2011-07-18 WSVA Show Notes

Tech NewsLulzSec Hackers Gone, but not without a parting shot
Jim and Ron’s discussion, Last month we talked about them hitting the Senate, game and FBI sites…this month they are gone."A LulzSec member told the Associated Press that the group was “bored” and denied that it was stopping its public attacks because of pressure from law enforcement. He did, however, say that some of the chat logs and information about hackers’ identities was correct."

They did pop data into the world at the end which included documents from the game Battlefield Heroes, plus internal documents from AOL and AT&T. According to the Next Web site, the release also has evidence that the group hacked the U.S. Navy, the NATO online bookshop and the FBI’s Web site. The files also include a hodgepodge of corporate and other IP addresses, usernames, passwords and other log-ins from Hackforums.net and other, unnamed sites.

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Google’s self-driving car gets a green light from Nevada
The New York Times did some digging last month and discovered that the company had been lobbying the Nevada state legislature to allow for autonomous cars to be driven on public streets. The proposal was slated to be introduced as two separate bills that would not only make them street legal, but also exempt the vehicles from a law prohibiting texting while driving.Nevada passed a bill for the Department of Motor Vehicles to create guidelines for “autonomous vehicles” that rely on artificial intelligence to get around on state roads. Come March of next year, state officials will start to iron out car certification standards, insurance requirements and other regulations for robotic cars. Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles will also determine which areas the cars can be driven.

It most likely will not occur next year or so, but not far off.

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Airline Pilots Ditch Paper for iPads and Save Millions in Fuel
Doling out gadgets may seem more like a recruiting perk than a sustainability decision, but pilots have to carry up to 35 pounds of paper with them in the cockpit on each flight. Swapping out those manuals, maps, and other documents to lighten the load could add up to $1.2 million in fuel savings, according to American Airlines.

So far American Airlines and Alaska Airlines are the only ones doing this.

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