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Is Elon Musk serious about the Tesla Semi?

Wrightspeed is currently working with Mack Trucks to supply the OEM with electric powertrains for its LM chassis. Wrightspeed Out of all of Elon Musk’s recent “Master Plan Part Deux,” the part that really caught our eye was a short paragraph about a Tesla semi. Much of the rest—solar, autonomous driving, ride-sharing—wasn’t exactly unforeseen. But the idea of a heavy duty Tesla electric vehicle took us by surprise and left us scratching our heads. Tesla isn’t the only company going after this market; Wrightspeed, Proterra, and BYD are already building heavy duty urban electric vehicles, and Mercedes-Benz is about to enter the fray. The Nikola Motor Company (no connection to Tesla Motors) already has 7,000 orders for a zero-emission heavy duty freight hauler that won’t be revealed until December. To find out if our confusion over the Tesla Semi is unwarranted, we spoke to some of the big players in the heavy duty EV market. Even though heavy duty vehicles only account for about eight percent of US carbon emissions (light duty vehicles make up roughly 20 percent), Wrightspeed CEO Ian Wright says electrifying that sector makes more economic sense. In fact, Wright doesn’t think the economics work in favor of electric passenger vehicles. “A Nissan Leaf is twice the price of a Versa and you only save $800 a year,” he told Ars, “that’s a 20-year payback time.” Wright goes on: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex Says It Was Hacked, Roughly $60M Stolen

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex said late on Tuesday it has suspended trading on its exchange after it discovered a security breach, according to a company statement on its website. The company said it has also suspended deposits and withdrawals of digital currencies from the exchange. “We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen, ” the company said. “We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.” The company said it has reported the theft to law enforcement. It said it has not yet determined the value of digital currencies stolen from customer accounts. CoinDesk reports that the company confirmed roughly 120, 000 BTC (more than $60 million) has been stolen via social media. “In response, bitcoin prices fell to $560.16 by 19:30 UTC, $530 by 23:30 and $480 at press time, CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data reveals, ” reports CoinDesk. “This price was roughly 20% lower than the day’s opening of $607.37 and 27% below the high of $658.28 reached on Saturday, July 30th, when the digital currency began pushing lower.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex Says It Was Hacked, Roughly $60M Stolen

Read the first 13 years of ‘Nintendo Power’ on Archive.org

Before the yawning information-spouting chasm of the Internet, there were two ways you could get information on video games: your dubiously-trustful buddies and trade magazines. Despite being a company rag that only covered things coming out on its own consoles, Nintendo Power was one of the best of these publications for its wonderful artwork and community culture. But don’t take my word for it: Now you can parse through the first 13 years of the magazine at Archive.org. The collection spans from the first issue , published in July of 1988 with its now-iconic claymation Mario cover, to number 145 in June 2001. For some of you, these doubtless offer a trip down memory lane to a time when cartridges ruled and console affiliation split friendships. But don’t assume the nostalgia train won’t stop for those who never cracked open an issue. The dated advertisements alone are worth the price of admission for wacky fashions and the outrageous exuberance they hoped would appeal to kids zonked on high-sugar cereal. Times change, and we don’t need video game magazines like we used to. Now you can post on social media or find any title’s subreddit community to talk shop with other enthusiasts. But these publications offered a light in the wilderness for certain kinds of nerds to share experiences on the letters page, writing in to editors and seeing their heroes respond publicly. So load up a few old issues and see how things like the first 3D console games had blown people’s minds. You’ll get a new appreciation for the miracles we play today.

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Read the first 13 years of ‘Nintendo Power’ on Archive.org

The federal government just approved first private mission to the Moon

An artist’s concept of Moon Express’ MX-1 lander on the surface of the Moon. Moon Express The Outer Space Treaty requires countries to “authorize and continuously supervise” the activities of space missions under their jurisdiction, including those of commercial companies. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration carries out those duties with regard to private spaceflight, and things have worked well enough. But now a number of companies, including SpaceX with its Red Dragon mission , are seeking to push beyond Earth orbit, which has been the traditional boundary for commercial activity. Perhaps the biggest of the many questions this raises is how permissive the federal government would be regarding this new commercial interest. The early answer seems encouraging. The first company to apply for a commercial space mission beyond Earth orbit has just received approval from the federal government. As part of the Google Lunar X Prize competition, Moon Express intends to launch a small, single-stage spacecraft to land on the Moon by the end of 2017. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The federal government just approved first private mission to the Moon

8TB disks seem to work pretty well, HGST still impressive

(credit: Alpha six ) Cloud backup and storage provider Backblaze has published its latest batch of drive reliability data. The release covers failure information for the 70,000 disks that the company uses to store some 250PB of data. This is the first quarter that Backblaze has been using a reasonable number of new 8TB disks: 45 from HGST and 2720 from Seagate. Drives from both companies are showing comparable annualized failure rates: 3.2 percent for HGST, 3.3 percent for Seagate. While the smaller HGST drives show better reliability, with annualized failure rates below one percent for the company’s 4TB drives, the figures are typical for Seagate, which Backblaze continues to prefer over other alternatives due to Seagate’s combination of price and availability. Annualized failure rates for all of Backblaze’s drives. (credit: Backblaze) But it’s still early days for the 8TB drives. While evidence for the phenomenon is inconclusive, hard drive reliability is widely assumed to experience a “bathtub curve” when plotting its failure rate against time: failure rates are high when the drives are new (due to “infant mortality” caused by drives that contain manufacturing defects) and when the drives reach their expected lifetime (due to the accumulated effects of wear and tear), with a period of several years of low failure rates in the middle. If the bathtub theory is correct, Backblaze’s assortment of 8TB drives should suffer fewer failures in the future. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Windows 10’s Anniversary Update arrives

