Every year, the Caretta Plaza in Tokyo is adorned with an impressive light show to mark the end of another 365 days. This time, over 270, 000 LEDs are being used to create an elaborate six-minute audiovisual light show that you can see in these images. Read more…
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This Light Show in Tokyo Is Bewilderingly Pretty
Volkwagen’s attempt to compensate vehicle owners who drive one of the models included in the company’s emissions scandal is now official. The initial reports were indeed correct, as the company will offer $1, 000 in gift cards and other incentives to VW customers. On top of a $500 dealership credit, the 482, 000 diesel owners will also receive a $500 Visa gift card that can be used anywhere and free roadside assistance for three years. Audi customers who drive affected vehicles will be privy to the same “goodwill package, ” too. Owners will have to visit a special website to request the items by entering their car’s VIN number and mileage alongside their name and address. Volkwagen says those customers should receive the package in a month. The company is already offering $2, 000 in trade-in credit, and with today’s announcement, the total compensation for owners of vehicles included in the on-going saga can be worth up to $3, 000. [Image credit: Getty Images] Via: Phys.org Source: USA Today
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VW offers $1,000 in gift cards and vouchers to affected diesel owners
There’s a reason this guy’s so popular. Bjorn Nyland might be familiar to readers because he just earned himself a free Tesla Model X by successfully getting ten people to buy a Model S . He was able to promote the all-electric car so well because he’s been doing it for ages. He’s proven the capability of the S by taking it 233 miles on a charge even in the deepest, darkest Norwegian winter . He also knows how to wring a lot more miles out of an electric car when the weather’s warm. A little over 452 miles, to be exact. Decked out in a Model S with a “Slow” sticker on the rear end, Nyland and his friend Morgan Tørvolt drove for 18 hours and 40 minutes at an average speed of just 24.2 miles per hour (ouch) to get 452.8 miles out of their battery pack. They started and ended at the Supercharger station in Rødekro, Denmark. That’s an extreme bit of hypermiling that I think throws down the challenge gauntlet to Wayne Gerdes or anyone else who wants to see just how far a big EV with two people inside can go. Unsurprisingly, the duo did the drive in a P85D, which has an 85-kWh battery pack, the biggest Tesla currently sells. A P90D model is on the way , so we’ll open up the floor to comments to see how many miles you think can be be stretched out of an extra 5 kWh. Pure math would say Nyland and Tørvolt got 5.3 more miles per kWh, which would translate to 26.5 more miles. Somehow we think that’s a floor, not a ceiling. The previous record for hypermiling an 85-kWh Model S was set by the father-son duo of David and Adam Metcalf in last 2013. Their record was 423.5 miles . The Metron 7 team took their modified all-electric Mazda minivan 513.3 miles on one charge , but that was using a 108-kWh pack. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Teslarati Source: Bjørn Nyland (YouTube) Tags: autoblog, bjornnyland, hypermiling, ModelS, morgantorvolt, p85d, partner, syndicated, tesla, tesla p85d, video
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There’s a new Tesla Model S long-distance record: 452.8 miles
As promised, Tesla’s latest autopilot features are out in the wild. A handful of Model S drivers are now testing the electric car’s upcoming semi-autonomous tech, including highway autosteer (which tackles lanes, passing and vehicle distance) and automatic parallel parking. Ideally, these vehicular pioneers will find the last remaining quirks in both the autopilot’s behavior and its interface — those edge cases that tend to creep up only in the real world. It’s not clear exactly when everyday Model S owners will get their turn, but it’s important to temper expectations. The technology isn’t really a peek at a future dominated by self-driving cars … at least, not yet. You’ll still need to flick the turn signal to pass cars (to indicate intent and absolve Tesla of liability), and the additions won’t help much when you’re stuck in city traffic. Think of this more as a step up from the lane and braking assists that you see on other cars . They’ll eliminate more of the monotony of driving, but there’s no point at which you can completely glaze over. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Autoblog Source: IEEE Spectrum , Teslarati Tags: autopilot, car, electriccar, electricvehicle, ev, models, semi-autonomous, tesla, transportation
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Tesla starts testing its autopilot features with Model S drivers
DeviceGuru writes: Russia-based Eltechs announced its ExaGear Desktop virtual machine last August, enabling Linux/ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs to run x86 software. That meant that users of the quad-core, Cortex-A7-based Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, could use it as well, although the software was not yet optimized for it. Now Eltechs has extended extended ExaGear to support earlier ARMv6 versions of the Raspberry Pi. The company also optimized the emulator for the Pi 2 allowing, for example, Pi 2 users to use automatically forwarding startup scripts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TaleSlinger sends this news from Space.com: Astronomers may finally have detected a signal of dark matter, the mysterious and elusive stuff thought to make up most of the material universe. While poring over data collected by the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton spacecraft, a team of researchers spotted an odd spike in X-ray emissions coming from two different celestial objects — the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster. “The signal’s distribution within the galaxy corresponds exactly to what we were expecting with dark matter — that is, concentrated and intense in the center of objects and weaker and diffuse on the edges, ” [assuming that dark matter consists of sterile neutrinos] study co-author Oleg Ruchayskiy, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, said in a statement. “With the goal of verifying our findings, we then looked at data from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and made the same observations, ” added lead author Alexey Boyarsky, of EPFL and Leiden University in the Netherlands. The decay of sterile neutrinos is thought to produce X-rays, so the research team suspects these may be the dark matter particles responsible for the mysterious signal coming from Andromeda and the Perseus cluster.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Possible Dark Matter Signal Spotted
If you’re a Google Play Music All Access subscriber, you’ll get access to the new YouTube Music Key service next week. If you’re not, you can sign up for the beta here . Read more…
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If you’re a Google Play Music All Access subscriber, you’ll get access to the new YouTube Music Key
AT&T has phased out a controversial tracking program it used that inserted identification tags without an opt-out into users’ internet traffic. Read more…
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Oh Good: AT&T Will Stop Putting Undeletable Tracking IDs on Your Phone
With another sweltering summer over you might have already forgotten the glory of your AC unit, the 100-year-old modern convenience which truly changed the way we live. But the U.S. might have felt the cool breeze of relief a half-century sooner, if an entire industry built on keeping things frozen hadn’t stopped the first air conditioner from being made. Read more…
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We could have had AC 50 years earlier but the ice lobby killed it
There’s no doubt about it, being able to see more than just the visible spectrum is the closest thing most of us will ever have to superpowers . Seeing the world through its heat signature is almost like having x-ray vision, and let’s not forget, even the Predator made sure to bring his thermal camera with him on his hunting trip to earth. Read more…
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16 Ways To Use FLIR’s Incredibly Fun Predator-Vision iPhone Camera