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Buenas noticias para la planta de producción del grupo PSA de Vigo, actualmente la más grande de Europa Occidental. El grupo francés quiere producir en esta planta, además con una inversión de unos 1.000 millones de €, los modelos destinados a los países en desarrollo en competencia directa con Dacia.

Vigo le ha ganado el pulso pues a las plantas de Turquía y Polonia, sus principales competidoras de cara a tamaño y competitividad. Estos modelos, denominados internamente el M3 y el M4, serán fabricados con vistas a venderlos a bajo coste en los países en desarrollo.

Además la noticia recoge que la planta de Vigo fabricaría la nueva versión de la Citroën C4 Picasso, además de las versiones eléctricas de los vehículos comerciales Citroën Berlingo y Peugeot Partner, que se fabrican actualmente en Vigo. Más de 50 años en activo para una planta de producción que parece que tiene su futuro garantizado.

De cara a los modelos a vender, no nos extrañe que acaben también en nuestro país, como ha pasado con el Dacia Logan. No sólo Europa del Este y el norte de África tiene una demanda de coches decentes y baratos.

Vía | Motorpasion

The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act? Really? Even by the disingenuous standards of Capitol Hill, calling the $174 billion spending package making its way through the House “a jobs bill” takes some real moxie.

Die-hard Keynesians, of course, will contend that so long as money gets pushed into the economy, how it gets spent isn’t so critical. But for a government running trillion-dollar budget deficits, at least every billion or so should count. And it’s hard to argue that this bill is optimized for job creation or economic growth.

1) For instance, the bill includes a one-year, $6.7 billion extension of the federal research and development tax credit. By not making it permanent, the credit is less likely to foster long-term investment. The bill also extends tax breaks for NASCAR and Hollywood, ensuring both Red and Blue state residents get fed their respective helpings of pork.

2) More than a quarter of the spending — $47 billion over 10 years — goes toward extending unemployment insurance benefits. Economists worry the increased availability of such assistance may reduce the intensity with which the jobless look for work and lengthen the duration of unemployment by nearly 10 percent. It’s also tough to pin down the job-creating impact of spending $63 billion to increase Medicare payments to doctors and $24 billion for higher Medicaid spending.

3) Even worse, the proposal enlarges the budget deficit. Less than a quarter of the tab is paid for, showing again just how easy it is for Congress to avoid self-imposed limits on deficit spending. And increased Medicare spending was excluded from healthcare reform so the bill could get a better score from the Congressional Budget Office.

4) The White House will argue that given the high unemployment rate, bringing down the deficit is less of a priority. But listen to what economist Carment Reinhart told the president’s deficit panel today (via The Hill):

The gross U.S. debt is approaching a level equivalent to 90 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, the level at which growth has historically declined, said Carmen Reinhart, a University of Maryland economist. When gross debt hits 90 percent of GDP, Reinhart told the commission during a hearing in the Capitol, growth “deteriorates markedly.” Median growth rates fall by 1 percent, and average growth rates fall “considerably more,” she said.

Reinhart said the commission shouldn’t wait to put in place a plan to rein in deficits. “I have no positive news to give,” she said. “Fiscal austerity is something nobody wants, but it is a fact.

5) Barack Obama’s original stimulus plan was $787 billion (though costs have pushed it up to $862 billion). While some advisers argued for $1.2 trillion, the president sided with those who believed an amount of such Brobdingnagian size would alarm financial markets — and probably voters, too. This latest legislation, combined with a $17 billion jobs bill passed in March, would put the tally at around $1 trillion, not counting interest. In due course, the math will be easy enough for the markets to understand.

Here’s another great chart from Doug Short (dshort.com), the master of overlaying markets on top of each other.

Short explains:

Here is a new overlay of five world markets since March 9, 2009. The start date is arbitrary: The S&P 500 hit a low on March 9th, the Nikkei 225 on March 10th, the DAX on March 6th, the FTSE on March 3rd, and the Hang Seng 4.4 months earlier on October 27, 2008. However, by aligning on the same day, we get a better sense of the present-day synchronous behavior of the markets than if we align the lows.

You almost have to feel sorry for Japan, the world’s biggest loser, once again.

