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"A Ford safety feature has also turned out to be a way to track badly-behaved drivers."

"Last week, a gossip blog based in the Dominican Republic called Remolacha published a disturbing video of what it said was a "self-parking car accident." A group of people stand in a garage watching and filming a grey Volvo XC60 that backs up, stops, and then accelerates toward the group. It smashes into two people, and causes the person filming the video with his phone to drop it and run."

"Back in 1999, Sony released a robotic dog called Aibo, a canine companion that didn't crap everywhere and only ate electricity. It sold pretty well - 150,000 units, despite the $2,000 price tag. Some owners became remarkably attached, which makes it even more sad that Sony has stopped repairing Aibo. Slowly but surely, they're all dying. The New York Times has recorded the plight of current-day Aibo owners in a completely heartbreaking video. They interviewed a series of owners, whose Aibos are a central part of their lives, but are slowly having to come to the fact that their dogs have a life expectancy. "

"Toyota takes Twitter emoji ad targeting to the next level with 83 unique videos designed to match a person's online mood. The effort, by Saatchi & Saatchi L.A., is part of a broader campaign for the 2018 Camry called "Sensations" that seeks to raise the emotional appeal of the midsize sedan, which is often viewed in a more practical, economical light."

Last week, security news site KrebsOnSecurity went dark for more than 24 hours following what was believed to be a record 620 gigabit-per-second denial of service attack brought on by an ensemble of routers, security cameras, or other so-called Internet of Things devices. Now, there's word of a similar attack on a French Web host that peaked at a staggering 1.1 terabits per second, more than 60 percent bigger.

"Nearly three years after the company was called out, it hasn't gone beyond a quick workaround"

"Only a couple of weeks ago, there were a lot of news headlines about how Germany had banned an internet-connected doll called "Cayla" over fears hackers could target children. One of their primary concerns was the potential risk to the privacy of children:"

London's Metropolitan Police have been urged to back down on plans to once again use facial recognition software at next weekend's Notting Hill Carnival. Privacy groups including Big Brother Watch, Liberty and Privacy International have written to police commissioner Cressida Dick (PDF) calling for a U-turn on the use of the tech. Automated facial recognition technology will snap the party-goers' faces, and run them against a database. The aim is to alert cops to people who are banned from the festival or are wanted by the police, presumably so they can take immediate action. The tech was first tested at the festival - where relations between police and revellers are often strained - last year, but it failed to identify anyone.

A couple of years ago, I was heavily involved in analysing and reporting on the massive VTech hack, the one where millions of records were exposed including kids' names, genders, ages, photos and the relationship to parents' records which included their home address. Part of this data was collected via an IoT device called the InnoTab which is a wifi connected tablet designed for young kids; think Fisher Price designing an iPad... then totally screwing up the security.

"Personalisation is no longer reserved for commercial parties like Spotify and Netflix. For the last few years public services have hopped on this trend, but the BBC is now taking the lead by creating a central open-source recommendation and data control service called My PDS. "

"OpenDP is a community effort to build trustworthy, open-source software tools for statistical analysis of sensitive private data. These tools, which we call OpenDP, will offer the rigorous protections of differential privacy for the individuals who may be represented in confidential data and statistically valid methods of analysis for researchers who study the data. "

"Self-host your online community and shape your experience at the most granular level: add and remove features, change behaviours and appearance, tune, swap or turn off algorithms. You are in total control."