Self-Driving Software: Why We Need E Pluribus Unum

Today, numerous large and small companies around the world are working diligently on perfecting their company’s self-driving software. All the large traditional automobile companies are included as well as large technology firms such as Google, Intel and Microsoft, and even Uber. These companies are working in true twentieth-century capitalist fashion: they’re doing it all independently and secretly. This approach leads to sub-optimal technology and foreseeable tragedies.

Self-Driving Vehicles Use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Programming a self-driving vehicle (SDV) by traditional software-development methods is so fraught with complexity that no one, to my knowledge, is attempting. So scrap that idea. Instead, developers have flocked to artificial intelligence, a red-hot technology idea built on rather old ideas about neural networks.

There’s a lot to AI technology beyond the scope of this blog. A quick Internet search will get you started on a deep dive. For today, let’s sketch a common approach to AI application development:

  • First, an AI rules-based model is fed real-world scenarios, rules, and practical knowledge. For example, “turning left into oncoming traffic (in the USA but not the UK) is illegal and hazardous and will likely result in a crash. Don’t do that.” This first phase is the AI Learning Phase.
  • Second, the neural network created in the learning phase is executed in a vehicle, often on a specialized chip, graphics processing unit (GPU) or multi-processor. This is the Execution Phase.
  • Third, the execution unit records real-world observations while driving, eventually feeding them back into the learning model.

The Problem of Many

Here’s the rub. Every SDV developer is on its own, creating a proprietary AI model with its own set of learning criteria. Each AI model is only as good as the data fed into its learning engine.

No single company is likely to encounter or imagine all of the third standard-deviation, Black Swan events that can and will lead to vehicle tragedies and loss of life. Why should Tesla and the state of Florida be the only beneficiaries of the lessons from a particular fatal crash? The industry should learn from the experience too. That’s how society progresses.

Cue the class-action trial lawyers.

E Pluribus Unum

E Pluribus Unum is Latin for “out of many, one”. (Yes, it’s the motto of the United States). My proposal is simple:

  • The federal government should insist that all self-driving vehicles use an AI execution unit that is trained in its learning phase with an open-source database of events, scenarios, and real-world feedback. Out of many AI training models, one model.
  • The Feds preempt state regulation of core AI development and operation
  • Vehicles that use the federalized learning database for training receive limited class-action immunity, just like we now do with immunization drugs.
  • The Feds charge fees to the auto industry that cover the costs of the program.


From a social standpoint, there’s no good reason for wild-west capitalism over proprietary AI learning engines that lead to avoidable crashes and accidents. With one, common AI learning database, all SDVs will get smarter, faster because they are benefiting from the collective experience of the entire industry. By allowing and encouraging innovation in AI execution engines, the industry will focus on areas that impact better-faster-cheaper-smaller products and not in avoiding human-risk situations. Performance benchmarks are a well-understood concept.

Philosophically, I don’t turn first to government regulation. But air traffic control, railroads, and numerous aspects of medical areas are regulated without controversy. Vehicle AI is ripe for regulation before production vehicles are produced by the millions over the next decade.

I am writing this blog because I don’t see the subject being discussed. It ought to be.

Comments and feedback are welcome. See my feed on Twitter @peterskastner.


Buying a PC for Your Third-World Adventure

A reader of this blog asked “What PC should I buy that can survive the erratic electricity of a third-world residency?” The answer, of course, is “It depends how much you want to spend.” But having reliable computing in a less-developed setting need not break the bank.


You’re an average, modern computer user with professional (i.e., office), social, and personal computing needs preparing to reside outside a first-world power grid. You could be in the mountains of Columbia or Colorado, or, like me, at the end of a one-kilometer driveway. You need to be able to use your PC at any time, but not necessarily all the time. You have a budget.

My previous stories on this subject are here. Your problem is spotty power that can come and go at any moment, day or night, and be off for hours. Your collateral problem is poor power with spikes, low and high voltage, surges, and intermittent on/off cycles. These can and will destroy the unprotected PC power supply in short order.


The strategy is to put as much inexpensive stored electricity (i.e., batteries) in front of the computer’s power supply as practical. Duh! The easiest implementation is to use a laptop, which comes with a built-in battery. Modern laptops have hours of self-contained power while you wait for the power grid, backup generator, or tomorrow’s sun to renew your power supply.

Still easy but more expensive choices are a desktop all-in-one (such as an Apple iMac) or a regular desktop. In both the desktop cases cases, you’ll want an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) which stores AC grid power in a battery and delivers it to your electronic devices.