Join the conversation about this story »

BP has started operation “Top Kill,” and we’ve embedded here the live videostream of their latest attempt to plug the well. The maneuver involves pumping heavy drilling mud and cement into the well. While routine on surface wells, it’s never been attempted at 5,000 ft underwater. And if it goes south and the blowout preventer cracks under the pressure, it could make matters worse. Bust out the popcorn! I just saw a robot arm!

UPDATE: The camera has changed. Now we are looking at valves instead of the plume.

UPDATE 2: Now we are floating around the blowout preventer.
UPDATE 3: Now we’re back to the valves.
UPDATE 4: Lots of floating and panning now.
UPDATE 5: I just saw a robot arm! Science is happening!
UPDATE 6: You know, by not showing the plume we don’t know what effect, if any, the operation is having on the leak rate.

Here is an animation of how Operation Top Kill is supposed to work:

Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser [BP]

Following up on the news that we posted yesterday about Verizon’s DROID Incredible disappearing from the Verizon Wireless site, it seems that the device is back up after a short delay.  Customers can once again order the Incredible, but the site says that the phone won’t ship until June 16th.  Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam was at the Barclays Capital Global Communications, Media & Technology conference in New York today and explained the situation, saying that HTC is suffering component shortages, specifically with the screen that is made by Samsung.  McAdam continued by saying that Samsung has ramped up production and that Verizon should be able to meet demand for the Incredible within 30 to 60 days.  The offer for an included 2 GB microSD card with the purchase of an Incredible is still available, so while you may have to wait a few weeks for a device, now is still a good time to get yourself one of the best Android devices on the market.

Via Fierce Wireless

Patrik Ervell will always have some items in his collection that will leave you in awe. From jackets, tops, even to the accessories, the designer always finds a way to construct pieces that seems totally out there, yet still applicable to our daily fashion. The Copper Oxyde Jean is one of those items. It’s a slim fitting and tapered jean-cut pant that has a medium rise along with a reinforced stitching at its stress points. It’s unique copper oxyde green print gives it that original Ervell touch and will not stretch at the waist because of its waistband lining. Available now at Hunting and Collecting.

Filed under: Coupe, Hybrid, Japan, Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota

If a report from Japan’s Best Car is to be believed, Toyota will delay the release of the FT-86 from 2011 to 2013.

The reasons behind the delay are varied, and include a different design direction, the economic slowdown and possibly a revised powertrain strategy that could include some kind of hybrid motivation.

As reported previously, the original FT-86 concept was just that – a design study – and Toyota is apparently second-guessing the styling of the coupe before it reaches production. Additionally, ToMoCo is reportedly gauging the success of the Honda CR-Z, which could influence the final drivetrain specs of the FT-86. If that means a hybrid powerplant is in the cards, we’re not totally heartbroken, but if Toyota decides to remake the coupe as a front-driver, consider our dreams officially dashed. Regardless, the next iteration of the FT-86 is slated to debut at the Tokyo Motor Show at the end of 2011.

[Source: Best Car via 7Tune]

Report: Toyota FT-86 delayed until 2013, hybrid under consideration originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 26 May 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the sunscreen speech? The Chicago Tribune column, which became an urban legend and then a bizarre spoken word hit for Baz Luhrmann, began

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

But is even this sage advice subject to the “it’ll cause cancer, no wait, it’ll cure cancer” back-and-forth that plagues medical studies? Reading some headlines today, you might think so. Don’t toss out your tube of Banana Boat just yet, though.

The non-profit Environmental Working Group released another of its reports on the sunscreen industry, coming down hard on the chemicals it uses and the claims it makes in its advertising. Some stories about the report drew headlines like “Sunscreen May Hurt, Not Help;” “Your Sunscreen May Give You Cancer: Study;” and “Study: Many Sunscreens May Be Accelerating Cancer.”

EWG’s report claims that a Vitamin A compound called retinyl palmitate, used in some 40 percent of sunscreens, breaks down and causes skin damage under exposure to sunlight. The report cites research done under the Food and Drug Administration. But, according to dermatologist Henry W. Lim of Henry Ford Hospital:

These claims, says Lim, are based on a study in mice, which are far more susceptible to skin cancer than humans. “It’s dangerous to apply a finding in mice to humans, and I’ve spoken with a number of my colleagues about this and we all agree that it’s very premature to even cast doubt about the safety of this chemical.” The EWG also flagged products with oxybenzone, which it calls a “hormone-disrupting” compound. This, too, is based on mice data, says Lim; the animals were fed significantly greater amounts of the chemical than what’s commonly applied in sunscreen. Other research found no significant changes in blood hormone levels in human volunteers who were told to apply sunscreens containing oxybenzone every day for two weeks [U.S. News & World Report].

