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BlackBerry Unveils Autonomous Vehicle Hub In Canada (venturebeat.com)
BlackBerry's Unix-like OS, QNX, is already in millions of cars. But today they're expanding their facility in Ottawa "to focus on developing advanced driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technology," according to Reuters. And one analyst says "If they can prove that they have the whole package and the security, they could absolutely dominate the market."
After a detour where QNX's industrial-focused software was used to reinvent the now-discarded BlackBerry phone operating system, BlackBerry is focused on how its embedded software interacts with the explosion of sensors, cameras and other components required for a car to drive itself... "What QNX is doing is providing the infrastructure that allows you to build higher-level algorithms and to also acquire data from the sensors in a reliable manner," said Sebastian Fischmeister, a University of Waterloo associate professor who has worked with QNX since 2009.
Instead of focussing on AI, BlackBerry wants "a niche role as a trusty sidekick," Reuters reports, adding that besides a recent deal with Ford, BlackBerry is also holding advanced discussions with "more than one or two" major automakers, according to the head of the company.
Instead of focussing on AI, BlackBerry wants "a niche role as a trusty sidekick," Reuters reports, adding that besides a recent deal with Ford, BlackBerry is also holding advanced discussions with "more than one or two" major automakers, according to the head of the company.
I'm not sure that their present branding is right for the "high-tech sidekick" role in the automotive industry. They should rebrand from Blackberry to something that says "cars" and "snazzy technology", like "TechnoZoom" or "Research in Motion".
They'd be better off completely rebranding themselves so no one knows they're RIM/Blackberry. If I knew a car I was about to buy had Blackberry software in it, I wouldnt buy it, because I know it'd be unsupported very soon.
too many rim-job jokes to use "research in motion". It worked when they had co-ceo's that demanded rim-jobs, but it can't with a real corporate structure. It will collapse under the weight of all the jokes.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Right now, we don't have standards for self-driving cars. This should be the baseline for any new standard.
*** Don't be dull.***
They bought QNX a while back, to use as a foundation for their modernization of the OS that runs on Blackberries('Blackberry 10' is QNX-based, 'Blackberry OS', v. 1-7.x are something much heavier on java).
Unless I'm missing something, they've announced an, um, bold and inspiring plan to attempt to continue selling QNX for basically the same applications that QNX was sold for before they bought it.
Beats letting it just rot in a back catalog somewhere; but "We plan to sell the product of a company we bought for the same sorts of things it was good for when we bought them, and that's pretty much it." isn't exactly the behavior of a company that has any idea what to do with itself.
Plot twist: Blackberry renames itself to "Research in Motion", becomes a leading seller of autonomous cars to business executives everywhere.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Yes, the evil government mandating and enforcing food and safety regulations, running the justice system, and doing all these evil things. Corporations should be free to add addicting substances to their products to hook consumers to their products, and if you go ahead and buy them (obviously there'll be no mention of the opiates added because that'd be EVIL GOVERNMENT intervening again) then it's your own personal choice and you should have funded your own laboratory to make sure what you're buying hasn't been messed around with.
'Stolen' implies you don't use publicly funded utilities and services to be able to work and thus make your money. The infrastructure provided for by taxes is the basis for most commercial operations in most economies, so to say that the money used for its upkeep allowing you to continue working iss 'stolen' from you is just asinine.
Property rights are not natural rights. The whole concept of "your property" and "my property" only exists because societies have come together and drafted a set of rules (=laws) which define ownership of goods and how they may be transferred or not. If the government stops existing you no longer have any property, you just have stuff which I can take away at any minute if I have enough muscle to do so. I cannot be prosecuted for it as that would require a court-system, also itself an extension of government and society that you oppose. Therefore claiming that you have some magical right to be entitled to 100 % of your salary and that any form of taxation is 'theft', when 'theft' itself is a concept defined by the society that you oppose is just idiotic.
Moreover, do you understand that we're headed into an age where the vast majority of people will not be able to trade their labor into money because for most menial tasks the constantly improving machines will be so much more cost-effective that corporations will have no need to hire low-skill workers anymore. You're essentially arguing for a future in which the vast majority of folks will be left to starve or commit crimes for their own survival.
The developed economies are in the grips of a fast change: people are being made obsolete as factors of production. To deny this is to deny the technological progress that can be plainly seen by anyone. Automation creates some new jobs but never at the same rate at which it is taking them away, as the upkeep of an automated system always takes less personel than running the entire operation with human labor (to use the example of self-driving cars here_ automating the taxi-serivces for example will require an X amount of people to oversee the system and do maintenance, but that number will be vastly smaller than the amount of cab-drivers it will make jobless).
So with this in mind I'm amazed at the (mostly) american far-right mentality of "fuck the government, I wish to subject my life to the whims of corporations, because they truly care about me, as I'm a hard working man'. They don't. The corporations care about making money, they will throw you at and leave you to die the moment you no longer provide any value for them, and because of that civilized societies have come together and decided that since we're no longer living in the middle-ages, people should not be left out to starve and die if they cannot get employed or in fact cannot work at all because of an illness or disability or other factors.
But for some reason you seem convinced that such principles are needless, either because you're unable to see the long term consequences of having instances around that care for stuff other than making more wealth for themselves, or because you do in fact see it but are enough of a sociopath to not give a shit about the well be
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
> If I knew a car I was about to buy had Blackberry software in it, I wouldnt buy it,
Most cars user QNX. It'll be a challenge to find one that doesn't, because 40 different car makers use it.