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Trump Promises a Federal Technology Overhaul To Save $1 Trillion

New submitter threc shares a report from MIT Technology Review: The tech world descended on Washington, D.C. yesterday to attend a tech summit at the White House. According to MIT Technology Review associate editor Jamie Condliffe: “Trump suggested he might relax his stance on immigration as a way to get tech leaders to help his cause. ‘You can get the people you want, ‘ he told the assembled CEOs. That sweetener may be a response to a very vocal backlash in the tech world against the administration’s recent travel bans. Trump may hope that his business-friendly stance will offer enough allure: if tech giants scratch his back, he may later deign to scratch theirs.” The report continues: “‘Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens, ‘ said Trump at the start of his meeting with the CEOs, according to the Washington Post. ‘We’re embracing big change, bold thinking, and outsider perspectives.’ The headline announcement from the event was Trump’s promise to overhaul creaking government computing infrastructure. According to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and advisor, there’s much to be done: federal agencies have over 6, 000 data centers that could be consolidated, for instance, while the 10 oldest networks in use by the government are all at least 39 years old. The upgrade, said Trump, could save the country $1 trillion over the next 10 years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Trump Promises a Federal Technology Overhaul To Save $1 Trillion

You Can Hack Some Mazda Cars With a USB Flash Drive

An anonymous reader writes: “Mazda cars with next-gen Mazda MZD Connect infotainment systems can be hacked just by plugging in a USB flash drive into their dashboard, thanks to a series of bugs that have been known for at least three years, ” reports Bleeping Computer. “The issues have been discovered and explored by the users of the Mazda3Revolution forum back in May 2014. Since then, the Mazda car owner community has been using these ‘hacks’ to customize their cars’ infotainment system to tweak settings and install new apps. One of the most well-designed tools is MZD-AIO-TI (MZD All In One Tweaks Installer).” Recently, a security researcher working for Bugcrowd has put together a GitHub repository that automates the exploitation of these bugs. The researcher says an attacker can copy the code of his GitHub repo on a USB flash drive, add malicious scripts and carry out attacks on Mazda cars. Mazda said the issues can’t be exploited to break out of the infotainment system to other car components, but researchers disagreed with the company on Twitter. In the meantime, the car maker has finally plugged the bugs via a firmware update released two weeks ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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You Can Hack Some Mazda Cars With a USB Flash Drive

Team Collaboration App Slack, Valued at $9 Billion, Draws Attention of Amazon

Amazon is in the running among a handful of companies looking to acquire the popular chatroom startup, reports Bloomberg. From the article: San Francisco-based Slack could be valued at at least $9 billion in a sale, the people said. An agreement isn’t assured and discussions may not go further, said the people. Buying Slack would help Seattle-based Amazon bolster its enterprise services as it seeks to compete with rivals like Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. The company’s cloud-hosting unit, Amazon Web Services, in February unveiled a paid-for video and audio conferencing service — Amazon Chime — that lets users chat and share content. Kara Swisher, reporting for Recode: Slack, the popular business communications company, is in the midst of raising $500 million at a $5 billion post-money valuation, an effort that has attracted several potential buyers interested in taking out the company ahead of the funding. Those include Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, several of which have previously shown interest in acquiring Slack. Bloomberg reported the interest by Amazon today, with a $9 billion sales price. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Team Collaboration App Slack, Valued at $9 Billion, Draws Attention of Amazon

Netflix Has More American Subscribers Than Cable TV

According to Leichtman Research estimates from the first quarter of 2017, there are more Netflix subscribers in the U.S. (50.85 million) than there are customers for major cable TV networks (48.61 million). While it doesn’t mean Netflix is bigger than TV because it doesn’t account for the 33.19 million satellite viewers, it represents a huge milestone for a streaming service that had half as many users just 5 years ago. Engadget reports: The shift in power comes in part through Netflix’s ever-greater reliance on originals. There’s enough high-quality material that it can compete with more established networks. However, it’s also getting a boost from the decline of conventional TV. Those traditional sources lost 760, 000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year versus 120, 000 a year earlier. Leichtman believes a combination of cord cutters and reduced marketing toward cost-conscious viewers is to blame. Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they’re clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Has More American Subscribers Than Cable TV

