Wired Wednesday 002

This week on News 1130 radio in Vancouver, I spoke about these tech topics for Wired Wednesday with Ben Wilson:

• Ford & Google to join forces to make self driving cars better (source)
  Google and Ford will create an independent company to build autonomous vehicles, according to a report from Yahoo! Autos. The joint venture will reportedly be announced by the two companies at CES next month. Last week, Google said it would move its self-driving car efforts out of Google and into a separate Alphabet corporation, and this partnership could be related.
  It would give both companies something they need. Google gets valuable expertise in how to mass produce automobiles, while Ford gets Google’s years of real-world autonomous drive research.
• New error code for censored web pages approved (source)
  With a few exceptions, web status codes are meant to indicate errors. A 404 page shows up when you tried to reach content that wasn’t found, for example. However, there’s now a code for those times when that absence is all too intentional. The newly published 451 code (a nod to Fahrenheit 451, naturally) lets site hosts and network providers warn you when censorship and similar “legal obstacles” prevent you from seeing web material. In theory, this gives you a much better explanation than the generic 403 “forbidden” code — and a not-so-subtle hint that you need to jump through hoops to get the truth.
• New 3D printing technology uses your smartphone to print objects (source)
  A vat, coated with the team’s unique resin, is placed over a smartphone so the light hardens the substance onto a print bed above the vat. With every cured layer, the platform slowly rises until the object is fully printed.