Hmm..
These days the combatants in the horsepower wars seem to have taken the gloves off. This is apparently the new SSC Ultimate Aero II.
Dear Adobe,
For breaking everything that is great about the PDF integration within OS X, eff you.
The end game of making cars for idiots.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has ... found that at the time of the crashes, throttles were wide open and the brakes were not engaged, people familiar with the findings said.
The results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyota and Lexus vehicles surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes...
The findings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration involve a sample of reports in which a driver of a Toyota vehicle said the brakes were depressed but failed to stop the car from accelerating and ultimately crashing.
Flash: There is, indeed, one born every minute.
So apparently Tesla managed to con convince a number of investors to part with some $226 million in their IPO.
Perhaps it's a good economic sign that enough people are willing to part with their hard-earned to support a company that has never turned a profit, probably never will turn a profit, and produces cars that are generally useless and targeted to an extremely small and whimsical niche.
It's worth noting that said IPO, heralded by the usual suspects as de-facto evidence that people want electric cars, is but a mere fraction of the $465 Million ponied up by Uncle Sam a short while ago.
As it goes, the only thing stupider than someone buying a useless item for a given sum, is a government buying one at twice the price.
posted by Mr. Lion
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14:25 EST | comments
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One wonders.
Exactly how prevalent is the theft of My First Borg Baby child car seats at Target to necessitate one of those stupid security-rope devices?
I mean, really. CDs, DVDs, video games, electronics-- I can see the average shop lifter having those items relatively high on the list of things to nab. But car seats?
What's next, security devices on fake potted plants?
posted by Mr. Lion
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00:26 EST | comments
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Dear Apple,
The improvements to Safari with version 5 are nice and all-- it's much faster, has rather good HTML5 support, and a host of other tweaks-- However, there is one utterly stupid, monstrously annoying "feature" you've decided to add which makes me want to eat glass.
And that, friends, is the same thing that makes me want to draw and quarter as many FireFox developers as I can find whenever I'm forced to use that mismashtastic hell of a browser: Title matching in the URL input bar.
Do. Not. Do. That.
My brain speaks domain names. When I want to go somewhere, I start typing domain names. I do not start typing titles, and your insistence that they be included in autofill matches, and in fact given preference, is about the stupidest thing I've seen since... well, FireFox doing exactly that same bloody thing.
If you've suddenly decided the majority of users' brains operate that way-- fine. Mine, however, does not, so give me an option to turn the goddamn thing off.
posted by Mr. Lion
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09:56 EST | comments
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It'll be nice when...
The NYT finally goes tits up and ceases foisting this kind of nonsense on otherwise calm people.
The cliffs notes:
1) College student takes on ~$100,000 in student loans, so she can go to a "good school" and achieve a basket weaving degree with no real job prospects, and hence "has trouble" paying back the loans.
2) This is somehow the fault of Citibank for giving her the money.
The relevant blood-boiling excerpts:
Sallie Mae gets a pass here, in my view. A responsible grownup co-signed for its loans to the Munnas, and the company eventually cut them off.
But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a “no doc” or at least a “low doc” subprime mortgage loan.
Her mother can’t help without selling her bed and breakfast, and then she’d have no home. She could take her daughter in, but there aren’t good ways for her to earn a living in Alexandria Bay, in upstate New York.
Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma.
She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies.
Huh.
I've often lambasted just about everyone who makes a car these days for failing to get it, primarily because the companies in question are largely not run by car people.
Evidently someone at Dodge finally figured out how to make a good ad, at least. Not much, but I'll take it.
Now, new Viper? Post haste?
posted by Mr. Lion
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12:28 EST | comments
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