Showing posts with label million. Show all posts
Showing posts with label million. Show all posts
Friday, March 17, 2017
Tesla has 780 million miles of driving data
Tesla has 780 million miles of driving data
and adds another million every 10 hours
Tesla?s customers are also test drivers amassing an unprecedented dataset that the company hopes to use to design its self-driving cars. And it hopes to do this before other car companies test their own self-driving technology with paying customers. So far, the strategy seems to be working.
Sterling Anderson, director of Tesla?s Autopilot program, told MIT Technology Review?s EmTech Digital conference this week that the company had recorded data from Tesla drivers who covered 780 million miles in the last 18 months. The company?s Autopilot program, launched in 2014, is not fully autonomous, but it uses a suite of ultrasonic sensors, radar and cameras to steer, change lanes and avoid collisions, and has been described as the predecessor to the full automation Tesla says it will release in 2018.
Tesla added sensors, radar cameras to its cars in 2014 to power its Autopilot feature.
Tesla?s rate of data collection is climbing fast. The company is adding another million miles worth of data every 10 hours, according to Anderson, almost double the figure Tesla CEO Elon Musk cited last October.
Tesla?s Autopilot feature still ranks on the low-end of autonomy (one of Volvo?s engineers called Autopilot an ?unsupervised wannabe?). But Musk has been taking an incremental approach. His priority seems to be getting as many Tesla cars on the road as possible, streaming back data. ?When one car learns something, the whole fleet learns. This fleet learning is quite a powerful network effect,? Musk said in a press call last year. ?Any car company who doesn?t do this will not be able to have a good autonomous driving system.?
Volvo is planning to roll out its own self-driving test in 2017. BMW, Mercedes, GM and others are readying programs as well. But most players appear years away from reaching scale. Even Google, which launched its self-driving program in 2009, has only amassed just over 1.5 million miles on the road through its self-driving program, although admittedly it has taken the more challenging approach of building fully autonomous vehicles. Google augments its testing program by running new features against the entire simulated driving history of its 55-car fleet, and logs more than 3 million simulated miles per day without leaving the lab.
Tesla claims its strategy has taken it from the back of the pack to the forefront of self-driving technology. Given that almost every car company is now in this race, and you can even obtain kits to outfit existing vehicles, Tesla needs to be there. ?The ability to pull high-resolution data from these vehicles and to update the vehicles over the air is a significant part of what?s allowed us in 18 months to go from very behind the curve, to what is today one of the more advanced autonomous or semi-autonomous driving features,? Anderson said.
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Friday, January 20, 2017
The Navys 864 Million Underwater Drones Still Dont Work BusinessWeek
The Navys 864 Million Underwater Drones Still Dont Work BusinessWeek
- Pentagon test data show 24 major failures since September 2014
- Crippled Lockheed drones towed to port seven times this year
Remote Minehunting System
The U.S. Navy?s new Littoral Combat Ship would be ineffective at hunting for mines because an underwater drone made by Lockheed Martin Corp. that?s supposed to find them often fails to work, the Pentagon?s weapons-testing office found.
While mine-hunting is intended to be the primary combat mission of the ship, the drones required to detect underwater explosive devices from a safe distance have failed 24 times since September 2014, according to Navy test data provided to the Defense Department?s Office of Operational Test & Evaluation.
Most recently, the drones failed 14 times over 300 hours in a five-month round of preliminary trials at sea that ended Aug. 30, according to the data. Crippled drones were towed to port seven times, and the intense combat testing required for increased purchases has been delayed. The Navy plans to spend $864 million buying 54 drones from Lockheed, the biggest U.S. contractor.
Frank Kendall, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, has scheduled a Jan. 19 review of the drone?s reliability woes, the latest setback for the troubled Littoral Combat Ship program. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon?s director of combat testing, prepared a 41-page classified assessment dated Nov. 12 for the review.
An independent team named by the Navy also is reviewing the drone program because the service realizes ?reliability performance has not been acceptable,? Captain Thurraya Kent, a spokeswoman for the service, said in an e-mail.
Lockheed?s Response
Lockheed spokesman Joe Dougherty said in an e-mail that the drone ?exceeded or met key performance parameters during a Navy-led development test conducted in early 2015.?? He said the Remote Minehunting System is ?the only system on track for delivery that can fill? an ?imminent capability gap.?
