Uber Hires Hackers Who Remotely Killed a Jeep 31
An anonymous reader writes: The past several weeks have been rife with major vulnerabilities in modern cars, but none were so dramatic as when Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek tampered with the systems on a moving Jeep Cherokee. Now, Miller and Valasek have left their jobs to join a research laboratory for Uber. It's the same lab that became home for a number of autonomous vehicle experts poached from Carnegie Mellon University. From the article: "As Uber plunges more deeply into developing or adapting self-driving cars, Miller and Valasek could help the company make that technology more secure. Uber envisions autonomous cars that could someday replace its hundreds of thousands of contract drivers. The San Francisco company has gone to top-tier universities and research centers to build up this capability."
"Uber envisions" (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Now if you drive for the competition, and your car happens to break down...you've been Ubered!
Re: "Uber embiggens" (Score:2)
Sehr intelligent
The visions! The visions! (Score:4, Interesting)
Uber envisions being able to mysteriously stop Google self-driving cars that aren't on the Uber payroll :)
Re: (Score:2)
Autonomous cars are for the lazy and the inept
Im only drunnk, you insendsitive clod!
Poached? (Score:2)
Why is offering someone a job poaching?
Re: (Score:2)
Why is offering someone a job poaching?
Because they weren't obviously looking for different jobs. There's nothing unethical about it.
Their end-game business model (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They're it in for the long game. Their 'independent contractors" aren't drivers. Their data collection experts. They know exactly how many people need to move where and when.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, the fever dream of capital: eliminate labor costs.
In the race to the bottom, some citizens will, of course, be made redundant. Don't stand in the way of progress, comrade, even if it destroys homes, families, and livelihoods!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the fever dream of capital: eliminate labor costs.
It is also its promised death: without labor costs, there is no more consumers.
Re: (Score:1)
But on the way, the top 1% will get even more fucking rich. Who cares about the long term effect when you yourself have all the money to buy everything you need to survive?
That's some BM! (Score:1)
This is the business model they're using: set up a service in which pseudo-independent contractors do all your work for you, while you aren't liable for their wellbeing or behavior while under your command, get super rich and fat off other people's sweat while robbing professionals of their livelihoods (the taxi driver's,) by undercutting them which you can do because the rules they are obliged to follow don't apply to your "independent" contractors, then use THAT money to fire all your workers, replacing
Re: (Score:3)
Are you stoned, demented, or just a shill for Uber?
This is the noose Uber hangs itself by... (Score:3)
The self-driving car is very much going to project that sinks Uber. It's an enterprise so far outside their core business, with such a sheer volume of money required to bring to fruition, and they're just not going to get there. Moreover, it's not at all clear that their financials support being able to back a project like this if it doesn't bring quick and immediate success.
Google are probably the current leaders in this field. And to their credit, there's a logical value there - Google's business is, essentially, AI - which is what the problem boils down to (and integrates nicely with the rest of their search business - object identification, categorization etc.).
When investors start wanting to cash out, Uber is going to wind up sliced and diced and a lot less valuable then it looked on paper due to projects like this which they can't possibly fulfill.