What Happens Off The Air

Category: News Comments

Uber’s New Recruits

Uber, a ride hailing service, has recently opened itsĀ Uber Advanced Technologies Center which is a joint effort with Carnegie Mellon University to research robotics and autonomous vehicles. Uber’s most recent staff acquisitions areĀ Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek who have recently proven that modern cars can be hacked. In 2013 they managed to control a Ford and a Toyota through the diagnostic port but the requirement of having physical access to the vehicles caused auto makers to dismiss this as something of little concern. Now recently they have proven that they can gain remote access to vehicles through the internet and control various functions including brakes and steering. Last month Fiat Chrysler even recalled 1.4 million vehicles after Miller and Valasek found a method to control many functions of the cars electronics, and again brakes and steering, after hacking in through the internet hardware chip of the vehicle.

People believe they’re safe. Then people like Miller and Valasek come along, without the intention of helping develop better security, and prove how vulnerable we really are. Thankfully it was a couple of people with good intentions that discovered this flaw but the next time it may not be. These men will definitely be useful in developing technology for Uber and they will hopefully stay one step ahead of any hacker.

Source: Uber Hires Two Engineers Who Showed Cars Could Be Hacked

Is Journalism Obsolete?

Journalism, as we know it today, is dying. However, it is not dead. Journalism has changed in ways that couldn’t have even been imagined 30 years ago. The internet is causing everything to evolve and journalism is no exception. Social media has become the fastest way to spread news stories throughout the world, whether they are fact or fiction. The thing people need to figure out is how to discern what information is factual rather than believing in complete nonsense, but with the amount of information swirling about the web, the process is difficult. As Dave Winer said in the article “Is journalism as we know it becoming obsolete?“, anyone can be a journalist now. That just opens up the world to a whole new source of information though. People can be more direct with the information being gathered from the original source rather than having to trust professional journalists and other second hand sources. All they have to do is look. Any average person can gather information that is the same or of similar quality to that of a professional journalist. This gives them the ability to see the sources and determine for themselves what the news is. In short, professional journalism is coming to an end but journalism itself isn’t going to die any time soon.

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