With those assumptions and strategy in mind, here is a prioritized list of what to buy and why to buy it:

The Basics

  • A laptop. Commercial grade (e.g., Dell XPS) has higher build quality than consumer grade (e.g., Dell Inspiron). You get what you pay for. Consider: 17″ screen-size as desktop replacement; SSD for reliability and speed. Your choice: Windows, Mac, even Chromebook.
  • A high-quality surge protector to filter as much electrical grief as possible. Mandatory unless you use a UPS.
  • A bigger and/or backup laptop battery. Greater off-grid time. More efficient than a UPS. Lowest cost when bought bundled with a new laptop.

The Upgrades

  • A powerful UPS, where power is measured in volt-amps. Over 1,000VA is better. Below 500VA is probably pointless with a laptop. The UPS has receptacles for other electrical necessities, so it becomes your electrical hub. Also, all UPS systems have power quality circuitry so your PC will always get clean power. Also, PC applications and a USB connection to the UPS can automatically and safely shut any PC down before the UPS itself exhausts its batteries.
  • A portable hard drive storage device to back up your PC. If this were me, it would rank in the Basics as a “must have”. The portable hard drives require no electrical power beyond a USB cable. With electricity (from your UPS), there are faster/greater capacity options.
  • A USB 3.0 Hub for greater I/O connectivity. Your laptop or all-in-one will never have enough USB ports for the printers, backup storage, Bluetooth speakers, and mobile devices that need charging. Your choices are four or seven ports. Go with the powered seven-port hub. After all, everyone in your house (office) will want to leech off your clean power. Plan accordingly.

The Options

Here’s where the budget goes out the window, but your level of electricity paranoia is nobody else’s business:

  • A secondary monitor scales your laptop’s screen to desktop size or becomes a second screen with more real estate.
  • Backup generator sized to your home electricity load. Best purchased locally as you will require service eventually. Requires (clean) gasoline.
  • Solar power generator requires solar panels, an AC inverter, and distribution hub. It can have its own battery for storage or use the UPS already in our specs. The money problem is a 300-400 watt solar installation can easily cost as much or more than our laptop computing device.
  • The ultimate upgrade for this scenario is a Ford C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid car with internal 7.4 kWh batteries, 2 AC power outlets, USB charging, and 12-volt power. You can also drive it. $31,770 and up.

Is a Tablet an Alternative?

A tablet or a laptop/tablet (i.e., a two-in-one) is worth considering. Portable, mobile, self-contained cellular network option. Some have a desktop operating system. The keyboard and mouse can use easily rechargeable AA batteries. Device operating life often exceeds eight hours. Rechargeable from a small solar panel. Connects to Bluetooth peripherals and to a video monitor/TV via an HDMI cable.

Minimalist computing dramatically simplifies backup power requirements.

Consolidated electronics such as a tablet connected to the LCD monitor also used as a TV makes planning easier and redundancy less necessary.

The Network

Getting on the Internet has its own set of problems and costs. You’ll need local knowledge to make cost-effective decisions.

Assuming a controllable data budget, the easiest Internet on-ramp is to use your smartphone as a hotspot and connect your laptop via Bluetooth. You won’t find unlimited data plans in the third world, so this approach needs careful usage-based planning.

A conventional desktop or laptop setup will require a network access device(s) to the cable, wireless broadband, or satellite network. Plan to power-protect these devices too by plugging them into your UPS. However, that limits PC placement to being close to the network access point.

Follow @PeterSKastner on Twitter

Note: the products linked in this blog post are not endorsed by the author. The author has no financial ties to any product mentioned in this blog post.




Plan A: Lenovo Chokes



Plan B: Dell Gets to Bat

The Unboxing: a Moment of Silence and Sadness



Tech Support: Call Triage


Tech Support: Call Resolution Team



Sales Support: Waiting for Godot


Luncheon Epiphany



Dear Michael,


No, It’s Not Just Dell and Lenovo …


Follow @peterskastner on Twitter

Dell Inspiron 3000 Desktop

IRS Loses Lois Lerner Emails

The IRS told Congress yesterday that two years of emails on Tax Exempt Organizations department manager Lois Lerner’s desktop were irretrievably lost due to a hard drive crash in 2011. As this is a technology blog, how could this event happen?

The Internal Revenue Service has 90,000 employees working in a complex financial-services organization. Like its private-sector counterparts, the IRS has a sophisticated Information Technology organization because the IRS mission is implementing the tax laws of the United States. The IRS is the epitome of a paper-pushing organization, and by 2011 paper-pushing was done by email.

1. The IRS first installed Microsoft’s enterprise email product, Exchange in the data center and Outlook on client desktops in 1998, about the same time as many Fortune 500 organizations. By 2011, the IRS had over a decade of operational experience.