After a few months of hype , the Windows 10 Anniversary Update is here… well, mostly. Microsoft has started rolling out the upgrade to desktop users, who’ll automatically receive it stages with “newer machines” getting it first. You can update manually if you just can’t stand sitting behind the curve. However long you wait, your PC will get more pervasive Cortana voice commands (such as controlling some apps), deeper pen input (including a dedicated pen interface) and a spruced-up Edge browser with extensions . If you’re hoping to update your Windows 10 phone … well, you’ll have to be patient. The Redmond crew will only say that the Anniversary Update hits smartphones in the “coming weeks.” Not that there’s as much of a rush in the first place. While the Windows 10 Mobile release gets some desktop features (such as cross-platform Cortana syncing) as well as interface tweaks (like more active Live Tiles and swipe-based browser navigation), it’s not the star of the show this time around. Source: Windows Experience Blog

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Windows 10’s Anniversary Update arrives

Latest Firefox update will help stop your browser from crashing

If Microsoft’s anniversary update and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 launch weren’t already enough excitement for you in one day, then hold on tight. Mozilla’s rolling out an update that brings a multi-process version of Firefox to some users. Trust us, it is exciting. The most potentially useful update here is Firefox’s new ability to split its workload into multiple processes. By splitting up Web content and Firefox’s own UI processes, the toolbars and buttons should never become unresponsive. Mozilla’s also tweaked the Awesome Bar to offer up more suggestions and to make it easier to read, redesigned the Discovery Pane and improved security for downloads. This last feature means that new classes of downloads are now protected — potentially unwanted software and uncommon downloads. Meanwhile, on mobile, Firefox for Android is getting a couple of worthwhile tweaks, like a merging of Reading Lists into Bookmarks, and moving Synced Tabs to the History Panel. If you’re watching a video while you receive a call, it’ll now pause automatically too. All in all, both the Android and Desktop updates are worth checking out, but don’t get too excited about that multi-process just yet — Mozilla’s rolling it out in a very cautious way that starts with around 1 percent of users and will shortly ramp up to around half, providing there are no major problems. Source: Mozilla

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Latest Firefox update will help stop your browser from crashing

Hacker Selling Data For 200 Million Yahoo Users On The Dark Web

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: A listing was published today on TheRealDeal Dark Web marketplace claiming to be offering data on over 200 million Yahoo users, sold by the same hacker that was behind the LinkedIn, Tumblr, MySpace, and VK data dumps. In statements to Softpedia, Yahoo said it was investigating the breach, but based on the seller’s reputation, it is very likely the data is authentic. The data is up for sale for 3 Bitcoin (approximately ~$1, 800), and based on the sample the hacker provided, the data dump includes details such as usernames, MD5-hashed passwords, and dates of birth for all users. For some records, there is also a backup email address, country of origin, and ZIP code for U.S. users. The hacker, called Peace, has also told Softpedia that he previously made $50, 000 from the LinkedIn breach alone, and over $65, 000 in total from all breaches. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Selling Data For 200 Million Yahoo Users On The Dark Web

Olympic Swimmers ‘Certain’ To Pick Up Virus From Three Teaspoons of Rio Water

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Independent: The Associated Press has released a 16-month-long study that shows just days before the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro begin, the waterways in the city are teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria. The report says both athletes and tourists are at risk of getting ill from the contaminated water. “The first results of the study published over a year ago showed viral levels at up to 1.7 million times what would be considered worrisome in the United States or Europe, ” reports The Independent. “At those concentrations, swimmers and athletes who ingest just three teaspoons of water are almost certain to be infected with viruses that can cause stomach and respiratory illnesses and, more rarely, heart and brain inflammation — although whether they actually fall ill depends on a series of factors including the strength of the individual’s immune system.” Many of the athletes have been taking antibiotics, bleaching oars and donning plastic suits and gloves to prevent illnesses, but antibiotics combat bacterial infections, not viruses. The AP investigation found that infectious adenovirus readings turned up at nearly 90 percent of the test sites over 16 months of testing. What’s more is that “the beaches often have levels of bacterial markers for sewage pollution that would be cause for concern abroad — and sometimes even exceed Rio state’s lax water safety standards, ” reports The Independent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Olympic Swimmers ‘Certain’ To Pick Up Virus From Three Teaspoons of Rio Water

You can cut this display with scissors

Want a display that can take any shape ? You might not need a factory to cut it for you in the future — may only need a pair of scissors and a steady hand. Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science has developed a flexible, organic/metal hybrid polymer display that you can cut without wrecking it. The technology only needs a few seconds of power to adjust to its new shape, and it even maintains its last information when you switch it off, a lot like e-paper. The existing design only displays in one color and has a limited display area. It’s easy to see the practical purposes even now, though. You could make your own clothes with integrated displays, or craft smart wearables that fit the exact shape of your wrist. The researchers also envision a world where you could change the colors of car interiors, sunglasses and windows thanks to displays that fit just about anything. Any such breakthrough is undoubtedly years away, but the very fact that it’s a possibility is noteworthy. Via: Science News Journal Source: NIMS

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You can cut this display with scissors

Ken May

Author: kenmay