That has been over for quite a while. You seem to have been deep asleep while the world changed. Europe still has some things they might want to copy, but anything the US can make, China can make as well these days. And they sometimes can make it better.

I work at a research university in the U.S. I find your claim that China doesn't care about acquiring U.S. technology to be absolutely hilarious.

I could tell you one story after another, up to and including the not-so-subtle six-figure bribes my colleagues and I were recently offered to be research "collaborators", but what's the point? You wouldn't believe me.

I'm pleased to see that Voyager has recovered from its damage, and can now begin fulfilling its revised prime directive: seeking out and sterilizing imperfect biological infestations.

Crashes, even if extremely rare, are likely too risky from a legal perspective.

On the other hand, that Amazon delivery van could run over your child or dog out on the street, or veer out of control and smash into your living room. Even if such things are extremely rare, using multi-ton vehicles to deliver Amazon packages is likely too risky from a legal perspective.

Or, maybe Amazon can purchase this thing called "insurance" ...

Funny thing is, the police are constantly ticketing and arresting people driving with suspended or revoked licenses where I live. Somehow I don't think that's going to solve the problem.

Self-driving automotive technology continues to improve, but human drivers hit their limits about a century ago. If anything, the trends are going backwards for human drivers, as U.S. highway fatalities have ticked upwards in recent years.

The politicians in British Columbia can rail against progress in the short term, but 20 years from now everyone will be looking back on arguments against autonomous vehicles and wondering what all the fuss was about.

Vinge was one of the most imaginative sci-fi authors that I ever read. I am very sorry to hear of his passing, but especially sorry because he never had a chance to finish the sequel to "The Children of the Sky".

Here's hoping that he left behind copious notes, and that someday another writer will finish his work.

Frankly I'm surprised that even 50% of college graduate do better than high school level employment. The percentage of economically worthless college degrees is probably quite a bit higher than that.

Of course this just addresses the existing attacks, new ones could be developed.

Sometimes security through better hardware is the way to go. There's no software-based attack that will be effective if the key fob isn't powered on.

The counter to any relay attack is to put accelerometers in the fob. When it stops moving for a few minutes, it powers down. When the owner picks it up, it wakes up.

Cloud cameras can be useful, but it's a mistake to use them indoors, or in any sensitive area. For interior views I use cameras that record to my own internal system, firewalled from the Internet.

I do have a couple of Wyze Cams to provide some overview images outside. They are cheap and handy for that purpose. I was one of the affected customers, and got the email from Wyze. I doubt that a view of my front yard or my parked car had much effect on my privacy.

If Ring had internal storage, these thieves would know that and steal the Ring too.

Yet another "perfect is the enemy of good" response.

Why bother having taking fingerprints? Thieves will wear gloves. Why bother installing locks? Thieves will pick them, or kick down the door.

As any security professional will tell you, install one camera that the thieves will notice, and one or two others (with overlapping fields of view) that he will not. Either that, or install a camera in a hard-to-access area. It's not rocket science, and it works.

You don't need the monthly subscription. I have a Blink system, and the videos are saved on a USB thumb drive.

But that USB storage requires WiFi, and it only stores motion events. Blink cameras don't have internal storage. If your WiFi is jammed, you're no better off. You'll still have no recordings of the burglary.

Wyze offers outdoor cameras (powered by AC adapters) with internal memory storage. Granted, they are still vulnerable to power outages, but plugging a power adapter into a UPS backup is pretty straightforward. Plus there is enormous advantage to having continuous-time recordings versus motion clips that may or may not capture the entire event.

They're affluent, they should have hard-wired cameras/security.

One of the consequences of being affluent is convincing yourself that you don't need security cameras because criminals would never strike a nice neighborhood like yours.

Then after you get cleaned out by a burglar, you start looking into security cameras. You ignore the recommendations from professionals to get wired cameras (too expensive, too much trouble, too difficult to learn to use) and hire a handyman to install a couple of Ring doorbell cameras.

Then a month later, a burglar with a WiFi jammer cleans you out again. Lather, rinse, repeat ....

The real question IMO: Is how come these cameras don't have a 256 GB SD card, or some other backup storage tech
that data can be buffered to while network is down, and simply Buffer saved video locally while the network is offline?

The answer to that question is obvious: adding a $10 memory card might impact Amazon or Google's revenue stream. They can't have customers realizing that maybe you don't need to pay that monthly subscription fee. Whether or not the camera is actually effective is completely secondary to Amazon and Google.

The only major cloud camera manufacturer that provides the means to add internal memory is Wyze. You still need a subscription to access their AI services (e.g. figure detection or face recognition), but continuous-time recording is free.

... was convincing the general public that Ring makes security cameras, instead of video doorbells.

Most cloud camera providers follow the Ring model. Unless you have a WiFi connection, nothing is recorded. The camera has no internal storage. It's all about the business model of ensuring that you pay the subscription fee.

A $10 memory card would provide a Ring camera with a week of continuous-time rollover video storage, but Amazon would never dream of incorporating one, because they don't want to impact their revenue stream. Instead you have millions of owners paying Amazon for cameras that are only marginally better than useless, and turn into paperweights if something happens to the WiFi.

A wired PoE camera system is the way to go for home security, but I know from long experience that you can only convince one person in a thousand to install them. So instead I tell people that if you're going to install WiFi cloud cameras, then get them from Wyze, and install memory cards. It won't prevent the cameras from being jammed, but at least you'll be able to review the video footage after the fact.

Human figure detection has already filtered down to the lowest end of consumer security cameras. I can buy a $50 Wyze camera that does an excellent job of it. You can wear a hoodie and a face mask, but you can't hide your body.

The next step is right on the horizon - networked neighborhood cameras that are constantly monitored by AIs, watching for suspicious behavior, especially late at night.

Within a decade it will be standard for "trusted" neighborhood security systems to send real-time alerts to the local police along with images of the behavior in question. It'll be the ultimate defense against late-night door checkers and burglars, so long as the police have the resources to respond to the alerts.

I agree this story is suspicious, but playing along for now.... ....what do they mean landscapers noticed it was missing?

Like no one called in and said 'hey, there's no AM broadcast'?

Sounds like a case of 'no one was even listening anyway'. Hopefully the thieves make better use of it!

"No one was even listening" would also have to include the DJ, the chief engineer, the owner, or whoever was the operator at the time.

I've worked at two radio stations in my life, and in both cases there was monitoring equipment that immediately generated an alarm if the transmitter went off the air. The chief engineer's job was to get the station back on the air ASAP when that happened. The FCC requires this. The privilege of operating a commercial radio station comes with the obligation to keep it on the air, per FCC regulations.

There's no way that a transmitter, tower, and antenna could have been stolen and carted away before the people who worked there noticed it, much less a landscaping crew. Suspicious, indeed.