Month: April 2019

Enlarge (credit: Keen Security Lab)

Researchers have devised a simple attack that might cause a Tesla to automatically steer into oncoming traffic under certain conditions. The proof-of-concept exploit works not by hacking into the car's onboard computing system. Instead, it works by using small, inconspicuous stickers that trick the Enhanced Autopilot of a Model S 75 into detecting and then following a change in the current lane.

Tesla's Enhanced Autopilot supports a variety of capabilities, including lane-centering, self-parking, and the ability to automatically change lanes with the driver's confirmation. The feature is now mostly called "Autopilot" after Tesla reshuffled the Autopilot price structure. It primarily relies on cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and radar to gather information about its surroundings, including nearby obstacles, terrain, and lane changes. It then feeds the data into onboard computers that use machine learning to make judgements in real time about the best way to respond.

Researchers from Tencent's Keen Security Lab recently reverse-engineered several of Tesla's automated processes to see how they reacted when environmental variables changed. One of the most striking discoveries was a way to cause Autopilot to steer into oncoming traffic. The attack worked by carefully affixing three stickers to the road. The stickers were nearly invisible to drivers, but machine-learning algorithms used by by the Autopilot detected them as a line that indicated the lane was shifting to the left. As a result, Autopilot steered in that direction.

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Over 58 percent of passenger cars sold in Norway in March were zero-emission vehicles, according to Norway's Road Traffic Information Office (OFV). That's a new record for the small Scandinavian country that has long led the world in adoption of zero-emission vehicles.

The strong sales reflected pent-up demand for Tesla's new Model 3, which only became available available in large volumes in late February. The Model 3 accounted for 5,315 of the 18,375 vehicles sold Norway in March, with the Model S and Model X selling another 500 vehicles combined.

"In 2018, Norway’s fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation," Reuters reports.

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  The flip-up headphone design will be familiar to anyone who has used the Oculus Rift. [credit: Valve / ResetEra ]

Monday afternoon, Valve briefly posted and almost immediately took down a series of work-in-progress Steam store pages for its recently revealed Valve Index VR headset. But that was enough time for Twitter's Wario64, members of the ResetEra forums, and other sources to view the page online and capture the scant information available on the still-incomplete, lorem-ipsum-laden pages.

(Yes, we know today is April 1 and that all online information is inherently suspect today. But if the brief store postings apparently seen by multiple independent sources were a joke, they are an incredibly subtle one).

The most interesting bit from the posting is the apparent front-on view of the headset itself, which show's a set of flip-up, over-ear headphones hanging down from either side. That style of integrated headphones was a big distinguishing features on the Oculus Rift, but has been removed from the upcoming Rift S in favor of subtle near-ear speakers in the headband.

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  This happy marching Yoshi on a rotating platform reminded me of a dwarf from Snow White more than anything else. [credit: Kyle Orland ]

BOSTON—Going to PAX and PA East year after year, the conventions can start to run together in the mind. A lot of the same booths return year after year, many of them with the same games or boothside attractions to try to get attendees to stop in their tracks. Cosplayers tend to congregate around the same few series, to the point where another Final Fantasy or Mario or Zelda costume is practically humdrum (the recent prevalence of Skull Kid costumes from Majora's Mask has been interesting, though).

No matter how familiar some of the PAX sights can be, though, there are always a few surprising sights that make us stop and take an appreciative gander while wandering the show floor. Enjoy some such wonders from PAX East 2019 in the above gallery.

The peaceful town of Centerville finds itself battling a zombie horde as the dead start rising from their graves in the first trailer for The Dead Don't Die, director Jim Jarmusch's deadpan foray into the zombie-comedy genre.

It's an interesting new direction for Jarmusch, but based on the trailer, the genre is tailor-made for his idiosyncratic style and deadpan wit. His career took off in 1984 with his first major film, Stranger Than Paradise. Shot entirely in black-and-white (a signature of the director's early work), the film won the Caméra D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year and established the director as a darling of arthouse cinema.

Movies like Dead Man, Mystery Train, Down by Law, Night on Earth, and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai further cemented his auteur status. In 2005, Jarmusch won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Broken Flowers, which starred Bill Murray as middle-aged man searching for the mother of the son he never met. And Jarmusch is no stranger to unusual takes on traditional horror stories, as evidenced by his 2013 "crypto-vampire love story," Only Lovers Left Alive.

Enlarge / The Falcon Heavy rocket proved that 27 engines can fly together and not go all explode-y. (credit: SpaceX)

On Monday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine held a town hall for agency employees to begin talking about how they can return humans to the Moon by 2024. This was the goal set down by Vice President Mike Pence last week during a space policy speech in Huntsville, Alabama.

The discussion was short on details until Bridenstine was asked why an idea to use private rockets to launch the Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight around the Moon was unworkable. The administrator replied that the agency had looked at a variety of options using United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, or (perhaps most intriguingly) a combination of the two.

"By the way, I was for it, because the visuals would be beautiful," Bridenstine said. Unfortunately, none of these options really worked for a 2020 mission due to a variety of reasons. These included the availability of Delta IV Heavy rockets, launchpad issues, and Orion's lack of capability to dock autonomously with a rocket's upper stage in orbit.