Fracking struggle, tech-blind MPs, AV car fears and more: best of the week’s news

Tim Fryer, technology editor

Fracking sector is struggling to make headway, says watchdog

First of all, it’s worth mentioning that I am a bit of a sandal-wearing environmentalist. Not necessarily the sort that stands on tube train roofs, but definitely the sort who believes a warm jumper is a more responsible way forward than banging on the heating on the first fresh day in September.

So, I should disapprove of fracking. It’s an investment in fossil fuels at a time when we should be doing the opposite and there are other skeletons in the fracking closet – earthquakes and polluted water. Yet I’m not so sure that it’s all bad. Admittedly, I haven’t had to live through the devasting effects of an earthquake in Blackpool and had I done so I might feel differently. However, I believe it’s still standing and in no worse disrepair than it was before.

The thing is, I think that fracking has got a bad press, initially at least driven by the NIMBYs in the South Downs and the negativity has gathered momentum. I really don’t think most people who oppose fracking really know what is involved in the process, nor what the environmental consequences are.

Whatever your thoughts on climate change, the switch to renewable energy will take time – not just to improve capacity, but technology as well. Not everything lends itself to being plugged in. While that transition takes place it seems obvious to me that having a secure and cheap supply of the cleanest fossil fuel should be a good thing. We are still at the mercy of supplies from abroad (about a third), although despite popular concerns very little comes from Russia (less than 1.5 per cent). As we are all aware, we are not exactly doing a sterling job of being neighbourly at the moment – it would be no surprise if our gas imports started being piped through at premium rates.

Given the level of opposition, it’s no surprise that fracking hasn’t fulfilled its promise so far. Its failure could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or we could give it a chance, as the US has done to its massive advantage, and provide the best economic platform from which to enact the environmental changes we need to make. I suspect though that the headwinds could be too great and this will be a missed opportunity.

Jonathan Wilson, online managing editor

Tech-savvy MP says Johnson’s Brexit deal threatens UK industry

As if we needed another warning about the long-term damage that any kind of deleterious Brexit will do to Britain’s economic future. Actually, we do need another warning. We need a thousand more warnings just like this, on the front page of every newspaper and at the head of every BBC news bulletin. That, of course, will never happen, when 80 per cent of UK media is owned by non-UK resident billionaires who pay almost zero UK tax*. No wonder they, through the mouthpieces of their biased, self-interested newspapers, are so vocal about ‘getting Brexit done’. Otherwise, the EU’s new financial transparency regulations coming in 2020 could prove very expensive for them, along with all the offshore, tax haven, money-hiding hedge fund companies that have been bankrolling Johnson and Brexit. A lot of lucrative promises have been made that must be kept.

Meanwhile, the government’s civil servants, its best-informed and largely impartial advisors, have been quietly issuing dire warnings to Johnson et al for months. Renowned economists have laid out clear projections that nothing about Brexit will improve Britain’s economy just as it decimates this country’s global standing. It’s been estimated that Johnson’s worse-than-before deal will leave us all approximately £2K poorer, with a 6 per cent shrinking of the UK GDP. For what it’s worth, Theresa May’s slightly-less-worse deal was estimated to have a 5 per cent impact. The tunelessly trumpeted ‘benefit’ of Britain being able to negotiate myriad free trade deals with all nations will have virtually no benefit at all: it has been proven repeatedly, by both economic model and real-world example, that free trade agreements add – at best – 0.2 per cent growth to a nation’s GDP. It never gets any better or any higher than that.

With Johnson’s worse-than-before deal, that would still leave the UK 5.8 per cent poorer. Still want to leave? I long ago accepted that most of the ‘Leave means leave’ crowd are not for turning, stubbornly refusing to countenance logic, economic data, hard fact or the systematic disproving of Johnson’s toddler-level lies. These are people you cannot reason with, because they have no reason. Regrettably, I fear that Britain will leave the EU eventually, as the political damage – at home and abroad – has already been done, but it will be limply achieved in such a calamitous, farcical way that no one will be satisfied with the outcome. In 20 years’ time, ‘Brexit’ will be remembered as nothing more than an embarrassing, wilfully suicidal chapter in Britain’s history, used by schools in history and economic classes as a salutary lesson in how certain politicians’ hubris, greed and ambition can wreck a nation for decades, despite the will of the people having so demonstrably turned against the idea.

[*Richard Desmond: Owner of the Daily Star, Sunday Star, Daily and Sunday Express. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere: Owner of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Metro. Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay: Owners of the Telegraph, the Spectator and the Business. Rupert Murdoch: Owner of the Sun, Times, Sky and Fox. All support Brexit.]

