Google self-driving car effort expands hiring, posts manufacturing jobs

Google’s Self-Driving Project–Advertising Jobs on Manufacturing  Expertise

Self-driving project of Alphabet Inc. has been advertising dozens of jobs with special focus on manufacturing expertise on its website. Jobs related to the Google X car project of around thirty six had been listed comprising of engineers working on display, motion control, robotics and sensors together with managers charged with operations, materials and marketing.

Google who had refrained from commenting had denied earlier that it had any interest in the making of cars. Several industry experts were of the belief that the tech giant would be partnering with established carmaker, supplying the software which would invent the fully autonomous vehicle. However, the job listed offers insight on how much hardware has been built by Google in its contribution to the future cars. A key priority of traditional carmaker, technology companies like Apple Inc. Uber Technologies Inc. and auto suppliers,is developing self-driving cars.

A manufacturing process engineer job listing has mentioned that the post is responsible for designing factory assembly stations, automating critical manufacturing process, optimizing production floor layout and approve fixture designs utilised in the assembly of electronic modules for self-driving cars.

Hiring May Continue to Increase

The manufacturing supplier quality engineer would be creating and approving `manufacturing inspection processes, mechanical components, mechanical assemblies, tools gauges and fixtures for raw materials. The mechanical global supply chain manager will be responsible for manufacturing development execution besides other tasks.

In January, the president of Google self-driving car project, John Krafcik, had mentioned that he wanted to form partnerships with established carmakers and suppliers to speed up work in 2016. When Krafcik had been hired in September, his earlier experience at Hyundai and Ford had driven speculation that Google had plans to build its own cars.

Other jobs were also posted by Google beyond the manufacturing which provided hints as to the scope of the developing project. The position of marketing manager posted nine days back needed someone to shape-go-to-market strategy and storytelling in order to win hearts as well as minds of community members, governments and influencers.The company is also on the look-out for a head of real estate and workplace services recommending that the hiring may continue to increase.

Google Achieved Landmark Victory

The hiring rampage tends to reflect Google’s aspiration to join the driverless car manufacturing trend and though the Silicon Valley based tech company had denied rumours of driverless car manufacturing several times in the past, the recent adverts posted by its secretive X division indicates the possible plans of bringing Google branded driverless cars to the market very soon.

Google had achieved a landmark victory on 4th February when US federal authority The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – NHTSA had agreed to consider the tech firm’s AI system as the legal driver under federal law. The decision had been a main boost to leading tech and automobile manufacturing companies who had been vying to bring driverless cars in the US and international markets in past.

Google is presently testing its autonomous car in US though the company had recently received an appeal from London transport authorities to expand testing to British capital too. Google has yet to remark on its plans for the future for its driverless car division.

AT&T Set to Test Speedy 5G

AT&T to Conduct Field Trials for 5G

AT&T has mentioned that it is ready to conduct field trials towards the end of the year for 5G, after a similar announcement had been made by Verizon. 5G, short for the fifth generation of wireless, translates into speed and AT&T states that there are 10-100 times quicker than the present average 4G LTE connections. This means that one may be capable of downloading a TV show in less than 3 seconds.

AT&T would be working together with Ericsson and Intel on 5G solutions beginning in the second quarter and the field trials would be taking place in fixed locations in Austin, Texas. Verizon had announced in September that it would also be starting the 5G field tests in 2016 and has been working with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm as well as Samsung to get it working.

It could take some time before 5G would be commercially workable, probably by 2020. No formal agreement on what 5G could be is available, though the standards are expected to get through, by 2018. Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics had mentioned that `with all the hype around the next G, there is a danger that 5G becomes another meaningless marketing word. What 5G involves is a radical rebuilding of how the network provider delivers the bits and bytes. And it is going to be faster, though more responsively at a lower cost’.

5G More than Quick Speeds

Matt Grob, chief technology of Qualcomm has agreed that 5G is more than just about quick speeds and has commented that it will have the capability of supporting more reliable communication, low latency communication with extreme security. It would have the potential to scale down to small low cost sensors and things as well as have long battery life.

The fixed 5G tests of AT&T, in the home are perceived by provider as a possible high speed broadband substitute. John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President for AT&T Technology and Operations had stated that the driving event there is that they are a big broadband provider and have merger commitment which has been agreed upon and that they have agreed to serve some rural areas with wireless broadband.

