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Google’s Waymo self-driving cars will debut as Chrysler minivans

Every car comes with a free frisbee

Someday soon, it’ll be time to make way for the fleet of Waymo’s self-driving… minivans? Wait, way who? Yes WayMo, Google’s newly independent self-driving car division. WayMo has partnered up with Chrysler/Fiat to outfit 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans that will begin prowling the streets next year. The modified vans have a streamlined roof pod that holds LIDAR, cameras and other sensors.

The minivans will have all undergone extensive testing prior to deployment, and Chrysler says the fleet will continue to gather data on how self-driving cars behave under severe weather and traffic conditions. Both ford and GM also have plans to test fleets of robocars as the self-driving race heats up in the USA.

Elon Musk’s series of tubes

Even billionaires get stuck in traffic sometimes, and while most roll down the windows in their limousines to ask other billionaires for some fancy mustard, some take to twitter to figure out how to solve the problem. That billionaire would be Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk who started out saying the traffic was driving him nuts and ended by saying he was going to start a company that will construct an underground network of tunnels.

The company name? The Boring Company, of course, and we know just where it should be headquartered. So, just a joke, right Elon? Yeah, maybe… or maybe not. His last tweet on the subject was “I am actually going to do this” and his twitter profile blurb was changed to “Tesla, SpaceX, Tunnels (yes, tunnels) & OpenAI.” If you own a company that makes those big tunnel boring machines, you might want to check your voicemail.

They should add a course on cyber security

Online skill-building site Lynda dot com says they’ve changed the passwords of over 50,000 accounts following a security breach. In an email to its 9.5 million users, the company said there was no evidence the stolen data had been made available online, but as you know, that’s often just a matter of time. Lynda said the information included contract information and which courses a user viewed.

Lynda officials said they are working with law enforcement to see if they can track down the hackers. Lynda was recently purchased by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion, which was in turn snapped up by Microsoft for $26 billion. LinkedIn has also been a victim of hackers when data for 100 million users was swiped in 2012. Keep changing those passwords…

Bill Roberson
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I focus on producing Digital Trends' 'DT Daily' video news program along with photographing items we get in for review. I…
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