Category: News

Geiger Cars ha introducido una nuevo paquete en el Corvette Grand Sport consiguiendo aumentar de forma considerable las prestaciones, alcanzando los 337 km/h. Esto lo consigue mediante una modificación en la trasmisión junto a un aumento de potencia de su motor V8.

Así Geiger Cars consigue exprimir del motor una potencia de 588 CV con un par máximo de unos 738 Nm permitiendo que el Grand Sport llegue a los 100 Km/h desde parado en menos de 4 segundos. Además su transmisión cambia al añadir una quinta y sexta marcha más alargada que permite obtener una mayor velocidad.

Sin embargo estas modificaciones tiene su precio, por lo que se tendrá que desembolsar unos 19250 euros extras para poder llegar a los 337 km/h con un Corvette Grand Sport. Junto a los cambios mecánicos también se incorporan otros como unas llantas de 18 y 19 pulgadas con neumáticos 275/35 y 325/30 o cuatro tubos de escape centrales.

Geiger Cars Corvette Grand Sport

Vía | worldcarfans

It’s like 2007 all over again: The world is waiting with bated breath for someone to step up to Apple. Last time it was to answer the iPhone. This time, the iPad. Here’s what we want to see. More »

Is your state the gassiest? This graph over at Infrastructurist compares how much each gas each state uses per person. Green is low use, blue is moderate, and red is high. What’s interesting is when you look at each state’s fuel use per capita, “High-use states like New York actually have low per-capita usage, while states like Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, and North Dakota — all states with smaller populations and large distances required for drivers — have higher than average consumption.”

How Much Gas Does Your State Use Per Person? [The Infrastructurist]

Ok, we lied. There’s one more risk beyond the Fed meeting that you need to be wary of. It’s tax hikes.

Well… talk of tax hikes. Headline risk.

How come?

Because the President’s working group on deficit reduction is getting into full swing, and it’s a sure thing that the team will propose tax hikes as part of the equation to solve the deficit problem. Now, that doesn’t mean Congress is actually going to the tax hikes.

The path of least resistance — deficit spending — seems like the way forward for now. But there’s going to be a ton of talk about a VAT and other measures to gain revenue.

OMB chief Peter Orszag wrote the following today to kick off the organization’s work:

The President formed the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform because he believes that the path to fiscal stability begins with bi-partisan cooperation. Today, the Commission met with the President and held its first meeting, where I joined them to discuss the Nation’s unsustainable fiscal trajectory and the importance of the task before them.

Recognizing the fiscal future that we face, the Administration has taken major steps to restore fiscal responsibility. The President’s Budget includes more deficit reduction than proposed by a President in any budget in over a decade; by 2015, it would cut the deficit from 5 percent of GDP to 4 percent of GDP.  Furthermore, the comprehensive health insurance reform we have just enacted represents an unprecedented effort to address the forces underlying rising health care costs, and is projected to lower future deficits by more than $100 billion in the first decade and by more than $1 trillion in the next.

More must be done, however. The Commission is charged with recommending measures to reduce the deficit to about 3 percent of GDP by 2015. This result is projected to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio at an acceptable level once the economy recovers — a key measure of fiscal sustainability. The Commission is also tasked with proposing policies to meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook.

Here’s the kicker:

The options to further reduce the deficit may not be popular, but they are necessary. Success will require a commitment from both parties to engage in constructive and honest dialogue, and I look forward to working with the Commission in the weeks and months ahead.

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See Also:

• Bernanke: Path To Fiscal Salvation Requires Slash And Burn On Entitlements And Higher Taxes
• CHART OF THE DAY: Your Parents Would Be Stunned At The Taxes You’re Paying
• US Fiscal Policy: Unless We Raise Taxes Or Cut Spending, We’re Screwed

The official True Blood Season 3 poster has arrived. Sookie, Bill, Jason, Tara and Eric — and the rest of the vampires, humans and the other supernatural beings of Bon Temps — are back in True Blood’s latest cast photo. Who’s ready for the blood-sucking June 13 premiere?