Equipped with a mobile sonar made by Raytheon Co., the drone is supposed to provide the ship with a system that can spot underwater explosive devices without sailing near them, as current Avenger-class mine-hunting ships must do.
?We remain confident the RMS is the most mature system to identify and destroy mines,? Dougherty said. A Lockheed brochure posted online and dated 2014 says the drone ?meets or exceeds all key performance parameters and is available today.
?
Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an e-mail Tuesday that the new report ?only furthers my concerns about the testing and reliability performance of the Littoral Combat Ship?s troubled mine countermeasures capability. ?
The Arizona Republican said decisions over the next few months will set the course for U.S. maritime anti-mine capabilities for decades so?there should be no rush to failure.?
Previous Questions
The drone failures add to previous questions about how much value the U.S. will get from what?s now supposed to be a $23 billion program to build 32 Littoral Combat Ships in two versions made by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed and Austal Ltd. based in Henderson, Australia. Both versions depend on the drones to detect mines from a safe distance.
The Remote Minehunting System
The Navy spent $109 million buying the first eight drones, spare parts and logistics services from Lockheed in 2005. The drone was supposed to complete combat testing and be declared ready for combat by September of this year. Lockheed stands to gain more than $700 million in orders for the remaining 46 drones. That includes as much as $400 million in February for the next order of 18 that Kendall will review.
Gilmore, the testing chief, found there?s ?sufficient information available, based on testing to date, to conclude? the Littoral Combat Ship ?would not be operationally effective? or maintainable if deployed in combat with the current mine-sweeping modules, Marine Corps Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, Gilmore?s spokesman, said in an e-mail describing the study?s unclassified conclusions.
The system?s ?reliability remains far below what is needed to support? the mine-hunting mission, Rankine-Galloway said. It?s unclear whether the drone ?will ever achieve its reliability goals? of operating 75 hours between major failures, ?but given the history of the program, it may require more design changes than the Navy has been considering,? Rankine-Galloway said.
The Navy?s program to date ?has not substantially grown the reliability,? he said. The conclusion was based on data showing not only that critical mine-hunting systems were unreliable but also that the drone was vulnerable to mines and possessed limited communications capability.
Airborne System
Further, the Littoral Combat Ship?s separate, airborne-based AN/ASQ-235 mine neutralization system currently can?t disable ?most of the mines contained in the Navy?s own real-world threat scenarios,? Rankine-Galloway said. The system, which would be deployed on MH-60S helicopters, is intended to destroy the mines found by the drones.
Kent, the Navy spokeswoman, said the mine-hunting system ?has demonstrated the ability to meet operational requirements.? Still, ?reliability performance has not been acceptable during the most recent? evaluation.
Since September 2014, the drone has experienced 24 ?operational mission failures? blamed on poor workmanship, design deficiencies, wear and tear or training procedures, Kendall was told Nov. 3 in a memo from David C. Brown, his deputy for development testing.
?Considering the focused effort put into improving? the drone?s reliability since 2010, the latest poor performance ?puts into question whether the current? design ?will ever meet the Navy?s reliability requirement,? Brown wrote.
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Tuesday, December 20, 2016
This 1 28 Million New Watch Is Made From Transparent Sapphire
This 1 28 Million New Watch Is Made From Transparent Sapphire
The Double Tourbillon 30ø Technique in an all-sapphire case.
Transparency isnt just a buzzword in politics: For a few years now, it?s been a genuine trend in the world of luxury watches. For example, earlier this year, Hublot introduced its Big Bang Unico Sapphire timepiece cut straight from the sapphire?the first time the material had ever been cut on this scale.
And now from Greubel Forsey, maker of what are some of the most supercomplicated timepieces in the world, comes the Double Tourbillon 30ø Technique. Its a watch the companys made for a while, but now its offered in, you guessed it, an all-sapphire case. Greubel Forsey calls it the ?pinnacle of transparency,? and it?s easy to see why. No metal is used at all in the creation of the dial and case (save for the winding pin), allowing for a panoptic view of as much of the movement architecture?and its dynamic interactions?as possible.
Cut from a single large sapphire crystal, including the rounded, multi-angular case horns, the entire movement is flooded with light within its 38.4mm case, allowing a view into its multi-tiered design from all angles. This is a more complicated watch than the Hublot, and uses sapphire in more places, including the crown.
The reverse of the Double Tourbillon 30ø Technique in all-sapphire.
