Drone regulation

If you're a drone operator in Australia, you should brush up on your safety regulations or face being automatically grounded from today. 

As of February 14, pilots of DJI drones — the most popular brand in the country — will be required to pass a short "knowledge quiz" about safety in order to fly their machines.

The quiz is embedded in a mobile phone app which controls the drone, meaning every DJI pilot will be forced to take the three-minute test, even if they are an experienced operator.

There is no limit on the number of times a pilot can attempt the quiz.

Peter Gibson, corporate communication manager at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which has authorised the move, says DJI approached the agency to help design the nine-item test.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-14/australian-dji-drone-pilots-forced-to-take-quiz-to-fly/9443712?section=technology

Hacking Tractors (& Legislation)

The days of home tractor repair are coming to an end with machinery technology and tightening intellectual property restrictions meaning farmers are forced to pay big bucks to fix their machinery.
When Nebraska farmer Tom Schwarz bought a tractor he did not realise he would be bound to his John Deere dealer who holds onto intellectual property rights to fix it.

"When you paid the money for a tractor, you didn't actually buy the tractor … because all of the intellectual property is still theirs," Mr Schwartz told tech journalist Jason Koebler in a documentary released earlier this month."You just buy the right to use it … for life."


Farmers and independent machinery repairers across the United States are now campaigning for the right to fix their own machinery.


.....


In Nebraska, a "fair repair" law is being proposed to allow farmers to repair their own tractor.
If successful, the Right to Repair Act would make it mandatory for companies to disclose their diagnostic software and sell parts.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-02-22/tractor-hacking-farmers-in-the-us-fight-for-right-to-repair/9470658

Uber not a technology company

Uber is a transport services company, the European court of justice (ECJ) has ruled, requiring it to accept stricter regulation and licensing within the EU as a taxi operator.

The decision in Luxembourg, after a challenge brought by taxi drivers in Barcelona, will apply across the whole of the EU, including the UK. It cannot be appealed against.

Uber had denied it was a transport company, arguing instead it was a computer services business with operations that should be subject to an EU directive governing e-commerce and prohibiting restrictions on the establishment of such organisations.

From The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/20/uber-european-court-of-justice-ruling-barcelona-taxi-drivers-ecj-eu

Seattle experimenting with new tax proposals

I love examples where governments experiment with new policies without actually being totally sure of the outcomes, but knowing they have to to do something.

This effort seems warranted, particularly in the light of the growing use of electric vehicles that seems to be emerging. The double whammy will be the possible widespread adoption of  autonomous vehicles.


Washington state to test pay-by-the-mile as a way to fund highways

• As cars get more fuel-efficient, gas-tax revenues won’t nearly keep up with the costs of highway work that those taxes fund. Washington is launching a pilot project to test a new way of funding roads — a tax on every mile you drive.

• Next year the Washington State Department of Transportation expects gas-tax revenues to rise by 0.9 percent. It expects its construction costs to increase by 2.6 percent. The year after, it expects gas-tax revenue to increase by 0.7 percent. It expects construction costs to increase by 2.7 percent.

•  “Inflation that we have forecasted is higher than these motor-fuel growth rates of less than 1 percent,” said Lizbeth Martin-Mahar, the Department of Transportation’s chief economist.

• It’s a problem that will only get worse in the future as cars get more and more fuel efficient and, eventually, revenues begin to actually decline. It’s also not a problem that has sneaked up on anyone. The Washington State Transportation Commission has been studying it since 2012 and is now recruiting volunteers to test a possible solution.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/washington-state-to-test-pay-by-the-mile-as-a-way-to-fund-highways/

They had better hurry with the autonomous vehicle rules

From Electrek
https://electrek.co/2016/11/11/teslaautopilotchipsupplierselfdrivinghardwareitsfiveyearsahead/


NVIDIA reported its financial results for the last quarter yesterday and surprised Wall Street. The chip maker, which is now becoming an “AI company” according to its leadership, reported revenue of $2 billion on expectations of $1.7 billion and they also surpassed earnings expectations by a similar margin. On a conference call with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang following the results, analysts were particularly interested in the company’s push in AI and the automotive industry, especially since Tesla’s started delivering every single one of its vehicles with NVIDIA’s Drive PX2 supercomputer. Huang offered some very interesting insights into how he sees Tesla’s self-driving program playing out.He says that by introducing the necessary hardware for full autonomy now, Tesla “sent a shock wave through the automotive industry”:

“And I think what Tesla has done by launching and having on the road in the very near-future here, a full autonomous driving capability using AI, that has sent a shock wave through the automotive industry. It’s basically five years ahead. Anybody who’s talking about 2021 and that’s just a non-starter anymore. And I think that that’s probably the most significant bit in the automotive industry. I just don’t – anybody who is talking about autonomous capabilities in 2020 and 2021 is at the moment re-evaluating in a very significant way.”

For a tiny insight into the regulators, but one that unfortunately does not not delve deep enough.

Policing Driverless Cars an interview with Christopher Hart, who heads the National Transportation Safety Board. MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, VOL. 119 | NO. 6 p 15. 

The ideal scenario that I talked about, saving the tens of thousands of lives a year, assumes complete automation with no human engagement whatsoever. I’m not confident that we will ever reach that point. I don’t see the ideal of complete automation coming anytime soon. Some people just like to drive. Some people don’t trust the automation, so they’re going to want to drive. [And] there’s no software designer in the world that’s ever going to be smart enough to anticipate all the potential circumstances this software is going to encounter. The challenge is that when you have not-so-complete automation, with still significant human engagement, complacency becomes an issue.

China's new cybersecurity rules

From MIT Technology Review Blog
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602812/chinas-new-cybersecurity-rules-may-block-western-innovation/



China has announced a new set of cybersecurity rules that could make it harder than ever for foreign technology companies to operate in the country.The rules, announced Monday, will provide central Chinese authorities with greater powers over the monitoring of data and hardware. Notably, the laws will open companies up to far greater scrutiny from the government, demanding that Internet firms coöperate with the state’s criminal investigations and provide full access to data if officials suspect them of wrongdoing. The law also demands that companies demonstrate that their systems are capable of withstanding hacks

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European messiness

Court Decision 

A recent court decision in Germany has just made things even more messy in the European Union.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently announced its decision in Sony v McFadden with important consequences for open wireless in the European Union. The court held that providers of open wifi are not liable for copyright violations committed by others, but can be ordered to prevent further infringements by restricting access to registered users with passwords. EFF reported on the legal aspects of the case last year and collaborated on an open letter to the ECJ on the costs to economic growth, safety and innovation of a password lockdown.

Free wifi is rare in Germany compared with other EU countries due to legal uncertainty generated by the doctrine of Störerhaftung, a form of indirect liability for the actions of others,which has deterred cafes, municipalities and others from offering free connectivity. Many in Germany hoped that the McFadden case would remove these doubts, but it is now clear that a legislative fix is needed instead. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/european-allows-copyright-owners-demand-open-wifi-networks-be-password-protected 

Google / Facebook tax

As the European Union reviews its copyright rules there appears to be the re-emergence of an idea that is twice tried and failed. The idea is to limit or tax or somehow force changes where uses upload a link of a news stories to the web and you get that that little picture and the headline of the article.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/european-copyright-leak-exposes-plans-force-internet-subsidize-publishers 

The idea will probably fail again because all it does it reduce the exposure of news stories to a wider audience.

 More here @BBC Click

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04955tn