Data shows Tesla owner experienced repeated glitch days before deadly 2018 crash

Owner complained to family about the dangerous bug—but may not have told Tesla.

A crashed sedan has been torn in half.

Enlarge / Walter Huang's Model X in a tow yard days after his fatal crash. (credit: NTSB)

On March 23, 2018, a glitch in Tesla's Autopilot technology contributed to the death of Walter Huang in Mountain View, California. As Huang's Model X approached a left exit on US Highway 101, the software apparently got the lane lines mixed up. The car steered to the left, putting itself in the space between the diverging lanes. Seconds later, it crashed into a concrete lane divider at 70 miles per hour. Huang was taken to the hospital but died soon afterward.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board released dozens of new documents that provide a detailed understanding of the circumstances of Huang's death. The documents confirm a claim by Walter Huang's family that he had experienced this particular glitch, in this particular spot, multiple times prior to his fatal crash. He complained to family and friends about the issue. However, the NTSB was not able to confirm another key claim: that Huang reported the issue to Tesla.

Forensic data also suggests one reason Huang might not have been paying attention to the road in the final seconds before his death: he was in the habit of playing a game called Three Kingdoms in his car while driving to work. Logs from his Apple-provided iPhone showed that he used the app during his morning commute every day the week of his fatal Friday crash. However, those logs don't provide enough information to say if he was interacting with the game in the final seconds before his death.

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Got small kids? Now’s a good time to buy a Fire Kids Edition tablet

Fire HD with Freetime Unlimited is a great, cheap option for younger kids.

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Enlarge / The 8" version of the Fire HD Kids Edition is the sweet spot—small enough for young kids, but noticeably bigger and nicer than the 7", with lots more storage. (credit: Amazon)

If you have little kids and need an inexpensive, safe source of games, media, and books for them, we've got good news for you—Amazon's Fire Kids Edition line of tablets are all on Black Friday-level sale right now. The Fire 7 Kids Edition is down from $100 to $60, the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is down from $130 to $80, and the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is down from $200 to $150. (The non-Kids Edition slates are on sale as well, with the Fire 7 available for $40, the Fire HD 8 available for $60, and the Fire HD 10 available for $110).

If you're already a Fire Kids Edition user, that might be all you need to know. But for new(er) parents who haven't figured out what electronics to get for their little ones yet, let's go over some features—and advice—from a father of three who's been there and done that.

Fire HD—sort of an Android device, but not really

There are only two major tablet operating systems right now: Google's Android and Apple's iOS. In the technical sense, Amazon's Fire HD tablets—including the Kids Edition line—are without a doubt Android.

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 02/17/20

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘Frozen 2′ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Knives Out’. ’21 Bridges’ completes the top three.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Frozen 2 is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (…) Frozen II 7.1 / trailer
2 (3) Knives Out 8.0 / trailer
3 (…) Charlie’s Angels 4.2 / trailer
4 (1) 21 Bridges 6.6 / trailer
5 (2) Ford v Ferrari 8.2 / trailer
6 (…) Parasite 8.6 / trailer
7 (…) Jumanji: The Next Level (Subbed HDRip) 6.9 / trailer
8 (5) Jojo Rabbit 8.0 / trailer
9 (4) Terminator: Dark Fate 6.4 / trailer
10 (8) Joker 8.8 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Fight or flight: How horror movies manipulate our brains for peak excitement

“The whole brain is responsive to a potential threat, at the expense of anything else.”

There's a demon behind you! Patrick Wilson starred in Director James Wan's  2010 film <em>Insidious</em>, one of two films used in a recent MRI study on fear.

Enlarge / There's a demon behind you! Patrick Wilson starred in Director James Wan's 2010 film Insidious, one of two films used in a recent MRI study on fear. (credit: Blumhouse Productions)

When we watch horror movies, our brains are hard at work, with lots of interconnected cross-talk between different regions to anticipate perceived threats and prepare to respond accordingly. This enhances our excitement while watching, according to scientists at the University of Turku in Finland. Researchers used an MRI to map the neural activity of subjects while the subjects watched horror movies. Their findings are described in a recent paper published in the journal NeuroImage.

According to co-author Matthew Hudson, now at the National College of Ireland in Dublin, the objective was to take a closer look at dynamic interactions in the brain during an intense emotional experience. Most prior studies on neural mechanisms have adopted a binary approach, in that the focus is on comparing two conditions. But this ignores the temporal dynamics between the two conditions—the continuous fear response.

