Techlife News #360

Ferrari is paving its way to future growth with a look to its roots. The company’s new CEO, Louis Camilleri, unveiled a new business plan Tuesday that includes reviving iconic models and embedding them with Formula One technology. Significantly expanding Ferrari’s electric-gasoline hybrid powertrain offering and affirming plans to introduce a utility vehicle that hews to the brand’s performance levels, Camilleri laid out his ambitions for a company he took over only in July following the death of long-time CEO and chairman Sergio Marchionne. “Our objectives are ambitious, but they are based on a meticulously constructed model pipeline, our enviable pricing power and appropriate investment levels,” Camilleri told investors. Under a five-year plan, Ferrari is planning to launch an unprecedented 15 new models, targeting revenues of around 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) by 2022,…

Tesla Inc. has turned over documents to the U.S. Justice Department after statements by CEO Elon Musk about taking the company private, the electric car maker confirmed Tuesday. The Palo Alto, California, company cooperated with the request and believes the matter should be resolved quickly once federal prosecutors review information they have received, according to a company statement. News of a potential criminal investigation pushed Tesla stock down 5 percent in morning trading Tuesday, but the decline subsided a bit by early afternoon to 3.4 percent, at $284.89. “We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process,”Tesla’s statement said. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday morning that the Justice Department is running a criminal probe parallel to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The news service cited two…

The U.S. government will test and implement a new system to capture and destroy dangerous vapors released at the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site as part of a settlement agreement reached Wednesday. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters that the agreement represents a major win for hundreds of workers who have been getting sick for years while cleaning up the nation’s nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington. “Those workers deserve to be protected,” Ferguson said. He added that the U.S. Department of Energy did not take the issue seriously and resisted putting protections in place. “There’s no way to sugar coat this,” Ferguson said. The Energy Department will for the first time test a new technology that Ferguson called “game-changing” that would protect workers from the vapor…

Three young computer hackers whose “botnet” known as Mirai virtually paralyzed chunks of the internet two years ago have received light sentences after helping the FBI with cybercrime and cybersecurity. Paras Jha, 22, of Fanwood, New Jersey; Josiah White, 21, of Washington, Pennsylvania; and Dalton Norman, 22, of Metairie, Louisiana, were sentenced Tuesday to five years of probation and 62½ workweeks of community service in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. The three men, who pleaded guilty to computer fraud charges in December, also were ordered to pay $127,000 in restitution and gave up what authorities said was a significant amount of cryptocurrency. Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess handed down the sentences after the men cooperated extensively with the FBI on cybercrime investigations and broader defensive efforts, according to a statement from the…

It’s almost moving day on the stock market. The line-ups of three of the 11 groups that make up the benchmark S&P 500 index are being shuffled as of last Monday. Twenty companies in the index including famous names like Facebook, Alphabet and Netflix will find a new home. The most notable change will occur with the telecommunications group, currently the smallest piece of the market. It gets reinvented as communication services and grows from three to 19 companies, adding some key names from the technology and the consumer discretionary sectors. The S&P’s changes reflect the way the communications and media industries have evolved. AT&T and Verizon were once known as phone companies, but they’re now media companies as well: AT&T just bought Time Warner, the parent of HBO and Warner Bros. movie…

Comcast and 21st Century Fox will settle their battle for control of broadcaster Sky through a rare auction designed to put an end to months of offers and counteroffers from the American media empires seeking a foothold in the European pay TV market. The auction will begin after the London stock market’s close on Friday and end sometime Saturday evening following a maximum of three rounds of bidding, said Britain’s regulator, the Takeover Panel. Fox started the bidding war last December, when it sought to acquire the 61 percent of Sky it doesn’t already own. Comcast has since offered 26 billion pounds ($34.3 billion) for Sky, topping Fox’s latest bid of $24.5 billion. The regulator said it called the auction “to provide an orderly framework for the resolution of this competitive situation.” Fox,…