An anonymous reader shared this report from the San Francisco Standard: As autonomous vehicles become increasingly popular in San Francisco, some riders are wondering just how far they can push the vehicles' limits — especially with no front-seat driver or chaperone to discourage them from questionable behavior... The Standard has spoken to four separate Cruise car riders who said they've had sex or hooked up in the driverless vehicles in San Francisco over recent months and have provided ride receipts. The Standard was unable to find a source who said they'd had sex in a Waymo...

The rules and regulations surrounding robotaxis are murky, largely because the industry is so new... Unfortunately for the debaucherous among us, robotaxi companies currently use pretty extensive camera surveillance inside and outside of their cars. "We record video inside of the car for added safety and support," Cruise states on its website... When asked, both Cruise and Waymo sidestepped commenting directly on what is or isn't allowed in their cars.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnCivil Liberty writes: Following in the footsteps of three MIT students who were previously gagged from presenting their findings at Defcon 2008 are two Massachusetts teens (who presented at this year's Defcon without interference).

The four teens extended other research done by the 2008 hacker team to fully reverse engineer the "CharlieCard," the RFID touchless smart card used by Boston's public transit system. The hackers can now add any amount of money to one of these cards or invisibly designate it a discounted student card, a senior card, or even an MBTA employee card that gives them unlimited free rides. "You name it, we can make it," says Campbell.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A battle has been brewing in San Francisco over driverless cars. Hundreds of the autonomous vehicles have been roaming city streets over the past couple of years. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, voted 3-1 to let self-driving car companies expand their programs and start charging passengers like taxis. The build-up before the Commission's vote Thursday was tense. Public comment lasted more than six hours. Much of that testimony was about how autonomous vehicles have impeded emergency operations in the city.

San Francisco's police and fire departments have urged the CPUC to oppose the expansion â" they say they've tallied 55 incidents where self-driving cars have got in the way of rescue operations in just the last six months. The incidents include running through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways and refusing to move for first responders. "Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in a public meeting on Monday providing commissioners testimony before Thursday's vote. "I am not anti-technology, I am pro-safety."

Amtrak and a company called Texas Central announced a partnership on Wednesday to connect Houston and Dallas by train, spanning roughly 240 miles at speeds upwards of 205 mph. Popular Science reports: According to Quartz, the applications have already been submitted to "several federal grant programs" to help finance research and design costs. Amtrak representatives estimate the project could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 100,000 tons annually and remove an estimated 12,500 cars per day from the region's I-45 corridor. The reduction in individual vehicles on the roads could also save as much as 65 million gallons of fuel each year.

The trains traveling Amtrak's Dallas-Houston route would be based on Japan's updated N700S Series Shinkansen "bullet train," a design that first debuted in 2020. "This high-speed train, using advanced, proven Shinkansen technology, has the opportunity to revolutionize rail travel in the southern US," Texas Central CEO Michael Bui said via the August 9 announcement.

American city planners have been drawn to the idea of high-speed railways for decades, but have repeatedly fallen short of getting them truly on track due to a host of issues, including funding, political pushback, and cultural hurdles. That said, 85 percent of recently surveyed travelers between Dallas and the greater North Texas area indicated they would ride such a form of transportation "in the right circumstances." If so, as many as 6 million travelers could be expected to ride the train by the end of the decade, with the number rising to 13 million by 2050.

CNN tells the story of Sandra Shuster, who'd included an airtag with her daughter's $2,000 lacrosse kit on a flight to Denver (with a stop-over in Chicago's O'Hare airport): When they arrived at Denver after midnight, the bag wasn't on the belt. United representatives at Denver gave them a case number and told them the bag should arrive on the 8.30 a.m. flight from Chicago in just a few hours. When it didn't, Shuster called the toll-free number for lost baggage that she'd been given. "They said, 'Your bag's going to come in later today on one of two flights.' I said 'OK, great,' but it never came. So I called later that afternoon and they said 'Your bag is still in Baltimore,'" says Shuster.

