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China Blocks Foreign Companies From Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars (thedrive.com)
The Chinese government is blocking foreign companies from mapping its roads in great detail, according to a Financial Times (paywalled) report. The restrictions, which reportedly do not apply to Chinese firms, are being instituted in the name of national security. China is concerned about spying. From a report: China has restricted the recording of geographic information for more than a decade because it believes giving other countries access to that information constitutes a security risk. Geographic surveys can't be performed without permission from the government, and many digital cameras don't record GPS coordinates for geotagging, as they do in other countries, according to Fortune.
If a car needs a detailed map to drive itself, instead of responding to visual cues like signs, curb position, road markings, then it's not truly "self driving." Self-driving cars should be able to follow maps of the level of detail given by (say) Google Maps -- they should be able to operate with GPS info and knowing how roads are "networked."
Do they even have cars there?
for asian prons
google cant compete
The Chinese have such tiny penises; apologies to South Park
This sounds like the US blowing up ball-bearing factories in WWII. Germans didn't really use them, but golly the US did. They thought it was strategic, but it was just a disclosure of their own weakness.
This sounds like food for thought for 3-letter agencies, and non-compete agencies, and such.
Saying "don't map here" and then doping it 200 to 1 with uniform random meaningless chunks and enforcing those, might have been able to make the foreign companies make great models for China's lack of IP to basically rob and use internally. It might have created barriers that reduced the competition, and it likely still would keep whatever super-secret super-secret secret. They could also require all maps to be shared with the Chinese government.
Now they just painted a big target on it saying "find me" at the cost of growth, exfiltration of world-class technology to local companies, practical experience at characterizing utility of maps, and lack of their nation-state competitors knowing at least one battlefield seem like bigger losses.
But who am I to pretend to think...
google maps does not even line up right in china.
It's like there forced to be off a bit.
This is what any country that takes national security matters seriously would normally do.
Like those that do keep the Chinese government up at night already have street locations, map locations, base locations, population patterns, and traffic flow patterns? It's laughable how the Chinese want the planet to believe how late to the dance they are.
Maybe it's even simpler, How much does Google want to pay?
and data roaming fees can add up fast with that (your car is locked to ATT that will be up to $15/meg in canada)
Just remember we're the ones that bombed the Chinese embassy due to faulty maps.
China's spies (political or industrial) face no such restrictions. Not exactly an even playing field.
Reading this reminded me of Stalin ordered that the Soviet Union never published accurate maps of the country for fear of spying/invasion/bombing. This went on until the USSR's break up.
Not surprisingly, Stalin ordered the creation of very detailed maps of the rest of the world to aid in spying/invasion/bombing: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/...
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
This is a typical China play. In addition they have full control of the data which they won't if they let foreign companies do it.
I don't read AC
Maybe more of a national security issue in China's eyes.
China indeed forces geographic data to be "off" a little bit compared to the rest of the world. For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in particularly the discussion on the GCJ-02 datum (colloquially Mars Coordinates).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
China is very much in a cold war with the west (and is winning). The ability to map the streets and then have a self-driving car with multiple cameras,move around, means that these vehicles can be used for weapons,but also for spying on what is happening.
As such, I fully expect china to block ANY self-driving western company car from China. Likewise, the west would be very wise to follow their steps on this.After all, China is just as likely to use their manufactured buses and vehicles as weapons and spy devices as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Take a left at the smog-obscured road, then continue for 3 miles, veering right of the smog-obscured fork.
Doesn't line up - I wondered about an area I discovered in a foreign country I lived in. About a 2KM X 1KM area where about half of GPS units consistently read about 1KM EAST of reality. The other half of units I tested were spot on - consistently. This area was near my home so I got a lot of neighbors to try it. 50-50. This persisted years. Why?
Monday coffee is always the best, toodles.
China...
Geographic surveys can't be performed without permission from the government, and many digital cameras don't record GPS coordinates for geotagging, as they do in other countries, according to Fortune.
