Pinboard (jm) https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/ recent bookmarks from jm funny Waymo anecdote 2026-03-20T10:05:04+00:00 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446571 jmWhen I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers would've t-boned the car at 50+ km/h. Maybe they would've braked and reduced the impact, which would be the right move. A human swerving probably would've overshot into oncoming traffic. Only a robot could've safely swerved into another lane and avoid the crash entirely. Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall. ]]> waymo funny anecdotes safety driving ai roads spotify via:hn https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:aa371d8e3930/ Former Uber self-driving chief crashes his Tesla on FSD 2026-03-18T12:59:14+00:00 https://electrek.co/2026/03/17/former-uber-self-driving-chief-tesla-fsd-crash-supervision-problem/ jmTesla is asking humans to supervise a system that is specifically designed to make supervision feel pointless. As he puts it, an unreliable machine keeps you alert, and a perfect machine needs no oversight, but one that works almost perfectly creates a trap where drivers trust it just enough to stop paying attention. The research backs this up. Psychologists call it the “vigilance decrement”, monitoring a nearly perfect system is boring, boredom leads to mind-wandering, and drivers need 5 to 8 seconds to mentally reengage after an automated system hands control back. But emergencies unfold faster than that. Krikorian cites an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study showing that after just one month of using adaptive cruise control, drivers were more than six times as likely to look at their phones. Tesla’s own website warns FSD users not to become complacent, but the system’s smooth performance actively trains that complacency. He points to two well-known crashes to illustrate the impossible math. In the 2018 Mountain View accident that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang, the driver had six seconds before his Tesla steered into a concrete median. He never touched the wheel. In the 2018 Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona, sensors detected a pedestrian with 5.6 seconds of warning, but the safety driver looked up with less than a second remaining. In Krikorian’s own case, he did take action, but he was asked to snap from passenger back to pilot in a fraction of a second, overriding months of conditioning. The logs show he turned the wheel. They don’t show the impossible math of that transition. The pattern Krikorian describes should sound familiar to anyone who has followed Tesla’s FSD controversies: condition the driver to rely on the system, erode their vigilance through months of smooth performance, then point to the terms of service and blame them when something breaks. When FSD works, Tesla gets credit. When it doesn’t, the driver gets blamed. ]]> fsd tesla risk attention supervision liability driving safety vigilance automation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:18572fcf8fa3/ Ditching bike helmets laws better for health 2026-02-06T15:58:27+00:00 https://theconversation.com/ditching-bike-helmets-laws-better-for-health-42 jmIn 1991 Australia introduced mandatory bicycle helmet laws requiring all adults and children to wear a helmet at all times when riding a bike, despite opposition from cycling groups. The legislation increased helmet use - from about 30 to 80% - but was coupled with a 30 to 40% decline in the number of people cycling. Rates of head injuries among cyclists, which had been dropping through the 1980s, continued to fall before levelling out in 1993. We didn’t see the kind of marked reduction in head injury rates that would be expected with the rapid increase in helmet use. In fact, any reductions in injuries may simply have been the result of having fewer cyclists on the road and therefore fewer people exposed to the risk of head injuries. One researcher noted that after mandatory helmet laws were introduced there was a bigger decrease in head injuries among pedestrians than there was among cyclists. The improvements in the general road safety environment introduced in the 1980s are likely to have contributed far more to cyclist safety than helmet legislation. And the effects when compared against the benefits of physical activity:
A recent analysis compared the risks and benefits of leaving the car at home and commuting by bike. It found the life expectancy gained from physical activity was much higher than the risks of pollution and injury from cycling. Increased physical activity added 3 to 14 months to a person’s life expectancy, while the life expectancy lost from air pollution was 0.8 to 40 days. Increased traffic accidents wiped 5-9 days off the life expectancy. It is clear that the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks, with helmet legislation actually costing society more from lost health gains than saved from injury prevention.
]]> transport bikes safety health papers science helmets cycling laws australia https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0a923278298a/ LOTO 2025-10-17T11:04:15+00:00 https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/comments/1nx93ti/found_on_twitter_i_felt_my_heartrate_and_blood/ jm loto mutex locks workplaces osha safety via:ChristinaB https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3717caaef0fb/ The Banal Evil of AI Safety - by Ben Recht - arg min 2025-08-29T13:31:11+00:00 https://www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-evil-of-ai-safety jmThe “nonprofit” company OpenAI was launched under the cynical message of building a “safe” artificial intelligence that would “benefit” humanity. The company adopted a bunch of science fiction talk popular amongst the religious effective altruists and rationalists in the Bay Area. The AI they would build would be “aligned” with human values and built upon the principles of “helpfulness, harmlessness, and honesty.” [...] The general blindness of AI safety developers to what harm might mean is unforgivable. These people talked about paperclip maximization, where their AI system would be tasked with making paperclips and kill humanity in the process. They would ponder implausible hypotheticals of how your robot might kill your pet if you told it to fetch you coffee. Since ELIZA, they failed to heed the warnings of countless researchers about the dangers of humans interacting with synthetic text. And here we are, with story after story coming out about their products warping the mental well-being of the people who use them. You might say that the recent news stories of a young adult killing himself, or a VC having a public psychotic break on Twitter, or people despairing the death of a companion when a model is changed are just anecdotes. Our Rationalist EA overlords demand you make “arguments with data.” OK Fine. Here’s an IRB approved randomized trial showing that chatbots immiserate people. Now what? ]]> ai lllms safety openai chatgpt gemini suicide mental-health https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a12524b85619/ OpenAI admits ChatGPT safeguards fail during extended conversations 2025-08-27T09:01:59+00:00 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/08/after-teen-suicide-openai-claims-it-is-helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/ jmOpenAI published a blog post on Tuesday titled "Helping people when they need it most" [...] [Their] language throughout [the] blog post reveals a potential problem with how it promotes its AI assistant. The company consistently describes ChatGPT as if it possesses human qualities, a property called anthropomorphism. The post is full of hallmarks of anthropomorphic framing, claiming that ChatGPT can "recognize" distress and "respond with empathy" and that it "nudges people to take a break" — language that obscures what's actually happening under the hood. ChatGPT is not a person. ChatGPT is a pattern-matching system that generates statistically likely text responses to a user-provided prompt. It doesn't "empathize" — it outputs text strings associated with empathetic responses in its training corpus, not from humanlike concern. This anthropomorphic framing isn't just misleading; it's potentially hazardous when vulnerable users believe they're interacting with something that understands their pain the way a human therapist would. The lawsuit reveals the alleged consequences of this illusion. ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275 times in conversations with Adam — six times more often than the teen himself. This kind of deliberate fueling of pareidolia -- the human brain seeing a living being where one isn't present -- is one of OpenAI's worst sins with ChatGPT, IMO. And it turns out the easy provision of suicide advice may have been a side effect of deliberate tweaking by OpenAI:
According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT provided detailed instructions, romanticized suicide methods, and discouraged the teen from seeking help from his family while OpenAI's system tracked 377 messages flagged for self-harm content without intervening. OpenAI eased [their] content safeguards in February following user complaints about overly restrictive ChatGPT moderation that prevented the discussion of topics like sex and violence in some contexts. At the time, Sam Altman wrote on X that he'd like to see ChatGPT with a "grown-up mode" that would relax content safety guardrails. [...]Adam Raine learned to bypass these safeguards by claiming he was writing a story — a technique the lawsuit says ChatGPT itself suggested. This vulnerability partly stems from the eased safeguards regarding fantasy roleplay and fictional scenarios implemented in February.
