March 23, 2019

Transport law, smart meter hacks, quantum and more: Best of the week’s news

By admin In News, Technology No comments

Jonathan Wilson, online managing editor

Transport law revamp paves the way for new vehicle types including electric scooters

South Korea installs lasers at road crossing to alert ‘zombie’ smartphone users

Two pedestrian-related stories from our modern urban centres. The UK government is reviewing our current transport laws to try to root out any “barrier to innovation”, which in the immediate future appears to mean allowing electric scooters onto UK roads for the first time. As much fun as riding these scooters can be made to look in publicity photos – replete with ubiquitous hipster millenials apparently ecstatic at living the freewheeling scooter dream, finally able to throw off the inhibiting shackles of all that old-fashioned walking, which is how last century’s dinosaurs still get around – there are plenty of global cities already well ahead of the UK in this regard, but which are now reconsidering allowing electric scooters to be so freely available.

As it happens, I was recently in Dallas, Texas, where the streets are littered with electric scooters, which anyone can pick up and ride for as little as $1 for a short trip. I watched countless riders weave dangerously in, out, through and directly across busy roads, as well as enjoying the spectacle of what was clearly a few riders’ first tentative, haphazard, crash-inducing attempts to ride the electric scooter wave. Helmets for all? Nope. None. Nada. Zip.

Emergency departments in US hospitals are already bemoaning the level of weekend late-evening casualty admissions for scooter-related injuries – and this is in cities where the relatively young urban environment is generally a lot wider, flatter and better paved than, say, London’s labyrinthine road network, built up over centuries and, in some areas, apparently last repaired almost as long ago.

I also learned a new word this week, which is always a treat. ‘Smombies’ – aka smartphone zombies – is the name now given to people who walk the streets and cross roads with their heads down and without so much as glancing up from the phone in their hands. Headphones on (or earbuds in) is another level of oblivious complication. It’s a smombie apocalypse, all right, and when the smombies meet the electric scooter debutants, it’s going to be carnage.

Tim Fryer, technology editor

Quantum computers clear hurdle with program that identifies ‘leaking’ code

I had to pick up on this as here at E&T’s editorial office we have been slaving away over our next issue, out in April, which will be themed around quantum technologies. We did feel it was a bit of a risk dedicating a significant section of the magazine to the subject, as any explanations on quantum can leave you with an aching brain. But it really is the most exciting emerging technology – it will transform the way we live. It could provide the computer processing power that fuels science fiction and turn it into reality. Artificial intelligence will advance beyond just machine learning. Blistering fast communications will be open to all. And, most importantly, it’s just around the corner.

This article mentions the IBM Q quantum computer, and another – the D-Wave – is being used in commercial applications already. After many years of development this technology is nearly ready to hit the big time but, as this article mentions, we are not quite there. There are still many details to be ironed out and quantum is a big and varied family, not just one technology that needs to be pinned down. Some applications are under way, the majority are more like two to five years away, but the image of quantum technology as being a distant and theoretical discipline now needs to be dispelled. We have some great writers lined up to explain the state of the technology in some of the leading applications areas such as communications, transport, finance and defence, demonstrating how transformative these technologies will be. You don’t have to understand it to have fun with it!

Ben Heubl, associate editor

Researchers warn of privacy risks on popular health apps

New research published in the British Medical Journal has found that popular health apps may widely share user data and infringe on patients’ privacy. This is by no means shocking to me. Health tech companies have a thirst for data in order to get their services and business up and running. Machine learning and advanced data analytics crave the collection of the so-called ‘new oil’ – apparently less so with the patients’ privacy in mind.

The patient is often left sitting at the receiving end. It might be the clinician prescribing health apps who needs to be able to comprehend – and communicate to patients – what privacy risks are involved. The paper explicitly concludes that medics should be aware of the choices they make in relation to app use and, “When recommending apps to consumers, [to] explain the potential for loss of personal privacy as part of informed consent”.

Let’s be honest. How much time is there for your GP to explain a long-winded health app consent form? In the UK, the average consultation time is about 10 minutes long, while primary care consultations are estimated last less than 5 minutes for half the world’s population. We’ve probably all clicked ‘Yes’ on a tick-box consent form without even looking at it. Perhaps, a more suitable start to put the brakes on is when a privacy regulator adequately considers “that loss of privacy is not a fair cost for the use of digital health services”, as the paper deduces.

