory focus by NHTSA comes as legislation in Congress to speed self-driving cars, which passed the U.S. House in 2017, has stalled and has only an outside chance of getting approved this year, congressional aides say.
The report said “NHTSA’s current statutory authority to establish motor vehicle safety standards is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the design and performance of different” automated vehicles.
But automakers have warned it could take too long for NHTSA to rewrite the rules to allow for the widespread adoption of self-driving cars without human controls.
The agency said it “may also consider a more fundamental revamping of its approach to safety standards” for automated vehicles and added future requirements “need to be more flexible and responsive, technology-neutral, and performance-oriented.”
NHTSA said it could require manufacturers “to use test methods, such as sophisticated obstacle-course-based test regimes” or it could also adopt computer simulation requirements as U.S. law “does not require that NHTSA’s safety standards rely on physical tests and measurements, only that they be objective, repeatable, and transparent.”
10 proving grounds dumped
The department also said it “no longer recognizes the designations of 10 automated vehicle proving grounds” announced shortly before then President Barack Obama left office in January 2017.
The sites, including a Michigan center that President Donald Trump visited last year, were named by Congress to be eligible for $60 million in grants “to fund demonstration projects that test the feasibility and safety” of self-driving vehicles.
The report said “given the rapid increase in automated vehicle testing activities in many locations, there is no need for U.S. DOT to favor particular locations.”
The Transportation Department also announced it will launch a study of the workforce impacts of automated vehicles with the Labor, Commerce, and the Health and Human Services departments.
The report also said the Trump administration will not call for ending human driving. The department “embraces the freedom of the open road, which includes the freedom for Americans to drive their own vehicles. … We will protect the ability of consumers to make the mobility choices that best suit their needs.”