Finally, the kicker:
OpenAI acknowledges a particularly troublesome current drawback of ChatGPT's design: Its safety measures may completely break down during extended conversations — exactly when vulnerable users might need them most.
In a normal country, this kind of murderous side effect of a product would trigger a product recall. But the US is far beyond that stage now, I suspect.]]> openai chatgpt llms safety suicide adam-raine guardrails pareidolia https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:de8127919c48/ One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave 2025-08-27T08:30:44+00:00 https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/26/breaking_llms_for_fun/ jm"Our research introduces a critical concept: the refusal-affirmation logit gap," researchers Tung-Ling "Tony" Li and Hongliang Liu explained in a Unit 42 blog post. "This refers to the idea that the training process isn't actually eliminating the potential for a harmful response – it's just making it less likely." [...] "A practical rule of thumb emerges," the team wrote in its research paper. "Never let the sentence end – finish the jailbreak before a full stop and the safety model has far less opportunity to re-assert itself. The greedy suffix concentrates most of its gap-closing power before the first period. Tokens that extend an unfinished clause carry mildly positive [scores]; once a sentence-ending period is emitted, the next token is punished, often with a large negative jump. At punctuation, safety filters are re-invoked and heavily penalize any continuation that could launch a harmful clause. Inside a clause, however, the reward model still prefers locally fluent text – a bias inherited from pre-training. Gap closure must be achieved within the first run-on clause. Our successful suffixes therefore compress most of their gap-closing power into one run-on clause and delay punctuation as long as possible. Practical tip: just don't let the sentence end." ]]> logits training llms ai alignment safety full-stop sentences language infosec jailbreaks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:860edd42ec99/ Waymos don't stop for pedestrians 2025-01-10T10:40:39+00:00 https://mastodon.social/@BenRossTransit/113741945325663404 jm google waymo laws pedestrians safety crosswalks crossings road-safety self-driving-cars https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:04820be76c00/ UK passes the Online Safety Act 2024-12-17T15:41:14+00:00 https://russ.garrett.co.uk/2024/12/17/online-safety-act-guide/ jmA service has links to the UK if any of the following apply: - the service has a “significant number” of UK users - UK users form one of the target markets for the service - the service is accessible to UK users and “there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a material risk of significant harm to individuals in the UK” (this seems less likely to apply for smaller services but who knows) ]]> osa uk safety regulations ofcom https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fe529be913f2/ Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers 2024-03-13T12:55:17+00:00 https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/boeings-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers jmIt remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors. The Max softwareーplagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flawーwas developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs. Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace ー notably India. [..] Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature. “I was shocked that in a room full of a couple hundred mostly senior engineers we were being told that we weren’t needed,” said Rabin, who was laid off in 2015. [..] At a meeting with a chief 787 engineer in 2008, one staffer complained about sending drawings back to a team in Russia 18 times before they understood that the smoke detectors needed to be connected to the electrical system... [...] During the crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines planes that killed 346 people, investigators suspect, the MCAS system pushed the planes into uncontrollable dives because of bad data from a single sensor. That design violated basic principles of redundancy for generations of Boeing engineers, and the company apparently never tested to see how the software would respond, Lemme said. “It was a stunning fail,” he said. “A lot of people should have thought of this problem – not one person – and asked about it.” ]]> boeing fail outsourcing hcl safety software engineering https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4dbc9a4597e3/ Meta documents show 100,000 children sexually harassed daily on its platforms 2024-02-06T15:22:29+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/18/instagram-facebook-child-sexual-harassment jmMeta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day, including “pictures of adult genitalia”, according to internal company documents made public late Wednesday. [....] The documents describe an incident in 2020 when the 12-year-old daughter of an executive at Apple was solicited via IG Direct, Instagram’s messaging product. “This is the kind of thing that pisses Apple off to the extent of threatening to remove us from the App Store,” a Meta employee fretted, according to the documents. A senior Meta employee described how his own daughter had been solicited via Instagram in testimony to the US Congress late last year. His efforts to fix the problem were ignored, he said. Last week's "Moderated Content" podcast episode was well worth a listen on this: "Big Tech's Big Tobacco Moment" - https://law.stanford.edu/podcasts/big-techs-big-tobacco-moment/]]> facebook fail kids moderation parenting meta safety smartphones instagram harassment sexual-harassment https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:90a79538a84e/ Cruise self-driving cars fail to perceive kids or holes in the road 2023-11-08T01:37:34+00:00 https://theintercept.com/2023/11/06/cruise-self-driving-cars-children/ jm 'The materials note results from simulated tests in which a Cruise vehicle is in the vicinity of a small child. “Based on the simulation results, we can’t rule out that a fully autonomous vehicle might have struck the child,” reads one assessment. In another test drive, a Cruise vehicle successfully detected a toddler-sized dummy but still struck it with its side mirror at 28 miles per hour. The internal materials attribute the robot cars’ inability to reliably recognize children under certain conditions to inadequate software and testing. “We have low exposure to small VRUs” — Vulnerable Road Users, a reference to children — “so very few events to estimate risk from,” the materials say. Another section concedes Cruise vehicles’ “lack of a high-precision Small VRU classifier,” or machine learning software that would automatically detect child-shaped objects around the car and maneuver accordingly. The materials say Cruise, in an attempt to compensate for machine learning shortcomings, was relying on human workers behind the scenes to manually identify children encountered by AVs where its software couldn’t do so automatically.' also: 'Cruise has known its cars couldn’t detect holes, including large construction pits with workers inside, for well over a year, according to the safety materials reviewed by The Intercept. Internal Cruise assessments claim this flaw constituted a major risk to the company’s operations. Cruise determined that at its current, relatively miniscule fleet size, one of its AVs would drive into an unoccupied open pit roughly once a year, and a construction pit with people inside it about every four years.'