Zero-emission vehicles to get green number plates; ULEZ cuts NO2 by a third in London

The suggestion that green number plates could be applied to zero-emission cars, granting them access to certain benefits by making them easily identifiable, seems like a good idea to me. To encourage a wider take-up of the most environmentally beneficial vehicles, you have to offer potential buyers more than just a do-gooder sense of well-being. If you knew you’d be able to use bus lanes and skip ahead of the polluting traffic jam alongside you or pay less for city parking, now you’re talking about real and tangible benefits that anyone can appreciate.

Children’s Commissioner calls for regulation of online gaming

Having spent much of this week at home for half-term with two avid teenage gamers, I am well aware of the temptations to young people to buy what I jokingly call ‘digital air’ – paying real-world money for virtual-world objects in video games. FIFA is a key case in point. EA Sports, the company behind the wildly popular football franchise, have created a demand whereby opening virtual ‘packs’ of player cards – like the Panini football stickers of old, or Match Attax if you were born this century – could magically get you a top-rated Ronaldo or Neymar to add to your squad, even if you are statistically much more likely to get Phil Jones or Andy Carroll. You can see where this is heading, can’t you? Although any player can earn virtual coins to open more packs just by playing the game, the fast-track of paying real coins to EA to be able to open more packs, more quickly, is a tantalising lure to the more suggestible, impulsive player.

While it can seem harmless, done on an occasional basis, the real-world cost of those virtual packs quickly adds up. The problem clearly goes back to EA: stop charging players additional money in-game to improve the basic experience of a product that is already priced at a premium just to own the damn thing. The cost of owning FIFA 20 is around £45 for the standard version; the Ultimate Edition is nearer £90. EA Sports is far from unique in this practice. In-app purchases are clearly a sweet additional revenue stream for any gaming company that takes this approach, but – mercifully, for parents everywhere – I have the feeling that their days are numbered. In-app purchases are unnecessary, they don’t add anything to the game and the only reason to charge money for them is to exploit and make more money from the end user. The flimsy defence for ‘loot box’ offers of “They’re optional” is simply not good enough and demonstrates either a total lack of understanding of the psychological problems associated with gambling or a self-serving inclination to downplay their effect on the minds of young gamers, in order to preserve those precious revenue streams. As always, follow the money.

Rebecca Northfield, assistant features editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

Okay, so something happened the other day that ground my gears. I was on my way to work and I’m driving my wee Corsa. It’s not very nippy, but it’s fast enough.

Now, everyone on the roads at seven in the morning tends to be half asleep anyway, so they’re all driving like grannies. I’m in the outside lane, as I usually am at that time in the morn, as I have no patience for slow drivers and their un-caffeinated brains. There’s a Tesla Model S in the same lane, not going much faster than the peeps in the inside lane. I think, that’s cool, it’s just overtaking this car and then it’ll go into the left lane because it has so much empty space there after it’s passed this car… it’s still in the outside lane… it’s still there. Still there.

It’s not moving over.

I stayed behind them for about two minutes and there were so many opportunities for this person to pop into the left lane. Now, I don’t usually do this, but I flashed the car with my lights once. Nothing.

Then sat behind them a little more. There was a load of cars behind me, looking as miffed as I was. I swerved a wee bit so they could see I wasn’t the problem. It was this stupid, beautiful Tesla.

After a little longer, I got annoyed. I did the illegal ‘undertaking’ move (bad, I know) and glanced into the car. There was a dude. Slack-jawed, fast asleep. Like an absolute loon. Lordy lord. Ridiculous.

That stupid car held up so much traffic because it was in self-driving mode and probably didn’t understand that when there’s a space, you get back into the left lane. Tesla had better sort this out, because this isn’t America and you can’t just drive in whatever lane you wish, no matter the speed.

Sort. It. Out.

In the news story, just 40 per cent of American drivers have said they are in favour of self-driving cars being available to purchase, as a new study warns that they could increase traffic congestion in cities. A survey conducted by Adobe Analytics of 1,040 American adults showed that the upcoming technology is struggling to find acceptance before it has even been deployed on American roads.

What about Britain? We’re experts in queuing, but not unnecessarily.

Ben Heubl, associate editor

Did MPs with a technical background vote differently on the Brexit deal?

After we ran our analysis last week, we got responses from various people questioning whether a lack of technological understanding really matters within Parliament.

