Tesla’s fastest charging stations claim upheld by ad watchdog

Ecotricity fails to convince the ASA that Tesla’s ad misleads customers.

(credit: Lee Hutchinson)

Tesla Motors' charging stations for electric cars can be described as the fastest currently available in the world, the UK's ad watchdog has ruled.

While there might be EV charging technology which might one day surpass Tesla's stations, specifically the GB/T charger from the Chinese manufacturer GuoBiao, the American company was found to be unsurpassed in the current market.

The Advertising Standards Authority investigated two complaints from British green energy company Ecotricity—which operates a number of EV charging stations in the UK—about claims Tesla had made on its website in October last year.

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Kim Dotcom to reboot Megaupload half a decade after FBI shut it down

File-sharing mogul still fighting against extradition to US.

(credit: Kim Dotcom)

Kim Dotcom, the flamboyant Web baron, is planning to relaunch his once popular Megaupload file-sharing website in 2017—five years to the day after the US government shut it down amid accusations of piracy.

In a series of tweets posted over the weekend, Dotcom hinted that the new Megaupload would involve Bitcoin, while he also promised "big announcements" would be coming regarding partners for the site. Previous users of the site will apparently have their accounts reinstated with premium privileges.

At its peak, the site had more than 150 million registered users, and more than 50 million daily visitors. However, the FBI shut down the Megaupload servers in 2012 working in concert with the New Zealand authorities, who raided Dotcom's Auckland mansion and seized his assets.

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Elon Musk hints at “top secret Tesla masterplan” coming this week

Announcement might be to divert attention from series of Tesla crashes.

Elon Musk has teased that he will release a "top secret Tesla masterplan" later this week, amid speculation that everyone's favourite eccentric tech billionaire is trying to distract attention from a recent spate of bad publicity.

In a tweet posted on Sunday, the electric car firm's chief said that this release would be "Part 2" of his plan—seemingly referring to a post he wrote almost exactly a decade ago, entitled "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)."

It discussed Tesla's early forays into affordable, non-sports electric cars, the vehicles which would become the Tesla 3 sports sedan, and the Tesla S four-door car, so there's a good chance he's about to preview a major new release.

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Facebook vows to only delete graphic live video used to mock victims

Facebook Live terms clarified after video of black man fatally shot by police.

(credit: Facebook)

Facebook has been forced to restate its live video rules, after footage of a black man being shot and killed by police officers during a routine traffic stop in the US was viewed by millions—before being removed and returned under mysterious circumstances.

The company insists it will only remove a video of someone's death if it has been "used to mock the victim or celebrate the shooting."

Philando Castile’s death at the hands of a traffic police officer while he reached for his driver's licence in Minnesota on July 7 shocked the world, after his girlfriend Lavish Reynolds had the presence of mind to film the immediate aftermath and upload it to Facebook. It was online for about 10 minutes before disappearing for around an hour in what Facebook has insisted was "a technical glitch." He had been stopped for what Reynolds said was "a busted tail light."

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Sky’s network-level porn filters now “default on” for new UK customers

Smut-loving Sky Broadband subscribers told to opt in to access porn.

(credit: Carry On Camping)

Sky Broadband's long-threatened move to automatically switch on its porn filter for new customers is finally happening.

What's more, the company has said it will also be contacting every existing broadband customer "over the coming months" to ask them to make a decision on whether or not to adopt the filter, dubbed Shield. If a user doesn't respond, the filter will automatically kick in—meaning that all Sky customers will ultimately have to make an active decision to ask to be allowed to access porn, or any other content Sky considers to be unsuitable for youngsters.

The company claims that the auto-on filter "ensures a safer Internet experience for millions of homes."

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Blizzard ups the ante against Overwatch cheats by filing lawsuit

Hostilities reopen between Blizzard and longtime rivals Bossland.

Blizzard has always taken an uncompromising attitude towards cheats in its games; it has already issued lifetime bans to thousands of players caught using hacks within weeks of the release of its new shooter Overwatch—even if they make new accounts or buy new copies of the game—and now it's going after the company that makes those cheats possible.

Blizzard has filed a lawsuit in California against Bossland GMBH, the German company behind Watchover Tyrant, a programme which allows all sorts of unpleasant and unsporting cheating shenanigans. Those include a radar that shows where enemies are, and aiming assistance. Bossland has made cheat programmes for most of Blizzard's other games, and the American firm is accusing its longtime rival of copyright infringement, unfair competition, and violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision.

