Electric Cars In China Talking Data To The Government As Well As To The Manufacturers.

Electric Cars in China Talking Data to the Government and Of Course to the Manufacturers.
China has directed all electric car makers to share real-time driving data of electrical vehicles like #Tesla and #Nissan with the government. China insists that it’s to ensure safety and improve the infrastructure. But given to China's behavior in the present and past, critics worry the tracking can be put to more nefarious uses.
All the electric car manufacturers, numbers nearing 200, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed monitoring centers, The Associated Press says this generally happens without car owners’ knowledge.
But it seems, car makers are not very clean either. They may be loud about users privacy outwards but as soon as they learn there are incentives, they jump hoops.
“The automakers consider the data a precious resource, They gave you dozens of reasons why they can’t give you the data. They give you dozens of excuses. Then we offer the incentives. Then they want to give us the data because it’s part of their profit.” said a government consultant who helped evaluate the policy and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

New Atomic clock by NIST Enables Sub Centimetric Level Geodesy

Simplified experimental scheme.

The first atomic clock was created in 1955 and used the energy transition of an electron in a cesium-133 atom as its frequency referent. Cesium-133 atoms absorb energy at wavelengths of 3.2 cm, which means the wave oscillates at a frequency of 9,192,631,770 cycles per second. When cesium-133 atoms are hit with microwaves at this frequency, it causes the atom’s single outermost electron to rapidly transition between energy states at the same rate. In this case, the electron transitioning between a high and low energy state over 9 billion times a second is analogous to a rapidly swinging pendulum in a conventional clock. In fact, the transition of the cesium-133 electron was used to formally define the length of a second in 1967.

 Now researchers at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an atomic clock that is so precise that our models of Earth’s gravity aren’t accurate enough to keep up with it. As detailed in a paper published this week in Nature , the atomic clock could pave the way for creating an unprecedented map of the way the Earth’s gravity distorts space-time and even shed light on the development of the early universe. 

 Image Geoid: Swiss Office of Topography

Abstract of the paper

The passage of time is tracked by counting oscillations of a frequency reference, such as Earth’s revolutions or swings of a pendulum. By referencing atomic transitions, frequency (and thus time) can be measured more precisely than any other physical quantity, with the current generation of optical atomic clocks reporting fractional performance below the 10−17 level1,2,3,4,5. However, the theory of relativity prescribes that the passage of time is not absolute, but is affected by an observer’s reference frame. Consequently, clock measurements exhibit sensitivity to relative velocity, acceleration and gravity potential. Here we demonstrate local optical clock measurements that surpass the current ability to account for the gravitational distortion of space-time across the surface of Earth. In two independent ytterbium optical lattice clocks, we demonstrate unprecedented values of three fundamental benchmarks of clock performance. In units of the clock frequency, we report systematic uncertainty of 1.4 × 10−18, measurement instability of 3.2 × 10−19 and reproducibility characterized by ten blinded frequency comparisons, yielding a frequency difference of [−7 ± (5)stat ± (8)sys] × 10−19, where ‘stat’ and ‘sys’ indicate statistical and systematic uncertainty, respectively. Although sensitivity to differences in gravity potential could degrade the performance of the clocks as terrestrial standards of time, this same sensitivity can be used as a very sensitive probe of geopotential5,6,7,8,9. Near the surface of Earth, clock comparisons at the 1 × 10−18 level provide a resolution of one centimetre along the direction of gravity, so the performance of these clocks should enable geodesy beyond the state-of-the-art level. These optical clocks could further be used to explore geophysical phenomena10, detect gravitational waves11, test general relativity12 and search for dark matter

Via Motherboard

Osmo Pocket, Big 4K Versatility in Your Pocket With Mimo in Your Phone.

If you have been looking for a small handheld camera/video camera or thinking of upgrading your GoPro, I wouldn't look past this new gimbal from DJI. 4k 60p for under $400 on a stabilized rig that can fit in your pocket sounds great to me. Same size sensor as many of the drone images you see out there today. Don't forget to look at the accessories as well. DJI also has a new app to got with the camera, DJI Mimo.

DJI Osmo Pocket

60 Million USPS Users' Data Left Exposed Over A Year Despite The Notification By A Researcher.

U.S. Postal Service has addressed a gap security that allowed a person with an account at usps.com to not only view but in some cases to modify account details on behalf of more than 60 million users of a system called Informed Visibility.
An anonymous researcher who discovered the flow informed the #USPS a year ago but has not received any response nor a fix to the problem. Due to the danger that to security flow posed, the same researcher contacted KrebsOnSecurity but also informed the journalist that he/she wished continued to remain anonymous.
KrebsOnSecurity contacted the USPS after confirming his findings, and USPS promptly addressed the issue.

The problem stemmed from an authentication weakness in a USPS Web component known as an “application program interface,” or API tied to a Postal Service initiative called “Informed Visibility,” which according to the USPS is designed to let businesses, advertisers and other bulk mail senders “make better business decisions by providing them with access to near real-time tracking data” about mail campaigns and packages. You can get more information about the issues here.