I called up dermatologist Darrell Rigel at New York University, who argues that since Vitamin A is used in skin cancer treatment, the claim that it’s a cancer-causer is a dubious one. As the old graduation speech notes, the benefits of sunscreen have been shown for the millions of people who’ve used it to protect their skin for the last quarter-century. Rigel’s worry is that cancer fear-mongering would lead people to go without sunscreen this weekend and throughout the summer, subjecting themselves to damaging burns. “That’s what the real danger is,” he says.

Besides, the Vitamin A compound isn’t the whole story. Back to Dr. Lim:

Interestingly, the EWG gave its green or favorable rating only to products that contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, two blockers that don’t get absorbed into the skin and are considered pretty innocuous. But Lim says that some dermatologists have expressed concerns about the use of these compounds in people who have inflammatory skin conditions like eczema. Tiny cracks in the skin of people with eczema could allow these compounds to enter the bloodstream [U.S. News & World Report].

So do pay attention to the ingredients if you have skin conditions. And if you’d prefer find a sunscreen without the Vitamin A ingredient anyway, the EWG’s database can give you a hand with that.

Just don’t stop wearing sunscreen, please. In fact, use more: The EWG reinforces some helpful points we already knew, including that high SPF numbers can lead people into a false sense of security so they don’t use enough sunscreen, or don’t reapply it when necessary. In addition, they argue, sunscreens should come with more information about their ability to block UVA radiation, and not just UVB.

This is partially the fault of the FDA, which has promised–and failed to deliver on–regulations for sunscreen. The organization claims that regulations might be issued as soon as next October, but manufacturers will have at least a year to comply [Fast Company].

Finally, the EWG reminds the public that sunscreen shouldn’t be a primary protector—that is, don’t stay out shirtless all day in the blazing heat because you slathered on some SPF 45 in the morning.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Biology of Sunscreen
DISCOVER: Outrunning Melanoma
Discoblog: Sunscreen: Healthy Habit for You, Bringer of Death for Coral Reefs
Discoblog: Lather Up: New Sunscreen Could Be Inspired By Hippo Sweat

Image: flickr / Indexorama

Article Tags: Blast From the Past, William Pinn

“On a warm day CO2 will heat up faster than the other air molecules, but on a cold day it will cool faster and lose its heat. So how exactly is CO2 supposed to warm the planet if it loses its heat?

HERE is how science is supposed to be done, with research, empirical verification, and a healthy dose of native intelligence and humor. Citing Specific Heats and Thermodynamics, Pinn follows a simple yet sound approach. Indeed, if the key to an atmospheric greenhouse effect is just the ability of certain gases to hold onto heat, thus yielding up the warmth they’ve stored when the earth rotates into night, Pinn’s conclusions are very solid. The most important hint the earth offers us is that it is cooler than predicted by day and warmer at night. With only minor quibbles here and there (for instance, the confusion between the specific heats of water vs water vapor) I’d call this essay quite a gem.

Surrounded by a vacuum, the earth can only lose heat by radiation. And what are ‘greenhouse gases’ famous for? Radiating. AS.

Why Carbon Dioxide is Not a Greenhouse Gas
Published August 26, 2008 by: William Pinn

I’m sitting here typing on my computer and basking in the coolness of another summer day here in Roseville, California. Did I say coolness? Yes I did. You see, we folks in Roseville are experiencing a summer with record cool temperatures.

Source: associatedcontent.com

Read in full with comments »   

With the big web companies taking a keen interest and rival startups all competing, there’s plenty of jostling amongst mobile social location sharing hopefuls.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has bought Koprol, Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Twitter are all planning their own location add-ons and rival Foursquare is growing in popularity.

Gowalla seems to want to keep its cards in the game by being as open as possible until things shake out. So is there really a differentiator, and what is it… ?