Hudson told Ars, "We wanted to use a naturalistic stimuli and new ways to analyze neural data to try and understand exactly how the fear response changes over time" rather than simply comparing brain activity before and after a perceived threat. Horror movies provided the perfect fear-inducing stimulus.

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TCL phone with slide-out screen leaked (maybe)

While Motorola and Samsung continue struggling to deliver a foldable phone with a screen that doesn’t scratch, crack, or separate from the phone’s body easily, it looks like TCL may have an alternatives to foldables — rollables. Accor…

While Motorola and Samsung continue struggling to deliver a foldable phone with a screen that doesn’t scratch, crack, or separate from the phone’s body easily, it looks like TCL may have an alternatives to foldables — rollables. According to CNET, which obtained a set of images of a TCL concept phone with a roll-out display, […]

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SpaceX: Falcon 9 scheitert am Versuch der 50. Landung

Das Jubiläum fiel buchstäblich ins Wasser. Nach dem Start von 60 weiteren Starlink-Satelliten tat die erste Raketenstufe, was bei anderen Raketen normal ist: Sie landete im Meer. (SpaceX, Raumfahrt)

Das Jubiläum fiel buchstäblich ins Wasser. Nach dem Start von 60 weiteren Starlink-Satelliten tat die erste Raketenstufe, was bei anderen Raketen normal ist: Sie landete im Meer. (SpaceX, Raumfahrt)

Cloudflare Blocks Access to Pirate Site For “Legal Reasons”, Displays Rare 451 Error

CDN company Cloudflare is displaying an extremely rare ‘Error 451′ to German visitors who attempt to access a music piracy site. The message currently affecting DDL-Music.to states that the site has been rendered “Unavailable for Legal Reasons’. Contrary to Cloudflare’s own error code guide, no explanatory legal demand specifics have been published.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

As one of the most important infrastructure companies on the entire Internet, Cloudflare often finds itself embroiled in copyright disputes of other entities’ making.

Along with millions of other ‘normal’ websites, ‘pirate’ sites often use Cloudflare’s services. The CDN company has a stated aim of remaining a neutral intermediary but entertainment industry groups see the company as helping to facilitate piracy by assisting sites to more efficiently stay online while rendering their true locations harder to find.

While sites like The Pirate Bay, for example, are using Cloudflare’s services trouble-free at this very moment, the same cannot be said of Germany-focused music piracy site DDL-Music.to.

This morning, Tarnkappe informed TorrentFreak that visitors to the platform utilizing German IP addresses were being blocked by Cloudflare. While these kinds of claims are relatively common given the sometimes unreliable nature of pirate sites, in this case clarity is being provided by the CDN company itself, which clearly states that it has taken action.

Tests carried out for TF using the German-based IP address listed above returned a rare “Error HTTP 451” which, as the image shows, is deployed when a site is “Unavailable For Legal Reasons.” Tests carried out by us from IP addresses elsewhere in Europe accessed the site without issue, perhaps suggesting that any “legal reason” may be specific to German territory.

This is the first time that we’ve seen an Error HTTP 451 displayed by Cloudflare when attempting to access a pirate site. The special HTTP status code was approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) back in 2015 as a more informative alternative to the “403 Forbidden” code utilized by some ISPs engaged in blocking.

“A really good Error 451 message would tell their customers how to challenge a block, how long the block’s expected to last, where the relevant legal documents are and which legal authority imposed the blocking order,” the 451 Unavailable project wrote at the time.

A nod towards providing this additional information is actually mentioned in Cloudflare’s own 4XX error code documentation that was updated only this month.

“Server is unable to deliver the resource due to legal actions,” the notes against Error 451 read. “The response should include an explanation in the response body with details of the legal demand.”

As the above screenshot of the Cloudflare error shows, no explanation for the blocking is provided. Why that is the case is currently unknown since Cloudflare has yet to respond to our request for comment. However, DDL-Music’s status as an obvious pirate site (and one with a history of being targeted by copyright groups) leads us towards a theory that Cloudflare may have been placed under pressure.

With that in mind, it’s perhaps helpful to look at the recent history surrounding ISP blockades of pirate sites in Germany and how they have played out, mostly without direct intervention from the courts.

