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The long road ahead for Tesla’s Autopilot

Good morning! This Tuesday, Tesla's Autopilot is in the NHTSA hot seat, Blue Origin puts NASA in another hot seat, and Yik Yak's back, all right!
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The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a preliminary investigation into the Autopilot feature on an estimated 765,000 Teslas following crashes involving emergency vehicles.
On paper, NHTSA is looking into a pretty specific road hazard that played into a dozen or so incidents. Most of the 11 accidents it identified occurred at night and involved road flares at other accident scenes, lights on first-responders' cars and trucks or other points of illumination.
But the real news here may be that the government is getting more serious about when human drivers are actually, well, doing the driving. That's because humans have to actively monitor their Teslas (and other automated systems) even when using driver-assistance technology. The drivers in many incidents involving automated systems seemingly relied on their Teslas to act as machine chauffeurs, with sometimes deadly consequences.
Teslas do have some safety features to ensure a human is in control, but investigations have suggested that lax systems could have played a part in crashes.
It seems the NTSB has been watching the issue for a while. The NTSB — which unlike NHTSA doesn't have regulatory powers — has actually called out what it sees as its fellow government agency's failure to put in place minimum safety standards for monitoring whether drivers are paying attention when using systems like Autopilot.
Even NHTSA previously has had its own tangles with Tesla. In 2018, the agency told Elon Musk that Tesla "has issued a number of misleading statements" in portraying itself as uniquely safe — as opposed to having scored alongside other carmakers in the top tier of safety.
NHTSA could eventually demand a recall, or it could opt to do nothing, according to Reuters. A recall would likely restrict how and when Autopilot should be used, and would definitely cast a shadow on the perception that eventually Teslas will drive themselves — a perception that Tesla is always quick to capitalize on. The investigation itself was enough to take a bite out of Tesla's stock price, which may show that without Autopilot, a Tesla is just another expensive electric car.
Ransomware victims paid over $416 million worth of cryptocurrency to attackers in 2020, more than quadrupling 2019 totals. As of July 2021, we know that ransomware attackers have taken in at least $210 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims. Shouldn't we just ban crypto? The answer is no. Cryptocurrency is actually instrumental in fighting ransomware.
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Walmart is looking for a crypto expert. The hire will help create a "digital currency strategy and product roadmap."
Jay Graber will lead Bluesky, Twitter's project focused on changing the way social media works. Graber founded a social events startup and has worked as a crypto developer.
Nitin Arora left Blue Origin for SpaceX. Arora worked on the human landing program at Blue Origin.
David Richter joined DoorDash as VP of corporate and business development. He's held senior roles at Lime and Uber.
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Tschudy Smith is ForgeRock's new chief people officer. She most recently served as senior VP of people and communities at Cisco.
Requirements for indoor activities are all over the place right now; depending on what state or county you're in, some facilities might require masks, and others might mandate vaccines. Or both! OpenTable is trying to help restaurants navigate those protocols with a new tool it's launching later this month that will label diners as "verified for entry."
After a restaurant verifies a person's vaccination status, the information is sent to OpenTable (just the status, not any personal information). Once patrons are marked as "verified for entry," they won't have to show their vaccine card at that restaurant — or any related restaurants in a restaurant group — the next time they decide to dine out, streamlining the time between getting to the restaurant and getting food to your mouth.
The key to tackling ransomware is disrupting the ransomware supply chain — developers, affiliates, infrastructure services providers, launderers and cashout points — and the blockchain is the only data source that ties these actors together. So while it may seem counterintuitive at first, ransomware groups' use of cryptocurrency for ransom payments is actually beneficial to ransomware investigations.
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