This sounds like a critical privacy feature, which is lacking in non-Chinese cameras.
Ask the Illuminati
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
In a previous generation, this would be handled with tariffs. No wonder we can't negotiate a trade deal for shit. The Chinese know we don't have the backbone to actually impose tariffs and restrictions on their trade. We are toothless and the Chinese are eating our lunch. This country needs to have its balls reattached.
detailed maps (like google maps) vs super mapped roads (street view with all signs, curb position, road markings mapped out and updated all the time)
Right now street view can be 1+ years out of date.
Just remember we're the ones that bombed the Chinese embassy due to faulty maps.
Right. It was just a coincidence that debris from the F-117 Stealth Fighter recently shot down were in there.
It would be interesting to know what the Chinese are attempting to hide from the satellite mapping of their roads that has already been done by the US Military, The Russian military and any other military that has a spy satellite in orbit. Their roads and streets are already mapped by everyone and their brother.
Fuck the commi bastards. I refuse to buy anything from china I can by from another country of origin. How could we be so blind to give them so much for cheap labor, what we gave up is inexcusable
No other country even had the capability to try that bombing strike. Sure, the US forces made the mistake. China wasn't even capble of trying.
Poor A/C the maps were very accurate; you're ignoring that this planet rotates, and moves around the sun. Not the other way around. LOL
Like having their hubcaps stolen a
while asking for directions? Sure thing Griswold.
People worry about the things that they would think of doing to others being done to them.
So, if they are afraid of others having detailed plans of any streets, not just specific areas, it stands to reason that they make use of detailed plans of the streets of their neighbors in their own offensive plans.
People marching don't need detailed plans. What kind of attack would benefit from detailed plans of everything as opposed to just detailed plans of specific targets? Maybe they plan some fully automated, massive, ground-based, modern blitzkrieg?
If China won't allow foreign competition in China, we simply don't allow Chinese Competition in $country until they do.
If I were to wager a guess, it's less about National Security than it is the inability to manipulate a foreign business like they do their own.
Do cars even use hubcaps anymore?
They want to give to their Chinese national companies a chance to become competitive against international companies. This will be always happening as the world accept two different rules, e.g.: To invest here in China you must share the technology, for we learn, copy and use as we please, but in you country we reserve the right to open out business and practice predatory prices and do whatever we want do.
I don't think they are wrong, we are the wrong ones that allow it and this will just get worse.
Is it possible that China cares more about privacy than the U.S. and that their blocking of Google and other social networks might be a good thing? If they only didn't put spyware in there own stuff, it sounds like a privacy advocate's paradise. Many of us would like to see Facebook go away but if the government had to get involved to make it happen, we'd all cry "attack on free speech." The real problem is, money talks and China has 1 billion untapped data dollars walking around with no geo tagging. Their government directs their media and large corporations direct ours. One is just being more honest than the other about it. Ours just has to filter through Google to squeeze a dollar before being handed over to an intelligence agency. We are completely reliant on the EULA to honor anonymous data collection as a "proxy" before it's scrapped.
All you need a few thousand people driving around with a phone GPS phone mapping app and you'll have all the detailed maps you need.
Why voted down? Much better read than the rant about HOSTS file being an antivirus and the Jewiss^H^H^H^HCatholic banking conspiracy. LOL, not realizing that host file implementations all go back to BSD or the like.
Self driving cars by definition must adapt to local conditions using SLAM algorithms. With multi-GNSS to deal with jamming/spoofing (GPS/Beidou/SLONASS/Galileo), and the coming newspace companies with high resolution daily satellite photography and SAR height mapping, denying map data is a mild annoyance where it can be acquired elsewhere. This, coupled with the cars sharing their own acquired data (not an active mapping operation per se, so can send back to the mothership), means such regulation is largely for naught.
And that's why self-driving cars should really be selfdriving and not having to rely on any extra maps.