Eventually, as an integrated carrier, they have a lot of incentive to add any new technology to their footprint especially if 5G for fixed usage tends to have better economics than fiber in definite settings

Competition among Major 5G Player Likely to Intensify

The additional advanced 5G developed for cell-phone, tablets together with numerous other mobile devices, comes later. Donovan comments that when it is ready, they are ready. T&T had reported that data traffic on its wireless network had grown over 150,000$ from the beginning of the iPhone age in 2007 right through 2015, mainly driven by video.

 In 2016, over 60% of the data traffic on the network of AT&T had been linked to video according to the company. Pushing the next wave of thing is 4K video, virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, and smart cities together with the Internet of Things. The competition among several major 5G players is also likely to intensify as it tends to happen.

Donovan has stated that it has been somewhat noisily recently with speed claims and all those things and felt compelled to put the road map out more specifically since increasingly Verizon has been reasonably running uncontested as though they are in a technology leadership position, which frankly is not at all the case. Verizon apparently requests to be different.

Google Will Launch a New VR Headset This Year

Google to Launch a New Virtual Reality Headset

Later in the year, Google would be launching a new virtual reality headset for Android smartphones, according to reports. It is said that the headset would be sturdier as well as sophisticated than the Google Cardboard, the £10 virtual reality headset which had been shipped around five millions units since its launch in 2014.Different from its flat pack predecessor, the new headset of Google is will be having plastic casing and improved sensors together with lenses according to the Financial Times and Google has refrained from commenting on the reports.

Rumours have given further evidence that Google would be taking the growing virtual reality market seriously. Augmented reality firm, Magic Leap which Google has invested greatly, has closed recently, a round of funding which valued it at around $3.7 billion. In January 2016, setting up a virtual reality division, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had informed that beyond early efforts, there would be lot more from them as well as their partners.

If the reports tend to be true, the new headsets of Google would be identical to Samsung’s Gear VR, collaboration between Samsung and Oculus which had gone on sale to consumers late last year.

Replacement to Cardboard – Better Sensors/Lenses/Solid Plastic Casing

Though Google tends to continue focusing on its budget Cardboard headset, there are others in the industry that has developed more high spec-virtual as well as augmented reality technology. The new headset would be a replacement to Cardboard, which Google had launched in 2014, featuring better sensors, lenses together with solid plastic casing.

It is said that Google would be releasing its rival headsets together with new Android VR technology, this year. Similar to the Cardboard and Gear VR, the new headset would be using an existing smartphone inserted in the device, for display as well as most of its processing power. Google Cardboard depends mainly on sensors that are built in modern smartphones to sense the position of the head of the user, while Gear VR tends to be more strongly built, featuring extra motion sensors.

 As the Alphabet unit attempts to bring the technology to a bigger audience, the latest Google headset would be well-suited with a much broader range of Android devices than the Gear VR that would only work with a few of the recent Samsung Galaxy smartphone models.

Enhance Quality of Mobile VR Viewing Experience

Google hopes to enhance the quality of the mobile VR viewing experience, by implanting new software directly in its Android smartphone operating system instead of depending only on traditional app as with Cardboard.

The issue with several present smartphone-based VR viewers is that users tend to feel dizzy or unwell which is due to the virtual images displayed that could lag behind slightly behind the user’s head movement in the real world which is known as latency or unconsciousness. Cardboard has been more successful than expected, with deliveries over 5m units till date, when it had launched the low-cost goggles in 2014.

On improving resolutions as well as latency, the combination of the improved Android software as well as the new headset would enable users to devote longer in VR and also enable developers in creating more sophisticated apps.

Hack' on DoJ and DHS downplayed

Data Breach – DoJ/DHS

The US authorities had approved a data breach disturbing the Department of Justice, DoJ as well as the Department of Homeland Security – DHS, though restrained its severity. As per technology news site, Motherboard, the hacker has stated that they would soon share personal information of around 20,000 DoJ employees comprising of staff at the FBI.

It was informed by the news site that it had verified small parts of the breach, but had also observed that some of the details listed seemed to be improper or probably out-dated. The Department of Justice too restrained the significance of the breach. DoJ spokesman, Peter Carr had informed Guardian that `the department has been looking into the unauthorized access of a system which was operated by one of its components comprising of employee contact information and this unauthorized access is under investigation.

However, there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive personally identifiable information. The department has taken this very seriously and is continuing to arrange protection as well as defensive measure in safeguarding information. Any activity which is determined to be criminal in nature would be referred to law enforcement for investigation’

Hacked Data Posted on Encrypted Website

Hacked data which had been anonymously posted on encrypted website and reviewed by the Guardian comprise of a DHS personnel directory and the information listed included phone numbers together with email addresses. These were for individuals who have not worked for DHS for years. Besides this, some of the listings also had out-dated titles.

