TITLE: Looks Like ‘Leave the World Behind’ Was Right About Elon Musk’s Self-Driving Teslas
https://www.themarysue.com/looks-like-leave-the-world-behind-was-right-about-elon-musks-self-driving-teslas/
EXCERPT: We’re all familiar with movies that imagine the threat of extremely advanced artificial intelligence that may not even be feasible to create. However, Leave the World Behind differs in that it’s existing technology that results in wide scale destruction. It suggests the entire country could be debilitated and thrown into chaos just by controlling and tampering with its technology. One of the most memorable scenes is when it’s revealed that hackers are controlling all the self-driving Teslas in the country. Though some viewers might have scoffed at the improbability of the scene, real-life events prove it’s not that far-fetched.
Just days after Leave the World Behind‘s streaming release, it was reported that Tesla is recalling nearly all of the two million vehicles it has sold in the United States. The massive recall is the culmination of a two-year investigation into Tesla after the company’s self-driving cars were involved in numerous accidents, some fatal. The recalled vehicles will be undergoing a software update due to issues with the autopilot function. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that accidents occurred because drivers were too reliant on the autopilot feature and would stop paying attention when it was enabled. The update will not only create frequent reminders for those using autopilot to pay attention but will limit the areas where a driver can use autopilot.
Many readers may have been startled to read the headlines about two million Teslas being recalled after watching Leave the World Behind. Of course, the Teslas weren’t recalled for hacking, but the recall still proves that the movie’s warnings about self-driving Teslas weren’t misplaced. It’s also quite humorous because Tesla founder Musk defended his self-driving cars after the movie premiered. He missed the movie’s whole point, arguing that, because the vehicles use solar panel charging, they’ll remain functional even in an apocalyptic situation.
Musk’s faith in his Teslas may take a hit now that they’re being recalled, and their most marketable feature, autopilot, will be further limited. Musk’s cockiness is even more inexplicable, considering there’s already proof that the scenario in Leave the World Behind could happen. In 2017, a “hacker” managed to gain control of Tesla’s entire fleet of vehicles. Fortunately, it wasn’t a malicious hacker but a man specifically hired to find vulnerabilities in Tesla’s servers. That same year, Musk himself stated that a “fleet-wide hack” was a genuine concern for Tesla.
TITLE: Republicans Are Mad The FCC Rejected Elon Musk’s Attempt To Get A Billion Dollars In Subsidies To Deliver Pricey Satellite Broadband To Some Traffic Medians
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/14/republicans-are-mad-the-fcc-rejected-elon-musks-attempt-to-get-a-billion-dollars-in-subsidies-to-deliver-pricey-satellite-broadband-to-some-traffic-medians/
EXCERPT: You might recall that Elon Musk claims to hate taxpayer subsidies. They should all be “deleted.” Except for the subsidies given to his companies (often for doing nothing), of course.
Back in 2020, Musk’s satellite broadband venture, Starlink, gamed a Trump-era FCC subsidy program to try and grab $886 million in taxpayer dollars. It was a deal consumer groups noted was a huge waste of money, because the proposal itself — which involved bringing expensive satellite broadband to places like airport parking lots and traffic medians — clearly wasn’t the best use of taxpayer funds.
The Biden FCC noted the problems with the application and forced Starlink to re-apply. After some whining Starlink did, but was then rejected again by the FCC last year. The FCC stated that they weren’t sure Starlink could meet program speed goals consistently due to growing congestion and slowing speeds on the over-saturated network.
They also expressed concerns that the service might not be affordable to the heavily rural, lower income users most in need of help. Starlink requires a $600 up front equipment fee and costs $110 a month, and data consistently shows that affordability is a key obstacle to broadband adoption.
So this week, the FCC formally finalized its rejection of Starlink’s attempt to grab a billion dollars to deliver satellite broadband to some parking lots:
“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable. The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.”
The FCC made the right call. It makes much more sense to spend those subsidies to extend affordable, faster, and more reliable fiber access as far as possible, with 5G and fixed wireless filling in the gaps.
Starlink is nice for folks with absolutely no other options who can afford it, but we’ve noted repeatedly that it lacks the capacity to truly scale. The service only has around 1.5 million subscribers worldwide (far less than the 20 million Musk promised investors it would have by this point). It’s a rural niche option whose importance is routinely overstated in stories (like this latest story at the Nation).
For context, somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans lack access to broadband. Another 83 million (as of 2020) live under a broadband monopoly. Even with its full suite of low-Earth orbit satellites in space a few years from now, Starlink will barely make a dent in the underlying problem. And that’s before you get to the whole ruining astronomical research thing.
But, of course, Republicans like the FCC’s Brendan Carr are already throwing hissy fits because the Biden FCC refused to waste a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies on an expensive service that doesn’t scale. Carr, as is his way, took a very valid rejection of a wasteful proposal, and distorted it into a narrative where the government is somehow being particularly unfair to Elon Musk.
It’s worth pointing out that Musk’s company certainly wasn’t alone in trying to game this particular program (the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF) with the Trump FCC and Brendan Carr’s help. The Biden FCC has had to come in and clean up the mess, suing numerous companies that tried to mislead the agency to grab taxpayer money for services they couldn’t actually deliver. All under Carr’s watch.
In fact the Trump FCC and Carr screwed up this particular subsidy program so badly, that when it came time to dole out $42 billion in infrastructure bill broadband funds, the Biden administration leapfrogged the FCC and put the NTIA in charge of managing much of it instead because they no longer trusted the agency’s reputation or competency. So Carr whining about the end result is particularly exhausting.
TITLE: Kevin McCarthy floats working with Elon Musk once he's out of Congress: 'I love entrepreneurs'
https://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-mccarthy-resigning-elon-musk-ai-love-entrepreneurs-2023-12
EXCERPT: McCarthy and Musk, the owner of SpaceX, reportedly talk and text frequently and have been friends since 2015, when the former speaker passed a bill related to commercial space exploration.
"I love entrepreneurs," McCarthy told Axios.
Earlier this year, Musk visited Capitol Hill to meet with McCarthy, where they discussed ways to "ensure Twitter becomes a platform that is fair to all parties." Musk bought the platform last year, later renaming it "X."
"He came for my birthday," McCarthy told reporters at the time.