An anonymous reader writes: Rolls-Royce has unveiled its first driverless vehicle dubbed The Vision Next 100. It is an autonomous vehicle aimed at “the most discerning and powerful patrons in the world.” There’s no steering wheel but there is a silk “throne” where passengers can sit and stare out the window. Rolls-Royce said the zero-emission model, codenamed 103EX, showed the company “rejects the notion of anonymous, utilitarian and bland future modes of mobility.” The owner will be “encircled by the most modern handcrafted fine-line Macassar wood panelling” as they gaze at a “generous” high-definition television display. In addition to the “finest one-off deep-pile ivory wool carpet, ” the vehicle features a virtual assistant named Eleanor, inspired after the actor Eleanor Thornton. It will be able to remind users about meetings; it will even bring the car around to the front of the owner’s house at the start of a journey. “As the Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 gracefully comes to a halt, something magnificent occurs, ” the company said. The glass roof rises to allow the occupant to stand, while a step emerges from below the running board and a red light is projected, “carpet-like” to announce their arrival. Rolls-Royce did not say how the vehicle would be powered or how much it costs, but it did say it’s due to hit the streets in the 2040s. You can watch a 360-degree video of the 103EX the company posted on YouTube. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Rolls-Royce Unveils First Driverless Car Complete With Silk ‘Throne’
An anonymous reader writes from a report issued by Softpedia on May 27: Microsoft and several other security researchers have detected the first ransomware versions that appears to have self-propagation features, being able to spread to other machines on its own by copying itself to shared network drives or portable storage devices automatically. Called ZCryptor, this ransomware seems to enjoy quite the attention from crooks, who are actively distributing today via Flash malvertising and boobytrapped Office files that infect the victim if he enables macro support when opening the file. This just seems to be the latest addition to the ransomware family, one which recently received the ability to launch DDoS attacks while locking the user’s computer. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. House of Representatives has passed H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, sending it on to the Senate and from there, hopefully anyhow, to the President. The yeas were swift and unanimous. The bill, which was introduced in the House early last year and quickly found bipartisan support, updates the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, closing a loophole that allowed emails and other communications to be obtained without a warrant. It’s actually a good law, even if it is arriving a couple of decades late. “Under current law, there are more protections for a letter in a filing cabinet than an email on a server, ” said Congresswoman Suzan Delbene during the debate period. An earlier version of the bill also required that authorities disclose that warrant to the person it affected within 10 days, or 3 if the warrant related to a government entity. That clause was taken out in committee — something trade groups and some of the Representatives objected to as an unpleasant compromise. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