At the Open Mobile Summit in London, CEO Josh Williams told me: “The Googles, Facebooks and Twitters of the world… location’s going to become a platform that is ubquitous across the web and mobile web. We want to provide a valuable service that sits on top of that – so, ultimately, we’re agnostic about where you choose to share your location.

“Hopefully, we can play friendly with everybody.” Williams told a summit panel session: “We dont care if you want to take (your location) to Gowalla and share it with your friends there or take it out to your Twitter friends.”

Williams says the location sharing space will mature in the next six months by the cluster of counterparts differentiating. He wants Gowalla to add media, not just location, sharing.

Ultimately, one wonders whether there’s a window of opportunity before the big guns switch on to the phenomenon – and that could mean either acquisition, as in Koprol’s case, or sticking to a start-up’s guns.

So is there a standalone business model? Gowalla’s trying “two or three different angles”, including promoting brands’ locations, Williams said. Is Gowalla an acquisition target? “It’s too early to say,” Williams added, noting he’s “very happy to be swimming in that (Austin start-up) pond”.

Two of the three iPhones released thus far have been launched in June. WWDC, where Apple generally announces iPhones 2-3 weeks before they’re shipping, starts on June 7th. If you had to guess, when would you wager that the new iPhone was coming?

If you said “June”, awesome — you’re probably right, and click on after the jump to find out more. If you said “October”… well, I’m not quite sure what to say to that.

According to BGR, AT&T HQ has internally confirmed to certain employees that there will be an iPhone launch next month, with the device hitting the shelves before the month is out. According to their tipster, “it won’t even be late June.”

Sure, it’s vague. Sure, you probably could have guessed as much, or thrown a dart in the dark and nailed it. But this is the good word of a random, unidentifiable AT&T employee who could very well be talking out of their arse, dammit — and we respect that word in this house.

Sony has developed a super-flexible 80 μm-thick 4.1-inch 121 ppi OTFT-driven full color OLED display (16 million colors) which can be wrapped around a thin cylinder. To create the display, Sony developed OTFTs with an original organic semiconductor material (a PXX derivative) with eight times the current modulation of conventional OTFTs. This was achieved due to the development of integration technologies of OTFTs and OLEDs on an ultra-thin 20 μm thick flexible substrate (a flexible on-panel gate-driver circuit with OTFTs which is able to get rid of conventional rigid driver IC chips interfering roll-up of a display) and soft organic insulators for all the insulators in the integration circuit. By combining these technologies, Sony successfully demonstrated the world’s first OLED panel which is capable of reproducing moving images while being repeatedly rolled-up – around a cylinder with a radius of 4 mm – and stretched.

Sony will unveil the results of this development on May 27 at “SID (Society for Information Display) 2010 International Symposium” in Seattle, WA (May 23-28).

Sony will proceed with the development of the solution / print based process which manufactures display devices from organic materials that are easily dissolved in common solvents. This process requires fewer steps, and consumes materials and energy more efficiently – thus has a smaller environmental footprint – compared to the conventional high temperature vacuum semiconductor process which use inorganic, silicon materials.

Sony will continue to improve the performance and reliability of its flexible organic displays because the application of these developments are expected to yield thin, light-weight, durable and mobile devices with enhanced form-factor.

So how did Sony do it?

An OTFT (Organic Thin-Film Transistor) is a thin-film transistor with organic (carbon-based compound) semiconductor. The OTFT can be directly made on a flexible substrate at low temperature below typically 180°C. It has high mechanical flexibility and therefore it is expected to realize thin, light-weight, mechanical-shock resistant and form-factor enhanced electronic devices, such as flexible display, e-paper and RF-ID tag. Because organic materials can be easily dissolved in common solvents, development of electronic circuits in a large area with solution/printed process has been attractive much attention.

Sony has developed organic semiconductor material, peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) derivative, which is stable under exposure to oxygen, moisture, light and heat and improved current modulation of eight-times that of conventional OTFT with organic semiconductor of pentacene. Improvement of this OTFT achieved the world’s highest-resolution OTFT-driven OLED display with resolution of 121 ppi and 432 x 240 x RGB (FWQVGA) pixels.