Over at Edge, a variety of scientists give their take on the Iceland volcano eruption and its impact on air travel. Two really stood out to me. The first also highlights the problem of defensive medicine; the second shows the downside to action dealing with global warming:

DANIEL KAHNEMAN

Psychologist, Princeton; Recipient, 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Imagine a public official who considers an action that involves a small and ambiguous risk of disaster. Imagine further that the best expert judgment available is that the expected social benefit of the action is large and that the risks are real but tolerably small. Such situations inevitably create a conflict between the interests of society and those of the officials who are charged to decide on its behalf.

Hindsight and personal accountability are the problem. Decision makers can be certain that if the worst happens their decision to act — however justified it was ex ante — will be perceived ex post as a horrendous mistake. They face the possibility of devastating blame and guilt, as well as career-destroying consequences. The risks are asymmetric because the costs of playing it safe are likely to be negligible.

Even if future analyses of the ash cloud incident conclude that flights could have resumed safely much sooner, it is unlikely that any of the officials involved in delaying the flights will lose their jobs. In this situation and in many others — defensive medicine is an example — the valid anticipation of hindsight combines with social norms of personal accountability to produce overly cautious behavior.

The solution?

Where the social good requires taking risks, we need procedures that will reduce personal accountability and diffuse responsibility, perhaps by assigning some categories of decisions to designated groups of experts rather than to individual functionaries.

MATT RIDLEY
Science Writer; Founding chairman of the International Centre for Life; Author, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

The ash cloud reminds us of the risks of risk aversion. Shutting down Europe’s airspace removed the risk of an ash-caused crash, but it also increased all sorts of other risks: the risk of death to a patient because an urgent medical operation might have to be postponed for lack of supplies, the risk of poverty to a Kenyan farm worker because roses could not be flown to European markets, the risk of a collision between ferries on extra night-time sailings in the English Channel. And so on. Risk decisions cannot be taken in isolation. The precautionary principle makes too little allowance for the risks that are run by avoiding risks — the innovations not made, the existing suffering not alleviated. The ash cloud, by reminding us of the risks of not being able to fly planes, is a timely reminder that the risks of global warming must be weighed against the risks of high energy costs — the risks of poverty (cheap energy creates jobs), of hunger (fertiliser costs depend on energy costs), of rainforest destruction and indoor air pollution (expensive electricity makes firewood seem cheaper), of orangutan extinction in subsidised biofuel palm oil plantations.

Oh, and remember the lessons of public choice theory: if you set up a body called the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, don’t be surprised if it over-reacts the first time it gets a chance the demonstrate that it considers itself — as all public bodies always do — underfunded.

Water quality is a serious problem that is not properly acknowledged, says top water expert and adviser Asit Biswas.

An award-winning water and sanitation expert is challenging United Nations agencies that claim the world is on track to achieve safe drinking water goals.

Photo by whiteafrican via Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The March 2010 update from the World Health Organization on global progress toward meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) declared that countries would surpass the drinking water goal, but fall short of the sanitation target by more than a billion people. The progress report estimated that 1.7 billion people had gained access to improved sources since 1990. The MDG for water is to reduce the number of people without access to improved water sources by half.

But the U.N. figures are being disputed by Asit Biswas, president of the global water management think tank, Third World Centre for Water Management. The problem with the recent assessment is that it measures infrastructure development instead of improvements to water quality, according to Biswas, who won the Stockholm Water Prize in 2006, the top award for the water field.

“If somebody has a well in a town or village in the developing world and we put concrete around the well – nothing else – it becomes an ‘improved source of water’. The quality is the same but you have ‘improved’ the physical structure, which has no impact,” said Biswas in an interview with the Guardian. “They are not only underestimating the problem, they are giving the impression the problem is being solved. What I’m trying to say is that’s a bunch of baloney.”

While the MDGs focus on protecting water sources from local contamination, the water quality from that source is not part of the metric.

Biswas, who has advised the governments of India and Egypt on water issues, said inadequate municipal water supply systems often stem from mismanagement and corruption rather than physical water scarcity. Meanwhile, the WHO progress report acknowledged that measuring water quality was difficult and expensive.

A forthcoming WHO/UNICEF pilot study of country-level water quality testing found that 90 percent of piped systems met WHO microbial standards, but only 40 to 70 percent of other improved sources were in compliance.

“We know how many people have access to water,” said the Prince of Orange at World Water Day in Nairobi, Kenya, “but we don’t know how many have safe water.”