There was just one problem: she already knew it wasn't in Baltimore. Three months earlier, Shuster had bought an AirTag — Apple's tracking devices — to know where her daughter's bag was... [T]he AirTag was showing as being at baggage reclaim at O'Hare. "I told them I could see it at Terminal 1 baggage reclaim in Chicago, and they said 'We have no record of it.' I asked them to call Chicago, and they said 'No, we're not allowed.' They said they'd put notes in the system and the baggage team would take care of it."
The airline had mistakenly attached another customer's baggage-claim number to the luggage — so when it arrived at the stop-over in Chicago, baggage handlers couldn't know its ultimate destination, and it was moved to the "reclaim" belt. There were several more communication misfires — but fortunately, Shuster had more than 30,000 unused air miles...

"I jumped on the plane, flew to Chicago, got to baggage claim, and it took them 30 seconds to give me my bag..." Shuster tells CNN. "What was difficult to comprehend was that it would have taken one call to Chicago to locate it, and nobody seemed able to do that... You can't tell me in this day and age, with all the technology available, that they can't figure this stuff out. Airlines need to do better."

United later refunded Shuster's air miles, along with an apology "for the inconvenience you experienced on your recent trip with United."

The Washington Post reports: California's newly empowered privacy regulators announced their first case Monday, a probe of the data practices of newer-generation cars that are often or always connected to the internet. The California Privacy Protection Agency said its enforcement division would review manufacturer's treatment of data collected from vehicles, including locations, smartphone connections and images from cameras.

The agency was established by a 2020 ballot initiative that toughened the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. As of July 1, it can conduct operations to enforce Californians' right to learn what is being collected about them, the right to stop that information from being spread and the right to have it deleted...

When combined with web surfing habits and other internet data collated by brokers, movement tracking can paint a full portrait that includes a person's home, workplace, shopping habits, religious attendance and medical treatments. Insurance companies also want data on how quickly drivers brake ahead of problems on the road, along with other performance indicators, and they are willing to pay to get it.
The Post notes that data is beamed to business partners of automakers under "vague privacy policies."

Is natural gas really a cleaner alternative to coal and oil? That claim "is facing increasing scrutiny," writes Slashdot reader sonlas: One significant concern with natural gas is the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during its extraction, production, transportation, and processing. Methane is approximately 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. (And methane leaks can occur at various stages of the gas supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction to leakage during transportation and distribution.) Additionally, intentional venting or flaring of methane also contributes to the problem.

An article published in Environmental Research Letters challenges the assumption that natural gas is a cleaner energy source compared to coal or oil. Their study takes into account the full lifecycle emissions of natural gas, including methane leakage rates, and arrives at a different conclusion. With a methane leakage rate of 7.5% and other relevant factors considered, the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can be on par with or even exceed those of coal. Even a lower methane leakage rate of 2% can diminish the environmental advantage of natural gas significantly.

A key aspect of this study is its focus on real-world methane leakage rates. Aerial measurements conducted in various oil and gas production regions in the U.S. revealed substantial methane leak rates ranging from 0.65% to a staggering 66.2%. (Similar leakage rates have been identified in other parts of the world.) These findings raise serious concerns about the climate impact of natural gas and cast doubt on its role as a so-called "transition energy" in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, especially liquefied natural gas...

This complicates the search for sustainable energy solutions, especially in Europe where gas was included in the green taxonomy following a push from Germany.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Waymo's fourth robotaxi city will be Austin, Texas. It will be a bit of a homecoming for the Alphabet-owned self-driving company. Waymo said that it will kick off the process for a commercial robotaxi service in the city later this year. But that doesn't mean passengers can hail one of the company's driverless vehicles quite yet; Waymo's playbook is to start with manual testing, following by supervised testing, fully autonomous driving, and then, eventually, passenger services. The company has been testing its vehicles on the streets of Austin since March, laying the groundwork for the eventual launch of a commercial ridehailing service.

