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WiFi Hotspots are Coming to Cars

Jan 29 2014

This year, our cars will be constantly connected to the internet. It’s going to be HUGE.

By 2021, the auto industry will have have the highest revenue that’s connectivity-related.

It arrived last year via Audi, and Chevy is a front-runner, with 10 of their models to be offered with 4G and LTE connections by this 2014 summer.

Read it online at Autonet.ca

Favourite line:

It will be interesting to see how the data will be priced, because using the rule of thumb that at YouTube video is 1MB per minute, we’d all be driving down the road just hemorrhaging money.

Remember my column about War Driving? I wonder how this will affect things like that. I also wonder about the security aspect of an always-connected car. Remember, you are responsible for hotspot users.

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Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

My First Data Block

Jan 27 2014

What Happened – using my mobile blog app, I hit publish on a blog post, and it failed to upload.

Fine, I’ll post from my laptop then.

Tethered my phone > opened a new browser > this page is there:

an alert: you have exceeded your monthly data plan by $50, you’re now denied access to all data
to restore data, text TELUS “Yes”, you understand, and agree, to additional data costs
or instead of text, call. Which I did, because I’m not clicking on something so odd

And it’s TELUS, so I got back an educated, helpful answer:

To avoid bill shock, the CRTC has set a cap on additional phone charges. Once the cap is reached, the data connection is shut off unless the consumer actively agrees to spend more.

Caps are: $50 data – $100 phone calls

That feeling, when I had no data: gah

All my accounts out there, all logged in, alone and unattended.

To get online I’d have to leave the house, and even then it wouldn’t be on my phone, my usual tool, where all my information is… find a computer, import contacts, good thing I have a copy of my contacts… do you… here’s how to properly backup.

A giant wave of “how will I run my life tomorrow, if I can’t use my phone?”.

I wouldn’t be able to. Gah.

This is a Working EMP Device

Jan 23 2014

Photo: eV2

EMP – ElectroMagnetic Pulse

EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) are often featured in movies – characters in The Matrix: Revolutions used them to defend against the sentinels, and do you remember Ocean’s Eleven? In that movie, a character is seen pulling into a parking lot in a white panel van that’s holding a giant machine, which he powers up and uses to knock out the power to the casino a block away. That’s an EMP attack.

Very basically, the targeted car is blasted with high-power radio frequencies and microwave waves, confusing the electronics system until the engine just gives up and shuts down. – Autonet.ca

That’s newspaper writing, in blog writing:

Radio Frequencies (RF) are pulsed at the car, which just melts the electronics like, you don’t bounce right back from an EMP attack.

Neat eh, movie-kinda stuff indeed.

Until UK company eV2 built the one above, and demonstrated its device to the BBC on an unused airport runway.

It was touted in the press as:
the device that would end car chases

Wrote about it at work, here.

Hacker Beer

Jan 23 2014

Hacker-Pschorr Beer from Germany, founded in 1417. There’s a Club-Mate joke in here, somewhere.

Don’t know if it’s good. I’m posting it because I can file it under both the Security and Food categories, and when will that ever happen again.

Wednesday blog technicality

Jan 22 2014

Mega meh post, but at least now I still haven’t missed a day. I have 2 newspaper deadlines tomorrow, a grand finale moment is happening Saturday at the other job, and what is hogging all the memory on my laptop?

We’re going to a Canadian Tire event tomorrow where there’ll be a trampoline, and wrote the news on Autonet today, about VW’s Super Bowl teaser ad, which is well done. Monday’s news on “Charging Rage” did ok, Autonet.ca.

kk night TTYT

This week’s column.