The point of advanced driver assistance systems, of course, is to increase traffic safety and driving comfort. But it's important to remember that this is automation at an intermediate level, not full automation. What that means is there's still a huge safety burden on the driver to maintain control of the vehicle and situational awareness.

The implication is that over time, these safety systems really can erode our attention. And that's dangerous, because it could indicate both that we're becoming less conscientious behind the wheel and that technologies meant to keep us safe will actually have diminishing returns over time.

The team believes that the reason for this poor entropy is down to IoT devices. Because the embedded gear is often based on very low-power hardware, the devices are unable to properly generate random numbers.

The recommendation is that IoT hardware vendors step up their security efforts to improve the entropy of these devices and make sure that their hardware is able to properly set up secure connections.

"Using a single cloud-hosted virtual machine and a well-studied algorithm, over 1 in 200 certificates using these keys can be compromised in a matter of days."

Researchers have also pointed out that some flaws in 5G allow for "downgrade" attacks in which a target's phone connection is manipulated to downgrade to 3G or 4G service, where hackers could use unresolved flaws in those older networks to carry out attacks.

The security and privacy gains of 5G will make a real difference in protecting users from manipulation and threats like tracking attacks. And as a massive horde of new internet connected devices comes online through 5G, features like network slicing will hopefully help manage their security. But there's never a magic security solution that solves every problem. And it seems likely that 5G has its own challenges on the horizon.

The KeyWe smart lock suffers from multiple design flaws resulting in an unauthenticated - potentially malicious - actor being able to intercept and decrypt traffic coming from a legitimate user.

There are no mitigations to the issue at the time of writing. The only way, although inconvenient for the end user, is to pair a mobile device that will be as far from the device as possible and use a physical key/touchpad only.

In a savage blow to the notion of nominative determinism, e-scooter startup Unicorn is shutting down after blowing all its money on Facebook ads.

To add insult to injury, none of its 350 orders will be shipped, and the firm isn’t able to provide full refunds for the scooters it failed to deliver.

"A large portion of the revenue went toward paying for Facebook ads to bring traffic to the site."

"And as the weather continued to get colder throughout the US and more scooters from other companies came on to the market, it became harder and harder to sell Unicorns, leading to a higher cost for ads and fewer customers."

The Information‘s Alex Heath is reporting that Magic Leap managed to sell just 6,000 units of its $2,300 Magic Leap One headset in its first six months on sale, a figure made worse by CEO Rony Abovitz’s internal claims that he wanted the startup to sell at least one million units of the device in the first year.

The company has now raised around $2.6 billion in venture funding from firms like Google, Alibaba and a slew of other investors.

The new pickup is expected to begin production in about two years. Tesla says it will start at $39,900 for a model with 250 miles of range.

The signup rate for Cybertruck pre-orders—200,000 orders in four days—isn't quite as impressive as for the Model 3 in 2016. Tesla had received 150,000 pre-orders for the Model 3 within hours of the unveiling event and had 275,000 orders in hand a few days later.

Apple says it loses more money than it makes when repairing customer devices such as iPhones and Macbooks.

Apple typically charges more than unofficial repair shops to fix things such as smashed screens.

"Knowing how much we pay for parts and the general labour costs of the repair industry, it seems unbelievable that they're not making money from repair services."

The primary issue with lithium batteries is a loss of capacity over time. Eventually, this will lead to reduced range for any vehicles that rely on them.

Even now—long before there should be many at the end-of-life stage—the authors note that some lithium batteries have found their way into metal recycling facilities, where handling them inappropriately has set off fires.

The individual cells in the batteries are also different sizes and shapes, and the chemistries of the cathodes are distinct. All of this rules out a single process or automated system for handling electric vehicle batteries.

The German government and car industry have agreed to increase joint subsidies for the purchase of electric cars on the same day automobile giant Volkswagen began production of a new all-electric vehicle.

Under the agreement, consumer subsidies for electric cars costing less than €40,000 ($44,500) will increase to €6,000 (about $6,700) from €4,000. Purchasers of plug-in hybrids in this price range would be given a subsidy of €4,500, up from €3,000.