The encrypted DHS directory had appeared online prior to 7 pm EDT on Sunday and the password seemed to be `lol’. A source demanding responsibility had informed Motherboard who had revealed the story of the hack, that they had compromised the employee account of DHS and had then used the information from it to convince an FBI phone operator to provide access to the computer system of DoJ.

 The hackers had promised to release the information from the DoJ on Monday. At 4 pm EDT, an identical list had been posted on the same site with a DoJ staff directory which had also appeared to be out-dated. In order to assess the hack, during a government wide-meeting, an official compared it to stealing a years old AT&T phone book after the telecom had digitized most of its data already.

Disruption Regularly in Government Data Security

However, experienced officials state that it should be less simple in obtaining access token by imitating an official from a different department over the phone to a help desk.Things tend to be disrupted regularly in government data security and the OPM hack, exposed in June, revealed the deeply researched security clearance of 21.5m present and former government employees together with contractors from phone numbers to fingerprints.

 But the DHS breach seems to be far less severe and it is especially embarrassing considering that the department has been selected the point of entry for all corporate data shared with government agencies in the debated information sharing program between government and industry developed last year, by the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. The program wherein private companies tend to share user information with the government in exchange for immunity from regulation had not been accepted from its start at the DHS, which is left holding the bag in the incident of a breach.

Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS deputy secretary cited troubling provision from the bill to Senator Al Franken in a letter sent in July, wrote that `the authorization to share cyber threat indicators and defensive measures with any other entity or the Federal Government, notwithstanding any other provision of law, could sweep away important privacy protection’

Mysterious Spike in Wordpress Hacks Silently Delivers Ransomware to Visitors

WordPress Content Management System – Hacked

A large number of websites which tend to run on the WordPress content management system are getting hacked to deliver crypto ransom-ware together with other malicious software to ignorant end users. Researchers from three different security firms, in the last few days have reported that a huge number of legitimate WordPress sites are hacked, silently redirecting visitors to a sequences of malicious site.

The attack sites tend to host code from Nuclear exploit kit which is available for sale in black market all over the Internet. People who tend to visit the WordPress sites and use out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader Internet Explorer or Microsoft Silverlight would find that their computers are infected with the Teslacrypt ransomware package which encrypts user files, demanding a heavy ransom for the decryption key required to restore them.

According to Malwarebytes Senior Security Researcher, Jerome Segura who had mentioned in his blog post published recently stated that WordPress sites are considered to be injected with enormous recommendations of rogue code which tends to silently perform redirection to domain appearing to be hosting ads. This could be a distraction and fraud since the ad comes with more code which sends the visitor to the Nuclear Exploit Kit.

Google’s Safe Browsing Mechanism

The compromised WordPress sites observed, had been hacked to include encrypted code towards the end of all legitimate JavaScript files according to the latest blog post published by website security firm Sucuri. It is said that the encrypted content seems to vary from site to site.

To avoid detection from researchers visiting the compromised site, the code makes efforts to infect only first time visitors and to further hide the attack, the code then redirects end users through a series of sites prior to delivering the ultimate malicious payload. Google’s Safe Browsing mechanism, Sucuri which browser maker then to use in helping users to avoid malicious websites had mentioned that Google had blacklisted some of the Internet domains that were utilised in the scam.

However, a post published recently by Heimdal Security listed an altered domain with the probability that the attackers seem to frequently refreshing as the old ones tend to get identified. Moreover, Heimdal Security also cautioned about antivirus programs could do little in protecting end users.

Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit - Microsoft

The exploit code for instance had been detected by only two of 66 leading AV packages, towards the latest part of the campaign, while the payload it delivered has also been limited.The most recent reminder of the attacks are that people could be exposed to powerful malware attacks even while visiting legitimate websites which could be trusted.

 The best defense would be to install security updates as soon as they tend to become available for such drive by attacks. Other systems comprise of running Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit of Microsoft on any of the Window based computers using the 64-bit version, if possible, of Google’s Chrome browser. It is not known how the WordPress sites tend to get infected.

 There could be a possibility that administrators may be failing in locking down the login identifications which may enable the site content to be changed. It could also be likely that the attackers may be exploiting unknown vulnerability in the CMS, which is one of the plugins used, or the operating system they tend to run on. When a system is infected, the website malware tends to install various backdoors on the webserver, a feature which could result in several hacked sites being repeatedly re-infected.