2. Hard drives are the weak-link in IT installations. These mechanical devices fail at the rate of about 5% a year. With 90,000 employees, that works out to an average of 4,500 a year or 22 per work day. The IRS IT staff is very familiar with the consequences of user-PC hard drive failures. Data center storage management is another leaf in the same book.

3. The IRS reported to Congress that senior executive Lerner’s hard drive failed, and nothing could be recovered from it. It was forensically tested. As a result, the IRS claims, there is no record of the emails that were sent or received from Ms. Lerner’s computer. The thousands of emails recovered to date were extracted from sender or recipient email lists within the IRS, not from Lerner’s files. There is no record of emails to other federal departments, or to other organizations or  personal emails.

4. The implication is that the Lerner email history only resided on her computer. There is no other IT explanation.  Yet Microsoft Exchange in the data center stores copies of all email chains on multiple hard drives on multiple, synchronized email servers. That’s the way all enterprise email systems have to work. So the facts as stated make no IT sense.

But let’s look at the implications of a strategy where the Lerner email history only resided on her computer and the hard drive failed completely so nothing could be recovered:

  • Where are the Lerner PC backups? With a 5% annual failure rate, industry-wide PC backup strategies are as old as centralized email. There should be Lerner PC backups made by IRS IT. Leave it up to the user to make backups? No organization the size of the IRS allows that for all the obvious reasons that come to mind, starting with it doesn’t work in practice.
  • How could Lois Lerner do her work? The hard drive was lost and there were no PC backups. Besides losing two years worth of emails, GS-15 department head Lerner had to also lose all the data of a digital business life: calendar; contacts; personnel notes; work-in-process plans, schedules, meeting notes, reviews, budget spreadsheets, official IRS rulings.
    It is inconceivable that a modern executive could be stripped of all her business data and not face-plant within a week. Could you? Not me. Nobody has paper backup for everything anymore. Your business smartphone backs up to your PC.
  • The Exchange servers log every email coming into and going out of the IRS. Did the whole set of IRS backup tapes fail in an unreported catastrophe? That primary (but undiscovered) failure would make the routine failure of Lerner’s PC unrecoverable.

I cannot think of an acceptable reason for the unexplained yet unrecoverable loss of the data on Lerner’s PC while following the usual practices every IT organization I have worked with over decades. Which leaves only two alternatives: a much clearer explanation from IRS IT professionals of how these events could happen; or something nefarious is going on.

Follow me on Twitter @peterskastner

The author’s experience with federal email and records management began with the Ronald Reagan White House in 1982.

Email Inbox





Enterprise Computing Jumps on the Supply-Demand Curve










Supply-Demand Curve



Follow me on Twitter @PeterSKastner

Microsoft: Wrong Strategy, Right Implementation

Last fall, then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the company’s new strategy as the “devices and services” company. I choked on this and remained silent because after all, Ballmer was on the way to retirement and the company was clearly on a road to change. I’m not a heckler.

However, let’s look at the strategy on the surface. First, Microsoft is not “the devices company”. They get credit for the xBox game consoles, mass-market mice and keyboards, and …. nothing more. The Microsoft-developed tablets and phones over the years have made hardly a dent in their respective markets. The assets and knowledge base of the Nokia acquisition aren’t likely to move the dial much either. My fellow analysts all agree on this state of reality.

Likewise, Microsoft’s overall impact on IT services is minuscule in the case of enterprise IT, and approximately non-existent in the case of consumers. You don’t need a focus group to determine that Microsoft is not top-of-mind for computer services. Therefore, I conclude the Microsoft as the “devices and services company” is a failure waiting to happen. The reality does not match the words.

Nevertheless, I applaud what Microsoft has been doing of late in making its familiar technology available on the real devices people own and use. A couple of weeks ago, the Office Suite became free apps for the Apple iPad. This morning, I loaded Word into Google Chrome on my Mac — and later I’ll put it on a Chromebook. In the devices space, Google (Android) and Apple (iPad and iPhone) are Microsoft’s arch enemies.

Enemies or not, I am paying nothing for the Microsoft apps on Chrome. I’m also paying nothing to store my documents on Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage. Free lunch on the Internet is good. Of course there’s a caveat, which is that my docs can only be stored in Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud. But that’s a free-market tradeoff that I and many consumers will be willing to make.

If Microsoft keeps implementing an “any device” strategy like the iPad/Chrome offer described above, they’ll do well and buff some tarnish off the brand. And if the company gets around to describing its strategy as “we are the best applications for everyday use by business and consumers on any device”, they might get more applause — and attention. Follow me on Twitter @PeterSKastner

Word for Chrome

“My ISP is a Solar-Powered Drone.”














Follow me on Twitter @PeterSKastner.

solar drone

Titan Aerospace/Associated Press