The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating Tesla Motor Co. for possibly breaking securities law by failing to disclose that one of its drivers had died while using the company's Autopilot semi-autonomous software. After the May 7 death of driver Joshua Brown, who was behind the wheel of a Model S when it collided with a big rig in Florida, Tesla said it immediately reported the fatal crash to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Brown had been using Tesla's Autopilot mode, which when engaged will assist drivers in steering, braking and collision avoidance; the feature is still in a public beta phase. The Palo Alto electric car maker characterized the death as "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," but faced criticism for not disclosing the crash to the SEC, a possible breach of its corporate duty to inform the agency – and thus, its investors – of so-called material events. If you are battling traffic, teaching a teen how to make a left-hand turn or worrying over the driving skills of an elderly relative, a driverless car may seem like a marvelous thing.

Netflix memberships are like a bag of chips. Sharing a Netflix password may be a criminal act, according to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It issued a ruling last week that declares password sharing without authorization is a crime that can be prosecuted under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It's unlikely you're going to be arrested for watching "Orange Is The New Black" using your friend's Netflix account, even though it violates the company's terms of use. Netflix terms of use allow only the primary account owner to have "exclusive control" of the account, and say that person should not reveal their password.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating Tesla Motor Co. for possibly breaking securities law by failing to disclose that one of its drivers had died while using the company's Autopilot semi-autonomous software. After the May 7 death of driver Joshua Brown, who was behind the wheel of a Model S when it collided with a big rig in Florida, Tesla said it immediately reported the fatal crash to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Brown had been using Tesla's Autopilot mode, which when engaged will assist drivers in steering, braking and collision avoidance; the feature is still in a public beta phase. The Palo Alto electric car maker characterized the death as "the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated," but faced criticism for not disclosing the crash to the SEC, a possible breach of its corporate duty to inform the agency – and thus, its investors – of so-called material events. By rolling out self-driving technology to consumers more aggressively than its competitors, Tesla Motors secured a spot in the forefront of a coming industry.

In a blog post last week, Tesla said its Autopilot system has been safely used in more than 100 million miles of driving, and the crash wasn't materially significant to investors because it didn't change what Tesla has said about the system's capabilities and limitations. Tesla said it informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the crash on May 16 and sent its own investigator to the Florida crash site on May 18.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA 3.69 % breached securities laws by failing to disclose a fatal crash in May involving an electric car that was driving itself, a person familiar with the matter said, heightening scrutiny of how the Silicon Valley company handled the information. The May 7 accident killed the driver, Joshua Brown, a 40-year old Tesla owner who collided with an 18-wheel semi-truck that pulled in front of him on a Florida highway. Tesla alerted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. car-safety regulator, to the crash and investigated to determine whether the car was using the company's Autopilot system, which lets cars drive themselves under certain circumstances. But Tesla didn't disclose the crash to investors in a securities filing. The car-safety agency opened an investigation into the Autopilot technology.

When Joshua Brown switched on the Autopilot feature of his Tesla Model S on May 7, he would have been warned not to trust it. "Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time," says the standard warning presented when Autopilot is turned on. But later that day Brown was killed when his car drove itself into the side of a semi-trailer that Autopilot had not detected. Federal investigations into the crash by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) may now question whether Tesla's design asks too much of drivers.

Much has been made of the fact that Dallas police used a robot to kill the gunman who fatally shot five officers last week. A lot of breathless speculation has gone into exactly what type of vehicle was used to carry the bomb to Micah Johnson's position, in what was widely reported as the first time that tactic was used on U.S. soil. Now, Dallas police have released additional details about the technology it used to end the standoff. On Saturday, authorities reported using a Remotec model F-5 to deliver a one-pound payload of C-4 and detonation cord to the target. In a news conference on Monday, Dallas Police Chief David Brown clarified that officials used a Remotec Andros Mark V-A1.

Last week was IoT week on SitePoint which saw us publish a plethora of articles focused on the intersection of the internet and the physical world. We covered some seriously great stuff! Among my favorites was this article by Christopher Pitt on combining an Arduino, Minecraft and PHP (yup, PHP) and this article by SitePoint's Alex Walker and Jude Aakjaer on creating a motion-sensing, meeting-room-reserving Arduino platform. As I've written in the past, it worries me that in the rush to get the latest, greatest IoT products out of the door, security is often an afterthought. I also have zero confidence in those large data-thirsty corporations who, given half a chance, would use my IoT devices to gather as much personal data as they possibly can. Oh wait, they're doing that already, you say?

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Only recently, Tesla Motors revealed that one of its self-driving cars, operating in Autopilot mode, had crashed in May and killed its driver. How much responsibility Tesla has for the death is still under debate, but many experts are already reminding us of the huge number of lives that could be saved by autonomous cars. Does that mean we shouldn't worry much about the single death--that we should look away for the sake of the greater good? Is it unethical to focus on negative things that could slow down autonomous-driving technology, which could mean letting thousands of people die in traffic accidents?

Evolution as understood by Charles Darwin was supposed to happen very slowly and gradually. That's why he, and many other scientists, were puzzled by an event that happened about 540 million years ago, known as the Cambrian Explosion. During that period, life as it was known went in overdrive mode, and a world that was mostly comprised by simple life forms, suddenly – in geological scale – became extremely diversified, with most major animal phyla appearing in a span of 25 million years, to then slow down to its normal pace. There are many theories trying to explain it, like the increase in oxygen levels, or the onset of new genetic mechanisms drastically affecting embryo development. A possible explanation was made popular in 2003 by then Oxford professor Andrew Parker, who published the book "In the blink of an eye: how vision sparked the big bang of evolution".