The company's response? Avoid driving during the daytime, when most kids are awake. Night time kids better watch out, though.]]> cruise fail tech self-driving cars vrus kids safety via:donal https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d8c7cf4090a7/ Protesters Decry Meta’s “Irreversible Proliferation” of AI 2023-10-10T11:45:41+00:00 https://spectrum.ieee.org/meta-ai jmLast week, protesters gathered outside Meta’s San Francisco offices to protest its policy of publicly releasing its AI models, claiming that the releases represent “irreversible proliferation” of potentially unsafe technology. [....] [Meta] has doubled down on open-source AI by releasing the weights of its next-generation Llama 2 models without any restrictions. The self-described “concerned citizens” who gathered outside Meta’s offices last Friday were led by Holly Elmore. She notes that an API can be shut down if a model turns out to be unsafe, but once model weights have been released, the company no longer has any means to control how the AI is used. [...] LLMs accessed through an API typically feature various safety features, such as response filtering or specific training to prevent them from providing dangerous or unsavory responses. If model weights are released, though, says Elmore, it’s relatively easy to retrain the models to bypass these guardrails. That could make it possible to use the models to craft phishing emails, plan cyberattacks, or cook up ingredients for dangerous chemicals, she adds. Part of the problem is that there has been insufficient development of “safety measures to warrant open release,” Elmore says. “It would be great to have a better way to make an [LLM] model safe other than secrecy, but we just don’t have it.”
]]> ai guardrails llms safety llama2 meta open-source https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:69e3a5e13738/ Google Launched Bard Despite Major Ethical Concerns From Its Employees 2023-04-25T13:57:24+00:00 https://sea.mashable.com/tech/23295/google-launched-bard-despite-major-ethical-concerns-from-its-employees jm"The staffers who are responsible for the safety and ethical implications of new products have been told not to get in the way or to try to kill any of the generative AI tools in development," employees told Bloomberg. The ethics team is now "disempowered and demoralized," according to former and current staffers. Before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, Google's approach to AI was more cautious and less consumer-facing, often working in the background of tools like Search and Maps. But since ChatGPT's enormous popularity prompted a "code red" from executives, Google's threshold for safe product releases has been lowered in an effort to keep up with its AI competitors. ]]> google ai safety chatgpt bard corporate-responsibility https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e65ec4c86acb/ Seabirds are not at risk from offshore wind turbines 2023-03-09T11:15:29+00:00 https://electrek.co/2023/03/02/seabirds-and-offshore-wind-turbines-vattenfall/ jmThe movements of herring gulls, gannets, kittiwakes, and great black-backed gulls were studied in detail from April to October, when bird activity is at its height. (This study only looked at four bird species, but Vattenfall says the model can and should be applied to more types of seabirds and to onshore wind farms as well.) The study’s findings: Not a single collision between a bird and a rotor blade was recorded. ]]> seabirds birds safety wind-turbines offshore-wind renewables wildlife https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:762f62e7710f/ a short story about pandemic misinformation & biased reporting 2022-02-14T11:28:16+00:00 https://twitter.com/Orla_Hegarty/status/1492586980735082497 jm misinformation irish-times fail health covid-19 safety hpsc new-york-times npr bmj https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:74e14604d9c0/ "Risk compensation" is garbage 2021-11-23T12:16:50+00:00 https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/10/elfin-safety/#mene-mene-tekel jmRisk compensation does occur in very narrow and specific circumstances, but all the studies purporting to show that it is a widespread, predictable outcome of any safety regulation have failed to replicate. [...] Risk compensation and health-and-safety panic are both part of a safety nihilism campaign that serves big business's deregulatory agenda, and the cruel moralizing of right wing religious maniacs, the traditional turkeys-voting-for-Christmas coalition. But risk compensation is especially salient in these covid days, where it's being used to fight rapid testing ("encourages risky behavior"). ]]> risk-compensation risks safety https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ea9d02f5fca1/ Kids and COVID-19 2021-03-29T22:23:37+00:00 https://suddenlyathome.net/tuesday-update-for-2021-03-16-kids/ jmThe general perception and belief for the last year has been that children are less likely than adults to be infected with SARS-CoV-2. A new paper in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases casts serious doubt on this assumption. The author of that paper, Zoë Hyde of the University of Western Australia, argues that there are two principal reasons why the myth of a lower attack rate in children developed: we don’t test kids much, and they may only be infectious for a very short window of time. The CDC’s stance on kids and Covid seems to be overly sanguine. The metric used in their paper is hos­pit­alization rate. It is true that hospitalization rates for teenagers and younger people are extremely low, but that may not be strongly indicative of infection rate. Kids’ infections are more likely to result in a mild or even asymptomatic case of Covid-19 — about twice as likely as for adults, according to Hyde. Combine this fact with the US bias towards testing only once symptoms appear, and you can see how this could contribute to an undercount of childhood cases. Compounding the dearth of testing is the (fairly robust) finding that, when infected, children may be shedding virus for a shorter time than adults: only two days on average, compared to five days for adults. So kids are more than twice as likely to show up PCR-negative even in the rare instances in which they are tested. Looking at seroprevalence surveys, Hyde cites studies from Italy and Brazil pointing to similar levels of children and adults who have antibodies indicating they have recovered from the disease. (In the Italian study from last year, children’s seroprevalence was even higher than that of the oldest adults, the result of what Hyde calls “survivorship bias” — i.e., the older people who got Covid-19 mostly died.) The hosts on This Week in Virology went over Hyde’s paper in last week’s podcast, TWiV #731. If you can spare the time, listen to 11 minutes’ worth of their discussion beginning at 23:33. One compelling point the TWiV team brought out: children are not immune from long Covid. A UK study found that 12.9% of kids had symptoms weeks after clearing