Tesla Model X production starts in earnest, pricing revealed

(credit: Tesla) Several months ago we found out pricing for the fully loaded “Signature” edition Tesla Model X electric SUV. Now, we’ve got a better idea of what the cheapest Model X will set you back: $80,000 before any options and tax rebates or incentives. That’s for the 70D, which has all-wheel drive (a motor for each axle) and a 70kWh battery (pricing for the 90D and P90D haven’t been announced). That’s $5000 more than the equivalent Model S sedan , which hits 60mph a little quicker and has a slightly longer range than the SUV but not the same funky rear doors. The distinctive Falcon wing doors are Tesla’s approach to making an SUV with all the utility of a minivan; that was how Elon Musk described the design brief back in September. By opening up and out, they’re supposed to give better access to the rear seats while taking up less space than a traditional door. There are three different interior layouts. The base 70D is a five seater, but there’s also a six seat version (three rows of two) for an extra $3000 and seven seats are yours for $4500. Tesla released the pricing information for the 70D Model X at the same time it told customers with preorders that they can begin configuring their vehicles. Screenshots of the online configurator provided by Tesla to Ars state that Model X deliveries will begin in early 2016, starting with range-topping P90D orders. “Lesser” 90D Model Xs follow by mid-year, with 70D deliveries before 2017. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tesla Model X production starts in earnest, pricing revealed

How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Chats with Google Drive

It’s been a long time coming, but Google Drive backups have finally arrived in the WhatsApp client for Android (if you don’t see the option yet, you should soon). Here’s how to make sure all your chats, photos, and videos are safe and sound, and how to get them back again if you need to. Read more…

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How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Chats with Google Drive

Google Street View gives you a tour of ancient Jordan landmarks

Jordan is home to some extremely significant historical and religious sites. However, visiting those landmarks in person is no mean feat — which is why Google just added many of them to Street View. Fire up your web browser and you can get virtual, 360-degree tours of more than 30 ancient locations, including the city of Petra (above), Jerash and legendary castles from the Crusades. We suspect that this will pale in comparison to the grandeur of seeing these relics first-hand, but you should at least have an inkling of what the experience would be like. Source: Google Maps

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Google Street View gives you a tour of ancient Jordan landmarks

Square’s new reader arrives to accept mobile payments and chip cards

We’ve known about Square’s new NFC-friendly reader for a while, and now the point-of-sale gadget is available for use. Starting today, 100 merchants in “select cities” (quite a few, actually) will begin accepting NFC-driven payments like Apple Pay , Android Pay , Samsung Pay and those newfangled chip credit/debit cards . The reader is a square pad (of course) separate from the company’s usual POS setups and sliding readers, allowing you to hover your phone or insert a card to complete purchase. The unit is wireless and pairs with either a countertop system or Square’s free mobile app to handle the transactions. However, the new reader itself will set businesses back $49 in order to get started. For the initial rollout, look for the device at businesses in the following cities: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle, St. Louis Tampa, and Washington, D.C.

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Square’s new reader arrives to accept mobile payments and chip cards

An Army colonel is in trouble for complaining that a $500k gas station cost $43 million to build

Army Col. John Hope blew the whistle on a task force that spent $43 million to build a useless gas station in Afghanistan. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says the useless gas station should have cost about $500,000. As a result of pointing out the doubly wasteful project, Hope has “been singled out for retaliation and retribution” for “speaking truth,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. The gas station is useless because it supplies natural gas to cars that have been converted to run on natural gas. But there are hardly any cars that run on natural gas in Afghanistan, and the cost to convert a car to run on natural gas is $700. The average annual income in Afghanistan is $690, according to the Washington Post . More from the Washington Post : The high cost of the gas station has angered many in Congress. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) has scheduled a hearing on it for next month. And Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said it was one of the worst cases of wasteful spending that she has ever seen. “There are few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop,” she said in a statement. “But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me.” The contractor, Central Asian Engineering Construction Company, originally bid $3 million to build the gas station, which is already an order of magnitude too much to charge. How they ended up charging $43 million is a mystery. I wonder who owns Central Asian Engineering Construction Company?

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An Army colonel is in trouble for complaining that a $500k gas station cost $43 million to build

Shazam’s song recognition just got a lot faster

Shazam is doubling down on what it does best with its latest update: Recognizing songs when your memory (or pop cultural knowhow) fails you. And, for the first time, the app now highlights a search feature on its main page, which lets you dig for more information about songs and artists. The goal, naturally, is to convince you to stay within Shazam rather than hopping over to the web for music research. In my brief testing, the new Shazam app recognized songs from television and radio in a few seconds — at times it even found a result in under a second. It feels significantly faster than previous versions of the app, which sometimes took over five seconds to lock onto a song. That’s not a huge difference, but given that Shazam has been around for years (it was one of the first killer apps back when the iPhone’s App Store launched in 2008), it needs to keep improving to keep up with competitors like Soundhound. Via: TechCrunch Source: Shazam

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Shazam’s song recognition just got a lot faster

Intel Broadwell-E, Apollo Lake, and Kaby Lake Details Emerge In Leaked Roadmap

bigwophh writes: In Q4 2016, Intel will release a follow up to its Skylake processors named Kaby Lake, which will mark yet another 14nm release that’s a bit odd, for a couple of reasons. The big one is the fact that this chip mayn not have appeared had Intel’s schedule kept on track. Originally, Cannonlake was set to succeed Skylake, but Cannonlake will instead launch in 2017. That makes Kaby Lake neither a tick nor tock in Intel’s release cadence. When released, Kaby Lake will add native USB 3.1 and HDCP 2.2 support. It’s uncertain whether these chips will fit into current Z170-based motherboards, but considering the fact that there’s also a brand-new chipset on the way, we’re not too confident of it. However, the so-called Intel 200 series chipsets will be backwards-compatible with Skylake. It also appears that Intel will be releasing Apollo Lake as early as the late spring, which will replace Braswell, the lowest-powered chips Intel’s lineup destined for smartphones. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Broadwell-E, Apollo Lake, and Kaby Lake Details Emerge In Leaked Roadmap

This High-Def Footage Of Colored Water On The ISS Is Mesmerizing 

This is really cool: astronauts onboard the International Space Station have long shown off what it’s like to play with water in microgravity. Now, they’ve taken some ultra high-def footage with color and effervescent tablets. Read more…

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This High-Def Footage Of Colored Water On The ISS Is Mesmerizing