Its actual 396-part movement may not be new?the patented tourbillon movement was first unveiled in platinum?but now its prowess is on full display. The hand-wound caliber, with 120-hour power reserve, packs two tourbillon escapements, one inside the other. Two tourbillons that rotate at different speeds are showcased here: An outer tourbillon rotates every four minutes while an inner tourbillon, every 60 seconds. All of this has helped the movement achieve a never-before-seen 915 out of a possible 1,000 points at the International Chronometry Competition.
Exclusive to the U.S. market in an edition of eight pieces to be individually created by hand over the course of the next three years, the watch is priced at $1.275 million.
The Double Tourbillon 30ø Technique in sapphire, from the side
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Tuesday, November 8, 2016
The Incredible Story Of How Hackers Stole 100 Million From The New York Fed
The Incredible Story Of How Hackers Stole 100 Million From The New York Fed
The story of the theft of $100 million from the Bangladesh central bank - by way of the New York Federal Reserve - is getting more fascinating by the day.
As we reported previously, on February 5, Bill Dudleys New York Fed was allegedly ?penetrated? when ?hackers? (of supposed Chinese origin) stole $100 million from accounts belonging to the Bangladesh central bank. The money was then channeled to the Philippines where it was sold on the black market and funneled to ?local casinos? (to quote AFP). After the casino laundering, it was sent back to the same black market FX broker who promptly moved it to ?overseas accounts within days.?
That was the fund flow in a nutshell.
As we explained, the whole situation was quite embarrassing for the NY Fed, because what happened is that someone in the Philippines requested $100 million through SWIFT from Bangladeshs FX reserves, and the Fed complied, without any alarm bells going off at the NY Feds middle or back office.
"Some 250 central banks, governments, and other institutions have foreign accounts at the New York Fed, which is near the centre of the global financial system," Reuters notes. "The accounts hold mostly U.S. Treasuries and agency debt, and requests for funds arrive and are authenticated by a so-called SWIFT network that connects banks."
Well, as it turns out, Bangladesh doesnt agree that the Fed isnt ultimately culpable. "We kept money with the Federal Reserve Bank and irregularities must be with the people who handle the funds there," Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said on Wednesday. ?It can?t be that they don?t have any responsibility," he said, incredulous.
Actually, Muhith, the New York Fed under former Goldmanite Bill Dudley taking zero responsibility for enabling domestic and global crime is precisely what it excels at.
But what really happened?
As it turns out there is much more to the story, and as Bloomberg reports today now that this incredible story is finally making the mainstream, there is everything from casinos, to money laundering and ultimately a scheme to steal $1 billion from the Bangladeshi central bank. In fact, the story is shaping up to be "one of the biggest documented cases of potential money laundering in the Philippines. It risks setting back the Southeast Asian nation?s efforts to stamp out the use of the country to clean cash, and tarnishing the legacy of President Benigno Aquino as elections loom in May."
And yes, it does appear that hackers managed to bypass the Feds firewall:
?Even as banks continue to harden their defenses against such sabotage, hackers too have upped their game to breach servers by utilizing both technical skills and rogue elements within the financial institutions,? said Sameer Patil, an associate fellow at Gateway House in Mumbai who specializes in terrorism and national security.
* * *
The story begins in Bangladesh, a country of about 170 million people that?s recently found itself with record foreign reserves thanks to a low wage-fueled export boom and inward remittances. Some of those reserves were held in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith this week accused the Fed of ?irregularities? that led to the unauthorized transfer of $100 million from the account. The Bangladesh central bank said the funds had been stolen by hackers and that some had been traced to the Philippines.
As reported previously, a Bangladesh central bank official who is part of a panel investigating the disappearance of the funds said Wednesday that a separate transfer of $870 million had been blocked by the Fed, something the Fed refused to comment on. It does not, however, explain why $100 million was released.
Essentially the dispute is about whether the Fed went through the right procedure when it received transfer orders.
Naturally, the Feds story is that it did nothing wrong. Bloomberg writes that according to a Fed spokeswoman, instructions to make the payments from the central bank?s account followed protocol and were authenticated by the SWIFT codes system. There were no signs the Fed?s systems were hacked, she said.
The problem is that the counterparty on the other side of the SWIFT order was not who the Fed thought, and what should have set off red lights is that the recipients was not the government of the Philippines but three casinos!
