Month: June 2016

(credit: We Like Cars)

A lawyer for Volkswagen Group told a US district judge today that the company will probably be able to fix the 85,000 outstanding 3.0L diesel Porches, Audis, and Volkswagens that were also discovered to flout emissions regulations, following revelations that nearly 500,000 2.0L diesel vehicles were built with illegal emissions cheating software.

The 3.0L diesels were not included in Tuesday’s news that Volkswagen would spend $10 billion to buy back diesel cars that were spewing up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide (NO_x). The 3.0L cars were discovered two months after the first revelations of cheating and have since been on a separate track. VW Group contests that its 3.0L cars did not cheat on federal emissions tests in the same way that the 2.0L engines did, although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asserted that the cars in question were built with illegal auxiliary devices to circumvent emissions regulations.

Reuters reports that US District Judge Charles Breyer asked that VW Group provide and update on this fix on August 25, but the judge has not yet given VW Group a firm deadline to present a fix to US regulators. VW Group’s lawyer told the judge that the fix the company is currently working on would not be complicated or impact the cars’ performance greatly.

Dell's Venue 8 7000 was a decent tablet, but its future doesn't look bright. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

There's a lot of competition and not a lot of profit in the Android ecosystem, so it's not exactly surprising to hear that Dell plans to exit the Android business in order to focus on its Windows PCs and convertibles. According to The Verge, the company will continue to honor warranties and service contracts for Venue Android tablets, but it will no longer sell or develop new hardware and will stop releasing software updates for current devices.

This means no more updates for relatively recent releases like the odd but relatively well-reviewed Venue 8 7000.

The move is part of a wider strategy shift at Dell, one in which it will "divest from the slate tablet market" in favor of convertibles, partly because "the tablet opportunity in big business has passed" (read: it can't sell enough of these at a high enough margin to make the effort worthwhile). Windows is a stronger choice for devices that spend all or most of their time attached to keyboard docks, since it offers a wider range of "professional" apps and is already accepted among and familiar the business and IT types that Dell is targeting with these products. Dell also takes a not-so-subtle swipe at a couple of recent Apple tablets, saying that "CIOs and IT administrators have to consider much more than just the word “Pro” and visual appeal of a device when deciding which products to deploy among their workforce."

Enlarge / Spotify says Apple is using its privileged position to hurt Spotify's chances against Apple Music.

Apple Music has been around for about a year now, and despite being a little late to the game, Apple boasts that it has managed to pick up about 15 million paying subscribers. Spotify has at least twice that many users, but the company is worried that Apple is using its privileged position on iPads and iPhones to push Apple Music at the expense of third-party services.

According to a report from Recode, Apple has blocked an update to the iOS Spotify app, citing "business model rules." Spotify no longer offers iOS users the ability to subscribe to its Premium tier from within the app, a move which inconveniences users but more relevantly denies Apple its typical 30 percent cut of the revenue. The report claims this led directly to the new update being blocked, which according to Spotify's lawyers "raises serious concerns under both U.S. and EU competition law" and "[diminishes] the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music."

The iOS Spotify app used to offer in-app subscriptions but charged users $12.99 instead of the standard $9.99 to compensate for Apple's cut. Spotify recently offered iOS users a three-month trial of Spotify for $0.99 if they signed up through Spotify's site rather than the app, but pressure from Apple prompted the company to remove that promotion and the in-app subscription option altogether.

The Model S uses several sets of sensors, from optical to ultrasonic to radar, to maintain awareness of the traffic around you. (credit: Tesla Motors)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is about to take a closer look at Tesla's Autopilot, the company revealed on Thursday. In a blog post, Tesla says that it learned on Wednesday evening that the NHTSA is "opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot" following a fatal crash involving a Model S.

The incident, which happened in May, involved a white tractor-trailer that crossed the divider on a highway, perpendicular to the path of the Tesla, which was cruising on Autopilot. "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S," Tesla stated.