The main concern is that Parliamentary debates are growing ever more technical. Take climate change, for example. Last week’s climate report launched by the Labour party was technical and number-driven in nature. The policy component was left out, completely.

From various corners, we also heard people saying that there is not only a lack of knowledge within Parliament. The civil service as a whole is affected by similar shortages. The incentives for scientists and engineers to become civil servants (or vice versa) are also lower when we look at salary statistics, compared with other roles. Science and engineering staff earn less on a median level than roles in international trade, legal position or economics. The lower quartile of science and engineering roles earn barely more than the median civil servant salary of £27,080. If you want to see more technologists, data scientists, computer engineers and AI experts in the service, the public sector must move closer to the average engineering salary that is around £47,896, according to one 2018 survey.

In a follow-up email, one MP told us: “Yes, I’m worried that civil servants do not understand technology.” Personally, I doubt there is enough pressure for a wakeup call to come anytime soon.

Another concern is that civil servants grow older. That could leave a considerable gap. The present median age is 46, but the peak of the age distribution is really near 54 or 55. Should the service not be able to hire and fill the gaps – perhaps with younger staff with a good grasp of technology – within two decades, the future of the service could look frightening vacant.

Siobhan Doyle, assistant technology editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

According to a new survey carried out by Adobe Analytics, around 60 per cent of American drivers are still wary of driverless cars being available to purchase and being on their roads in the future, as a new study warns that self-driving cars would increase traffic congestion in cities.

This comes as no surprise. The mere idea of cars that lack human control still concerns a lot of people. Not only in the US, but across the globe. What is more, new research from the University of Adelaide concludes that the technology may also worsen traffic congestion in the coming decades. This is due to the combination of drivers’ attitudes to the emerging technology and a lack of willingness to share their rides. Talk about stirring the pot a bit more.

That being said, the Adobe Analytics survey found that those who own electric and hybrid vehicles – nearly half of whom are millennials – are twice as likely to feel comfortable getting picked up by a self-driving car. Of the proportion that were in favour, the most popular reason for owning one was the ability to drink and eat while driving to their destination (49 per cent).

I’m personally still pretty sceptical about driverless cars hitting our roads. The idea to me sounds so daunting and unpredictable and I think that’s the issue. Much like Brexit, the thing that’s keeping us all on our toes is the unknown and the uncertainty of it all. That’s how I imagine the perception of driverless cars to be. Surely I’m not the only one who is anxious about the unknown or uncertain?

Dickon Ross, editor in chief

Prescriptions to be entirely digitised across England

When I checked into A&E recently, it was sobering to experience in today’s digitised world how much the NHS still relies on paperwork. Not unavoidable paper like that in the legal profession, for example, where something may have to be physically signed to be valid, nor enjoyable paper like magazines and books that aren’t essential but are just easier or nicer to read instead of yet another screen. This was avoidable, awkward, inconvenient paper records that in any other commercial industry would be digitised by now.

I know it’s not easy. There are privacy issues, legacy systems, data sharing issues and so on, but these are all solvable. My GP surgery is more digital than it used to be, with touch-sensitive screens to check in, computerised appointments (at their end, anyway) and the doctor’s computer on which they can Google diseases for you (just like you shouldn’t at home, but they’re doctors so it’s OK, apparently). The hospital still managed to temporarily lose my folder and the doctor still writes prescriptions in impenetrable handwriting.

Maybe not for much longer, after this week’s announcement that the prescribing system with pharmacies is to be digitised. This sounds like a welcome move, but it will need to clear the biggest hurdle facing such initiatives: successive governments’ terrible track record in running large-scale IT projects over decades. We’ll see if it pulls through. I did. Turns out there was nothing wrong with me at all.

Hilary Lamb, technology reporter

Zuckerberg defends Libra payments system in Congressional hearing

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t appear before legislators very willingly, ignoring summons to the UK and Canadian parliaments and even refusing twice to be called before a ‘Grand Committee on Disinformation’ formed of legislators from 10 countries demanding answers about Facebook’s role in the recent subversion of democracy through viral deception. A five-hour appearance before the US Senate in April last year proved disappointing to seasoned Zuckerberg-haters, with Senators wasting hours of testimony by asking ‘Facebook 101’ questions that could have been answered in seconds with a search engine.

This time around, everyone’s least favourite tech bro was up before the House Financial Services Committee to answer questions about Facebook’s plans for its own digital payments service, Libra. Some members of Congress – including chair Maxine Waters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joyce Beatty – put Zuckerberg on the spot with searing, well-directed questions about Facebook’s record on disinformation, privacy violations and redlining. Once again, however, an enormous amount of time was wasted by members of Congress asking questions that can only be described as stupid.