Waymo says its driverless taxis will traverse "a large portion of the city night and day," covering spots like "the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more." The company makes no mention of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where the taxi business is typically the most lucrative. The company also noted that "autonomous vehicles help improve road safety," a claim that sounds true on the surface but is hard to prove. Waymo has released several datasets that show its vehicles to be adept at avoiding certain collisions. But humans drive billions of miles every year -- orders of magnitude more real-world driving than the comparatively tiny fleet of AVs on the road today. And while there are an unacceptable number of fatalities every year, humans are actually good drivers -- for the most part.

theodp writes: Wired Editor at Large, Steven Levy, was hit with a $52 bill for a 2.9-mile Uber ride in New York City as he headed to interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. "Do you know how much it cost me to go 2.9 miles to where we are now in an Uber?," Levy asked Khosrowshahi. "And he said $20, and I said, 'no it was like $52,' and he said, 'oh my God wow.'" [While Khosrowshahi attributed the head-scratching fee to "surge pricing," Levy insisted that made no sense given the trip took place at "10 a.m. on a sunny weekday and it's not like the president's in town." Uber's CEO blamed inflation for the increased rates, telling Wired during his sit-down that "everything is more expensive."]

When asked for a statement, Uber shared the following: "Riders' fares are a direct result of the city's regulations." "The fact is that they're not subsidizing rides anymore," said Levy of Uber. "And the way that company operates is expensive." Uber, which had recorded more than $31 billion in losses since it launched in 2009, reported its first profit ever on Tuesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Elon Musk's tunneling company has permission to significantly expand its operations under the city of Las Vegas. Last month, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to approve the Boring Company's plan to dig more tunnels under the city, following in the steps of Clark County, which in May gave a similar thumbs-up to the tunneling concern. The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, served by a fleet of Tesla electric vehicles, each able to carry three passengers at a time.

Despite the unanimous approval, Mayor Carolyn Goldman had a litany of concerns, including safety, low throughput of passengers, and a lack of accessibility. However, she said that "hotels are begging for transportation options." [...] Should the Boring Company see this project through to completion, 60 of the stations would be in Clark County, mostly concentrated down the Strip and the major casinos, with the remaining 21 in the city of Las Vegas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation on Thursday to bar automakers from eliminating AM broadcast radio in new vehicles and require companies like Ticketmaster to put total ticket prices including fees in marketing materials. The AM radio bill and the ticket-pricing bill both had strong bipartisan support and both have companion measures in the House of Representatives. The AM radio bill would direct the Transportation Department to issue regulations mandating AM radio in new vehicles without additional charge. Senators said this year that at least seven automakers have removed AM broadcast radio from their electric vehicles, including Tesla, BMW, and Volkswagen. Ford reversed course in May under pressure from Congress. Lawmakers say losing AM radio undermines a federal system for delivering key public safety information to the public. The National Association of Broadcasters said the bill "will ensure that the tens of millions of AM radio listeners across the country retain access to local news, diverse community programming and emergency information." The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing major automakers, opposed the measure: "This is simply a bill to prop up and give preference to a particular technology that's now competing with other communications options and adapting to changing listenership."

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee also approved two bills aimed at tightening privacy protections for children online.

Four years from now, if all goes well, a nuclear-powered rocket engine will launch into space for the first time. The rocket itself will be conventional, but the payload boosted into orbit will be a different matter. From a report: NASA announced Wednesday that it is partnering with the US Department of Defense to launch a nuclear-powered rocket engine into space as early as 2027. The US space agency will invest about $300 million in the project to develop a next-generation propulsion system for in-space transportation. "NASA is looking to go to Mars with this system," said Anthony Calomino, an engineer at NASA who is leading the agency's space nuclear propulsion technology program. "And this test is really going to give us that foundation."

