Today, I’d like to tell you about the Etak Navigator, a truly revolutionary product and the world’s first practical vehicle navigation system.

Back in 1985 you used paper maps to navigate, like this one from a Thomas Brother’s map of Los Angeles: A Thomas Brother’s Map. As you can see, the maps weren’t always pretty. By today’s standards it was also supremely difficult and tedious to find locations and even more difficult to work out how to get there. So, when the Etak Navigator launched, it was like something from the future.

source: HN

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to approve a new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan. The plan still faces challenges from six lawsuits before it can begin in June.

A viral car review by tech-reviewing’s biggest name highlights the all-too-common pitfalls of shipping before the firmware is ready.

“Hypercars” can approach or even exceed 300 m.p.h. Often costing millions of dollars, they’re ostentatious trophies—and sublime engines of innovation.

Linda Velasco’s larger-than-life 1934 Packard evokes classic Hollywood; ‘It is almost like Errol Flynn is with you in the passenger seat’

This is a detective story about how a car was stolen - and how it uncovered an epidemic of high-tech car theft.

Now that people know how a relay attack works generally possible to defeat it: car owners keep their keys in a metal box (blocking the radio message from the car) and some car makers now supply keys that go to sleep if motionless for a few minutes (and so won’t receive the radio message from the car). Faced with this defeat but being unwilling to give up a lucrative activity, thieves moved to a new way around the security: by-passing the entire smart key system. They do this with a new attack: CAN Injection.

1963 Chrysler Turbine: Ultimate Edition. It’s the amazing car Jay’s lusted after since he was 14 years old, and today’s episode is packed with all kinds of amazing footage! We’ve got a book review, a road test, and Chrysler’s original promotional video.

SSC’s Tuatara clocked a record 316.11 mph (508.73 km/h) on a dusty desert highway outside Las Vegas.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/N22JfNHiC1k

source: K

“The Kharkovchanka” - Russia’s Colossal Antarctic Cruisers which have been continuously operating in some of the most extreme environments on Earth for over 50 years. Produced in Kharkiv, Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic and originally operated by USSR, the ’Харьковчанка’ (literally ‘Kharkiv Women’), these amazing Snow Cruisers were built in the late 1950s and featured everything a polar explorer could need in the field. In their half-century mission, they have crossed thousands of miles on Antarctic Ice, visited the South Pole, the pole of inaccessibility as well the dozens of outposts and research stations on the continent.

Previously: “The Snow Cruiser“-Antarctica’s Abandoned Behemoth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR0M7KjnJTE

By the time Garden headed back down the driveway, he was well on his way to a SoftBank investment of $375 million, with double that money on the table if his business gained traction. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Zume marks one of the biggest recent disappointments in SoftBank’s port­folio. As of this year it no longer makes or ­delivers pizzas. In January, Zume cut 360 jobs, leaving a little over 300 employees, and said it would focus on packaging and efficiency gains for other food delivery companies.

Levine commentary: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-14/robot-pizza-trucks-hit-some-bumps

Just, what a closed loop it is. You run a pizza delivery business. You craft a pitch calculated to convince Masayoshi Son that your pizza delivery business will change the world. You meet with Masayoshi Son. He convinces you that you will change the world. Now you are all believers, all in it together. He hands you piles of money. You go home and weep to your friends, “I am going to change the world.” The friends are like “wait what with the pizzas?” But it is too late for skepticism, you have the money, the robots are in the trucks, they are fanning out across town, the cheese is everywhere, they cannot turn back.

source: ML

Last week, Jalopnik ran an article about a person who bought a used Tesla from a dealer—who in turn bought it at auction directly from Tesla under California’s lemon law buyback program—advertised as having Autopilot, the company’s Advanced Driver Assistance System. The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because “Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for.” Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he’d have to fork over the $8,000.

source: cox

Every week The Wall Street Journal’s My Ride column profiles vehicles and their owners, with surprising back stories. Here’s a look back at 2019.

A young Studebaker fan, a historic race car made newly famous by a Matt Damon movie and a Corvette expert’s Corvette are among the My Ride column’s highlights this year

A few years ago, Mustapha Harb realized there was a problem in his field of research about how autonomous cars will change the way people travel. The solution to the problem he settled on was as simple as it was revealing.

Using 13 volunteers (a very small sample size due to budgetary constraints) from the San Francisco Bay Area who owned cars, Harb and his team studied their travel patterns using GPS trackers on their cars and phones for one week, then gave them a chauffeur for a week who would drive the participants’ personal vehicles for them. Finally, the researchers observed the subjects for a final week to look for any changes returning to their chauffeur-less life.

source: HN

Despite the lawsuits and predictions of gridlock, restricting a single Manhattan street to buses has been a success. Why stop there?

And in SF: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Plan-to-remake-SF-s-Market-Street-without-car-14535887.php

Also: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191011-what-happens-when-a-city-bans-car-from-its-streets

source: HN

You’re asking me if something I didn’t see looks like something you’ve never seen.

It’s a simple yes or no question.

Also: red light cameras.

However, the idea that the photo is placeless is, to be blunt, nonsense. As others have pointed out before me, the setting is instantly recognizable as Breezewood and only Breezewood. Far from being “Every Town, U.S.A.,” Breezewood is a weird, improbable blip of a place. It’s what an architect might call a unique urban condition—a churning mini-city where the population nearly turns over every hour. (For this reason, and for the place’s sheer, unembarrassed honky-tonk, I’m a Breezewood fan.)

source: HN

This may be equal parts hilarious and infuriating.

source: ML

Motorbikes in Taiwan. 3:27.

source: K

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that “chalking” is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Terrible business, chalking.

Law professor Orin Kerr, noting that he had never seen a chalking case before, said parking enforcement officers could sidestep the constitutional issue altogether by simply taking a photo of the car rather than using chalk.

Ah, yes, much better.

In this post, I want to show off a fun little web app I made for visualizing parking tickets in Chicago, but because I’ve spent so much time on the overall project, I figured I’d share the story that got me to this point. In many ways, this work is the foundation for my interest in public records and transparency, so it has a very special place in my heart.