Driver Distraction Technology

Not this hand-off

In the aftermath of the 737 MAX crashes, I wrote First We Change How People Behave.:

The fundamental problem of autonomous vehicles sharing roads is that until you get to Level 5, you have a hand-off problem. The closer you get to Level 5, the worse the hand-off problem.

Three years earlier, Paul Vixie was more specific in Disciplining the Unoccupied Mind:

Simply put, if you give a human brain the option to perform other tasks than the one at hand, it will do so. No law, no amount of training, and no insistence by the manufacturer of an automobile will alter this fact. It's human nature, immalleable. So until and unless Tesla can robustly and credibly promise an autopilot that will imagine every threat a human could imagine, and can use the same level of caution as the best human driver would use, then the world will be better off without this feature.

Follow me below the fold for an update on the hand-off problem.

Nvidia vs. Intel

NV1-based Diamond Edge
Swaaye, CC-By-SA 3.0

Today Nvidia replaced Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a market cap of about $3.6T, about the same as Apple, as against Intel's market cap about 33 times less.

That is a long way from Curtis Priem's kitchen table, a $2.5M A-round from Sutter Hill and Sequoia, and the NV1.

1.5C Here We Come

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John Timmer's With four more years like 2023, carbon emissions will blow past 1.5° limit is based on the United Nations' Environmental Programme's report Emissions Gap Report 2024. The "emissions gap" is:

the difference between where we're heading and where we'd need to be to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It makes for some pretty grim reading. Given last year's greenhouse gas emissions, we can afford fewer than four similar years before we would exceed the total emissions compatible with limiting the planet's warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial conditions.
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The report ascribes this situation to two distinct emissions gaps: between the goals of the Paris Agreement and what countries have pledged to do and between their pledges and the policies they've actually put in place.

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Back in 2021 in my TTI/Vanguard talk I examined one of these gaps, the one between the crypto-bros' energy consumption:

The leading source for estimating Bitcoin's electricity consumption is the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, whose current central estimate is 117TWh/year.

Adjusting Christian Stoll et al's 2018 estimate of Bitcoin's carbon footprint to the current CBECI estimate gives a range of about 50.4 to 125.7 MtCO2/yr for Bitcoin's opex emissions, or between Portugal and Myanmar.

and their rhetoric:

Cryptocurrencies assume that society is committed to this waste of energy and hardware forever. Their response is frantic greenwashing, such as claiming that because Bitcoin mining allows an obsolete, uncompetitive coal-burning plant near St. Louis to continue burning coal it is somehow good for the environment.

But, they argue, mining can use renewable energy. First, at present it doesn't. For example, Luxxfolio implemented their commitment to 100% renewable energy by buying 15 megawatts of coal-fired power from the Navajo Nation!.

Second, even if it were true that cryptocurrencies ran on renewable power, the idea that it is OK for speculation to waste vast amounts of renewable power assumes that doing so doesn't compete with more socially valuable uses for renewables, or indeed for power in general.

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Note that the current CBECI estimate shows that Bitcoin's energy consumption has increased 43% since 2021, a 12.7%/yr increase.

Follow me below the fold for more details of the frantic greenwashing, not just from the crypto-bros but from the giants of the tech industry that aims to ensure that:

Following existing policies out to the turn of the century would leave us facing over 3° C of warming.

It Was Ten Years Ago Today

Ten years ago today I posted Economies of Scale in Peer-to-Peer Networks . My fundamental insight was:

• The income to a participant in a P2P network of this kind should be linear in their contribution of resources to the network.
• The costs a participant incurs by contributing resources to the network will be less than linear in their resource contribution, because of the economies of scale.
• Thus the proportional profit margin a participant obtains will increase with increasing resource contribution.
• Thus the effects described in Brian Arthur's Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy will apply, and the network will be dominated by a few, perhaps just one, large participant.

In the name of blatant self-promotion, below the fold I look at how this insight has held up since.

Warning: Slow Blogging Ahead

Vicky & I have recently acquired two major joint writing assignments with effective deadlines in the next couple of months. And I am still on the hook for a Wikipedia page about the late Dewayne Hendricks. This is all likely to reduce the flow of posts on this blog for a while, for which I apologize.

Dewayne Hendricks RIP

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Dewayne Hendricks, my friend of nearly four decades, passed away last Friday at age 74. His mentors were Buckminster Fuller and Paul Baran. He was a pioneer of wireless Internet connectivity, a serial entrepreneur, curator of an influential e-mail list, and for the last 30 years on the organizing committee of the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop.

For someone of his remarkable achievements he has left very little impression on the Web. An example is his Linkedin profile. Below the fold I collect the pieces of his story that I know or have been able to find from his other friends. If I can find more I will update this post. Please feel free to add information in the comments.

Lie Down WIth Dogs, Get Up WIth Fleas

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It is generally quite difficult to upset the denizens of a wretched hive of scum and villainy by further besmirching their reputation, but recently the Trump family has succeeded.

Below the fold I explain how they did it, and why the denizens of the wretched hive are not happy.