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AS HEARD ON NH Today with Jack Heath WGIR-AM 610: Self Driving Cars Kill, GM Car Rentals and the Death of Uber

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Release Date: 08/10/2020

ShinyHunters Got FBI Records. Craig’s Question Is Which Contractor Was Holding Them.

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

A listener asked Matt to ask Craig about the theft of FBI data, and Craig started with who holds it. Much of what the federal government keeps — background-check records, applications to the FBI, even the designs of weapons made by defense contractors — sits with third parties. The group behind this one is called ShinyHunters; its reported leader was arrested by Dutch police the day before the show. Craig’s point was the gap between the government and its vendors: last week every federal agency was required to patch ScreenConnect, a remote-support tool with a serious vulnerability....

Office 2021 Stops Getting Security Updates on October 13. Windows Update Won’t Tell You What Else Has.

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

On October 13, Microsoft ends support for Office 2021 — Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint stop receiving security patches that day — along with the extended security updates for Windows Server 2012. Danny, sitting in for Jim Polito, asked the obvious follow-up: how does anyone find out what they are running? Craig’s answer started with what people assume covers them. “Most people think, oh, I’ve got antivirus software. I’ve got Windows Update turned on. So, I’m all set. It is not true.” Windows Update does not update all the software on a Windows machine, and antivirus only...

Senator Warner Wants an AI Oversight Agency. Craig Answers With the Clipper Chip.

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Sen. Mark Warner went to the Senate floor to call for a government body to oversee AI. Craig read the legislation and the senator’s website before the show, and his objection was that the problem it describes is already illegal. Laws against hacking a computer system have been on the books for almost 30 years; people have gone to jail under them, foreign nationals included. “I think what they’re trying to do is get legislation that protects them from the laws that exist.” Jeff played the other side: if the AI gets loose because of “grossly incompetent nitwits that I chose to...

Craig Puts It at 60%: The Share of New Web Content Written by AI

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

OpenAI launched ChatGPT 6, Sol, and Luna this month, claiming Sol makes about half as many mistakes as the models before it. Matt asked whether that is real progress. Craig’s answer was yes, with a catch: the models are not getting smarter. The companies, Anthropic included, have rewritten the code around them so the AI runs the same prompt again and again from different angles and then votes on the most likely answer. The new models use about twice the tokens of the old ones. “And they get a 50% better answer.” Matt: “There seems to be a correlation here.” The second half was about...

Websites Collected Driver’s License Photos to Check Ages. Craig Says 150 Million Were Stolen.

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Jim came into the segment from a morning on Flock license-plate cameras, and Craig took it one step wider. The technology is old and the courts have ruled on it for years; his discomfort is with how much of our information is collected at all. Websites that must verify your age now ask for a photo of your driver’s license or passport, so Facebook “or whomever” holds government ID for millions of people. Craig said 150 million of those records have been stolen. “So now what are they going to do? How am I going to prove who I am when other people have a copy of all of my information?”...

The AI “Breakouts” Were Given Hacking Instructions and an Internet Connection

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

OpenAI’s model got into Hugging Face. Anthropic said its model had broken into someone first. Then Google said its model had done it before either of them. Jeff wanted to know how these AIs keep “breaking out,” and whether he should picture Robby the Robot fiddling with a lock. Craig spent the previous two weeks reading the published investigations, which go back to May, and said nothing broke out of anything: “These AIs were let loose on networks that had access to the Internet. They were given specific instructions that had 100% to do with hacking and breaking into systems.” The...

Jeff and Heidi Want a Robot Bartender for Their Home Bar. Craig Says It Runs About $400.

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Jeff and Heidi hold happy hour at the bar in their house at 6:03, and Heidi has decided what it is missing: a robot bartender. Jeff’s terms were that he picks how it looks and she picks what it says. Craig’s answer was that the hardware already exists. Bars now have table-top machines that check your ID card and make any drink you order; those start around $30,000, and home versions run about $400. The conversation half is ChatGPT or Claude, spoken rather than typed. It started with a more serious question. Elon Musk and Sam Altman both say AI development should slow down, so why not...

Chinese Ships Are Stopping in Canada’s Northern Straits to Map the Sea Floor

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Craig’s wife sent him an article the morning of the show: Chinese ships moving through the straits of northern Canada are not just passing through. International agreements allow transit through territorial waters at a reasonable pace, but these ships are stopping, and it looks like they are measuring the sea floor. Russia is doing it too. The route used to be frozen; now it can be navigated in summer. Craig used it to explain why the U.S. wants a foothold in the North. It was the last stop in a long Canada conversation. Jim opened on British Columbia’s three-year experiment...

Microsoft Shipped Almost 700 Patches in One Patch Tuesday — Six Times a Normal Month

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

This was the biggest Patch Tuesday on record: Microsoft pushed close to 700 patches in a single month, roughly six times the usual volume. Craig's follow-up question is the one that actually decides whether a machine is exposed. Microsoft is patching Microsoft. Who is patching everything else? Windows Update never touches third-party software — it barely updates Windows itself, Craig said, and it does nothing for the average of 62 other programs sitting on a typical computer, many of which are being actively exploited right now. He named Adobe Reader and WinZip specifically: the current...