Blizzard's suit reads:

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Google Chrome now comes with casting functionality baked in

Users no longer need to download a finicky browser extension.

The latest build of Google Chrome, version 51, now includes a built-in Cast option, meaning users will no longer be required to download a browser extension if they want to beam media from their devices to their TV. While you'll still need to physically plug a Chromecast device into your telly's receiver, it's now simply a matter of right-clicking a tab and selecting the "Cast" option to send it over.

What's more, Google has streamlined the delivery, allowing Chrome to control the parameters automatically, so users are no longer asked to tweak settings for the resolution, bitrate, or quality of the cast.

Chrome 52, which is already on the horizon in the beta channel, seems likely to allow users to cast a tab into a video Hangout. This will require a touch more involvement from the user; you'll have to check Enable Cloud Services in the menu, and use Google Calendar to book your Hangout in ahead of time. Says Google:

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Discovery of new helium reserves a “game changer” for medical industry

Tanzania could now hold the solution to the world’s chronic helium shortage.

It might be the second most common element in the observable universe but until very recently, Earth, it was thought, was running out of helium. Aside from its obvious uses in balloons given out at children's parties by pizza restaurants, the noble gas actually has a number of vital medical and scientific applications—and in recent decades we've burned through most of our once-enormous reserves.

Helium is used mostly as a coolant, especially in MRI scanners, which use around one fifth of the world's reserves in liquid form to cool the machines' superconducting magnets. The semiconductor industry also uses it to grow crystals, while modern materials science also uses its high-yield cooling properties, as do certain advanced telescopes. Despite its uses, however, Earth was believed to be coming to an end of its reserves, having been allowed to squander what was once considered a fairly useless resource.

Researchers from Durham and Oxford universities, however, have surprised the scientific world by discovering a huge new reserve in Tanzania's Rift Valley in east Africa—using a new technique which could be used to find even more. It turns out that volcanic activity helps release the gas from the ancient rocks which usually hold it, allowing it to rise to shallower gas fields.

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Tour de France to use thermal imaging to fight mechanical doping

Want to catch cyclists cheating with hidden motors, neodymium magnets.

(credit: YouTube/France TV)

They call it "mechanical doping," but the name simply doesn't do it justice. Cycling is not a sport celebrated for honesty amongst even its top riders, but following several very high-profile doping cases in recent years, it seems as though the cheats have been trying a different route: hiding motors in their seat posts that help push them to superhuman feats of endurance.

The technique has been known since at least 2010; commercial versions of the motors can put out 200 steady watts of power, nearly doubling a typical pro-cyclist's output. An onboard motor can help riders go faster, and can keep their pedalling cadence—the number of revolutions through the crank per minute—up while energy dips in endurance stages.

With the biggest cycling event in the world, the Tour de France, set to begin on July 2, mechanical doping is a serious concern—one that has moved France's sports minister Thierry Braillard to tell the French press: "This problem is worse than doping; this is the future of cycling that's at stake."

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Google’s own non-Nexus Android phone could launch this year—report

Unconfirmed report suggests search giant is already in discussions with operators.

(credit: Ron Amadeo)

Google is preparing to release a branded phone by the end of 2016 in an effort to compete more directly with Apple's iPhone, according to a report in The Telegraph this morning. It follows a similar report from The Information (subscription required) in February that stated Google wanted to take "greater control" over the design and building of Nexus phones.

"Sources familiar with the discussions" told The Telegraph that the search giant is in discussions with operators and manufacturers that would see it leap into hardware design above and beyond its current partnerships with the likes of LG and Huawei, which make its Nexus phones. Such a move wouldn't be entirely unprecedented: the Pixel C Android tablet was developed entirely internally by Google.

Android is the operating system that powers roughly four in every five smartphones around the world, but so far Google has stuck to developing free software platforms, leaving handset design and manufacture to the likes of Samsung. The slight exception to the rule has been the company's Nexus range, which serves as both an example to manufacturers of how to build an Android device, and offer consumers an entirely stock version of the operating system. The Telegraph's report doesn't mention what will become of the initiative and phones like the well-received Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P.

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