Source: Guardian

Recent and proposed changes to Facebook’s information sharing policies have Senators Franken (D-MN) and Schumer (D-NY) a little irritated. They’ve penned a letter, along with Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mark Begich (D-AK), asking Facebook to reconsider their new opt-out procedure, and to take further steps to keep user’s personal details, such as their interests and friend lists, private unless they chose to share them.

In a statement, Senator Schumer warned that the interests lists opened the door for unwanted marketing efforts.

“I love baseball, but I don’t want to be grouped online with thousands of people who also like baseball unless I choose to join this kind of online group. Right now, this new Facebook policy does just that. No doubt, marketers peddling their wares will find this grouping a treasure trove and inundate users with solicitations and more,” said Schumer

Here’s the letter:

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

We are writing to express our concern regarding recent changes to the Facebook privacy policy and the use of personal data on third party websites. While Facebook provides a valuable service to users by keeping them connected with friends and family and reconnecting them with long-lost friends and colleagues, the expansion of Facebook – both in the number of users and applications – raises new concerns for users who want to maintain control over their information.

The following three changes have raised concerns:

1. Publicly available data. Facebook’s expansion of publicly available data to include a user’s current city, hometown, education, work, likes, interests, and friends has raised concerns for users who would like to have an opt-in option to share this profile information. Through the expanded use of “connections,” Facebook now obligates users to make publicly available certain parts of their profile that were previously private. If the user does not want to connect to a page with other users from their current town or university, the user will have that information deleted altogether from their profile. We appreciate that Facebook allows users to type this information into the “Bio” section of their profiles, and privatize it, but we believe that users should have more control over these very personal and very common data points. These personal details should remain private unless a user decides that he/she would like to make a connection and share this information with a community.

2. Third party data storage. Previously, Facebook allowed third-party advertisers to store profile data for 24 hours. We are concerned that recent changes allow that data to be stored indefinitely. We believe that Facebook should reverse this policy, or at a minimum require users to opt in to allowing third parties to store data for more than 24 hours.

3. Instant personalization. We appreciate that Facebook is attempting to integrate the functionality of several popular websites, and that Facebook has carefully selected its initial partners for its new “instant personalization” feature. We are concerned, however, that this feature will now allow certain third party partners to have access not only to a user’s publicly available profile information, but also to the user’s friend list and the publicly available information about those friends. As a result of the other changes noted above, this class of information now includes significant and personal data points that should be kept private unless the user chooses to share them. Although we are pleased that Facebook allows users to opt-out of sharing private data, many users are unaware of this option and, moreover, find it complicated and confusing to navigate. Facebook should offer users the ability to opt-in to sharing such information, instead of opting out, and should make the process for doing so more clear and coherent.

We hope that Facebook will stand by its goal of creating open and transparent communities by working to ensure that its policies protect the sensitive personal biographical data of its users and provide them with full control over their personal information. We look forward to the FTC examining this issue, but in the meantime we believe Facebook can take swift and productive steps to alleviate the concerns of its users. Providing opt-in mechanisms for information sharing instead of expecting users to go through long and complicated opt-out processes is a critical step towards maintaining clarity and transparency.

I’ve been getting some questions about the upcoming Rapture Metro Pack, the next DLC for BioShock 2 that’s coming to Xbox 360 and Games for Windows -LIVE, so I thought I’d help clear up some details.

Rapture Metro Pack (800 Microsoft Points):

· Six all-new maps built, some built from the single-player portion of the game

· Three new Achievements/Trophies

· Rebirth Feature – Players who reach rank 50 have the option to rank down to Level 1 and receive a special mask

And just to update: the content will not be available this week as previously reported.

I’ll have more details on timing in the very near future.

Four senators have sent a joint letter to Facebook asking that it make changes to the way it handles privacy, the latest salvo of privacy-related criticism to be directed at the social network. One of them, Charles Schumer — a Democratic senator from New York — also sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission on Sunday asking that the agency investigate Facebook for breaches of privacy legislation. The latest criticisms appear to have been fueled by Facebook’s recent launch of new features at its f8 conference, including social plugins for websites, an open graph protocol and a so-called “instant personalization” feature that’s being implemented on several sites, including Microsoft’s Docs.com and Yelp.com.

