Month: March 2019

Enlarge / A traffic jam in New York City. (credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

In 2015, a pair of hackers demonstrated just how easy it was to break into the UConnect system of a Jeep Cherokee, remotely manipulating the speed, braking, steering, even shutting the car down entirely. Vehicles on the road will only have greater interconnectivity from this point forward, with self-driving cars on the horizon. That poses a unique potential risk: if someone can hack one car, what happens if they manage to hack many at once in a major metropolitan city?

That question inspired scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology to quantify the likely impact of such a large-scale hack on traffic flow in New York City. Skanda Vivek, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, described the study's findings at the American Physical Society's 2019 March meeting, held last week in Boston. Worst-case scenario: a small-scale hack affecting just ten percent of cars on the road would be sufficient to cause city-wide gridlock, essentially cutting half of Manhattan off from the rest of the city. And unlike compromised data, compromised vehicles can lead to physical injury.

Vivek and his colleagues performed computer simulations of traffic flow in Manhattan, using a statistical method called percolation theory. If that reminds you of brewing coffee, that's exactly the right image. Percolation theory is a mathematical model of a smooth, continuous phase transition (as opposed to a rapid one, like flicking a light switch), similar to water seeping through roasted ground coffee beans until it shifts into a new state: "coffee." Hot water seeping through packed coffee grains will hunt for the most viable path. The more connected routes that are open, the more likely it is the water will filter through. Traffic works much the same way. Cut off too many routes, and there won't be sufficient connectivity for cars to filter through.

Enlarge / A (not serious) artist's conception of what Google's gaming hardware might look like. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Apple)

Normally, Google showing up to the Game Developers Conference isn't a huge deal. The company does this pretty much every year—Android smartphones and Google Play are a pretty big gaming platform, after all—and it shows up with livestreams and blog posts and all the usual festivities. This year, though, is different. Google has been sending out vague teasers since last month for a GDC event, but as the date approaches, the company has been dropping more and more hints of exactly what it is announcing: Google is launching video game hardware for the Project Stream platform.

A new YouTube video for the event posted today asks people to "Gather around as we unveil Google’s vision for the future of gaming at GDC19." Google recently wrapped up the "Project Stream" beta test, which streamed a full version of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey from the Internet to any desktop version of Chrome. A game-streaming platform certainly fits a vision for the future of gaming, but this is still just a piece of software.

Google hardware

There are two big pieces of evidence that this is a hardware announcement. First, Google is a heavily compartmentalized company, and the person promoting this event on Twitter is none other than Risk Osterloh, Google's senior vice president of Hardware. Osterloh is behind the division that brought us the Pixel phone, Google Home, and every other Google hardware product. His involvement is a solid sign that, yes, new hardware is coming.