(Millionaire) Congressman Roger Williams opened by asking Zuckerberg if he was a capitalist or socialist and then repeatedly expressed approval at his answer (spoiler alert: the billionaire CEO of Facebook is a capitalist), while swivel-eyed Congressman Bill Posey demanded that Zuckerberg explain why anti-vax content is demoted on the platform, asking if he could be absolutely certain that vaccinations do not cause harm to a single person on the planet. For several seconds, Zuckerberg stared back at Posey in stunned silence. It takes a real effort to make Zuckerberg look like the good guy, but a handful of Republicans somehow managed it on Wednesday.

The result was that – despite some moments in which he appeared genuinely unable to explain himself – Zuckerberg enjoyed another cakewalk before Congress.

Foxconn twiddles thumbs over high-tech Wisconsin ‘innovation centres’

What an unexpected turn of events.

Vitali Vitaliev, features editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

Whereas the fears of increased congestion due to driverless cars are not new, I was most amused by the part of this story which says that 49 percent of driverless car enthusiasts think that the main advantage of autonomous vehicles is that one can eat and drink behind the wheel while the vehicle is in motion!

I can associate with that kind of culinary craving very well! What is it about transport – be it a car, train, aircraft or boat (or ship, depending on the size, of course) that makes a passenger feel ravenous the moment they get on board, often after a good, filling ‘stationary’ meal? There must some kind of physiological riddle there and I have often felt its effects on myself. Haven’t you?

Here, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of sharing with you an insightful (and very funny, from my point of view) extract from ‘The Twelve Chairs’ by Ilf and Petrov, one my favourite books of all time and the undisputed classic of Soviet satire, first published in 1928:

“[Train] passengers eat a lot. Ordinary mortals do not eat during the night, but passengers do. They eat fried chicken, which is expensive, hard-boiled eggs, which are bad for the stomach, and olives. Whenever the train passes over the points, numerous teapots in the rack clatter together and legless chickens (the legs have been torn out by the roots by passengers) jump up and down in their newspaper wrapping”.

For those who would prefer reading behind the wheel of an autonomous car to stuffing themselves with food, I cannot recommend strongly enough the 1980 English-language edition of ‘The Twelve Chairs’ in the excellent translation by John H.C. Richardson. 

Happy eating and reading while being driven, to all E&T readers!

Dominic Lenton, managing editor

Children’s Commissioner calls for regulation of online gaming

Forgive me if I take the results of any research that tries to make deductions about young people’s relationship with online gaming from the answers they give to questionnaires about their habit with a large pinch of salt. I’d put it in the same category as surveys of drinking habits, in which adults notoriously underestimate or intentionally understate their weekly consumption. If you’re enjoying something, but suspect you’re supposed to feel guilty about how much you indulge, it’s likely you’ll be a little reserved about admitting how much time or money you spend on it.

Whether time spent playing Fortnite is wasted is debatable. Surely – as kids argue to justify the hours they spend on it – they’re socialising even if it’s in a virtual world and learning about digital teamwork. Would we be as worried if they were spending the same amount of time hunched in silence over a chessboard in the hope of one day achieving grand master status in a game that’s similar in its cunning balance of repetition and novelty?

The one aspect of the report out this week that it’s hard to argue with is the need for regulation when it comes to ‘loot boxes’, the features that are available to buy in a game and which give the player an advantage over their opponents. To stretch the chess metaphor almost to breaking, it’s like being able to stick a ten pound note in a box by the board half way through a game and change a couple of your pawns into queens.

While even the youngest gamers are savvy enough to recognise that the companies behind their favourite games use gimmicks like this to separate them from their – or more likely their parents’ – money, they unsurprisingly find it hard to resist in the heat of the virtual battle. Hence the call from Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield for regulations to be applied to this aspect of gaming that treat it in a similar way to established forms of gambling. Perhaps youngsters are exaggerating when they claim to be spending hundreds of pounds on intangible in-game purchases. However much it is, though, once they’re trying to recover their losses by coughing up even more in the hope of eventually breaking even, it’s time to intervene.

Sorry, kids. There are enough parents around now who have grown up with this sort of gaming as part of their lives for the argument that adults just don’t understand not to wash any more. What you should be worrying about with the current pace of technological progress is what sort of problems you’re going to have to address with your own offspring one day. 