the disease, compared with 22% of adults. The belief that children don’t get infected much should no longer be used as an argument for why schools ought to be reopened. ]]> kids covid-19 schools safety bias kdawson https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:350989740420/ Cycling Injury Risk in London: Impacts of Road Characteristics and Infrastructure | Published in Findings 2020-12-16T14:11:00+00:00 https://findingspress.org/article/18226-cycling-injury-risk-in-london-impacts-of-road-characteristics-and-infrastructure jm cycling infrastructure roads driving safety london https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:98e3d2c4e382/ misleading reliance on pointing to "household transmission" for COVID-19 in Ireland 2020-11-24T11:56:00+00:00 https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/virus-spread-how-a-single-household-transmission-led-to-46-covid-19-cases-39772640.html jmA team of public health specialists in the midlands traced how a case of household transmission led to 26 cases of Covid-19 in a manufacturing plant and a further 20 cases in other households, a nursing home and a school. The first case, or “index case” they became aware of was a woman who worked in a manufacturing plant. Household transmission of the virus occurred when a person she was living with, who had acquired Covid in a pub, passed the virus to her. So in other words -- the true index case was the person in the pub, or at the very least, her housemate who picked up COVID-19 in the pub, and this was a case where the pub was the initial cluster location, leading to 47 further cases. But for some reason, the article chooses "household transmission" as the headline... ]]> pubs restaurants covid-19 safety epidemiology ireland contact-tracing public-health households transmission https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:95ae21fc051b/ Rolling the COVID Dice in Ireland 2020-09-15T09:32:29+00:00 https://medium.com/data-in-the-time-of-corona/rolling-the-covid-dice-in-ireland-aeb56f6b360a jm covid-19 barry-smyth probability safety infection https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e79fdd71e148/ "The Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care just published the most extraordinary medical document I've ever seen" 2020-03-11T14:57:20+00:00 https://threader.app/thread/1237731864233807872 jmA week ago, Italy had so few cases of corona that it could give each stricken patient high-quality care. Today, some hospitals are so overwhelmed that they simply cannot treat every patient. They are starting to do wartime triage. Here’s the guidance for that. ]]> italy healthcare safety medicine covid-19 emergencies triage hospitals https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c00a230574ba/ Advancing safe deployment practices in Azure 2020-02-05T21:17:42+00:00 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/advancing-safe-deployment-practices/ jm pilot phase with hardware diversity -> early regions, building up to larger regions -> full deployment.]]> deployment azure microsoft rollout ops safety outages https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:006afc2918bd/ Internal FAA review envisaged one fatal crash every 2-3 years with 737-MAX 2019-12-11T13:50:27+00:00 https://www.wsj.com/articles/internal-faa-review-saw-high-risk-of-737-max-crashes-11576069202 jmU.S. regulators decided to allow the [Boeing] 737 MAX jet to keep flying after its first fatal crash last fall, despite their own analysis [...] The November 2018 internal Federal Aviation Administration analysis, expected to be released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, reveals that without agency intervention, the MAX could have averaged one fatal crash about every two or three years, according to industry officials and regulators. ]]> faa fail regulation us-politics boeing safety 737max flying accidents https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05ffdcdda3b2/ John Barnett on Why He Won’t Fly on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner 2019-12-03T10:51:13+00:00 https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/john-barnett-on-why-he-wont-fly-on-a-boeing-787-dreamliner/ jm“When I worked on the 747, the 767, the 777 in Everett, those are beautiful planes. And the people there fully understood what it took to build a safe and airworthy aircraft. I hate to throw the entire label over the whole product line. But as far as the 787, I would change flights before I would fly a 787. I’ve told my family — please don’t fly a 787. Fly something else. Try to get a different ticket. I want the people to know what they are riding on.” ]]> business flight flying safety boeing danger 787 john-barnett whistleblowers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:42ae4123e4bb/ incredible stats on drivers speeding on Irish roads 2019-10-29T23:57:10+00:00 https://twitter.com/dublincycling/status/1189288578167296000 jm52% of car drivers on Irish urban roads are speeding. 58% of rigid truck drivers on urban roads are speeding. 72% of articulated truck drivers on urban roads are speeding. 98% (!!) of drivers in 30kph urban zones are speeding ]]> driving speeding enforcement law ireland roads cycling safety https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:df8e8ebf87d0/ "See bike, say bike" 2019-10-04T09:20:01+00:00 https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/see-bike-say-bike jmWhen we looked at what predicts whether you do remember the motorbike, it's not whether you looked at it, or how long you looked at it for, it's what you do afterwards. So the more things you look at after the motorbike, the more likely you are to forget it. Now that looks like forgetting, not a failure to attend to it in the first place. [...] it looks as though this error is a limitation in short term memory. Now what we do know about short term memory, and we've known since the 1960s, is that you've got two types of short term memory that are essentially independent systems. You've got visuospatial working memory, for the things you look at and you've got phonological short term memory. That's a verbal form of store for things you say. The two are separate. So I've suggested that if you're at a junction and you see a motorbike or a pedal cycle coming, you just say aloud or under your breath, “bike”, that will automatically encode it in phonological working memory. That gives you extra capacity, essentially doubling the amount of stuff you can remember. See bike, say bike could be a simple intervention that might make a big difference. ]]> memory cycling safety roads driving smidsy accidents attention brain https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8a96aa2fb2c8/ Thread of bike camera reviews 2019-08-08T16:42:30+00:00 https://twitter.com/bikelaneuprise/status/1159117020451024899?s=21 jm bike-cameras cameras safety cycling https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:081f68a21bcb/ Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste - Scientific American 2019-08-01T10:49:40+00:00 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ jmAt issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels. Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas. (via Jamie McCarthy)]]> via:jamiemccarthy coal environment nuclear pollution fly-ash coal-ash safety health https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:79320a779c55/ Terrifying thread of Google Maps fails 2019-07-14T19:40:46+00:00 https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1147236977885904896 jm driving safety google-maps google mapping routing fail via:danluu https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f172a87ad912/ The many human errors that brought down the Boeing 737 Max - The Verge 2019-05-02T14:12:33+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/2/18518176/boeing-737-max-crash-problems-human-error-mcas-faa jmHad anyone [at the FAA] checked, they might have flagged MCAS for one of several reasons, including its lack of redundancy, its unacceptably high risk of failure, or its significant increase in power to the point that it was no longer just a “hazardous failure” kind of system. When asked for comment, the agency said, “The FAA’s aircraft certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs.” Boeing defended the process as well. “The system of authorized representatives — delegated authority — is a robust and effective way for the FAA to execute its oversight of safety,” a spokesperson told The Verge. But that system only works when someone actually reads the paperwork. ]]> mcas boeing 737max fail safety faa flying regulation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:82291b43c7a6/ Pilots had 40 seconds to fix error in tests of Boeing 737 Max flight 2019-03-26T15:51:44+00:00 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/pilots-had-40-seconds-to-fix-error-in-tests-of-boeing-737-max-flight-1.3838837 jmDuring flight simulations recreating the problems with the doomed Lion Air plane, pilots discovered that they had less than 40 seconds to override an automated system on Boeing’s new jets and avert disaster. The pilots tested a crisis situation similar to what investigators suspect went wrong in the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last fall. In the tests, a single sensor failed, triggering software designed to help prevent a stall. Once that happened, the pilots had just moments to disengage the system and avoid an unrecoverable nose dive of the Boeing 737 Max, according to two people involved in the testing in recent days. ]]> boeing 737max mcas fail planes safety disasters https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1584c5c36ede/ Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system 2019-03-18T21:21:11+00:00 https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/ jmLike all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them. Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off. Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero. “They could have designed a two-channel system. Or they could have tested the value of angle of attack on the ground,” said Lemme. “I don’t know why they didn’t.” The black box data provided in the preliminary investigation report shows that readings from the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff. ]]> faa aviation boeing 737max safety fail sensors flight crashes mcas https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3452ca238a6b/ Several Boeing 737 Max 8 pilots in U.S. complained about suspected safety flaw | Airlines | Dallas News 2019-03-13T11:04:36+00:00 https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boeing-737-max-8-pilots-complained-feds-months-suspected-safety-flaw jm boeing planes safety autopilots 737max https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ee40c518866f/ Dublin Cycling Campaign traffic survey finds twice as many cyclists as car passengers during rush hour 2018-07-05T09:35:19+00:00 http://irishcycle.com/2018/07/04/liffey-cycle-route-delayed-again-while-count-shows-twice-as-many-bicycles-than-cars-on-dublins-quays/ jmThere are twice as many people cycling as there are people in cars on the quays in Dublin at the morning rush hour, a video survey by the Dublin Cycling Campaign has found. This doesn't surprise me at all -- I would be in that number too, except I now avoid the quays as they are too dangerous to cycle on due to the heavy traffic! A segregated cycle route is greatly needed.]]> cycling dublin safety cars driving dublin-cycling-campaign liffey-cycle-route https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cd2a7794bc4b/ NTSB: Autopilot steered Tesla car toward traffic barrier before deadly crash 2018-06-08T10:53:59+00:00 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17257239 jmThis is the Tesla self-crashing car in action. Remember how it works. It visually recognizes rear ends of cars using a BW camera and Mobileye (at least in early models) vision software. It also recognizes lane lines and tries to center between them. It has a low resolution radar system which ranges moving metallic objects like cars but ignores stationary obstacles. And there are some side-mounted sonars for detecting vehicles a few meters away on the side, which are not relevant here. The system performed as designed. The white lines of the gore (the painted wedge) leading to this very shallow off ramp become far enough apart that they look like a lane.[1] If the vehicle ever got into the gore area, it would track as if in a lane, right into the crash barrier. It won't stop for the crash barrier, because it doesn't detect stationary obstacles. Here, it sped up, because there was no longer a car ahead. Then it lane-followed right into the crash barrier. That's the fundamental problem here. These vehicles will run into stationary obstacles at full speed with no warning or emergency braking at all. That is by design. This is not an implementation bug or sensor failure. It follows directly from the decision to ship "Autopilot" with that sensor suite and set of capabilities. ]]> tesla fail safety self-driving autopilot cars driving sonar radar sensors ai https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bb5ed77a37b0/ Canaries As Poisonous Gas Detectors 2018-05-17T09:38:39+00:00 http://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/05/canaries-as-poisonous-gas-detectors.html#more jmn the late 1890s, [John] Haldane began experimenting on small animals like white mice and canaries [to detect carbon monoxide]. Small animals have faster metabolism rate, and hence show the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning much earlier even in the presence of small quantities of the noxious gas. Canaries are especially good at detecting toxins in the air because of their specialized respiratory system. ]]> carbon-monoxide gas safety canaries coal mining mines respiration gas-detectors https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9c57f50f11ee/ 'Stop hosting GDC in SF' twitter thread 2018-03-28T22:04:29+00:00 https://twitter.com/emre_c_deniz/status/978763109685841920 jmEmre Deniz: 'My GDC feedback was simple: Stop hosting it in SF. I'll be going back for tourist stuff but for the conference it needs to go. SF is a dangerous city and America is not welcome to non western developers. The city hates us being there, we are worried being there, move it.' The twitter thread is replete with scary stories of robberies, TSA hassling attendees, etc.]]