This is the world’s first demonstration of an OLED display with an integrated gate-driver circuit with OTFTs. The improvement of the OTFT described above enables integration of a flexible gate-driver circuit with OTFTs on a display panel. The roll-up capability is possible because the rigid driver IC chips has been removed from the display.

In order to enhance flexibility of the display, Sony has developed organic insulators for all the insulators in the OTFT and OLED integration circuit. These organic insulators can be formed with the solution process in the atmosphere which is requires fewer steps, and consumes materials and energy more efficiently – thus has a smaller environmental footprint – compared to the conventional high temperature vacuum semiconductor process which use inorganic/silicon materials.

The OTFT-driven OLED display with the aforementioned technologies (1-3) can reproduce moving images while rolled-up around a cylinder with a radius of 4 mm. Even after 1000 cycles of repeatedly rolling-up and stretching the display, there was no clear degradation in the display’s ability to reproduce moving images.

WASHINGTON—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited Wednesday to the White House by Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in Jerusalem. Netanyahu arrives in June. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will also soon be meeting with Obama.

“The President looks forward to a visit from President Abbas in the near future. We’re just working out timing,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman said Wednesday.

In speaking to Netanyahu, Emanuel said, “Mr. Prime Minster, on behalf of the President, you will be in Canada, and he has asked me to extend an invitation to you to come visit him at the White House for a work meeting to discuss both our shared security interests as well as our close cooperation in seeking peace between Israel and its neighbors,” Emanuel said.

“And also on a personal matter, on behalf of the Emanuel family, I want to say that this trip has been a wonderful trip for the entire Emanuel family, most importantly for me to show my children, given so much as you know of my childhood was here, to show them the country, expose them to the history in a very intimate way and most importantly the most important thing about Israel, to its people who have been exceptionally warm and genuine in their affection to both all the family in general, but particularly to Zach on his Bar Mitzvah in wishing him a Mazal Tov.

“And so it has been heartfelt and nothing more than a father could wish his son on his Bar Mitzvah the way the Israeli people have treated him – now if we just get him to do his homework that will make me happy,” Emanuel said.

Netanyahu replied, “This sounds like an impossible task, but we have shown we can do the impossible.’

Emanuel said, “It’s been a great trip. The entire administration, the President, particularly is looking forward to the visit June first. Thank you.”

Netanyahu “I gladly accept. I think we have a good invitation, I gladly accept and look forward to the meeting.”

12.46pm

The toughest hurdle while attempting to reaching Jamaica’s many trouble spots is getting in, as airports shut down. American Airlines canceled flights into Kingston so you must fly into Montego Bay on the North side of the island, where most tourists go. A flight attendant said crews could not get to downtown Kingston because of the gunfire. No taxis from the hotel would make the drive which is about 120 miles. Air Jamaica is still flying in, so we so we got on a 9am flight into Kingston, found a driver, Mr Powell, and drove in toward the center of the violence, Tivoli Gardens.

The atmosphere was eerie with deserted streets, looted stores, and shot-up police stations, some of which were burned down.

For 4 days the government has tried and failed to capture a drug lord, Christopher Coke. Sending the Army in led to barricades in the streets and gunbattles which have killed almost 50 civilians. A section of the capital city is out of government control.

We set up near a soldiers’ road block. By the time I had Qik streaming video up on an iphone cameraman Chris Pontius already had a stronger signal from a bgan, a transmitter the size of a laptop computer. He set up his gear right on the sidewalk- laptop and cables on the pavement, all charged the night before.

The soldiers did not like being filmed, nor did the civilians. There is a sense of shame in the world looking at the looted stores and street violence. One young man in a red shirt made his hand into an imaginary gun and walked up behind me yelling “Blam blam blam.”

There were crowds on foot around a gas station. Security felt dicey. Pontius and I stood out.

The military and private security and police wear a maze of uniforms and masks and often travel in civilian cars or pickups with guns sticking out the windows. That makes it tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

The battle also has shifted from different parts of the city. Foot traffic is heavy today on some streets where there were pitched battles yesterday. So it is hard to tell where the front line is.

I’ve read about parallels between this man Coke and Pablo Escobar – figures romanticized as Robin Hoods who help the poor from their neighborhoods. That might explain some of the support Coke has gotten from his section of the city. Other reports say his gang – the Shower Posse – got its name from the amount of bullets it sprayed into victims. Some estimates say the Shower Posse is responsible for 40 percent of the crack cocaine trade in the U.S.