Tim Fryer, technology editor

Fracking sector is struggling to make headway, says watchdog

First of all, it’s worth mentioning that I am a bit of a sandal-wearing environmentalist. Not necessarily the sort that stands on tube train roofs, but definitely the sort who believes a warm jumper is a more responsible way forward than banging on the heating on the first fresh day in September.

So, I should disapprove of fracking. It’s an investment in fossil fuels at a time when we should be doing the opposite and there are other skeletons in the fracking closet – earthquakes and polluted water. Yet I’m not so sure that it’s all bad. Admittedly, I haven’t had to live through the devasting effects of an earthquake in Blackpool and had I done so I might feel differently. However, I believe it’s still standing and in no worse disrepair than it was before.

The thing is, I think that fracking has got a bad press, initially at least driven by the NIMBYs in the South Downs and the negativity has gathered momentum. I really don’t think most people who oppose fracking really know what is involved in the process, nor what the environmental consequences are.

Whatever your thoughts on climate change, the switch to renewable energy will take time – not just to improve capacity, but technology as well. Not everything lends itself to being plugged in. While that transition takes place it seems obvious to me that having a secure and cheap supply of the cleanest fossil fuel should be a good thing. We are still at the mercy of supplies from abroad (about a third), although despite popular concerns very little comes from Russia (less than 1.5 per cent). As we are all aware, we are not exactly doing a sterling job of being neighbourly at the moment – it would be no surprise if our gas imports started being piped through at premium rates.

Given the level of opposition, it’s no surprise that fracking hasn’t fulfilled its promise so far. Its failure could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or we could give it a chance, as the US has done to its massive advantage, and provide the best economic platform from which to enact the environmental changes we need to make. I suspect though that the headwinds could be too great and this will be a missed opportunity.

Jonathan Wilson, online managing editor

Tech-savvy MP says Johnson’s Brexit deal threatens UK industry

As if we needed another warning about the long-term damage that any kind of deleterious Brexit will do to Britain’s economic future. Actually, we do need another warning. We need a thousand more warnings just like this, on the front page of every newspaper and at the head of every BBC news bulletin. That, of course, will never happen, when 80 per cent of UK media is owned by non-UK resident billionaires who pay almost zero UK tax*. No wonder they, through the mouthpieces of their biased, self-interested newspapers, are so vocal about ‘getting Brexit done’. Otherwise, the EU’s new financial transparency regulations coming in 2020 could prove very expensive for them, along with all the offshore, tax haven, money-hiding hedge fund companies that have been bankrolling Johnson and Brexit. A lot of lucrative promises have been made that must be kept.

Meanwhile, the government’s civil servants, its best-informed and largely impartial advisors, have been quietly issuing dire warnings to Johnson et al for months. Renowned economists have laid out clear projections that nothing about Brexit will improve Britain’s economy just as it decimates this country’s global standing. It’s been estimated that Johnson’s worse-than-before deal will leave us all approximately £2K poorer, with a 6 per cent shrinking of the UK GDP. For what it’s worth, Theresa May’s slightly-less-worse deal was estimated to have a 5 per cent impact. The tunelessly trumpeted ‘benefit’ of Britain being able to negotiate myriad free trade deals with all nations will have virtually no benefit at all: it has been proven repeatedly, by both economic model and real-world example, that free trade agreements add – at best – 0.2 per cent growth to a nation’s GDP. It never gets any better or any higher than that.

With Johnson’s worse-than-before deal, that would still leave the UK 5.8 per cent poorer. Still want to leave? I long ago accepted that most of the ‘Leave means leave’ crowd are not for turning, stubbornly refusing to countenance logic, economic data, hard fact or the systematic disproving of Johnson’s toddler-level lies. These are people you cannot reason with, because they have no reason. Regrettably, I fear that Britain will leave the EU eventually, as the political damage – at home and abroad – has already been done, but it will be limply achieved in such a calamitous, farcical way that no one will be satisfied with the outcome. In 20 years’ time, ‘Brexit’ will be remembered as nothing more than an embarrassing, wilfully suicidal chapter in Britain’s history, used by schools in history and economic classes as a salutary lesson in how certain politicians’ hubris, greed and ambition can wreck a nation for decades, despite the will of the people having so demonstrably turned against the idea.

[*Richard Desmond: Owner of the Daily Star, Sunday Star, Daily and Sunday Express. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere: Owner of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Metro. Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay: Owners of the Telegraph, the Spectator and the Business. Rupert Murdoch: Owner of the Sun, Times, Sky and Fox. All support Brexit.]