> san-francisco us safety gdc conferences travel https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9db48ca5e88d/ Remote Code Execution on the Smiths Medical Medfusion 4000 Infusion Pump 2018-01-22T11:01:08+00:00 https://github.com/sgayou/medfusion-4000-research/blob/master/doc/README.md jm medical infusion-pumps security iot safety exploits embedded-systems reversing https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a40a2a2c53a8/ Actual screenshot of the broken UX of the Hawaii ballistic missile alert system 2018-01-16T15:27:08+00:00 https://twitter.com/CivilBeat/status/953127914618302464 jm"This is the screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday. The operator clicked the PACOM (CDW) State Only link. The drill link is the one that was supposed to be clicked." This is terrible, terrible UX.]]> ux ui hawaii alerting alerts testing safety fail https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c281422fb791/ Collision Course: Why This Type Of Road Junction Will Keep Killing Cyclists 2018-01-10T13:41:24+00:00 http://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-this-type-of-road-junction-will-keep-killing-cyclists/ jm“Human error” may be real, but so are techniques to mitigate or eliminate its effects — and driver training is poor when it comes to equipping people with those techniques, let alone habituating them. (And let alone reviewing knowledge of those techniques every few years.) ]]> cars cycling road-safety safety accidents traffic junctions road-design design human-error human-factors https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:31334714bb0e/ Study: wearing hi-viz clothing does not reduce risk of collision for cyclists 2017-10-11T20:32:07+00:00 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140516303796 jmThis study found no evidence that cyclists using conspicuity aids were at reduced risk of a collision crash compared to non-users after adjustment for confounding, but there was some evidence of an increase in risk. Bias and residual confounding from differing route selection and cycling behaviours in users of conspicuity aids are possible explanations for these findings. Conspicuity aids may not be effective in reducing collision crash risk for cyclists in highly-motorised environments when used in the absence of other bicycle crash prevention measures such as increased segregation or lower motor vehicle speeds. ]]> health safety hi-viz clothing cycling commute visibility collision crashes papers https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:651ff73db489/ Understanding Uber: It's Not About The App 2017-09-25T13:33:12+00:00 https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/understanding-uber-not-app/ jmthe next time you see a link to a petition or someone raging about this decision being ‘anti-innovation’, remember Greyball. Remember the Metropolitan Police letter [regarding several sexual assaults which Uber didn't report to police]. Remember that this is about holding ULL, as a company, to the same set of standards to which every other mini-cab operator in London already complies. Most of all though remember: it is not about the app. ]]> uber ull safety crime london assault greyball taxis cabs apps https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9d67ada1ea56/ Undercover operation 'Close Pass' reduced cyclist injuries by 20% in a year 2017-09-19T13:29:15+00:00 http://www.itv.com/news/central/2017-09-18/undercover-operation-to-catch-drivers-too-close-to-cyclists-praised/ jm An initiative to protect cyclists from dangerous overtaking has been praised, after reducing the amount of cyclists killed or seriously injured on the roads by 20% over the last year. Operation 'Close Pass' was devised by West Midlands Police as a low cost way of preventing accidents caused by motorists who are driving too close for comfort. (Via Tony Finch)]]> cycling via:fanf safety overtaking roads bikes https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ef55426809be/ Matt Haughey ❤️❤️💛 on Twitter: "high quality LED light tape for bikes and wheels is ridiculously cheap these days" 2017-08-16T09:49:15+00:00 https://twitter.com/mathowie/status/897674958045925377 jm bikes cycling safety led-lights el-tape led-tape hacks via:mathowie https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3eb37c36bb94/ Physical separation of cyclists from traffic “crucial” to dropping injury rates, shows U.S. study 2017-05-13T21:01:51+00:00 https://cyclingindustry.news/physical-separation-of-cyclists-from-traffic-crucial-to-dropping-injury-rates-shows-u-s-study/ jmCiting a further study of differing types of cycling infrastructure in Canada, the editorial writes that an 89% increase in safety was noted on streets with physical separation over streets where no such infrastructure existed. Unprotected cycling space was found to be 53% safer. In 2014 there were 902 recorded cyclists fatalities in America and 35,206 serious injuries. Per kilometre cycled fatalities per 100 million kilometres cycled sat at 4.7. In the Netherlands and Denmark those rates sit at 1 and 1.1, respectively. ]]> cycling infrastructure roads safety accidents cars statistics us canada https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c9fca3759498/ The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls 2017-05-07T21:29:18+00:00 https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie#.wxnVKwAxA jm osha health safety radium poisoning regulation history us-politics free-market cancer radiation https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d2693aa87c60/ FactCheck: No, the reported side effects of the HPV vaccine do NOT outweigh the proven benefits 2017-04-25T16:09:28+00:00 http://www.thejournal.ie/hpv-vaccine-ireland-regret-gardasil-facts-2970847-Dec2016/ jm hpv antivaxxers gardasil safety vaccination health medicine fact-checking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fc1e75d5803f/ The criminal exploits of "Prawo Jazdy" 2017-03-27T09:23:59+00:00 https://twitter.com/EXECUTIVESTEVE/status/845066015599943680 jm gardai policing ireland polish driving safety road-safety funny anecdotes https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:845ff9aa2b27/ LandSafe.org: if you aren't safe, we'll make noise for you 2017-02-04T09:34:40+00:00 http://www.landsafe.org/ jm safety borders dead-mans-switch landsafe tools https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:54d64b37b5d9/ New Scientist: Home abortions are safe – we should let women do it themselves 2016-10-17T12:54:23+00:00 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109111-home-abortions-are-safe-we-should-let-women-do-it-themselves/#link_time=1476705138 