Some places you can feel the violence. A couple of weeks ago in Greece I saw demonstrators in white face masks holding scrolls of protest like some elaborate theatre put together by graduate students. I did not feel there would be much violence. Here you can see the pock marks in the central police station. Yesterday men took automatic rifles and blazed away at the police HQ. I thought about the men holding the rifles. That is violence.

The bigger concern for the U.S. is not just about extraditing one drug lord. It is the close connection between a drug lord who supplies 40 percent of crack to the U.S. and a country’s Prime Minister. Coke and Jamaican PM Golding are from the same district, allies. Political parties have used street gangs here to get out the vote since the 1970s, but now these gangs have developed into international drug rings. The money and the firepower and the opportunity for corruption has magnified to the point where a state is at threat, at risk of becoming a narco-state. So now we will see if a drug lord’s ally can bring him to justice by the use of the military inside a crowded capital without igniting further unrest.

This is Dr. Mark Gasson. He’s a human being who’s managed to contract a nasty computer virus. Don’t feel too bad for him, though: he did it to himself. More »










Computer virus – Security – Malicious Software – Viruses – Detection and Removal Tools

They change their clothes frequently. They shower repeatedly, sometimes using a whole bar of soap in one go. Some even swallow perfume.

They think they smell bad, but they don’t.

Olfactory reference syndrome is a rare psychiatric disorder, but it can lead to isolation, depression, and suicide. It’s also a little-noticed, little-studied syndrome. But now a study to appear in Depression and Anxiety has looked at twenty sufferers and reviewed current literature on the disorder to determine its general characteristics.

Psychiatrists have known about the disorder’s symptoms for over a century, but treatment and diagnosis are difficult, in part because the syndrome doesn’t currently have its own classification in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)–the handbook of mental health professionals. The manual combines the syndrome with other disorders, such as social phobia, delusional disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The new study gives recommendations for updating the next version of the manual, and suggests adding this disorder to an appendix of conditions that need further research.

As reported by HealthDay News, nineteen of the study’s twenty volunteers exhibited at least one compulsive behavior, like repeated self-sniffing or showering. On average, they spent eight hours a day thinking about their smell. Fearing social interactions, forty percent had been housebound for over a week.

Many patients thought the smell came from their mouth, but they were also concerned with their armpits, genitalia, anus, feet, and skin, according to a MedPage Today article.

Katharine Phillips, a coauthor of the study and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, presented these and other findings on Tuesday at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting. She told Reuters Health:

“I think it’s a very secret and hidden disorder, because these patients tend to be very ashamed of themselves…. I have been so struck by the intense suffering that the patients experience.”

Related content:
Discoblog: Bad Breath? Body Odor? Don’t Bother Applying to China’s Space Program
Discoblog: Doctor, Is My Diabetes Medicine Supposed to Smell Like Gym Socks?
DISCOVER: Finding the Right Word Odor
DISCOVER: The Brain: The First Yardstick for Measuring Smells

Image: flickr / mysza831

BMW 135i 360-hp ECU remap by Superchips

The upcoming BMW M version of the 1-Series (aka M1) is expected to make some 345-hp from an updated version of the N55 engine. However, while you wait for BMW to debut an M1 (if they ever do), a company by the name of Superchips is offering a performance boosting ECU remap for the 135i model.

“Careful optimization of ignition, fuelling and turbo boost settings via combination of extensive chassis dyno testing and road validation has produced a Superchips remap that elevates the performance of the 135i onto a different plane,” Superchips says.

Click here for prices on the 2010 BMW 135i.

What kind of a different plane? An increase of 49-hp and a boost of 52 lb-ft of torque. That brings the total output of a BMW 135i to 360-hp and a maximum torque of 336 lb-ft. While Superchips has only dyno tested the car at its own headquarters, it has yet to confirm any performance figures. Either way, we expect it to be much better than the 135i’s 0-60 mph time of 5.3 seconds (top speed of 155 mph is left untouched).

Those interested in the upgrade can head over to Superchips at its UK dealer network with a total of £445.00 ($640 USD) in their pocket. Not a bad deal at all.

