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Nissan Friend-Me Concept is cooler than its name

Here is the Nissan Friend-Me, a swoopy - and let us emphasize that word "swoopy" - sedan-with-a-hatchback developed specifically for Chinese youth in their mid-twenties, the ones born in the '80s mainly bereft of siblings due to China's one-child policy. The exterior is meant to be most imposing at night, when Nissan figures these single children will be getting together with their friends. The sheetmetal looks like it was shaped by waves, and the details like lighting and vent openings could have been penned on Krypton.
The real show is inside, where peers are made equal and can interact with one another via the "oracle stone." The concept is that instead of a driver and three passengers, everyone gets access to the same information and the ability to alter the ambiance of the car - dash readouts are provided for all of the occupants, and anyone can move content from their phones to the in-car screens to be shared throughout. As Nissan says, it's the end of anyone being a "music dictator."
Designed by Nissan Design China for a specific market-within-a-market estimated to contain 240 million potential buyers, Nissan says the wishes of these customers and the ideas in this car could shape automotive offerings for decades to come. So read all about it in the press release below and take some long virtual looks in the galleries of high-res photos.

Consumer Reports no longer recommends Honda Civic

Consumer Reports annual Car Reliability Survey is out, and yes, there are some big surprises. First and foremost? The venerable publication no longer recommends the Honda Civic. In fact, aside from the walking-dead CR-Z and limited-release Clarity fuel-cell car, the Civic is the only Honda to miss out on CR's prestigious nod. At the opposite end there's a surprise as well – Toyota and Lexus remain the most reliable brands on the market, but Buick cracked the top three. That's up from seventh last year, and the first time for an American brand to stand on the Consumer Reports podium. Mazda's entire lineup earned Recommended checks as well. Consumer Reports dinged the Civic for its "infuriating" touch-screen radio, lack of driver lumbar adjustability, the limited selection of cars on dealer lots fitted with Honda's popular Sensing system, and the company's decision to offer LaneWatch instead of a full-tilt blind-spot monitoring system. Its score? A lowly 58. The Civic isn't the only surprise drop from CR's Recommended ranks. The Audi A3, Ford F-150, Subaru WRX/STI, and Volkswagen Jetta, GTI, and Passat all lost the Consumer Reports' checkmark. On the flipside, a number of popular vehicles graduated to the Recommended ranks, including the BMW X5, Chevrolet Camaro, Corvette, and Cruze, Hyundai Santa Fe, Porsche Macan, and Tesla Model S. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the hilariously recall-prone Ford Escape getting a Recommended check – considering the popularity of Ford's small crossover, this is likely a coup for the brand, as it puts the Escape on a level playing field with the Recommended Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue. While Ford is probably happy to see CR promote the Escape, the list wasn't as kind for every brand. For example, of the entire Fiat Chrysler Automobiles catalog, the ancient Chrysler 300 was the only car to score a check – there wasn't a single Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, or Ram on the list. That hurts. FCA isn't alone at the low end, either. GMC, Jaguar Land Rover, Mini, and Mitsubishi don't have a vehicle on CR's list between them, while brands like Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Lincoln, Infiniti, and Cadillac only have a few models each. You can check out Consumer Reports entire reliability roundup, even without a subscription, here.

Renault and Nissan are among the businesses affected by massive ransomeware attack

SINGAPORE/TORONTO, May 14 (Reuters) - Technical staff scrambled on Sunday to patch computers and restore infected ones, amid fears that the ransomware worm that stopped car factories, hospitals, shops and schools could wreak fresh havoc on Monday when employees log back on. Cybersecurity experts said the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" which locked up more than 200,000 computers - had slowed, but the respite might only be brief. New versions of the worm are expected, they said, and the extent of the damage from Friday's attack remains unclear. Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said. Marin Ivezic, cybersecurity partner at PwC, said that some clients had been "working around the clock since the story broke" to restore systems and install software updates, or patches, or restore systems from backups. Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday. Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue," was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools. The agency has not responded to requests for comment. Hong Kong-based Ivezic said that the ransomware was forcing some more "mature" clients affected by the worm to abandon their usual cautious testing of patches "to do unscheduled downtime and urgent patching, which is causing some inconvenience." He declined to identify which clients had been affected. The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number will grow when people return to work on Monday. "The global reach is unprecedented ... and those victims, many of those will be businesses, including large corporations," Europol Director Rob Wainwright told Britain's ITV. "At the moment, we are in the face of an escalating threat. The numbers are going up, I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn (on) their machines on Monday morning." MONDAY MORNING RUSH?