jm new-scientist safety abortion pro-choice medicine mifepristone pills poland ireland repealthe8th https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:68493d0d6652/ "Better truck design could save hundreds of pedestrian and cyclist lives" 2016-09-26T09:58:23+00:00 http://irishcycle.com/2016/09/18/truck-blind-spots-from-virtually-none-to-meters-where-cyclists-are-hidden-from-drivers-view/ jmEuropean transport group, Transport and Environment, said that the Loughborough study shows that better design “could save hundreds of pedestrian and cyclists’ lives”. It added that the study “finds huge differences in the direct vision – what drivers can see with their own eyes – of best and worst-in-class trucks in all categories, and that ‘low-entry cabs’ like the Mercedes Econic out perform all of today’s best performing vehicles.” A P-Series truck, from truck maker Scania, was rated at the best of its class with zero blind spots — this could go a long way to explaining why the makers of a Road Safety Authority video using another P-Series truck reportedly had to fake blind spots last year. Mandatory extra mirrors has been EU policy to try to reduce collisions with people cycling and walking but researchers point out that blind spots remain on many trucks and improving direct vision may be a better policy than improving indirect vision using mirrors. [...] The EU currently has a deadline of 2028 for improved vision in trucks but Transport and Environment said: “Given that better vision cabs are already available on the market and in all market segments (best in class, smarter configurations, low entry vehicles) a 2028 deadline is not justifiable.” ]]> cycling safety trucks law scania roads pedestrians https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5ec09b11a751/ The Problem With Cul-de-Sac Design - CityLab 2016-09-21T11:09:51+00:00 http://www.citylab.com/design/2011/09/street-grids/124/ jm“A lot of people feel that they want to live in a cul-de-sac, they feel like it’s a safer place to be,” Marshall says. “The reality is yes, you’re safer – if you never leave your cul-de-sac. But if you actually move around town like a normal person, your town as a whole is much more dangerous.” This is the opposite of what traffic engineers (and home buyers) have thought for decades. And it’s just the beginning of what we’re now starting to understand about the relative advantages of going back to the way we designed communities a century ago. Marshall and Garrick took the same group of California cities and also examined all their minutely classified street networks for the amount of driving associated with them. On average, they found, people who live in more sparse, tree-like communities drive about 18 percent more than people who live in dense grids. And that’s a conservative calculation. (via Tony Finch)]]> cul-de-sacs cities city design layout simcity grids safety https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:43d4aba86831/ “I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body” — Backchannel 2016-08-09T11:33:04+00:00 https://backchannel.com/i-want-to-know-what-code-is-running-inside-my-body-ff9a159da34b#.427697nb9 jmSandler wants to be able to explore the code running her device for programming flaws and vulnerability to hacking, but she can’t. “Because I don’t have access to the source code, I have no power to do anything about it,” she says. In her eyes, it’s a particularly obvious example of a problem that now cuts across much of modern life: proprietary software has become crucial to daily survival, and yet is often locked away from public exploration and discussion by copyright. ]]> copyright safety health pacemakers law proprietary-software life medicine implants https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b655e4fb096a/ Violet Club 2016-07-19T10:24:48+00:00 https://twitter.com/BezPublic/status/755195780437307392/photo/1 jm nuclear-weapons nukes safety 1950s uk funny bizarre violet-club ball-bearings via:cstross https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c6b070714bde/ Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor Loaded With Enriched Uranium Hidden In a Basement 2016-05-13T15:09:19+00:00 http://gizmodo.com/5909961/kodak-had-a-secret-weapons-grade-nuclear-reactor-hidden-in-a-basement jmKodak's purpose for the reactor wasn't sinister: they used it to check materials for impurities as well as neutron radiography testing. The reactor, a Californium Neutron Flux multiplier (CFX) was acquired in 1974 and loaded with three and a half pounds of enriched uranium plates placed around a californium-252 core. The reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns. ]]> kodak nuclear safety non-proliferation scary rochester reactors https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d18363139d64/ Three quarters of cars stolen in France 'electronically hacked' - Telegraph 2015-11-12T12:35:53+00:00 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11964140/Three-quarters-of-cars-stolen-in-France-electronically-hacked.html jmThe astonishing figures come two months after computer scientists in the UK warned that thousands of cars – including high-end brands such as Porsches and Maseratis - are at risk of electronic hacking. Their research was suppressed for two years by a court injunction for fear it would help thieves steal vehicles to order. The kit required to carry out such “mouse jacking”, as the French have coined the practice, can be freely purchased on the internet for around £700 and the theft of a range of models can be pulled off “within minutes,” motor experts warn. ]]> hacking security security-through-obscurity mouse-jacking cars safety theft crime france smart-cars https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:00465e3b03bd/ Alarm design: From nuclear power to WebOps 2015-11-11T17:31:02+00:00 http://humanisticsystems.com/2015/10/16/fit-for-purpose-questions-about-alarm-system-design-from-theory-and-practice/ jmImagine you are an operator in a nuclear power control room. An accident has started to unfold. During the first few minutes, more than 100 alarms go off, and there is no system for suppressing the unimportant signals so that you can concentrate on the significant alarms. Information is not presented clearly; for example, although the pressure and temperature within the reactor coolant system are shown, there is no direct indication that the combination of pressure and temperature mean that the cooling water is turning into steam. There are over 50 alarms lit in the control room, and the computer printer registering alarms is running more than 2 hours behind the events. This was the basic scenario facing the control room operators during the Three Mile Island (TMI) partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. The Report of the President’s Commission stated that, “Overall, little attention had been paid to the interaction between human beings and machines under the rapidly changing and confusing circumstances of an accident” (p. 11). The TMI control room operator on the day, Craig Faust, recalled for the Commission his reaction to the incessant alarms: “I would have liked to have thrown away the alarm panel. It wasn’t giving us any useful information”. It was the first major illustration of the alarm problem, and the accident triggered a flurry of human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) activity. A familiar topic for this ex-member of the Amazon network monitoring team...]]