Uber and CMU Announce Strategic Partnership and Advanced Technologies Center | Uber Blog

Posted on by cathywu

Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are announcing today a strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus.  The center will focus on the development of key long-term technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere.

The partnership will provide a forum for Uber technology leaders to work closely with CMU faculty, staff, and students — both on campus and at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) — to do research and development, primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology.

via Uber and CMU Announce Strategic Partnership and Advanced Technologies Center | Uber Blog.

Uber is hiring more than fifty senior scientists from Carnegie Mellon as well as from the National Robotics Engineering Center, a CMU-affiliated research entity. Carnegie Mellon, home of the Mars Rover and other high-profile robotics projects, declined to comment at this time, as did scientists mentioned by our source. Uber has “cleaned out” the Robotics Institute, said the source.

The source also noted that most of these technologies came through a “massive” military spending push over the past decade and should net the university millions in IP licensing fees.

Uber will be developing the core technology, the vehicles, and associated infrastructure at this Pittsburgh facility, according to sources. They have already hired a number of employees and made moves to outfit them with software, including a multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in third-party engineering workstations.

via Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility In Pittsburgh To Build Self-Driving Cars | TechCrunch.

Exclusive: Google and Uber Are Going to War Over Taxis – Bloomberg Business

Posted on by cathywu

Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber’s board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member.

There’s already an additional sign of a rift between the companies. Last week Google announced it would start presenting data from third party applications inside Google Now, a service that displays useful information prominently on the screen of Android smartphones. Google said it had struck deals to draw data from such apps as Pandora, AirBnb, Zillow, and the ride-sharing service Lyft. The company most obviously missing from that list? Google’s old and possibly former friend, Uber.

via Exclusive: Google and Uber Are Going to War Over Taxis – Bloomberg Business.

Google’s Self-Driving Car Pals Revealed – IEEE Spectrum

Posted on by cathywu

at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, project director Chris Urmson named Continental, Roush, Bosch, ZFLS, RCO, FRIMO, Prefix, and LG as companies that had helped to build the pod-like vehicle.

via Google's Self-Driving Car Pals Revealed – IEEE Spectrum.

Specs: plug-in electric

Roush Enterprises: from Detroit, design integration and final assembly of 100 units
LG: battery supplier, possibly similar to the systems in Tesla’s vehicles (modular lithium ion system)
Bosch: long-range radar, electric powertrain supplier; about to acquire ZFLS (German steering systems company)
ZFLS: parallel, redundant motors
RCO Engineering: seats designer
FRIMO: plastic and composite components for interior/exterior
Prefix: general automotive design and manufacturing engineering firm
Continental: “intelligent transportation systems” business unit based in SV, developing competing autonomous vehicle technologies; supplying tires and some electronics/components
Nvidia: microprocessors for object detection and recognition

LIDAR units (currently $70k) are being designed in-house.

A New Partnership With Europe | Uber Blog

Posted on by cathywu

This year, in close partnership with European cities, we can take 400,000 cars off the road, expand UberPOOL and reduce emissions, all while creating 50,000 new jobs across the continent.

As with our recent initiative with the city of Boston, Uber can share smart data with partner cities to help them manage growth, reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions and expand public transportation. We’re confident this combination of data sharing, job creation and reduced use of personal automobiles represents important partnership opportunities for Europe’s cities as well.

via A New Partnership With Europe | Uber Blog.

Uber is moving fast and breaking stuff, woo!

Customize Gmail’s Priority Inbox View with a Super Simple Hack

Posted on by cathywu

You can hack your inbox sections similarly in a number of different ways (e.g., only show emails labeled "work" that are unread). Here are the steps using this example, for Chrome:

  1. Set up the priority inboxes and your labels, if they aren’t already.
  2. Apply a filter to archive “work” messages coming in so they skip the main inbox.
  3. Go to Settings > Inbox > Options next to the inbox section you want to customize.
  4. Click “More Options…”
  5. Right-click or CTRL+Shift+C on the label (e.g., “work”) and select “Inspect element.” (Firefox users just go to Tools > Web Developer > Inspect Element and click on the label).
  6. Look for the attribute cfg=”^all,Work” and change the value to cfg=”^u,^all,Work”
  7. Finally, select the work label on the page as normal.