Wind, Solar Surpassed 10 Percent of US Electricity In March, Says EIA

According to the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration, wind and solar produced 10 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. for the first time in March. The Hill reports: The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) monthly power report for March found that wind produced 8 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. that month, with solar producing 2 percent. The two sources combined to have their best month ever in terms of percentage of overall electricity production, EIA said. The agency expects the two sources topped 10 percent again in April but forecasts that their generation will fall below that mark during the summer months. Due to the way geographic wind patterns affect the generation of electricity, the two sources typically combine for their best months in the spring and fall. Annually, wind and solar made up 7 percent of electric generation in 2016, EIA said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wind, Solar Surpassed 10 Percent of US Electricity In March, Says EIA

Firefox 54 Arrives With Multi-Process Support For All Users

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 54 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new version includes the next major phase of multi-process support, which streamlines memory use, improving responsiveness and speed. The Electrolysis project, which is the largest change to Firefox code ever, is live. Firefox now uses up to four processes to run webpage content across all open tabs. This means that complex webpages in one tab have a much lower impact on responsiveness and speed in other tabs, and Firefox finally makes better use of your computer’s hardware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Firefox 54 Arrives With Multi-Process Support For All Users

Developer Accidentally Deletes Production Database On Their First Day On The Job

An anonymous reader quotes Quartz: “How screwed am I?” asked a recent user on Reddit, before sharing a mortifying story. On the first day as a junior software developer at a first salaried job out of college, his or her copy-and-paste error inadvertently erased all data from the company’s production database. Posting under the heartbreaking handle cscareerthrowaway567, the user wrote, “The CTO told me to leave and never come back. He also informed me that apparently legal would need to get involved due to severity of the data loss. I basically offered and pleaded to let me help in someway to redeem my self and i was told that I ‘completely fucked everything up.'” The company’s backups weren’t working, according to the post, so the company is in big trouble now. Though Qz adds that “the court of public opinion is on the new guy’s side. In a poll on the tech site the Register, less than 1% of 5, 400 respondents thought the new developer should be fired. Forty-five percent thought the CTO should go.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Developer Accidentally Deletes Production Database On Their First Day On The Job

Malware Uses Obscure Intel CPU Feature To Steal Data and Avoid Firewalls

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft’s security team has come across a malware family that uses Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) interface as a file transfer tool. The problem with Intel AMT SOL is that it’s part of Intel’s ME, a separate chip inside Intel CPUs that runs its own OS and stays on even when the main CPU is off. Inside Intel’s ME, AMT SOL opens a virtual network interface which works even when the PC is turned off. Furthermore, because this virtual network interface runs inside ME, firewalls and security products installed on the main OS won’t detected malware using AMT SOL to exfiltrate data. The malware was created and used by a nation-state cyber-espionage unit codenamed PLATINUM, active since 2009, and which has targeted countries around the South China Sea. PLATINUM is by far one of the most sophisticated hacking groups ever discovered. Last year [PDF], the OS maker said the group was installing malware by abusing hotpatching — a mechanism that allows Microsoft to issue updates that tap into active processes and upgrade applications or the operating system without having to reboot the computer. Details about PLATINUM’s recent targets and attacks are available in a report [PDF] Microsoft released yesterday. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Malware Uses Obscure Intel CPU Feature To Steal Data and Avoid Firewalls

Airbnb Announces Its Plan To House 100,000 People In Need

New submitter mirandakatz writes: Airbnb has just unveiled its Open Homes Platform, a home-sharing site for hosts motivated by goodwill instead of profits — and for guests motivated by need rather than wanderlust. Specifically, Airbnb is going to begin by connecting refugees with hosts in Canada, France, Greece, and the United States. Ultimately, refugees will be just one group that the site aims to help: Site visitors can also nominate other groups of people for temporary placements, and the platform will expand to include them eventually. At Backchannel, Jessi Hempel dives into the home-sharing platform’s latest effort, and places it in the context of the company’s broader business strategy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Airbnb Announces Its Plan To House 100,000 People In Need

Electric Vehicles Have Another Record Year, Reaching 2 Million Cars In 2016

An anonymous reader shares a report from the International Energy Agency: The number of electric cars on the roads around the world rose to 2 million in 2016, following a year of strong growth in 2015, according to the latest edition of the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook. China remained the largest market in 2016, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world. With more than 200 million electric two-wheelers and more than 300, 000 electric buses, China is by far the global leader in the electrification of transport. China, the US and Europe made up the three main markets, totaling over 90% of all EVs sold around the world. Electric car deployment in some markets is swift. In Norway, electric cars had a 29% market share last year, the highest globally, followed by the Netherlands with 6.4%, and Sweden with 3.4%. The electric car market is set to transition from early deployment to mass market adoption over the next decade or so. Between 9 and 20 million electric car could be deployed by 2020, and between 40 and 70 million by 2025, according to estimates based on recent statement from carmakers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.