Byron Acohido:

Markey reacted to a story in last Saturday’s New York Times examining how the online advertising industry is now able to track consumers across the various platforms and devices they use, often without the user’s knowledge or consent.

That Times’ scoop followed an Oct. 2 report about how the National Security Agency conducted a secret pilot program in 2010 and 2011 to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans’ cell phones. That pilot program was never carried out.

Even so, Markey said in a statement issued late Thursday to reporters that he is “concerned about the increasing practice of marketers scooping up digital traces from our phones, tablets and computers that are then stitched together into detailed dossiers without consumers’ knowledge or permission.”

In a separate — but very much related development on Thursday — data management firm Identity Finder disclosed how the caching mechanism in Google’s popular Chrome browser stores unencrypted personal data in a way that makes it trivial for hackers to steal.

Andrew English:

“So that’s why everyone comes back with a smile on their face,” said the Toyota translator as she pulled up in the i-Road tilting-trike concept after begging a short drive.

If you thought the appearance of this space-age tandem two seater was pretty wacky when it first appeared at the Geneva Motor Show last March, let me tell you, the driving experience is equally out of this world.

It’s also more fun than it has a right to be, our translator completely nailed it. No one climbs out of i-Road without a silly grin on their visog, although rear passengers tend to have a slightly horrified look. As for chief engineer Akihiro Yanaka’s idea of selling the idea of swooping around town in one of these to pensioners, well it would have to be a super granny who put her shopping basket into an i-Road.
Designed in house by Koji Fujita with its tilting battery-electric driveline engineered by a team under Yanaka, the i-Road is an urban runabout concept.

The motor industry has a long history of both three wheels going back to the earliest Morgan trikes and tilting bodies going back to the Thirties and more recently with a series of Mercedes-Benz concepts the 1997 Lifejet and 2002 Carving and BMW’s tilting tricycle eco concepts. As with the 1970s Advanced Passenger Train or more recent Pendolino trains, tilting a car’s body allows it to cope with more horizontal force so you can corner faster and more safely.