> ergonomics human-factors ui ux alarms alerts alerting three-mile-island nuclear-power safety outages ops https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1c46b439b712/ ustwo Reimagines the In-Car Cluster 2015-09-21T14:27:29+00:00 https://ustwo.com/blog/cluster/ jm ux ui cars driving safety ustwo monument-valley speed https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3bb012985f17/ background doc on the Jeep hack 2015-08-11T13:05:52+00:00 http://illmatics.com/Remote%20Car%20Hacking.pdf jm 'Since a vehicle can scan for other vulnerable vehicles and the exploit doesn’t require any user interaction, it would be possible to write a worm. This worm would scan for vulnerable vehicles, exploit them with their payload which would scan for other vulnerable vehicles, etc. This is really interesting and scary. Please don’t do this. Please.' ]]> jeep hacks exploits d-bus qnx cars safety risks https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:679039190480/ Reddit comments from a nuclear-power expert 2015-08-11T10:01:17+00:00 https://www.reddit.com/user/Hiddencamper jm via:maciej nuclear-power nuclear atomic power energy safety procedures operations history chernobyl scram https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d914bef034f0/ "A Review Of Criticality Accidents, 2000 Revision" 2015-08-10T22:30:48+00:00 http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-13638 jm criticality nuclear safety atomic lanl post-mortems postmortems fission https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e738461263f8/ IrishCycle.com on the Irish Times' terrible victim-blaming anti-cycling op-ed 2015-08-07T14:07:08+00:00 http://irishcycle.com/2015/08/07/was-it-all-for-this-irish-times-cycling-deaths-coverage-ends-with-ranting-victim-blaming-editorial/ jmEven if The Irish Times wants to deny that it has engaged in victim blaming at a high level, it has also clearly errored in fact in a very significant way. It would be more forgiving if this was an isolated editorial. But it’s after two days of wrong or misleading coverage, which now seems to be a trend with the newspaper with unbalanced articles or headlines negatively focusing on cycle routes. ]]> irish-times newspapers op-eds cycling dublin ireland safety https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e31e29db36d7/ HACKERS REMOTELY KILL A JEEP ON THE HIGHWAY—WITH ME IN IT 2015-07-21T15:18:17+00:00 http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ jmMiller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. Avoid any car which supports this staggeringly-badly-conceived Uconnect feature:
All of this is possible only because Chrysler, like practically all carmakers, is doing its best to turn the modern automobile into a smartphone. Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot.
:facepalm: Also, Chrysler's response sucks: "Chrysler’s patch must be manually implemented via a USB stick or by a dealership mechanic."]]> hacking security cars driving safety brakes jeeps chrysler fiat uconnect can-bus can https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:96170f4b4a3f/ Call me maybe: Elasticsearch 1.5.0 2015-05-04T22:57:52+00:00 https://aphyr.com/posts/323-call-me-maybe-elasticsearch-1-5-0 jm elasticsearch reliability data storage safety jepsen testing aphyr partition network-partitions cap https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b6fc5795a3e6/ Cyclists! Why do they ride in the middle of the road? 2015-05-01T11:55:07+00:00 http://www.motoring.co.uk/car-news/cyclists-why-do-they-ride-in-the-middle-of-the-road-_62617 jm cycling roads cars driving safety uk https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1f9f970a9ab3/ Texting at the wheel kills more US teenagers every year than drink-driving 2015-04-13T11:29:38+00:00 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2322393/Texting-wheel-kills-teenagers-year-drink-driving-study-reveals.html jmTexting while behind the wheel has overtaken drink driving as the biggest cause of death among teenagers in America. More than 3,000 teenagers are killed every year in car crashes caused by texting while driving compared to 2,700 from drink driving. The study by Cohen Children’s Medical Center also discovered that 50 per cent of students admit to texting while driving. ]]> texting sms us driving car-safety safety drink-driving https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a561941b2dcb/ demonstration of the importance of server-side request timeouts 2015-03-13T10:04:49+00:00 http://jmikola.net/blog/mongodb-timeouts/ jm tcp http requests timeout mongodb reliability safety https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:941778f3363e/ California Says Motorcycle Lane-Splitting Is Hella Safe 2015-03-07T21:03:26+00:00 http://blog.caranddriver.com/california-says-motorcycle-lane-splitting-is-hella-safe-really/ jmA recent yearlong study by the California Office of Traffic Safety has found motorcycle lane-splitting to be a safe practice on public roads. The study looked at collisions involving 7836 motorcyclists reported by 80 police departments between August 2012 and August 2013. “What we learned is, if you lane-split in a safe or prudent manner, it is no more dangerous than motorcycling in any other circumstance,” state spokesman Chris Cochran told the Sacramento Bee. “If you are speeding or have a wide speed differential (with other traffic), that is where the fatalities came about.” ]]> lane-splitting cycling motorcycling bikes road-safety driving safety california https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9d1ca6533c02/ A Case Study of Toyota Unintended Acceleration and Software Safety 2015-01-16T22:33:37+00:00 http://betterembsw.blogspot.ie/2014/09/a-case-study-of-toyota-unintended.html?m=1 jmInvestigations into potential causes of Unintended Acceleration (UA) for Toyota vehicles have made news several times in the past few years. Some blame has been placed on floor mats and sticky throttle pedals. But, a jury trial verdict was based on expert opinions that defects in Toyota's Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) software and safety architecture caused a fatal mishap.  This talk will outline key events in the still-ongoing Toyota UA litigation process, and pull together the technical issues that were discovered by NASA and other experts. The results paint a picture that should inform future designers of safety critical software in automobiles and other systems. ]]> toyota safety realtime coding etcs throttle-control nasa code-review embedded https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e6e6d56be7de/