By Tian DuBelko
We round up the trending stories every week so you can catch up on the top tech news. This week, President Donald Trump said he wanted to the help of tech leaders to upgrade the federal IT infrastructure, Facebook unveiled a new mission statement, Elon Musk announced an update to his plan for settling Mars, and Amazon released the designs to its new beehive delivery drone nest. Get your weekly recap here, then head over to our blog for more stories.
Trump wants tech leaders to upgrade government IT
At Monday’s roundtable session of the American Technology Council, President Trump announced plans to upgrade existing government computer infrastructure. 18 U.S. tech leaders from firms including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft featured at the council. The upgrade, according to Trump, would save federal taxpayers over $1 trillion over the next 10 years. While it’s unclear how the upgrade will happen, Trump said it would be done with the help of “great American businesses.”
Facebook changes its mission statement
Facebook’s mission had been to “make the world more open and connected.” Yet that spoke little of how Facebook aimed to make a positive impact on the world. So recently, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new mission statement for the social giant, which is “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” This new statement appears more in line with how Facebook has gradually recast itself from a place for silly updates and pictures to a hub of community and modern discourse.
Elon Musk promises update for his Mars plan
Billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to send a million people to Mars in a decades-long plan. This week, Musk unveiled in a pair of tweets that a second version of the Mars plan would be out soon. He also teased in the tweets the topics that this update would contain, which will answer concerns such as paying for the development and operation of the giant rockets needed to get to Mars.
Amazon unveils plans for new beehive drones
Amazon’s drone delivery program is second to none, and if they had it their way, the future of drone delivery could be huge drone beehives. Amazon described them as “multi-level fulfillment centers” in a recently published patent application. They also described how these multi-story drone centers could be built to account for densely populated areas and provide quick delivery. Some issues that still need to be worked out is the potential noise of such a drone tower and potential safety issues.
