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Comment Re:wut (Score 2) 233

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any website designed with assembly language. Perhaps assembly needs an overhaul to avoid being relegated to drivers and low-level development.

Comment Good for the consumer (Score 1) 94

I see this as good for the consumer. Generally, when Apple does this, the result is a product/solution/capability which becomes free, and is done better given Apple's resources being greater than the app Apple replaces. If the app being replaced, in this case Clue, is any good and worthwhile, then people will continue to use it.
I, for one, am happy to see free options to these subscription apps. I understand developers need to make money, a lot of these apps have high subscription fees and with little new functionality or capability for the end user.

Comment How about the oil spills? Oil, fuel transport? (Score 1) 432

The various oil spills should be taken into consideration when analysing the environmental impact of internal combustion engines.
* Exxon Valdez, 1989
* Montara oil spill, 2009
* Deep Horizon, 2010
There's a huge list of them on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills

How about the environmental impact of transporting the crude oil to the refinery, the refining process, and the trucks delivering the fuel to the gas stations?

Comment Re:A note to you nerds and geeks (Score 1) 296

Correct, Nintendo does not have to provide an outlet for older products (consoles, games, etc) to be available. However, if the people are going to do it anyway, wouldn't it make sense to provide this and make money from it, instead of getting lawyers involved to prosecute the pirates? All this is likely to do is make examples out of some unlucky few, and push the rest on to the dark web.

They should release a vintage console which has an app store, and charge for the apps. It'll be expensive, but will take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the pirate websites. It'll probably make more money than a successful lawsuit or two, and skips the bad publicity of dragging fans & supporters through an unpleasant experience. Plus, I'm sure none of the defendants will actually have the money that Nintendo is seeking in damages. Some corporate types are really naive and out of touch.

Submission + - Nintendo To ROM Sites: Forget Cease-and-Desist, Now We're Suing (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Nintendo's attitude toward ROM releases—either original games' files or fan-made edits—has often erred on the side of litigiousness. But in most cases, the game producer has settled on cease-and-desist orders or DMCA claims to protect its IP. This week saw the company grow bolder with its legal action, as Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit (PDF) on Thursday seeking millions in damages over classic games' files being served via websites. The Arizona suit, as reported by TorrentFreak, alleges "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights" by the sites LoveROMs and LoveRetro. These sites combine ROM downloads and in-browser emulators to deliver one-stop gaming access, and the lawsuit includes screenshots and interface explanations to demonstrate exactly how the sites' users can gain access to "thousands of [Nintendo] video games, related copyrighted works, and images."

Comment Re:(sic)?? (Score 0) 241

A quick Google search yielded this: "adverb - used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child's interest and “enrich his [ sic ] life.”."

Submission + - Cost to build a Tesla Model 3: $28k (German teardown study)

Rei writes: An interesting report came out the other day from Germany, where an engineering firm purchased four Tesla Model 3s on the grey market to study on behalf of an anonymous major German auto manufacturer. Among their key findings: due in part to a huge reduction in cobalt in the batteries (2,8% in the cathodes versus a typical 8%) and a number of simplifications, the parts cost of a Model 3 (in units of 10k/wk) is estimated at $18k, along with $10k in production costs. Note that the teardown was for the long-range version with the premium upgrades package. On Reddit, users with access to the full report added further details. The 75kWh battery is 40% of the components cost ($7200); the interior is completely symmetric (facilitating RHD); there are only 4 kinds of screws used in the underbody (a typical German luxury manufacturer uses 40); many parts of the car are designed specifically so as to be easier for robots to grab; and the battery pack is harder to remove than on the S/X (e.g. not battery swap capable). After studying the individual components, they concluded that German EV manufacturers would not be capable of producing a similar vehicle at this point in time.

Asked on Twitter whether Musk agreed with their price conclusions at a rate of 10k/wk, Musk replied "Definitely." That said, Tesla is still in the process of moving from 3,5k to 5-6k per week by the end of this quarter, and is not expected to reach 10k/wk until next year.

Submission + - T-Mobile bug let anyone see any customer's account details (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A bug in T-Mobile's website let anyone access the personal account details of any customer with just their cell phone number.

The flaw, since fixed, could have been exploited by anyone who knew where to look — a little-known T-Mobile subdomain that staff use as a customer care portal to access the company's internal tools. The subdomain — promotool.t-mobile.com, which can be easily found on search engines — contained a hidden API that would return T-Mobile customer data simply by adding the customer's cell phone number to the end of the web address.

Although the API is understood to be used by T-Mobile staff to look up account details, it wasn't protected with a password and could be easily used by anyone.

The returned data included a customer's full name, postal address, billing account number, and in some cases information about tax identification numbers. The data also included customers' account information, such as if a bill is past-due or if the customer had their service suspended.

Submission + - FBI has grossly inflated the problem of encrypted phones (washingtonpost.com) 1

mi writes: The FBI has repeatedly provided grossly inflated statistics to Congress and the public about the extent of problems posed by encrypted cellphones, claiming investigators were locked out of nearly 7,800 devices connected to crimes last year when the correct number was much smaller, probably between 1,000 and 2,000.

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