Yeah the problems have been known for a while, but it's something else to see disassembled ECU code with very specific conditions that disables the system during normal driving. In the talk they even re-create the emissions test conditions on a rolling road with realtime monitoring of the ECU's memory contents, so you can watch as it calculates the amount of urea to inject. As soon as the driving behavior leaves the test boundaries those calculations drop to 0 and stay there. It's pretty blatant.

The EPA just filed a lawsuit against VW, and given this evidence I don't see how they can weasel their way out of it this time.

There was a fantastic talk at this year's Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg delving into the reasons behind "Dieselgate", including insights into the car industry itself and findings from disassembled ECU code. Part of it shows exactly how and why the NOx scrubbing technology was purposely disabled during normal driving. It does work, it just wasn't allowed to do its job, presumably to lower maintenance costs for the customer. And as the talk shows this decision must have involved hundreds of people including upper management, not just a couple of engineers.

The testing methodology for emissions is a shambles and has been cheated by every car manufacturer for decades now to varying degrees. If we're serious about fixing the emissions problems then this is the first place that needs attention. I believe you can make diesels cleaner, but it costs money. Fix the tests to force these emission standards to be applied in normal driving and then let the consumer decide if the added cost is worth owning a diesel. In fact we need to fix the tests regardless, if only to get a proper look at the real state of emissions across the board.

But seriously, the talk is well worth watching.

Sounds good, where do I pick up my Green Gaming subsidy for the new hardware?

Sounds to me like region locking content has become socially unacceptable in this globally connected age. These people are not only paying for the content, they're paying extra on top of it just to get around your arbitrary restrictions.

Maybe it's time for people like her to join us in the 21st century.

I stopped downloading music and picked up a sub to Spotify instead simply because it's more convenient. I share the same music library on my home PC, work PC and smartphone without having to fiddle with anything. When I'm in the car I plug the smartphone into the deck and listen to the playlists that I've downloaded. Even my AV receiver at home can stream from Spotify. It all just works and I'm always stumbling across new music that I end up liking a lot.

I've even set up a few collaborative playlists with friends. When one of us finds something new we add it to the list, then the others can have a listen and add it to their own private playlists if they like it.

Only two things bother me: not everything is available and some things that were available will simply disappear one day. Same old licensing BS that just doesn't work in a digitally connected world.

One thing is clear though. Previously the music industry made no money at all off me, now they do. Not because of some anti-piracy campaign but because someone was finally able to provide an acceptably priced product that's more convenient than pirating. Funny how that works.

That's possible yes. I guess you could already snap a photo of your completed election ballot to show to those thugs, but you're right that it'd be easier for them to verify votes if they can coerce you into giving up your ID.

If you ask me having those kinds of thugs around in the first place is a pretty good sign of a broken system, but it's a fair point anyway.

How is that any different from your employer demanding your Facebook password or your private email history? If you can be fired for refusing either of those demands then sure, they could fire you for refusing to give them your voting ID. But I'd say that's a completely different issue, wouldn't you?

Voter shows ID to election worker. Worker checks a box. Voter reaches into a giant lottery box full of generated IDs and uses that ID to vote. Later the voter can inspect the blockchain, find his ID and verify that his vote went to the right candidates.

I'm not saying it's a better system but I think there are ways to keep voter anonymity while also allowing the public to audit the result.

Maybe instead of representing solidarity with a silly hashtag it'd better for us all to exercise free speech by posting a picture of Muhammad. Not an overly offensive picture either, a simple stick man would do.

This craziness isn't going to stop until the media and us people in general start standing up for the things that we're always claiming to hold dear.

Maybe this has more to do with the threat of releasing more information "if their demands aren't met" than it does the threat of physical attacks? Maybe there really was some backroom discussion between Sony and the big theater chains to scrap the release because of this?

Or maybe not. It's probably just stupidity.

Maybe there wasn't a legal risk that would have held up in court. What all that legal council evidently failed to mention is the very real threat of crippling litigation that, while ultimately unsuccessful, could still wipe you out in the process.

I guess that's one thing separating the 'good' legal council from the 'best'. The former will stop at examining the laws, the latter will also examine all the ways the laws could be abused to achieve the same result.

I agree with you about Kickstarter but for the past few months Frontier has been selling preorders for the game on their website, clearly labeled as "preorders". For the people who bought those dumping the offline play could be cause for a refund.

It's not that the thing itself is flying away from us at c, it's that all the space in between us and that thing is expanding. Naturally the further away it gets, the more expanding space there is between us and the thing, the faster the thing appears to be receding from us.

In this system nothing is moving faster than the speed of light but the effect is the same: a spacecraft trying to reach that galaxy would need to overcome all the expanding space between, and that would require a speed greater than c. In fact, at that point even light from that galaxy would not reach us anymore, putting it outside our cosmological horizon.

Disclaimer: I may not know what I'm talking about. This should really be in my sig.

Might be the Diaspora mod for Freespace Open, which is really good.

Some back story for those that don't know, Volition (the developer behind Freespace 2) released the source code to the game about 10 years ago when it became apparent that they weren't going to be able to make a third installment. Since then the FS2 community has enhanced the game engine, fixed bugs, overhauled the graphics, added support for all kinds of new peripherals and created several new games, like Diaspora and a Babylon 5 conversion.

If you're a fan of space combat sims you really should check out Freespace Open. Besides playing through the original campaigns I'd recommend Blue Planet (included in the installer) and the subsequent War in Heaven campaigns.

On the other hand I can see this becoming very useful for overcoming fears or certain types of neurological disorders. We recently put together a training program for a clinical trial with Parkinson's patients who experience "freeze of gait". Certain situations (like walking through a narrow doorway) can cause them to become locked in place in a sort of trance until some external stimulus snaps them out of it again. The idea was to train these situations from the safety of their own home in order to better deal with them in public. The clinical trial hasn't started yet, but I'd guess a VR headset would provide a much more realistic experience than a monitor.