Commands:

^i = Inbox
^u = Unread
^io_im = Important
^t = starred
^f = sent
^r = drafts
^all = All mail (include archive)
ie. ^i,^u,Work = all emails in your inbox, that are unread with the label “Work”.

via Customize Gmail's Priority Inbox View with a Super Simple Hack.

Nice hack for Gmail’s priority inbox.

Elon Musk is spending $10 million to save us from an evil robot takeover – Quartz

Posted on by cathywu

the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX announced yesterday that he is giving $10 million to fund research that ensures artificial intelligence will be used for good, not evil. … This week, Musk signed an open letter calling for research that will “help maximize the societal benefit of AI.”

via Elon Musk is spending $10 million to save us from an evil robot takeover – Quartz.

Donation is to the “Future of Life Institute” — nonprofit research group

Research priorities document [src]

I think I have a new hero.

Uber’s legal battles and robocars | Brad Ideas

Posted on by cathywu

the Online Ride drivers make the very common mistake of acting as though the depreciation on their car costs them nothing because they have already bought the car. In talking to drivers, I have found that most do not account for the true cost of operating their car (around 50 cents/mile or about $20/hour) and rather mostly look at the cost of gasoline. They figure their income by just taking what they are paid and deducting very immediate costs like fuel. They are making an error, and this allows the companies to get drivers for less than the real cost. Robocars, of course, won’t have this issue.

Attacks on the online ride industry will continue. The official reason for slowing it down will be a reasonable sounding one such as safety

As a postscript, I should note that Uber has also gotten into deserved trouble because of very bad privacy practices and abuses, and disturbing attitudes by management about the press, their opponents and even women. These issues are unrelated to the real question, and Uber deserves trouble for them. Though it’s enemies will seize on its real mistakes in other fields to fight their battle.

via Uber's legal battles and robocars | Brad Ideas.

The battle against inertia.

Peculiar Benefits – The Rumpus.net

Posted on by cathywu

You don’t necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don’t have to apologize for it. You don’t need to diminish your privilege or your accomplishments because of that privilege. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. They might endure situations you can never know anything about. You could, however, use that privilege for the greater good–to try to level the playing field for everyone, to work for social justice, to bring attention to how those without certain privileges are disenfranchised. While you don’t have to do anything with your privilege, perhaps it should be an imperative of privilege to share the benefits of that privilege rather than hoard your good fortune. We’ve seen what the hoarding of privilege has done and the results are shameful.

via Peculiar Benefits – The Rumpus.net.

HT Laura Royden

Well-said. (discussion of privilege.)

Area 1 Security: Former NSA Employees Launch Startup To Stop Social Engineering – Business Insider

Posted on by cathywu

Area 1 Security is fighting social engineering attacks with NSA-like methods.

But after learning tricks from the NSA, Area 1’s co-founders think they’ve got the solution. It’s a butt service that basically watches the whole Internet and can then detect when something fishy (phishy?) is going on at a particular company.

"The hardest thing a human can do [when hacking] is to pretend to be normal. There’s all of these subtle behaviors when someone is being attacked, deviations when they go to banking sites, search the web," CEO Oren Falkowitz tells us.

Area 1 isn’t the only security company working on this. FireEye made its name with a product that protects against a similar kind of targeted attacks.  And the whole field of "anomaly detection" security is decades old.

But because Area 1 is watching the whole internet, not just looking at data inside the company, it thinks this service will perform better.

"We look outside of companies," to see where websites, emails, or ads are coming from and if they are behaving weird. If so, it can block them or take other actions, depending on how an IT department has the service set up.

via Area 1 Security: Former NSA Employees Launch Startup To Stop Social Engineering – Business Insider.