According to NBC News, New York City is using surveillance software with artificial intelligence to track people evading fares in its subway stations. From the report: The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City's public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by "approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow," the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fare evasion in 2022. Joana Flores, an MTA spokesperson, said the AI system doesn't flag fare evaders to New York police, but she declined to comment on whether that policy could change.

Tim Minton, the MTA's communications director, said the system tracks fare evasion to figure out how much money the subway isn't collecting. "We're using it essentially as a counting tool," Minton said. "The objective is to determine how many people are evading the fare and how are they doing it." Minton said the videos are stored on the MTA's servers and are kept "for a limited period." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office announced last year that the city's transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.

The University of Southampton has an announcement. Slashdot reader pyroclast shared this report from ScienceDaily: Today an international team of researchers has chosen the location which best represents the beginnings of what could be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Working Group have put forward Crawford Lake, in Canada, as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene.

A GSSP is an internationally agreed-upon reference point to show the start of a new geological period or epoch in layers of rock that have built up through the ages. It's been proposed by some geologists that we are now living in the Anthropocene — a new geological epoch in which human activity has become the dominant influence on the world's climate and environment. The concept has significant implications for how we consider our impact on the planet. But there is disagreement in the scientific community about when the Anthropocene began, how it is evidenced and whether human influence has been substantial enough to constitute a new geological age, which usually span millions of years. To help answer these questions, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) set up the Anthropocene Working Group.

"The sediments found at the bottom of Crawford Lake provide an exquisite record of recent environmental change over the last millennia," says Dr Simon Turner, Secretary of the Anthropocene Working Group from UCL. "Seasonal changes in water chemistry and ecology have created annual layers that can be sampled for multiple markers of historical human activity. It is this ability to precisely record and store this information as a geological archive that can be matched to historical global environmental changes which make sites such as Crawford Lake so important...."

Professor Andrew Cundy, Chair in Environmental Radiochemistry at the University of Southampton and member of the Anthropocene Working Group, explains: "The presence of plutonium gives us a stark indicator of when humanity became such a dominant force that it could leave a unique global 'fingerprint' on our planet. In nature, plutonium is only present in trace amounts. But in the early-1950s, when the first hydrogen bomb tests took place, we see an unprecedented increase and then spike in the levels of plutonium in core samples from around the world. We then see a decline in plutonium from the mid-1960s onwards when the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty came into effect."

Other geological indicators of human activity include high levels of ash from coal-fired power stations, high concentrations of heavy metals, such as lead, and the presence of plastic fibres and fragments. These coincide with 'The Great Acceleration' — a dramatic surge across a range of human activity, from transportation to energy use, starting in the mid-20th century and continuing today.
"Evidence from the sites will now be presented to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which will decide next year whether to ratify the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch."

Congress will pour billions more dollars into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its associated architecture, even as NASA science missions remain vulnerable to cuts. TechCrunch reports: Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees recommend earmarking around $25 billion for NASA for the next fiscal year (FY 24), which is in line with the amount of funding the agency received this year (FY 23). However, both branches of Congress recommend increasing the portion of that funding that would go toward the Artemis program and its transportation cornerstones, SLS and the Orion crew capsule. Those programs would receive $7.9 billion per the House bill or $7.74 billion per the Senate bill, an increase of about $440 million from FY 2023 levels. Meanwhile, science missions are looking at cuts of around that same amount, with the House recommending a budget of $7.38 billion versus $7.79 billion in FY 2023.

Overall, NASA received $25.4 billion in funding for FY '23, with $2.6 billion earmarked toward SLS, $1.34 billion to Orion, and $1.48 to the Human Landing System contract programs. Science programs -- which include the Mars Sample Return mission and Earth science missions -- received $7.8 billion overall.

U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors' Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday. From a report: The petition, filed in February 2022, seeks government approval to deploy vehicles annually without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals or windshield wipers. National Highway Traffic Safety acting Administrator Ann Carlson said Wednesday the agency "will issue a decision "in the coming weeks."