Zero-emission vehicles to get green number plates; ULEZ cuts NO2 by a third in London

The suggestion that green number plates could be applied to zero-emission cars, granting them access to certain benefits by making them easily identifiable, seems like a good idea to me. To encourage a wider take-up of the most environmentally beneficial vehicles, you have to offer potential buyers more than just a do-gooder sense of well-being. If you knew you’d be able to use bus lanes and skip ahead of the polluting traffic jam alongside you or pay less for city parking, now you’re talking about real and tangible benefits that anyone can appreciate.

Children’s Commissioner calls for regulation of online gaming

Having spent much of this week at home for half-term with two avid teenage gamers, I am well aware of the temptations to young people to buy what I jokingly call ‘digital air’ – paying real-world money for virtual-world objects in video games. FIFA is a key case in point. EA Sports, the company behind the wildly popular football franchise, have created a demand whereby opening virtual ‘packs’ of player cards – like the Panini football stickers of old, or Match Attax if you were born this century – could magically get you a top-rated Ronaldo or Neymar to add to your squad, even if you are statistically much more likely to get Phil Jones or Andy Carroll. You can see where this is heading, can’t you? Although any player can earn virtual coins to open more packs just by playing the game, the fast-track of paying real coins to EA to be able to open more packs, more quickly, is a tantalising lure to the more suggestible, impulsive player.

While it can seem harmless, done on an occasional basis, the real-world cost of those virtual packs quickly adds up. The problem clearly goes back to EA: stop charging players additional money in-game to improve the basic experience of a product that is already priced at a premium just to own the damn thing. The cost of owning FIFA 20 is around £45 for the standard version; the Ultimate Edition is nearer £90. EA Sports is far from unique in this practice. In-app purchases are clearly a sweet additional revenue stream for any gaming company that takes this approach, but – mercifully, for parents everywhere – I have the feeling that their days are numbered. In-app purchases are unnecessary, they don’t add anything to the game and the only reason to charge money for them is to exploit and make more money from the end user. The flimsy defence for ‘loot box’ offers of “They’re optional” is simply not good enough and demonstrates either a total lack of understanding of the psychological problems associated with gambling or a self-serving inclination to downplay their effect on the minds of young gamers, in order to preserve those precious revenue streams. As always, follow the money.

Rebecca Northfield, assistant features editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

Okay, so something happened the other day that ground my gears. I was on my way to work and I’m driving my wee Corsa. It’s not very nippy, but it’s fast enough.

Now, everyone on the roads at seven in the morning tends to be half asleep anyway, so they’re all driving like grannies. I’m in the outside lane, as I usually am at that time in the morn, as I have no patience for slow drivers and their un-caffeinated brains. There’s a Tesla Model S in the same lane, not going much faster than the peeps in the inside lane. I think, that’s cool, it’s just overtaking this car and then it’ll go into the left lane because it has so much empty space there after it’s passed this car… it’s still in the outside lane… it’s still there. Still there.

It’s not moving over.

I stayed behind them for about two minutes and there were so many opportunities for this person to pop into the left lane. Now, I don’t usually do this, but I flashed the car with my lights once. Nothing.

Then sat behind them a little more. There was a load of cars behind me, looking as miffed as I was. I swerved a wee bit so they could see I wasn’t the problem. It was this stupid, beautiful Tesla.

After a little longer, I got annoyed. I did the illegal ‘undertaking’ move (bad, I know) and glanced into the car. There was a dude. Slack-jawed, fast asleep. Like an absolute loon. Lordy lord. Ridiculous.

That stupid car held up so much traffic because it was in self-driving mode and probably didn’t understand that when there’s a space, you get back into the left lane. Tesla had better sort this out, because this isn’t America and you can’t just drive in whatever lane you wish, no matter the speed.

Sort. It. Out.

In the news story, just 40 per cent of American drivers have said they are in favour of self-driving cars being available to purchase, as a new study warns that they could increase traffic congestion in cities. A survey conducted by Adobe Analytics of 1,040 American adults showed that the upcoming technology is struggling to find acceptance before it has even been deployed on American roads.

What about Britain? We’re experts in queuing, but not unnecessarily.

Ben Heubl, associate editor

Did MPs with a technical background vote differently on the Brexit deal?

After we ran our analysis last week, we got responses from various people questioning whether a lack of technological understanding really matters within Parliament.

The main concern is that Parliamentary debates are growing ever more technical. Take climate change, for example. Last week’s climate report launched by the Labour party was technical and number-driven in nature. The policy component was left out, completely.

