Radar & camera can be degraded by snow/ice buildup. A grate that lets wet snow in is also going to be big enough to let rocks and other debris in.

Like snow or ice buildup causing issues with the camera, radar, etc.

Especially the police unions in Massachusetts, where they have a stranglehold on public works. Need to dig up a sidewalk to repair a water main? That’ll require a 2 person police detail for a minimum of 6 hours, and it’s all overtime pay.

Bet you can’t find civilian flagged anywhere in the state.

CDN & security companies like Akamai actually have data centers designed to intercept and “scrub” DDoS traffic. Akamai has a few dozen of them around the world. From their website:

Prolexic is the industry pioneer in cloud-based DDoS protection. Network traffic is directed in one of two ways via a border gateway protocol route advertisement change or DNS redirection (A record or CNAME record). Available as an always-on or on demand service, Prolexic offers flexible integration models based on the needs of a customer’s desired security posture across hybrid origins. With global high-capacity scrubbing centers in 32 metro locations, Prolexic can stop attacks closer to the source to maximize performance for users and maintain network resiliency through cloud distribution. Traffic is routed via anycast through the closest scrubbing center, at which the Akamai SOCC deploys proactive and/or custom mitigation controls designed to stop attacks instantly — ensuring fast and accurate DDoS defenses. Clean traffic is then returned to the customer origin via Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels, Layer 2 VLAN connections, and/or VIP-to-origin back-end mapping.

20 years of Black Friday traffic because some anonymous person put up realistic looking advertisements all over the city offering 90% off from 9:00 to noon.

I use an older version of Calibre that has a fairly robust plug-in to remove DRM. I use it to remove DRM from all my ebook purchases. That plug-in isn’t supported in newer versions of Calibre so I don’t upgrade.

BD is far from bullshit. I used to work across the street from them and saw them testing robots countless times in the parking lot and surrounding area. They were also nice enough to give me & a bunch of coworkers a tour of their labs. It’s pretty darned impressive what they’ve achieved in 3 decades of research. This recent news story shows a lot of the capabilities of their current generation Atlas robot.

You should check out this news story. It gives a lot more detail about their Atlas robot.

You should see just how far Boston Dynamics has progressed. They’ve been working on it for literally decades, and it shows. They may have humanoid AI robots working in automotive assembly lines within a year or two:

This is exactly the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard what happened. I still clearly recall the WPRI news video of the fire mentioned in the Wikipedia article. That news crew had just shown up to report on the band that was playing, and they got clear footage of the nightmare. You could see bodies stacked up at the door as hundreds of people pushed to get out of the inferno… You can probably still find the video on smaller video sharing sites if you dare to go looking for it.

Roxy’s Arcade in Cambridge, MA uses tokens and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I also know a few places in MA with pinball machines that take quarters and I’d be surprised if they changed.

This article includes a picture of the ship that it claims shows the parts in question. However the picture isn’t the greatest resolution, and they also state the cargo was wrapped in tarps. So take what you will…

All the black hats are going to have a field day uncovering all manner of zero-day exploits…

No kidding. If this happened in North Korea the trial would have lasted 15 minutes and the execution would have been a public spectacle.

I’m so glad my wife & I never got sucked into using things like Alexa.

I can recognize when a police officer is directing traffic at a dead traffic light. I can also recognize the intent of other drivers who may wave, flash their headlights, etc. I doubt any current self driving cars can accurately recognize any of those.

Exactly. Any such remote control would have to be trivial for a cop to use, and also need to directly control only the car(s) the cop is currently interacting with. Think of a situation like this where a traffic light is disabled and a cop is there directing traffic. If driverless cars are approaching from multiple directions then how does the cop direct his commands to only the one he’s focusing on at the given moment? Not all that easy when you think about it…

It wasn’t a cloud failure. The self driving cars are highly dependent on traffic lights being red/yellow/green. With the signals inoperative the cars don’t know what to do. Even if there were police officers directing traffic at intersections, the cars aren’t programmed to recognize & respond to them.

This is one of the many edge cases that I’ve been convinced will keep self driving cars from becoming mainstream unless/until true AGI is achieved.

A few years ago I stopped at a red light next to a construction site. I was watching the traffic light, so at first I didn’t notice a cop at the construction site trying to wave me through the red light. He finally took a few steps towards me and yelled to get my attention. Only then did I realize he was waving me through, so I did just that. I seriously doubt any current self driving car would recognize a police officer (and not just a random pedestrian) that’s overriding the traffic signal like that.

Another edge case, coincidentally at the same intersection a few years earlier was when there was a car fully engulfed in flames as I drove up. I could hear sirens in the distance, and the cars in every direction were making sure to safely get out of the way of the approaching fire trucks. At least one or two cars cautiously crossed on the red to get out of the way. Again, I doubt any current self driving car would have navigated that situation anywhere nearly as well as a human.

Don’t forget that they are also reportedly squandering their gold reserves, and are losing a lot of revenue from Ukraines growing attacks on oil infrastructure. Russia isn’t going to be able to pay its soldiers or buy equipment if those two trends continue.