Axios

This week's ride is the 2019 Honda Passport Elite AWD, the latest addition to Honda's SUV lineup — but with more off-road chops.

Why it matters: The Alabama-built Passport slots between the popular CR-V and the full-size Pilot, adding some extra fuel to Honda's fast-growing SUV sales.

A slew of companies are pushing to define safety metrics and validation methods in hopes of setting — and potentially cashing in on — an industry-wide standard for AVs.

The big picture: Current safety standards govern only the design of motor vehicles — the cars' technical specifications and validation methods to certify they perform as designed. But convincing the public and regulators that self-driving cars are safe will require an entirely different set of standards.

Broadcom is in advanced talks to buy Symantec for more than $15 billion, as first reported by Bloomberg.

Why it matters: Symantec is the world's largest provider of cybersecurity software.

Take the location-based engine and augmented reality smarts that produced Pokémon Go, mix in the popularity of Harry Potter and you have a guaranteed hit, right? That's the logic behind Niantic's recently released Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, but early results suggests the new game may have a tough time living up to expectations.

By the numbers: It's down to No. 73 on App Annie's chart of top-grossing iOS apps, far below Pokémon Go at No. 15 and also below a different Harry Potter title from Jam City.

Apple has long prided itself that it knew what consumers wanted even before they did. Now, with Steve Jobs long gone and design guru Jony Ive now out the door, the big question is who at Apple can see what's around the next corner and bring it to market.

Driving the news: Apple pushed back hard this week against a Wall Street Journal story that portrayed Ive as checked out and disaffected and declared that his departure "cemented the triumph of operations over design at Apple."

Instead of trying to design fully automated vehicles from scratch, the way forward might be to adapt limited technologies that have already proven themselves in specific settings, and gradually add capability.

Why it matters: Adapting new technology from successful use-cases where safety is paramount, like in mining, could assuage public concerns about AVs, and accelerate AV development and production.

Email management app Superhuman made headlines last week for raising new venture capital, but now the by-invitation-only service has come under fire for its privacy practices around the use of pixel tracking.

The big picture: Pixel tracking allows senders to track emails by forcing a recipient to download a tiny, invisible graphic file when they open the message, explains Axios’ Joe Uchill. Once the image file is downloaded, the sender knows their email was opened — and can also harvest a slew of additional information about the reader. 

• In the case of Superhuman, which aims to streamline inbox work for heavy email users, that includes location data about each time a recipient opened a message. (Update: Superhuman has removed location data following the controversy. More below.)
• As Mike Davidson, former VP of design for Twitter, put it in a widely read critique, "Superhuman teaches its user to surveil by default."

The controversy centers on a persistent question that faces technology users: Are you okay with trading some (or all) of your privacy in exchange for services that are more convenient, better personalized, and less expensive? 

• Per an IBM survey, 71% of people said it’s worth giving up privacy for the benefits of tech. And while 81% said they’re concerned about how their data is used, only 45% have actually changed settings in an app, and a mere 16% have stopped using a tool because of data misuse. 

Yes, but: In the case of Superhuman and email pixel tracking, the privacy equation is different. 

• Pixel tracking is common in some apps, but it's usually a feature that users have to turn on.
• With Superhuman, users are collecting information by default on the people to whom they're sending email messages, without alerting or warning those people.

Between the lines: Email has evolved its own cultural expectations, and Superhuman looks like it's pushing beyond some people's comfort zone.

• Subscribers to email content and newsletters (even from Axios), particularly those containing ads, may be aware that the sender is tracking them for business purposes.
• Many understand that sales inquiries are carefully monitored, too — pixel tracking is a basic feature in virtually all email tools for sales and marketing. 
• But what about messages from friends, family, acquaintances, former romantic partners? Arguably, that’s where the expectation is different.
• “Read receipt” functions in apps like iMessage are turned off by default, and it’s up to the recipient to decide whether to enable them.
• Yes, email recipients can disable image downloading, which foils pixel tracking, but that also strips much of the look and feel of modern email use.

The bottom line: If Superhuman's aggressive push to spread pixel-tracking into new spheres doesn't spark significant public outcry, it could establish a new norm.

Go deeper: How email open tracking quietly took over the web (Wired)

Update: Following the controversy, Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra announced that the company was immediately removing location tracking (and deleting the data), turning off the email tracking feature by default, and will build a feature to disable remote images.

As presidential campaigns gather steam, a niche world of consultants and tech vendors has popped up with the promise of helping them fight off online disinformation.

The catch: These efforts have gained little traction, in part because they offer a dizzying array of options at a confounding spread of prices — from around $3,000 to nearly $300,000 a year — potentially leaving campaigns without a weapon against the predicted onslaught.