Siobhan Doyle, assistant technology editor

Children need protection from ‘online Wild West’, say MPs

Girls say they feel pressure of social media expectations

MPs are calling on Ofcom to regulate social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to protect children from graphic content online after a report was published about the impact social media has on mental health. The report says that it is truly a wake-up call, that something should be done to tackle this, especially seeing as it has reached the point where parents of children who have taken their own lives are beginning to accuse social media platforms (Instagram is far by the worst) of contributing to their deaths.

Mental health is such an important topic to talk about, especially seeing as the report and the survey published by Shout magazine are just two of many studies about the impact social media has on mental health. And all the statistics and evidence makes it very clear that the government should act on it.

Not only are young children exposed to graphic content – self-harm, suicide and even that very strange moment last month when a hoax known as the Momo challenge was used to frighten children – but a lot of young people, particularly girls, are feeling pressured to get likes and followers on social media platforms such as Instagram.

It’s rather upsetting that it has come to this. Even children as young as 11 are starting to feel insecure about the way they look, feeling the need to conform to a certain look on social media to feel accepted by society. They’re far too young to be feeling this way. You almost wonder if children so young should be using social media on the regular to begin with.

Lorna Sharpe, sub-editor

Revitalised Bloodhound project unveils new car livery and HQ

So, the Bloodhound project has a new lease of life, rescued from administration and relaunched as Bloodhound LSR (for ‘land speed record’). I must say I’m glad. We’ve been hearing about this project for a very long time now; the plan to attempt a new land speed record was announced to the public in October 2008 and was due to culminate just three years later. That timeframe clearly looked ambitious even then, let alone with the benefit of hindsight, but the message right from the start was that this project was meant to engage people in general, and young people in particular, with the excitement of technology.

The fact that it stayed in the public eye for all the succeeding decade, despite delays and setbacks, says how well it has achieved that. My own interest was sparked back in 2009 when the car’s driver, Andy Green, gave a lecture at Savoy Place (the IET’s London headquarters) which I decided to attend because I was already there that day for other reasons. That’s when I realised just how remarkable the engineering was going to be. In the ten years since then I’ve seen how often ambitious projects fall apart because initial enthusiasm isn’t matched by hard cash, so parts can’t be ordered and essential staff can’t be paid. I’m glad Bloodhound has a new backer, and I hope this new beginning will lead to an eventual attempt at that record.

Dickon Ross, editor in chief

Videos showing how to hack smart energy meters ‘pose danger to society’

YouTube has been much criticised in the media recently for its slowness to act on videos posted on its platform that are dangerous or illegal so we don’t really expect it to act in this case, but it’s worth raising to show the videos that catch the headlines are just the tip of an iceberg. Alerted by Crimestoppers’ Stayenergysafe campaign, we looked into the videos claiming to show viewers how to misuse their smart electricity meters to steal energy. While experts told us some of the techniques probably wouldn’t work in the UK, others are clearly highly illegal or highly dangerous. YouTube so far seems to have done nothing about the videos and, let’s face it, we don’t expect that it will. The good news is that, while we can’t be sure forensically, hacking smart meters appears not to have killed anyone in the UK yet. Is that what it will take for the videos to be removed?

Vitali Vitaliev, features editor

Book review: ‘Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future

Life is full of coincidences. Just a couple of days after my review of ‘Manual of Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future’ was published on our website, I bumped into my old friend Paul Bernays, who was the cameraman of the small Channel 4 TV crew that accompanied me to my native Ukraine in June 1994 to make a documentary ‘The Train to Freedom’. One of the main filming venues was Chernobyl nuclear power station, or whatever was left of it in the wake of the reactor explosion eight years earlier.

It was one of my life’s most memorable days and it was good to remember it with Paul over a cup of coffee almost 25 years later. The memories were still fresh. We recalled how Channel 4 was unable to get us cover for that one day of filming in Chernobyl from any insurance company in the world, so we went there at our own risk. Paul himself had to be dragged away by the ears (almost literally) from filming in all those tragically unique locations, like the former funfair in the dead city of Pripyat, abandoned after the disaster and by then totally overgrown with wild grass, its rusty merry-go-rounds moving squeakily under the soft gusts of wind, or the freshly built storks’ nest on the roof of a hut inside the heavily contaminated area (storks are symbols of life and hope in Ukraine).

We also recalled the rather cruel but good-natured jokes directed at me by the crew after I stupidly drank a glass of water from a well, offered to me kindly by one of the samosioli (self-settlers) – a group of elderly peasants who had returned to the area despite the official bans. The jokes were mostly about me being luminescent at night, or growing a second head from then on.

I told Paul about the book I’ve just reviewed and we agreed how important it was to keep highlighting and making public the true dimensions of the horrible catastrophe. In 2016, I wrote a piece to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Unfortunately, it remains topical.