Craig Left Quebec in the 1970s, When a Driver's License Ran $300 and Registering the Family Wagon Ran $3,000

Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Craig grew up in Canada and left in the 1970s, and this week he put numbers on why. A driver's license in Quebec cost $300 a year. Registration on the family station wagon cost $3,000 a year. Both figures in 1970s dollars. Auto insurance, by contrast, was free — which Craig turned into the sharpest point of the segment: his father remarried, his stepmother got her license at 26, and she totaled three cars. Craig's question was not about her driving. It was about what happens to the premium. "How much does insurance go up? How much is the risk? Zero, of course, because there is no insurance....

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Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning discussing How the logic in self-driving cars can kill. General Motors Car Rental plans and Coronavirus and the Death of Uber. Here we go with Jack.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit

- CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

2020-08-10-wgir-uber_problems-todays_self_driving_cars_can_kill

[00:00:00] Craig Peterson: Companies like general motors is betting the bank on not selling cars to individuals, but selling basically renting fleets of cars.

Yeah. If you're like me, I'm really disappointed about this new AAA study and our self-driving cars. Of course, this is Craig Peterson and I was on this morning with Mr. Jack Heath. We got into it this morning and a little bit about the problems we're facing and how some of our US automakers might be going down the completely wrong road.

Jack Heath: All right. Hey, with a tech talk update, we go to our own Craig Peterson, his show airs on the weekend's Tech Talk, Craig joins live on the AutoFair listener lines.

Good morning, Craig.

[00:01:00] Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning, Jack. What do you have? Did you hear the latest? About the parked cars and some of these automatic driving cars. There have been some tests that have been conducted here lately, showing that in recent years, some of these car companies like Tesla, for instance, have these driver assistance systems. The whole idea behind them is to stay in the lane and they have these adaptive cruise controls. More and more companies are starting to come out with them. Well, there's an interesting study that is just happened here. A report from AAA has found that they do not stop or divert themselves for cars parked, even in the lane, in front of them. In other words, if there's a car broken down in front of you on the highway, these self-driving systems, none of them were tested, will avoid the car. They just ran right into it. And it has to do with the logic in the system saying, well, if it's a fixed object, if it's not moving, it's probably off the side of the road, so I don't need to worry about it. So there go my hopes for having a self-driving car in a couple of years.

[00:02:00] Jack Heath: Yeah. It might take a while.

Justin McIssac: It sounds like self-driving cars were designed in Massachusetts.

Jack Heath: Hey, we haven't talked about this in a while, but you know, before the quote-unquote COVID-19 thing, Uber was just coming into more places, more available and places like New Hampshire. How has the whole pandemic and the whole Uber thing? I mean, they, they weren't even profitable, to begin with, but I mean, Where's Uber at? I'm just curious.

Craig Peterson: Yeah. Uber is an interesting problem. They just lost. What was it? Like two, almost 2 billion. It might've been just over $1 billion, right?

Jack Heath: Just a couple of zeros. It’s a rounding error.

[00:03:00] Craig Peterson: Yeah, exactly. Compared to the US budget. So now they're in really bad shape. I just got from Uber this last week, three rides at 50% off offer. Now I haven't used Uber in probably a year, but they are getting very desperate. Many of these companies like General Motors, is betting the bank on not selling cars to individuals, but basically renting fleets of cars.

So GM would have a car show up when you want it to show up. All automatically. I think all of these guys are going to be completely, really rethinking what they've been doing because frankly, a safe self-driving car, it’s just not here. It's not in the near future. So, this is really going to upset all of the manufacturers in cars worldwide.

Jack Heath: Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's, it's just one of these trends, people are not out and about not doing as much business travel and it's just interesting that it's going to all shake out. All right. Thank you, Craig Peterson. I appreciate it. You have a good one tech talk.

Craig Peterson: Thank you, sir.

Hey, take care. I'll be back Saturday at 1130.

Jack Heath: Alright, thanks, Craig.

Craig Peterson: Hey everybody.

[00:04:00] Thanks for so many kind comments here. I got dozens and dozens of them. We've been through a lot. And if you've been listening, you know, I kind of dropped the hint about my having had this whole WuHan virus and the COVID-19 symptoms and how that has knocked me on my but here.

I still have that muscle soreness. I feel like I just finished a big workout, which is kind of crazy. But anyway, that's the only thing left. Apparently, that residual of, I felt like I just worked out like crazy, last weeks or sometimes even months. They're saying. So, I have that to look forward to, I guess as well. But we did get a newsletter out and there's a little note in there from me and Karen helped a little bit with some of that, too. Of course, she put together all of the stuff on the articles that I had selected for this week. So, thanks to her as well for all of her help.

I will be back tomorrow, of course, on with Jim Polito on two powerhouse stations down in Mass that actually cover parts of Vermont and Rhode Island and Connecticut as well.

[00:05:00] I'm still doing all of this stuff. We're still reworking things in the studio. I'm meeting with my video guy this afternoon. Again, we've been getting together multiple times a week sometimes just trying to get together so we can do a lot more training for you guys. So have a great day and. Thanks again, guys, for all of those kind words and well wishes and prayers. I really do appreciate it.

Back tomorrow and visit online of course, as well.

Craig Peterson out.

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