Month: December 2017

Jonathan Gitlin

It's OK to be a little confused by the dizzying array of Porsches to wear the 911 badge. The rear-engined sports car first appeared in 1963 and has been in production ever since. Considering that the 1,000,000th 911 came off the production line in May, perhaps this approach of catering to a wide variety of tastes with a single car makes sense; right now there are 23 different 911 variants available in the company's lineup, and the latest of these is the 911 T.

It's a name revived from history. The first 911T appeared in 1968, fitting into the middle of the range with bigger brakes and wider wheels taken from some of the racier cars, but with what today seems like a very meagre 110-horsepower engine. Fast forward 50 years and the new 2018 911T also fills a particular niche.

Enlarge / Volkswagen AG Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) vehicles sit parked in a storage lot at San Bernardino International Airport (SBD) at dusk in San Bernardino, California, U.S., on Wednesday, April 5, 2017. Volkswagen agreed last year to buy back about 500,000 diesels that it rigged to pass U.S. emissions tests if it can't figure out a way to fix them. In the meantime, the company is hauling them to storage lots, such as ones at an abandoned NFL stadium outside Detroit, the Port of Baltimore and a decommissioned Air Force base in California. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images (credit: Getty Images)

In a letter to the US federal judge who will sentence him on Wednesday, former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt wrote "I must say that I feel misused by my own company in the diesel scandal or ‘Dieselgate'."

Schmidt is one of the most senior executives to be charged in the diesel emissions scandal that rocked Volkswagen Group in late 2015. The scandal broke when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused VW Group of installing illegal software on its diesel vehicles that would suppress the emissions control system while the car was being driven under normal driving conditions, thereby giving the cars better performance.

Schmidt, who was 48 at the time of his arrest, was in charge of emissions compliance for Volkswagen cars sold in the US during the years that VW pushed its "clean diesel" vehicles with emissions-defeating software. In the aftermath of the scandal, Schmidt left VW and returned to Germany, but he was arrested in January while on vacation in Miami. In August, the executive pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the US government and violate the Clean Air Act, and making a false statement under the Clean Air Act.

Enlarge / The iPhone 8 Plus dwarfs the iPhone X.

Some iPhone users woke up this weekend to continuously crashing iPhones, iPads, and other iDevices, and Apple has pushed out its iOS 11.2 software update early to fix this and numerous other issues. The update also starts the rollout for Apple Pay Cash and enables 7.5W wireless charging on new iPhones.

Users took to Internet forums early this weekend after discovering an iOS 11 bug that made their iPhones crash after 12:15am on December 2. Aside from the date and time, the issue was tied to local notifications from scheduled daily alerts or from apps that send repeat reminders. A support document issued by Apple tells users to turn off notifications for all apps on the iDevice before installing iOS 11.2. This bug appears to be the reason Apple pushed out iOS 11.2 so quickly to all users. The software update had been in beta for just over a month, and currently Apple hasn't even updated its security page to include security details about iOS 11.2.

In addition to fixing the date bug, iOS 11.2 starts the rollout of Apple Pay Cash. This is Apple's peer-to-peer payment system that lets users send and receive money through iMessage. Funds are drawn from a linked credit or debit card and are sent in the form of an Apple Pay Cash Card. Those who receive money through Apple Pay Cash can spend it through Apple's Wallet app or transfer the money to a linked bank account.