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Transportation

Video Meet the Makers of an Exotic (Partially) 3-D Printed Car (2 Videos) 25

Last month, in a story headlined 3D Printed Supercar Chassis Unveiled, we promised video interviews with builders Kevin and Brad "in the near future." Here they are. First, we have Kevin Czinger, Founder & CEO of Divergent Microfactories. He says the way we build cars is more important from an environmental standpoint than how we fuel them, and that the way we make cars now is a lot less efficient and a lot more expensive than it needs to be. Divergent's first demo vehicle, the Blade, is a tandem-seating 700 HP supercar its makers say does 0 - 60 in 2.5 seconds. Price? No word yet, but it's safe to assume "plenty" might be an accurate guess.

In the second video, Blade project lead Brad Balzer goes into detail about how, why, and where they use 3-D printing, and explains the modular nature of their car chassis design. He says they don't need to change many parts to go from ultra-sports car to pickup truck. He also says that while Divergent Microfactories is working on cars right now, their manufacturing system can be applied to many different industries. Indeed, their long-range goal is to help people build microfactories making many different kinds of products faster, more flexibly, and for less money than it takes to make similar manufactured items today.

Note: The transcript covers both videos and has a little 'bonus' material in it, too.

Comment Re:Opt-outs (Score 1) 141

I actually flew out of O'Hare on Thanksgiving day last year. The checkpoint was completely empty, but the agent very lightly challenged me when I opted out, saying something like "Why do you have to do that? You know its pointless." I wasn't actually ready with my A-Game talking points so I just said "I just don't want to support the security theater." but I don't think he really cared enough to have a debate about it.

Comment Re:OpenMoko? (Score 2) 207

Finally someone mentioned this way way down in the comments. Its sad that such a great project has so easily been forgotten. The remains of the project are still very interesting but there aren't enough people to even finance a production run of the new hardware.
www.gta04.org

Comment Re:What an amazing idea!! (Score 1) 207

The old OpenMoko Neo Freerunner did this, the price point is a bit high but you're asking for a very special feature with low demand in the general market, so supply and demand kick in.

There's a new version with better hardware that just hasn't gone into production because it can't get enough pre-orders to finance a production run. Check it out:
http://www.openphoenux.org/ (Click the GTA04 link for more info)

Comment Re:Gentoo (Score 1) 627

Gentoo is still _my_ linux, not Cannonical's or Red Hat's or whoever. It takes a bit of work sometimes, but that's what makes it mine. No one-size-fits-all approach will ever be right.

My Gentoos:
AMD64 laptop
DreamPlug plug computer, 1.2GHz ARM v5
Old AMD x86 desktop
AMD64 VM at work
Virtualized AMD64 SVN server at work

Comment Very difficult to opt-out too (Score 2) 294

This one is particularly bad because there is no "obscure and buried opt-out option" to check. The process to opt-out requires you to mail a physical signed letter to some office. I'm pretty sure none of these terms are actually legal and enforceable, particularly in California where the courts have already struck down binding arbitration clauses before, but it's a deterrent to actual justice being served. My wish would be that the "Severability" clause was found illegal, so if the corporation decided to put something illegal in the contract, it voids the whole contract. That would be the only way to get the corporations to stop doing these things.
Businesses

The Dark Side of Digital Distribution 270

An anonymous reader writes "Game journalist Stuart Campbell has written an incisive piece on how the digital distribution model users have grown to know and love over the past several years still has some major problems that go beyond even the DRM dilemma. He provides an example of an app developer using very shady update techniques to screw over people who have legitimately purchased their app. Touch Racing Nitro, a retro racing game, launched to moderate success. After tinkering with price points to get the game to show up on the top download charts, the developers finally made it free for a period of four months. 'Then the sting came along. About a week ago (at time of writing), the game received an "update," which came with just four words of description – "Now Touch Racing Free!" As the game was already free, users could have been forgiven for thinking this wasn't much of a change. But in fact, the app thousands of them had paid up to £5 for had effectively just been stolen. Two of the game's three racing modes were now locked away behind IAP paywalls, and the entire game was disfigured with ruinous in-game advertising, which required yet another payment to remove.'"

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