I'm pretty annoyed at people trying to compare the ELR or the Volt to a Tesla, or Leaf, or any other pure electric. The biggest reason why I wouldn't buy a Tesla is because total electrics are still impractical. If you look on the Tesla website, you'll see that I'm basically limited to a 300mile radius to where I live. This is because at 300 miles, it'll take 4:43 to charge my 85kw battery with the supercharger. Bump that down to a 240v outlet, and its a 9:26 charge. And thats after spending nearly 95k for the car, because the 70k version only goes about 200miles. There are some tricks to get 80% 'fairly quick', but you're still adding hours onto each segment of a roadtrip.

Which is where the volt comes in. For -most- people, they only need 30-50miles a day in their car. BUT, if you want to take a road-trip just 5 hours away, you're going to want a way to get there without spending 4 hours charging. And at $299/mo lease, its cost isn't much different than some nicer compacts of its class, and for everyday driving you spend nothing on fuel.

I'm -my- use case, and driving style (where I go) -- I think given the choice of a Tesla or ELR, I probably would go with the ELR. At least then I wouldn't have to buy another car so I could goto the beach, out camping where there is no power, or any of the other places the 'supercharger' grid hasn't made it yet. But in reality, the volt is nice on its own, I don't have any desire to pay another 35k to have a neat badge and a blocky-looking car. Don't get me wrong, I think the Tesla is a nice car, but without the gas generator, its a non-starter for me. Now put a little Diesel TDI generator in there, and I'd buy a Tesla in a heartbeat!

Huh? The volt is directly connected via two electric motors, one on each front wheel. The engine has no direct connection to the wheels, only to the motors. When the battery runs below a certain threshold (out of electricity but not really), the gas engine pops on. Whenever the generator pushes the batteries back over the threshold, it turns off. This happens when you roll to a stop, go down a steep hill, etc. But the gas engine will come on whenever its below that threshold, even if you're going 10mph (if you're going up hill)

A new feature in 2013 is the hold button, so you can hold the battery at a certain level by turning on the engine. This is really useful when you want to go distances and save your battery power for less efficient times (like going slow through town)

Source - Volt owners manual, also I'm a owner of a volt. Best car ever owned (leased).

But it doesn't even do that! At best, a few 'regular people' -might- think about the environment for a few days (or hours), akin to the hype around St. Patty's day this year. But come the day after, those people will forget all about it. And at worst, it just gives environmentalists more to be smug about, sniffing their own asses thinking they are making a difference, when in fact they aren't. We're on hydro-electric here. Our CO2 doesn't change a lick if we turn out our lights in the PNW.

No, Earth Hour is simply a fundraising opportunity for the WWF and other environmental organizations. Its mainly about money, and has little to do about making real change. Similar to politicians and political parties, environmental organizations need to look like they're fixing problems, otherwise they won't make money, or a living. I'd go as far as to say many environmental organizations are also anti-technology (nuclear, GMOs, etc), shooting themselves in the environmental foot they want to fix.

As soon as I received my MBPr I started testing to see if it had ghosting issues and if it was an LG screen. Sure enough, both were true. I returned it, and referenced the specific part number 661-7171 (that was the samsung screen) to replace it with. My local apple rep obliged and I had a nice new Samsung screen. Re-ran the stress test and it cleared.

That was 6 months ago, haven't seen a ghosting issue since.

Definition of Motor vehicle (Per TFA): “Motor vehicle”, any motor driven vehicle or house trailer required to be registered under chapter 90 regardless of curb weight or required to be registered under sections 20 to 35, inclusive, of chapter 90B having a curb weight of not more than 1,000 pounds, or a truck camper. Sure sounds like Tesla falls under that model to me!

turntable.fm is also down -- I guess the NYC tech startup community is going crazy right now. Time to diversify!

I use old phones over wifi to control my XBMC media boxes. When I build my new house in a few years, I'll probably incorporate them into home automation since I'll have around 10 lying around. Most phones in airplane mode with wifi will last at least a week, and it lets me have chargers around the house to keep them (or my current phone) plugged in most of the time.

Its also how Blizzard distributes its games. Its nothing new, and quite effective.

No, in the interview he talked about some of the issues regarding digital, and that it basically sucks right now (for IMAX quality at least). He likes the current film, and it doesn't look like they will be changing anytime soon.

I have the HTC Thunderbolt, unlocked running BAMF. According to the verizon rep, the bootloader lockdown was at the request of HTC. Additionally, the warranty is handled by the manufacturer, and would be void by them, not verizon. He told me that I could return the phone, and verizon only does some cursory testing to see if it turns on, functions, etc. The fact it was rooted wouldn't be detected until handed to HTC.
Now this is all assuming Verizon isn't lying to me. It could very well be all false. But it seems like they're trying to pin the fault on locked down phones to the manufacturer, NOT themselves. Aren't there some Android phones, made by Verizon that are unlocked?

I was one of those lucky high school tech nerds that attended Teen Tech Fest 2000 sponsored by AcePlanet and Microsoft. It was its first and last year, since AcePlanet went belly up like many other startups of the time. AcePlanet was going to do annual computer-themed summer camps for kids, but I guess there wasn't enough money in it.

Already being already an F/OSS person, it was a very fun camp. Despite being Microsoft sponsored (and getting a free copy of VS6 and tour of the MS campus), many of the kids there were very open source users and programmers. Many to this day I still talk to and are in tech related industries, including a few working at Google and Intel.

geeks, the group who will argue for logic and facts instead of warm fuzzy articles to make them feel better