But adaptive driver assistance technologies, including self-driving vehicle technology, will save thousands of lives each year. Recent incidents involving Tesla's autopilot feature raise questions about whether these technologies should be fielded before full government regulation. The self-driving car will revolutionize mobility and democratize transportation, offering newfound independence to countless seniors and the visually-impaired. To do so, this technology must be tested and evaluated based on real-world conditions. Airbags were introduced over a decade before they were regulated.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany plans new legislation to require manufacturers of cars equipped with an autopilot function to install a black box to help determine responsibility in the event of an accident, transport ministry sources told Reuters on Monday. The fatal crash of a Tesla Motors Inc Model S car in its Autopilot mode has increased the pressure on industry executives and regulators to ensure that automated driving technology can be deployed safely. Under the proposal from Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, drivers will not have to pay attention to traffic or concentrate on steering, but must remain seated at the wheel so they can intervene in the event of an emergency. Manufacturers will also be required to install a black box that records when the autopilot system was active, when the driver drove and when the system requested that the driver take over, according to the proposals. The draft is due to be sent to other ministries for approval this summer, a transport ministry spokesman said.

Self-driving cars in Germany might end up having "black boxes" that can record details of accidents, similar to planes, Reuters reports. Sources say that the proposal from Germany's Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, will also require that riders stay seated in front of the steering wheel, though they won't have to pay attention to traffic or actually steer. As you've probably guessed right now, the legislation follows the recent Tesla Autopilot-related driver death. Regulators and car companies alike will have to work even harder to prove the safety of self-driving cars.

During this year, I heard and read a lot about real-time machine learning. People usually provide this appealing business scenario when discussing credit card fraud detection systems. They say that they can continuously update credit card fraud detection model in real-time (See "What is Apache Spark?", "…real-time use cases…" and "Real time machine learning"). It looks fantastic but not realistic to me. One important detail is missing in this scenario – continuous flow of transactional data is not needed for model retraining.

DARPA are starting a competition to help automate defence and see how artificial intelligence can combat cyber-threats. The latest DARPA Grand Challenge is looking to artificial intelligence to seek out and destroy vulnerabilities in software. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Cyber Grand Challenge will see seven teams battle it out to see if machine learning can do better in finding and fixing exploits better than humans. The agency said on its competition website that identifying threats and remediating them can take over a year from first detection to the deployment of a solution, by which time critical systems may have already been breached. "This slow reaction cycle has created a permanent offensive advantage," reads the blurb.

Machine learning is set to go mainstream in the next two years, according to a new survey by software and application development vendor SoftServe Inc. The new report, based on an April poll of 300 U.S. and U.K.-based medium and large enterprises, shows that 62 percent of firms expect to roll out machine learning-based tolls for business analytics within the next two years. The majority of those companies said the most promising opportunity for machine learning lays in real-time data analysis. According to SoftServe, the survey is evidence that machine learning is moving past the "hype cycle", with enterprises looking to automate analytics processes in areas like business intelligence and cyber security. In the latter area, further evidence of machine learning's progress comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is sponsoring an "all-machine" hackathon at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas next month.

Tesla Motors is trying to see if it can make improvements in its Autopilot partial self-driving system, which may have been a factor in a recent fatal accident. He said "significant improvements" look possible that would be beamed to Tesla's electric cars wireless via over-the-air updates. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation. Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board sent its own team to look into the safety of the system.

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA – Three police officers were shot to death and three others wounded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, in what authorities said was an ambush less than two weeks after a black man was killed by police, sparking nationwide protests. The officers in Baton Rouge were responding to a call of shots fired when they were ambushed by at least one gunman, Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden said. One suspect is dead and police are checking the shooting scene with a robot to make sure there are no explosives, Baton Rouge Police spokesman L'Jean Mckneely said. Police told reporters authorities are seeking more than one suspect and said the public should be on the lookout for people dressed in black and carrying long guns. President Barack Obama has been briefed on the shootings and will be updated throughout the day, the White House said.

Three police officers were shot to death and three others wounded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Sunday, in what authorities said was an ambush less than two weeks after a black man was killed by police, sparking nationwide protests. The officers in Baton Rouge were responding to a call of shots fired when they were ambushed by at least one gunman, Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden said. One suspect is dead and police are checking the shooting scene with a robot to make sure there are no explosives, Baton Rouge Police spokesman L'Jean Mckneely said. Police told reporters authorities are seeking more than one suspect and said the public should be on the lookout for people dressed in black and carrying long guns. A state police helicopter is seen near the scene where police officers were shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 17, 2016.

Renewable energy like solar and wind power are changing the way we generate electricity. Our energy production is becoming cleaner and cheaper, and in many countries renewables are starting to overtake fossil fuels as the primary power source. But one of the biggest problems with renewables has yet to be solved: what happens if it's cloudy? More specifically, the problem is that renewable energy sources can never provide a constant source of power. No matter how many solar panels you build, they all provide zero power when the sun goes down.