"The central issue is deciding whether vehicles that are driven not by humans but by computers need to comply with safety standards that are fundamentally about human drivers: requirements for mirrors, sun visors, windshield wipers and so forth," Carlson said. Cruise currently offers a limited service in San Francisco with a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles fitted with driverless technology. Cruise wants to deploy its Origin vehicle, which has subway-like doors and no steering wheels.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On his way to catch a flight, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was asked to have his photo taken by a facial recognition machine at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration has been testing use of facial recognition software to verify travelers' identification at some airports. Use of the technology is voluntary, the TSA has told the public and Congress. If you decline, a TSA agent is supposed to verify your identification, as we have done at airport security for years. When Merkley said no to the face scan at Washington's Reagan National Airport, he was told it would cause a significant delay, a spokeswoman for the senator said. There was no delay. The spokeswoman said the senator showed his photo ID to the TSA agent and cleared security.

Is facial recognition technology really voluntary if a United States senator has trouble saying no? The TSA is using facial recognition technology for a limited purpose that the agency says is accurate. As flying reaches record highs again this summer, the technology could improve safety and efficiency with fewer risks than controversial uses of facial recognition such as police trying to identify crime suspects from vast numbers of images. But problems encountered by Merkley and others raise questions about whether the technology can be used fairly and how far it might spread in American life without true oversight.

"More major cities in the United States are letting public transit riders hop on board for free," reports CNN: Kansas City; Raleigh; Richmond; Olympia; Tucson; Alexandria, Virginia; and other cities are testing dropping fares on their transit systems. Denver is dropping fares across its system this summer. Boston is piloting three zero-fare public bus routes, and New York City is expected to test free buses on five lines.

Eliminating fares gives a badly needed boost to ridership, removes cost burdens — particularly for lower-income riders — — and reduces boarding times at stops. Proponents also hope it will compel more people to get out of their cars and ride transit... At least 35 US agencies have eliminated fares across their network, according to the American Public Transit Association. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey and US Rep. Ayanna Pressley have introduced a bill in Congress to establish a $25 billion grant program to support state and local efforts for fare-free systems.

The zero-fare push comes as ridership nationwide remains sluggish after people shifted to working from home during the pandemic. Ridership is at about 70% of pre-pandemic levels nationwide, and transit agency budget shortfalls threaten service cuts, layoffs and fare hikes.
CNN also reports the case against. Experts "say there are more effective policies to get people out of their cars and onto transit, such as congestion pricing and parking restrictions.

"And dropping fares does not make buses run on time or lead to faster and cleaner trains. These are the improvements that will get more people to take transit instead of drive, according to passenger surveys."

"The obsession with EV range is all wrong," argues a new article in the Washington Post's Climate section. "This year, one EV on the market — the sleek $140,000 Lucid Air Grand Touring — boasts a whopping 516-mile range. Toyota recently announced that it had achieved a breakthrough with solid-state battery technology, saying it will soon be able to produce electric cars that can go 746 miles on a single charge.

"But some analysts say that all that range — and all that battery — misses the point, and wastes resources." Only 5% of trips in the U.S. are longer than 30 miles. The vast majority of big batteries will never be used — particularly if the owner has a place to plug in their car every day... Those batteries are massive, in every sense of the word: the battery on the electric F-150 Lightning, which allows the car to go more than 300 miles on a single charge, weighs a whopping 1,800 pounds.

But is all that necessary? Americans drive a lot, but most of our trips are not very long. According to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, 95.1% of trips taken in personal vehicles are less than 31 miles; almost 60% of all trips are less than 6 miles. In total, the average U.S. driver only covers about 37 miles per day. And there is evidence that much smaller batteries could do the lion's share of the work. In a study published in 2016, researchers at MIT found that a car with a 73-mile range (like an early version of the Nissan Leaf), charged only at night, could satisfy 87% of all driving days in the United States. Providing Nissan Leafs to everyone whose driving fit that pattern, the researchers found, would cut 61% of U.S. gasoline consumption by personal vehicles...