From various corners, we also heard people saying that there is not only a lack of knowledge within Parliament. The civil service as a whole is affected by similar shortages. The incentives for scientists and engineers to become civil servants (or vice versa) are also lower when we look at salary statistics, compared with other roles. Science and engineering staff earn less on a median level than roles in international trade, legal position or economics. The lower quartile of science and engineering roles earn barely more than the median civil servant salary of £27,080. If you want to see more technologists, data scientists, computer engineers and AI experts in the service, the public sector must move closer to the average engineering salary that is around £47,896, according to one 2018 survey.

In a follow-up email, one MP told us: “Yes, I’m worried that civil servants do not understand technology.” Personally, I doubt there is enough pressure for a wakeup call to come anytime soon.

Another concern is that civil servants grow older. That could leave a considerable gap. The present median age is 46, but the peak of the age distribution is really near 54 or 55. Should the service not be able to hire and fill the gaps – perhaps with younger staff with a good grasp of technology – within two decades, the future of the service could look frightening vacant.

Siobhan Doyle, assistant technology editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

According to a new survey carried out by Adobe Analytics, around 60 per cent of American drivers are still wary of driverless cars being available to purchase and being on their roads in the future, as a new study warns that self-driving cars would increase traffic congestion in cities.

This comes as no surprise. The mere idea of cars that lack human control still concerns a lot of people. Not only in the US, but across the globe. What is more, new research from the University of Adelaide concludes that the technology may also worsen traffic congestion in the coming decades. This is due to the combination of drivers’ attitudes to the emerging technology and a lack of willingness to share their rides. Talk about stirring the pot a bit more.

That being said, the Adobe Analytics survey found that those who own electric and hybrid vehicles – nearly half of whom are millennials – are twice as likely to feel comfortable getting picked up by a self-driving car. Of the proportion that were in favour, the most popular reason for owning one was the ability to drink and eat while driving to their destination (49 per cent).

I’m personally still pretty sceptical about driverless cars hitting our roads. The idea to me sounds so daunting and unpredictable and I think that’s the issue. Much like Brexit, the thing that’s keeping us all on our toes is the unknown and the uncertainty of it all. That’s how I imagine the perception of driverless cars to be. Surely I’m not the only one who is anxious about the unknown or uncertain?

Dickon Ross, editor in chief

Prescriptions to be entirely digitised across England

When I checked into A&E recently, it was sobering to experience in today’s digitised world how much the NHS still relies on paperwork. Not unavoidable paper like that in the legal profession, for example, where something may have to be physically signed to be valid, nor enjoyable paper like magazines and books that aren’t essential but are just easier or nicer to read instead of yet another screen. This was avoidable, awkward, inconvenient paper records that in any other commercial industry would be digitised by now.

I know it’s not easy. There are privacy issues, legacy systems, data sharing issues and so on, but these are all solvable. My GP surgery is more digital than it used to be, with touch-sensitive screens to check in, computerised appointments (at their end, anyway) and the doctor’s computer on which they can Google diseases for you (just like you shouldn’t at home, but they’re doctors so it’s OK, apparently). The hospital still managed to temporarily lose my folder and the doctor still writes prescriptions in impenetrable handwriting.

Maybe not for much longer, after this week’s announcement that the prescribing system with pharmacies is to be digitised. This sounds like a welcome move, but it will need to clear the biggest hurdle facing such initiatives: successive governments’ terrible track record in running large-scale IT projects over decades. We’ll see if it pulls through. I did. Turns out there was nothing wrong with me at all.

Hilary Lamb, technology reporter

Zuckerberg defends Libra payments system in Congressional hearing

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t appear before legislators very willingly, ignoring summons to the UK and Canadian parliaments and even refusing twice to be called before a ‘Grand Committee on Disinformation’ formed of legislators from 10 countries demanding answers about Facebook’s role in the recent subversion of democracy through viral deception. A five-hour appearance before the US Senate in April last year proved disappointing to seasoned Zuckerberg-haters, with Senators wasting hours of testimony by asking ‘Facebook 101’ questions that could have been answered in seconds with a search engine.

This time around, everyone’s least favourite tech bro was up before the House Financial Services Committee to answer questions about Facebook’s plans for its own digital payments service, Libra. Some members of Congress – including chair Maxine Waters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joyce Beatty – put Zuckerberg on the spot with searing, well-directed questions about Facebook’s record on disinformation, privacy violations and redlining. Once again, however, an enormous amount of time was wasted by members of Congress asking questions that can only be described as stupid.