The letter from the four lawmakers says they’d like Facebook to make privacy-related changes “opt in” instead of turning them on by default and requiring users to opt out if they don’t want their information shared. A number of critics, including Search Engine Land writer Danny Sullivan, have complained about the same thing, saying Facebook should not have enabled instant personalization and other services by default, but should have allowed users to decide first whether they wanted to have those features.

The senators are also opposed to allowing websites and services to retain information on users that they receive from Facebook for longer than 24 hours, another recent change made by the company. And they dislike a new feature that adds users to “connection” pages based on topics or places they have expressed an interest in through their Facebook profile. “Social networking sites are a Wild West of the Internet; users need ability to control private information and fully understand how it’s being used,” they said in a news release.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told the Associated Press that the company has “powerful tools to give our users control over what information they want to share, when they want to share it and with whom,” but that not everyone has found it easy to discover what they’re opted into and what information they’re sharing — or how to turn it off (we recently posted a simple guide to doing this). Finding out what information is being shared through Facebook’s new open graph protocol and API is not easy, although one developer, who happens to work for Google’s charitable arm, has come up with a tool that shows you on a single page what information of yours Facebook is sharing.

In other privacy-related news, the Commerce Department recently launched an Internet Policy Task Force to investigate whether privacy policies are limiting innovation, and has asked average citizens as well as companies and public agencies to send comments on that issue to the government. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the task force intends to explore “ways to address the challenges of the new Internet economy and society in a manner that preserves and enhances privacy protection.” It will also investigate cyber security and online copyright protection, the department said.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why New Net Companies Must Shoulder More Responsibility

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Dooley

Hope you haven’t forgot about Samsung, they continue to release very good Android devices all around the world (we just hope some of them make their way here). Samsung has released the Galaxy A for South Korea. This device has similar specs to the original Galaxy but has a few new ones as well.

This handset is somewhat of a prelude to the main course, the quietly powerful Galaxy S. unlike the original Galaxy, this phone only has one hard key but it features an 800MHz CPU, 5MP camera, 8GB internal memory, video calling, T-DMB, Bluetooth 2.1, DivX support, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm headphone jack and 1500mAh battery. It also has a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED PLUS screen that claims to have more touch sensitivity and clarity than any other AMOLED before it. This phone also supports SKT’s T Store, Google apps and the Android Market. And this is another Android 2.1 device.

[via samsunghub]

What it is: The world’s cheapest car has a starting price of about $2000 in its home market of India. Pictured is a more expensive version for already-emerged markets.

Keep Reading: 2013 Tata Nano – Feature

No related posts.

Its now clear that the European debt crisis could take a huge chunk of the euro zone with it. Greece, Portugal, and Ireland are already in tough debt positions, while larger states like Spain and Italy might soon be.

What this could mean is the end of the currency union, as states are forced to depart because they can’t inflate their currencies to pay down their debt. While that approach would have its own problems for members, it could end the reach of the euro zone and significantly damage the European project all together.

Here are the results if Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy were to depart (using 2008 data):

GDP: 32% of all Euro zone GDP (subject to changes in euro valuation)

Population: 132,355,572 million people, 40% of the population of the euro zone.

Dark blue states represent euro zone members.

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Nokia’s not very happy right now. Just days before they officially announced their new flagship phone, the X8, someone managed to get their hands on an early prototype. Sound familiar?

Unlike Apple’s prototype iPhone, Nokia’s leaked X8 actually booted up, bearing its early software — and all of its early faults — for judgement.

Although Eldar’s early hands-on makes a passing mention or two of the device’s early state, Nokia says it isn’t enough:

“Buried deep down in the blogger’s salacious headlines about the software not being ready, was the most important point. This is a very early, pre-production prototype with dated software that is not yet ready. So the site’s comments that the software ‘felt premature’ is probably one of the more blindingly obvious things you will read this year.”

While they’re disappointed that the prototype was revealed in such a manner, they say it won’t let it affect the way things work at Nokia. While they avoid naming any names outright, they make a fairly transparent jab at Apple’s (generally) extreme security practices:

“However, whilst we are determined to protect our intellectual property and maintain the surprise when a shiny new gadget is introduced, we are not going to do so at the expense of the working conditions we enjoy here at Nokia. We are not the Secret Police, and we want to maintain our culture of openness”

In the end, they just want their prototype back, closing the post with “Now that the official news is out, we’d like our prototype back. Please.” Lets just hope Eldar doesn’t make them write a signed and dated letter.