So most of the time, drivers are lugging around giant batteries but only using 10 to 15% of their actual power. And those big batteries require mining a lot of metals, damaging the environment and workers' health... In a report by researchers at the University of California at Davis, the Climate and Community Project, and Providence College, experts found that simply switching to smaller EV batteries — batteries that could give a small car a range of 125 miles or so — could cut lithium demand by 42%...


The article notes that the upcoming Dodge Ram 1500 REV, with a range of about 500 miles, will need a battery "roughly equivalent in terms of resources to 16 batteries for the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid..."

"For those who need to take frequent long road trips and don't want to have to plug in, a plug-in hybrid can be a good option. But for most Americans, an EV with medium range will do just fine."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A decentralized group of safe streets activists in San Francisco realized they can disable Cruise and Waymo robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on a vehicle's hood, and they're encouraging others to do it, too. The "Week of Cone," as the group is calling the now-viral prank on Twitter and TikTok, is a form of protest against the spread of robotaxi services in the city, and it appears to be gaining traction with residents who are sick of the vehicles malfunctioning and blocking traffic. The protest comes in the lead-up to a hearing that will likely see Waymo and Cruise expand their robotaxi services in San Francisco. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is set to approve the expansion of both Cruise's and Waymo's autonomous vehicle passenger service deployments in San Francisco on July 13. The agency doesn't give companies permission to operate their AVs on public roads -- that's the Department of Motor Vehicles' domain. But it does grant companies the authority to charge passengers a fare for that service, which is an essential ingredient to scaling robotaxi and autonomous delivery operations sustainably. In May, the CPUC posted draft resolutions approving the expansion, despite mounting opposition from city agencies and residents.

Opponents called out the string of AVs that have impeded traffic, public transit and emergency responders, and asked that the CPUC move cautiously, set up workshops, collect more data, prohibit robotaxi deployment downtown and during peak hours, and limit the expansion of fleet sizes. Other opponents like the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance and the Alliance for Independent Workers have protested the spread of robotaxis, which they say will eliminate the need for taxi and ride-hail drivers. Safe Street Rebel's cone campaign is a bid to raise awareness and invite more pissed-off San Franciscans to submit public comments to the CPUC before next week's hearing. "These companies promise their cars will reduce traffic and collisions, but instead they block buses, emergency vehicles and everyday traffic," reads one video posted on social media. "They even un-alived a person and a dog. And they're partnering with the police to record everyone all the time without anyone's consent. And most importantly they require streets that are designed for cars, not people or transit. They exist only for profit-driven car companies to stay dominant and make it harder for transit to stay afloat."

While the above statement is a bit hyperbolic, there are nuggets of truth. [...] Nonetheless, the group brings up a common concern about unleashing autonomous vehicles onto public roads -- the lack of input from everyday people who have to deal with the vehicles on the ground. Congressional efforts to regulate self-driving cars have lagged for several years, so most regulation comes from state departments of transportation and departments of motor vehicles. The group is inviting others to follow its lead and disable the vehicles by "gently placing" cones on a driverless -- meaning, empty -- car's hood. Some people are apparently sending in submissions, but it's unclear how many people have sent images to Safe Street Rebel. "Not only is this understanding of how AVs operate incorrect, but this is vandalism and encourages unsafe and disrespectful behavior on our roadways," Waymo said in a statement. "We will notify law enforcement of any unwanted or unsafe interference of our vehicles on public roadways."

"Cruise's fleet provides free rides to late-night service workers without more reliable transportation options, has delivered over 2 million meals to food insecure San Franciscans, and recovers food waste from local businesses," said Cruise in a statement. "Intentionally obstructing vehicles gets in the way of those efforts and risks creating traffic congestion for local residents."