(Millionaire) Congressman Roger Williams opened by asking Zuckerberg if he was a capitalist or socialist and then repeatedly expressed approval at his answer (spoiler alert: the billionaire CEO of Facebook is a capitalist), while swivel-eyed Congressman Bill Posey demanded that Zuckerberg explain why anti-vax content is demoted on the platform, asking if he could be absolutely certain that vaccinations do not cause harm to a single person on the planet. For several seconds, Zuckerberg stared back at Posey in stunned silence. It takes a real effort to make Zuckerberg look like the good guy, but a handful of Republicans somehow managed it on Wednesday.

The result was that – despite some moments in which he appeared genuinely unable to explain himself – Zuckerberg enjoyed another cakewalk before Congress.

Foxconn twiddles thumbs over high-tech Wisconsin ‘innovation centres’

What an unexpected turn of events.

Vitali Vitaliev, features editor

People still wary of driverless cars as study shows they could increase congestion

Whereas the fears of increased congestion due to driverless cars are not new, I was most amused by the part of this story which says that 49 percent of driverless car enthusiasts think that the main advantage of autonomous vehicles is that one can eat and drink behind the wheel while the vehicle is in motion!

I can associate with that kind of culinary craving very well! What is it about transport – be it a car, train, aircraft or boat (or ship, depending on the size, of course) that makes a passenger feel ravenous the moment they get on board, often after a good, filling ‘stationary’ meal? There must some kind of physiological riddle there and I have often felt its effects on myself. Haven’t you?

Here, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of sharing with you an insightful (and very funny, from my point of view) extract from ‘The Twelve Chairs’ by Ilf and Petrov, one my favourite books of all time and the undisputed classic of Soviet satire, first published in 1928:

“[Train] passengers eat a lot. Ordinary mortals do not eat during the night, but passengers do. They eat fried chicken, which is expensive, hard-boiled eggs, which are bad for the stomach, and olives. Whenever the train passes over the points, numerous teapots in the rack clatter together and legless chickens (the legs have been torn out by the roots by passengers) jump up and down in their newspaper wrapping”.

For those who would prefer reading behind the wheel of an autonomous car to stuffing themselves with food, I cannot recommend strongly enough the 1980 English-language edition of ‘The Twelve Chairs’ in the excellent translation by John H.C. Richardson. 

Happy eating and reading while being driven, to all E&T readers!

Dominic Lenton, managing editor

Children’s Commissioner calls for regulation of online gaming

Forgive me if I take the results of any research that tries to make deductions about young people’s relationship with online gaming from the answers they give to questionnaires about their habit with a large pinch of salt. I’d put it in the same category as surveys of drinking habits, in which adults notoriously underestimate or intentionally understate their weekly consumption. If you’re enjoying something, but suspect you’re supposed to feel guilty about how much you indulge, it’s likely you’ll be a little reserved about admitting how much time or money you spend on it.

Whether time spent playing Fortnite is wasted is debatable. Surely – as kids argue to justify the hours they spend on it – they’re socialising even if it’s in a virtual world and learning about digital teamwork. Would we be as worried if they were spending the same amount of time hunched in silence over a chessboard in the hope of one day achieving grand master status in a game that’s similar in its cunning balance of repetition and novelty?

The one aspect of the report out this week that it’s hard to argue with is the need for regulation when it comes to ‘loot boxes’, the features that are available to buy in a game and which give the player an advantage over their opponents. To stretch the chess metaphor almost to breaking, it’s like being able to stick a ten pound note in a box by the board half way through a game and change a couple of your pawns into queens.

While even the youngest gamers are savvy enough to recognise that the companies behind their favourite games use gimmicks like this to separate them from their – or more likely their parents’ – money, they unsurprisingly find it hard to resist in the heat of the virtual battle. Hence the call from Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield for regulations to be applied to this aspect of gaming that treat it in a similar way to established forms of gambling. Perhaps youngsters are exaggerating when they claim to be spending hundreds of pounds on intangible in-game purchases. However much it is, though, once they’re trying to recover their losses by coughing up even more in the hope of eventually breaking even, it’s time to intervene.

Sorry, kids. There are enough parents around now who have grown up with this sort of gaming as part of their lives for the argument that adults just don’t understand not to wash any more. What you should be worrying about with the current pace of technological progress is what sort of problems you’re going to have to address with your own offspring one day. 

E&T editorial staffhttps://eandt.theiet.org/rss

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/10/best-of-the-weeks-news-251019/

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