In March 2019, Vodafone told TorrentFreak it had implemented a blockade of pirate platform Boerse.to following a notification from local music rights group GEMA, an action duplicated by its service provider 1&1. Around the same time, Vodafone also began blocking DDL-Music. Kabel Deutschland is also known to block access to the music platform.

The companies believe that principles established by the Federal Court of Justice require them to do so, without a specific court order.

On the same basis, Vodafone previously blocked access to several other ‘pirate’ sites including S.to, BS.to, Libgen and Kinox.to.

Whether Cloudflare is following a similar pattern of behavior with its restriction of DDL-Music is currently unknown but we will update this article as soon as the company responds.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Daily Deals (2-17-2020)

Presidents Day sales started a week or two ago, but today is the official date of the US holiday, so if you’re looking for a deal on laptops, tablets, headphones, charging accessories, or other gadgets… I guess they’re still on sale. …

Presidents Day sales started a week or two ago, but today is the official date of the US holiday, so if you’re looking for a deal on laptops, tablets, headphones, charging accessories, or other gadgets… I guess they’re still on sale. Anyway, Lenovo is selling a Windows laptop for $150 today. Best Buy has a […]

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Samsung’s “Ultra Thin Glass” doesn’t seem much stronger than plastic

Testing shows the Galaxy Z Flip isn’t scratch-resistant or puncture-proof.

The Galaxy Z Flip's "glass" isn't any more scratch-resistant than plastic.

Enlarge / The Galaxy Z Flip's "glass" isn't any more scratch-resistant than plastic. (credit: JerryRigEverything)

There comes a point in the life of every foldable smartphone when, after a wave of hype and highly controlled early looks, the phone actually hits the hands of the general public—and durability issues immediately pop up. We've seen it with the Galaxy Fold, which died in the hands of reviewers and was delayed for six months; the Huawei Mate X, which had its launch limited to China and broke after a single drop; and the Moto Razr, which has a creaky hinge that jams easily and a display that delaminates. This weekend it was the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip's turn to disappoint us. The initial shipments are going out, and we're already seeing that Samsung's much-hyped flexible glass cover isn't much more durable than plastic.

YouTuber JerryRigEverything regularly does destructive durability tests on phones, partly by attacking a device with a set of Mohs picks. These pointy metal tools that are calibrated to the Mohs scale of mineral hardness allow a user to determine the hardness of a surface by doing a scratch test. You start with the softest pick and work your way up the set until you find something that can scratch the surface you're testing. A modern smartphone with Corning's Gorilla Glass scratches at level 6 on the Mohs hardness scale.

The Galaxy Z Flip features a first-of-its-kind flexible glass cover that Samsung calls "Ultra-Thin Glass." Until now, foldables have had to suffer through life with plastic display covers, which scratch easily, don't provide much protection, and just like a resistive touchscreen, feel bad to swipe around on, thanks to the squishy pliability of the display. With this new invention of flexible glass, the Z Flip promised a return to a hard, smooth, scratch-resistant display surface.

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Coronavirus cancels F1 and Formula E races, could make EU miss CO2 target

Sporting events and trade shows are cancelled or postponed as a result of contagion.

A man wearing a face mask rides his bicycle along an empty street in Beijing on February 12, 2020.

Enlarge / A man wearing a face mask rides his bicycle along an empty street in Beijing on February 12, 2020. (credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Coronavirus disease 2019—COVID-19 to its friends—hasn't racked up a bodycount like the influenza epidemic of 1918, but in this far more globalized world, it's still causing quite a degree of havoc. There are now over 71,000 confirmed cases reported so far, and fears of that number growing by orders of magnitude have resulted in the postponement or cancellation of large public events both in China and beyond. Last week we learned that Mobile World Congress, an annual tradeshow in Spain, won't happen in 2020—now we can start adding auto shows to that list.

On Monday, it emerged that the Beijing auto show—which was scheduled for April of this year—will be postponed, presumably until the health crisis is over. According to Autocar, rumors that the show would be cancelled or postponed had been circulating for a week, with no official response until now.

The Beijing auto show is in good company; last week the promoters of the Chinese Grand Prix—an F1 race scheduled to take place in Shanghai on April 19—successfully petitioned the FIA (the sport's organizing body) and Formula 1 to postpone the event until an as-yet-undecided date toward the end of the 2020 F1 season. Although there is no official word on the inaugural Vietnam Grand Prix—set for April 5—some in the sport are concerned about attending that race in Asia as well.

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