The company also stated that in a front-on or rear-end collision with the tractor-trailer, the outcome would not have ended in tragedy. It described the driver as "a friend to Tesla and the broader EV community" and expressed sympathy for his friends and family for their loss.

Silkeborg Museum

From the Silkeborg Museum, this is a recreation of the high-status woman's grave found in a Viking "death house" in Denmark.

8 more images in gallery

Construction of a new highway in Hårup, southwest Denmark, has unearthed farms and houses from the Middle Ages, including a rare Viking dødehus or "death house" dated to 950 C.E., packed with grave goods that reveal a lot about the three people buried within it. The death house was a common form of Viking tomb, but the Hårup death house has a very unusual design. It appears to have been inspired by early stave churches of Western Europe, with large wooden posts holding up heavy roof beams. Inside, archaeologists found other international influences. A ceramic vase came from the Baltic and two silver coins hail from the region now known as Afghanistan. These discoveries are testimony to how far Vikings traveled and how extensive their trade networks were.

The tomb itself is fairly roomy at 13 x 43 feet and was initially the resting place of a wealthy couple. Later, a third grave was added for another man. Though little remains of the bodies themselves, a few strands of the woman's black hair stood the test of time, as did the two keys she wore around her neck. The larger of these keys would have symbolized that she was the lady of a great house, and the other unlocked an unusual shrine. She was buried in a small wooden wagon, an honor also reserved only for noblewomen. At the woman's feet was the shrine, full of golden thread (probably used in fabric), fur, glass beads, and fine wool. Her husband was also buried in high style, with a massive Dane Axe, popular among high status men and seriously destructive on the battlefield. The third man, possibly the couple's heir, was buried with a slightly smaller Dane Axe.

(credit: Masahiro Ihara)

Nearly everyone knows you’re supposed to eat heaping helpings of fruits and vegetables every day. But that doesn’t mean that people actually follow through. In fact, in updated dietary guidelines released in January, the federal government called out nearly everyone for not eating enough produce (as well as eating way too much sugar). But now, researchers have followed up with what may be a simple fix.

In grocery stores, big emojis and arrows on the floor that direct and encourage people to head to the produce section actually got shoppers to buy more produce, researchers report Thursday in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. Moreover, after analyzing grocery bills, the researchers found that shoppers didn’t up their overall shopping budget to accommodate the fresh additions. In other words, grocery store goers weren’t simply piling on crops to their already full carts, but, rather, they were swapping other grocery items for healthy fruits and vegetables.

The findings suggest that adding the minor signage to more stores could be an easy way to get consumers to eat healthier produce. And if so, it “could trigger a public health shift” in a general population that is largely struggling with weight and dietary problems, lead author Collin Payne, of New Mexico State University, said in a statement.

Reddit user and Guild Wars 2 fan galveyra2 breaks down exactly how a Beijing hockey team infringed upon a well-known video game's logo. (credit: galveyra2)

On Wednesday, news hit the wire that a video game's indistinguishable logo and art style had been lifted without permission, all done to advertise a wholly unrelated product. Sadly, the news brought on a real case of deja vu. As in: wait, didn't this just happen?

As it turns out, it had. Two very similar stories unfolded within 48 hours of each other, and they each speak to a pair of modern copyright issues: the ease with which images can be lifted and reappropriated by a lazy design firm, and how easy it is for such copycats to be busted by the court of public opinion.

The more recent case involved a professional hockey team from Beijing, which was announced last week as the newest team to join an upstart, highly budgeted Eurasian league known as the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Once the Kunlun Red Star revealed its logo, eagle-eyed hockey fans noticed that it was very nearly a beat-for-beat copy of the dragon head from MMO sensation Guild Wars 2. Eyes, nose, tongue, and general shape—it's very clearly a match, minus some weak width-stretching efforts by Kunlun's Photoshop intern. (Props to Guild Wars 2 fan galveyra2 for the specific image analysis posted above.)