What it is: A two-seat mid-engine Porsche that’s smaller and more affordable than the $48,550 Boxster.

Keep Reading: 2014 Porsche “Baby” Boxster – Feature

No related posts.

[JURIST] The Oklahoma State Senate on Tuesday voted 36-12 to override Governor Brad Henry’s veto of two anti-abortion bills that will now immediately become law. The first bill would prevent “wrongful life” lawsuits in which parents seek damages for a child born with a birth defect because the mother was unable to obtain an abortion. The second bill would require doctors to conduct a vaginal ultrasound at least one hour prior to an abortion while displaying and explaining the images. The 48-member senate just met the minimum of three-quarters majority required to override an executive veto. The senate’s vote comes one day after the House of Representatives voted 84-12 to override the veto.
The Oklahoma Senate voted to approve five anti-abortion bills last week, sending three to Henry for his approval and returning two to the Oklahoma State House of Representatives. Pending House approval, two additional bills would require a woman to answer 38 questions, including why she is seeking an abortion, and prohibit state health plans from covering elective abortions. The Oklahoma laws join another restrictive abortion law passed recently in Nebraska, which bans abortions after 20 weeks.

According to AdMob’s, mobile analytics company, Mobile Metrics Report for March 2010; Google Android is seeing more diversity among handsets in the market and also plagued by fragmentation woes. Below are key figures from the report:

• 11 devices accounted for 96% of Android OS traffic in March 2010, up from two devices in September 2009.
• The three primary versions of the Android OS all drove significant traffic in March 2010 – Android 1.5 (38%), Android 2.0/2.1 (35%) and Android 1.6 (26%).
• Three devices – the iPhone 3GS (39%), second generation iPod touch (25%) and iPhone 3G (20%) – generated 84% of total iPhone OS traffic.
• iPhone OS traffic share from the iPhone 3GS has increased from 30% in September 2009 to 39% in March 2010.

We find that iPhone does have fragmentation however not in the same ways as Android as apps work virtually the same across all versions of iPhone; whereas Android users on older versions may not be able to find some apps in the Market (due to target at higher Android versions). As carriers and handset manufacturers release updates, these fragmentation issues will subside.

[Via AdMob]

Posted by Rick Pearson at 12:32 p.m.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk won’t attend a planned state GOP fundraiser featuring Sarah Palin next month, campaign aides said today.

Kirk, a five-term North Shore congressman, sought but did not get supportive words from Palin during the Senate primary campaign. Instead of attending the May 12 fundraiser in Rosemont, Kirk will be in Washington for scheduled House votes, his campaign said.

The issue of Kirk soliciting support for Palin was a controversial one for the GOP nominee. Though Kirk cruised through a multi-candidate primary with 56 percent of the vote—his nearest challenger got 19 percent—some activists said that Kirk wasn’t conservative enough on social issues, such as abortion, to earn their support.



Last November, Kirk downplayed seeking Palin help for the primary, saying he was merely sending a memo as he does to a number of “prominent GOP people when they come into Chicago.” At the time, Palin was coming to Chicago for a taping of the "Oprah Winfrey Show."



Palin is scheduled to headline an Illinois Republican Party event with ticket prices as high as $25,000 for a half-hour private roundtable with the controversial former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor. The media will be shut out, just like it was last week at the big state Republican fundraiser featuring embattled National Republican Chairman Michael Steele.

Republican sources said when they learned Palin would be in Rosemont for her own events that day, they decided to try to piggyback with a state party fundraiser.

Kirk faces Democratic state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in November for the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama.

Without doing anything particularly special, AOL’s stock has delivered one of the best year to date returns,  Mark Mahaney of Citigroup notes, in a preview of AOL’s earnings.

As you can see below, AOL is up 22% year-to-date. Meanwhile, Yahoo is only up 1.48%. Other Internet stocks are also up, but not as much as AOL.

AOL’s stock price is $28.30 as of this writing. Mark has a $29 price target and a rating of “hold” on the stock.

AOL reports earnings tomorrow morning (join us for LIVE coverage). We’ve pasted Mark’s cheat sheet for the quarter below.

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