2010 BMW 135i (Coupe and Convertible):

– By: Omar Rana

“Not a fan of 3D movies? Wait till you play 3D games, that’s when the technology will really shine.” Not an exact quote, but that’s the spirit of what Sony Computer Entertainment Europe President Andrew House said in a recent interview. The idea is that, OK, 3D movies may be just sorta there, but it’s sitting there and playing something like WipeOut HD in 3D where you’ll really gain an appreciation for the medium.

Having played several games in 3D at various events over the past few months, allow me to say this: meh. At no point did I play a game in 3D where I reacted like Homer’s mother seeing Joe Namath’s sideburns. That is, at no point did I go, “HOLY SMOKES THIS IS LIFE-CHANGING.” Neat? Sure, it’s neat, but if I never play another 3D game it won’t be so big a deal.

Then again, we’re still pretty early in the transition 3D. Perhaps in a few years developers will have figured out how to make the most of the technology. First-gen graphics are always a little wonky.

Specific to the PS3, well, we still have to wait for 3D TVs to be affordable enough to start showing up in your local Wal-Mart. We’re a little while away from that yet.

I keep seeing the stat that HDTVs are still only in something like 50 percent of homes in the U.S. Considering that unemployment is still quite high, I don’t know if now is the time to depend on people to shell out $2,000 for a TV when they just bought a TV a few years ago…

via Bit-Tech

Who knew federal prosecutors were so good at breaking news? A former Disney administrative assistant and her friend have been arrested for attempting to sell non-public information to investors — but that may not be the big news. In the complaint (.pdf) that the government released today regarding the action, prosecutors may have inadvertently revealed that Disney may be on the verge of selling its broadcast network ABC.

According to the complaint, the ex-employee — Bonnie Hoxie — sent e-mails to several investors saying that she would sell them non-public information before the company’s earnings announcement. She was the administrative assistant of Disney’s Head of Corporate Communications. But the FBI got wind of this and had an undercover agent posing as an interested investor contact Hoxie. In an attempt to show her insider credentials, Hoxie sent the following e-mail after learning that the fake investor wanted to make a deal:

I only have access to the earnings report that is delivered to us three days before its official release date. Until then i will not be able to get you any other documents but here is a piece of information i can give away to show good faith and build trust. Bob Iger is in serious and advanced negotiations with two private equity firms to sell them the ABC network but no price has been determined yet. I will keep aware of any relevant information that could move the stock price in the future.

(The letter above is presented as is, not corrected for grammar or punctuation.)

Bob Iger is Disney’s CEO. A few months later, Hoxie accurately provided Disney’s quarterly earnings-per-share as $0.48 to the FBI agent a few hours before the information was publicly released.

It’s not a huge surprise that Disney is humoring an ABC sale, but it hasn’t been reported that it was in “serious and advanced” negotiations. On Monday, for example, the New York Post speculated that Disney might be considering looking for buyers:

Meanwhile, ABC’s future in the Mouse House is also not guaranteed, with Disney chief Bob Iger said to be taking a hard look at the network.

“There are no guarantees,” he said recently about ABC’s future at Disney. A source said the issue is what to do with the accompanying stations.

Being in “serious and advanced” negotiations with private equity investors for a sale isn’t “taking a “hard look” — it’s being on the verge of a sale. If this ex-employee had her facts right — and she did about EPS — then this is significant news. Did federal prosecutors realize that they were releasing this potential bombshell by unsealing the complaint?

Disney was contacted about the validity of Hoxie’s claim about its intent to sell ABC, but has not yet responded. (I will update this post if they do.)

Update: Thanks to a commenter who pointed out that, even though it isn’t on their own website’s press releases, Disney has issued a statement saying:

The reference in the complaint to conversations regarding the ABC Network were and are false.

Now we can only wonder why Hoxie would have used a false claim to attempt to ‘built trust’. Usually, you’d want to use a fact to do that. What if the investor had attempted to verify this information by asking around if his friends at any private equity firms are bidding on major networks? It might have also been nice to see the DOJ state that this purported fact was false in the complaint, rather than get the market wondering if it might be true.

Disney – Walt Disney Company – New York Post – ABC – American Broadcasting Company