On the other hand, Bangladesh is quite - understandably - furious: a local official said the Fed should?ve checked the payment orders with the central bank to ensure they were authentic, even if they used the correct SWIFT codes. The official also said there are plans to take legal action against the Fed to retrieve missing funds.
Aquino spokesman Sonny Coloma said he had no information on reports that funds from the Bangladesh central bank reached the Philippines. The case is being handled by the AMLC, an independent body, Coloma said. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando Tetangco, who heads the AMLC, did not reply to mobile-phone messages seeking comment.
If at this point flashing light bulbs are going off above the heads of some of our more industrious readers, we can understand why: after all if a fake SWIFT money order is all it takes to have the Fed send you $100 million dollars then...
Separately, a Reuters report digs into the details of the SWIFT wire requests: it notes that the hackers breached Bangladesh Banks systems and stole its credentials for payment transfers, two senior officials at the bank said. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Banks account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, entities which as will be revealed shortly were... casinos.
Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organization was held up because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.
Hackers misspelled "foundation" in the NGOs name as "fandation", prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction, one of the officials said.
There is no NGO under the name of Shalika Foundation in the list of registered Sri Lankan non-profits. Reuters could not immediately find contact information for the organization.
Luckily, the Fed stopped some of the $1 billion in total requested funds. The unusually high number of payment instructions and the transfer requests to private entities - as opposed to other banks - raised suspicions at the Fed, which also alerted the Bangladeshis, the officials said. The details of how the hacking came to light and was stopped before it did more damage have not been previously reported. Bangladesh Bank has billions of dollars in a current account with the Fed, which it uses for international settlements.
The transactions that were stopped totaled $850-$870 million, one of the officials said. At least$80 million made it through without a glitch.
* * *
Meanwhile, back in the Philippines, the gaming regulator said it is investigating reports that as much as $100 million in suspicious funds were remitted to the bank accounts of three casinos it didn?t identify.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer has led reporting on the theft. It wrote last month that cash may have entered the Philippines via the Jupiter Street, Makati City, branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. The money was converted into pesos and deposited in the account of an unidentified Chinese-Filipino businessman who runs a business flying high net worth gamblers to the Philippines.
The funds were used to buy casino chips or pay for losses at venues including Bloomberry Resorts Corp.?s Solaire Resort & Casino and Melco Crown Philippines Resort Corp.?s City of Dreams Manila, according to the paper. There was no suggestion in the report the banks or casinos named were complicit with any improper movement of funds.
In other words, the Fed was funding gamblers, only these were located in Philippine casinos, not in the financial district. Ironically, thats precisely what the Fed does, only it normally operates with gamblers operating out of Manhattans financial district.
Bloomberry Resorts investor relations director Leo Venezuela and City of Dreams Manila Vice President Charisse Chuidian didn?t reply to calls and phone messages.
And then, once the "gamblers" were done having their fun laundering freshly received Fed money, they moved the cash offshore: funds were later dispatched into accounts outside the Philippines, the paper said, including to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority declined to comment, as did the Hong Kong police. The Inquirer separately reported the head of the Rizal branch where the transactions occurred had made a statement that top bank officials were aware of the transactions ?at every stage."
Were the banks in on this unprecedented theft? Probably, although it will be nearly impossible to prove.
Rizal?s shareholders ?are fully committed to comply with all banking laws and regulations, in particular those on money laundering,? Vice Chairman Cesar E.A. Virata said in a statement Wednesday. In a separate statement, the bank?s Chief Executive Officer Lorenzo Tan condemned ?any insinuations that the top management of the bank knew of and tolerated alleged money laundering activities in one branch.?
* * *
The exact amount stolen from Bangladesh is still not exactly clear, as is what happens next in the dispute with the Fed.
While Muhith said the Fed was responsible for at least $100 million, another Bangladeshi central bank official who asked not to be identified said $20 million of a $101 million total had been recovered from an account held in Sri Lanka, leaving $81 million unaccounted for. That figure matches the amount Rizal?s Virata said the bank was investigating.
What we would like to know, is whether this is merely the Feds way of testing its level of preparedness for the moment it has to wire helicopter money around the globe, in lieu of using drone delivery of cash, especially if cash has been banned previously as so many "famous economists" demand, clearly unaware that cash has to be present when in the last ditch step to boost inflation, the Fed has no choice but to hand out physical money to every willing recipient.
For a few lucky recipients in the Philippines, it already worked out.
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