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British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover will launch a fleet of more than 100 autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles on UK roads by 2020. Dubbed Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technologies, the vehicles will cruise along 41 miles of roads near Coventry and Solihull beginning later this year, with the first stage testing tech that allows cars to communicate directly with each other, and with infrastructure like signs and traffic lights.

While the company hasn't revealed all the tech inside the new test vehicles, it did detail a few of the key technologies. First is the "Roadwork Assist" feature, which uses a front-facing 3D camera to scan the road for for cones and barriers. In a regular car, this would chart a course around the obstruction, and provide steering assistance. In an autonomous car, it could be used to navigate a way through roadworks without any human intervention at all.

The "Safe Pullaway" feature uses another camera to monitor the area in front of the vehicle, the idea being to prevent the driver (or computer) from being overeager with the accelerator and bumping the car in front before it's had a chance to pull away. If the system detects that the car in front isn't moving, it swiftly applies the brakes.

A cluster of E. coli bacteria. (credit: ARS/USDA)

At this point, alarmist headlines about the end of the antibiotic era may seem a lot like those car alarms that periodically go off on your street: distracting, annoying, and probably nothing worth panicking over. After all, despite years of distressing headlines, drug-resistant superbugs have yet to rain down upon the public, striking the otherwise healthy with deadly, incurable infections.

Yet, the unfortunate reality is that the longstanding challenge of drug resistance is cause for concern and action. Bacteria have been developing resistance to powerful antibiotics ever since the drugs were first introduced in the 1930s. In some cases, bacteria developed widespread resistance in years and sometimes months after a new drug came out. And bacteria are building up ever more extensive immunity thanks to current practices of overusing and misusing the drugs—antibiotics given thoughtlessly for mild illnesses, or used to treat viral infections (which antibiotics don’t fight), or poured into the feed of healthy livestock. Coupled with the sluggish development of new drugs in the past few decades, the public health problem has reached a crisis level.

Right now, drug resistant infections are mainly a threat to those that are already sick and/or in medical facilities. But, if we continue down this path, mundane infections in the otherwise healthy could someday morph into life-threatening ordeals, and simple medical procedures and surgeries may be skipped to avoid risk of infection.

The Blackphone and its parent, Silent Circle, have taken some knocks over the past few months, as the company prepares a new course. Will hardware be part of it? (credit: Sean Gallagher)

When we reviewed the Blackphone 2 last September, the company behind the privacy-focused smartphone was in transition. Silent Circle had moved to bring the Blackphone joint venture with the Madrid-based Geeksphone back under its umbrella, hired a telecom industry veteran as CEO, and was fine-tuning its marketing to go after an enterprise audience. The phone’s Android-based operating system, rebranded as Silent OS, became simultaneously more user-friendly and more hardened, paving the way for features that would be incorporated into Android for Work.

Less than a year later, Silent Circle has substantially changed. For starters, that new CEO is gone. Bill Conner resigned June 27 after, as he put it, Silent Circle "extended its privacy leadership into the enterprise as a secure communications SAAS [Software as a Service] company." The company’s general counsel is now serving as interim CEO as it seeks new leadership.

Over the course of the last year, many more core security team members—including co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jon Callas, Chief Architect Mike Kershaw (AKA "dragorn," creator of the Kismet wireless network security tool), and Chief Security Officer Dan Ford—left the company. Callas remains as an investor, but he now works for Apple. There have also been layoffs.