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¿Os acordáis del Bugatti Veyron que cayó al lago en EEUU hace poco? Un millonario norteamericano, cayó a un lago junto con su Bugatti Veyron (dicen que se distrajo para buscar su móvil que se había caído), dejándo al coche inservible, como es evidente.

Este buen hombre no tardó mucho en reemplazar al maltrecho Veyron por otro coche similar. Vista la amplia repercusión que tuvo su acrobática caída al lago y las múltiples teorías que se mencionaron, su propietario anunció la compra, mediante un mensaje al sitio Jalopnik con foto del flamante coche incluída.

Seguramente, quiso limpiar su imágen, ya que una de las teorías que se mencionaron, fue que este señor planificó “el accidente” para cobrar el seguro de su anterior Veyron, sobre lo cual coincido plenamente. Al menos, de una cosa se puede estar seguro: este tío tiene excelente gusto (y dinero) a la hora de comprar coche y mucha inventiva a la hora de destruírlos ¿qué “accidente” sufrirá ahora?

Vía | Jalopnik

UPDATED: Chicago police say a 15-year-old West Side girl whose family had not seen her since she left for school Friday is reunited with her family.

Family friends said Marshiana Brown had last been seen Friday at a bus stop near Jackson Boulevard and Brown’s mother spoke to her Friday and said she was coming home, but she did not, a family friend said.

Harrison Area Special Victims Unit detectives were investigating.

ORIGINAL STORY: Chicago police are asking for help finding a 15-year-old West Side girl whose family has not seen her since she left for school Friday.

Family friends said Marshiana Brown was last seen Friday at a bus stop near Jackson Boulevard and Springfield Avenue about 8:30 a.m.

Brown skipped school on Friday and it is believed that she left with two friends and may be in the area of 113th Street and Peoria Avenue, according to police.

Brown may have been seen near the Pulaski Road Congress/Blue Line “L” stop on the West Side after she was seen at the bus stop, according to a family friend.

Brown’s mother spoke to her Friday and said she was coming home, but she did not, the family friend said.

Brown is 4 feet, 10 inches tall, black with a dark complexion, with brown eyes and black hair with micro braids. She was last seen wearing a black jacket, green shirt, and khaki pants, police said.

Harrison Area Special Victims Unit detectives were investigating.

Anyone with information should call detectives at 312-746-9259.

– Staff report

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

Bears defensive end Gaines Adams died Sunday morning of cardiac arrest resulting from an enlarged heart, according to Greenwood County, S.C., chief deputy coroner Marcia Kelley-Clark.

The 26-year-old Adams was taken to the emergency room at at Self Regional Healthcare at 7:14 a.m. Eastern time and pronounced dead at 8:21 a.m., Kelley-Clark said. Adams, who is from Greenwood, was visiting his girlfriend.

A Greenwood County Sheriff’s investigator said the house was owned by Adams and the player and his girlfriend were at the residence at the time, and she reportedly made the call to 911 at around 7 a.m.

Toxicology tests are being run by the State Law Enforcement Division, though drug use was not suspected as a factor in Adams’ death. However, those results probably will not be available for at least two months, Kelley-Clark said.

The Bears issued a statement Sunday afternoon, saying, “We are stunned and saddened by the news of Gaines’ passing. Our prayers are with his family during this difficult time.”

Adams’ unexpected death shocked teammates. He was traded to Chicago from Tampa Bay in exchange for a 2010 second-round draft pick.

“It’s crazy,” Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher said. “I didn’t know him that well because he came in during the middle of the season. But I did know him. I still saw him every day when I went into work. It’s just weird.

“I had a teammate die when I was in college. You just don’t know how to handle it. It’s just sad, man. It’s a bad deal.”

Adams, a star at Clemson, was the fourth pick in the 2007 draft by the Buccaneers. The Bears traded for him in October, intent on rebuilding their pass rush around him.

Adams did not have any reported prior medical issues that would have revealed heart issues.

“I remember him at the 2007 Draft as a fine young man,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “Our condolences to Gaines’ family, his teammates on the Bears and Buccaneers, and their organizations on their loss.”

Photo: Gaines Adams in 2009. (Photo by NFL Photos)

By Vaughn McClure and Brad Biggs

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

This news just missed mention in our ultimate ebook reader guide, too bad so sad, but nevertheless there’s an eReader coming soon from Asus. The 6-inch OLED reader plays flash, includes wifi/3G and lasts up to 122 hours per charge.

Note that, like with all electronics being marketed to consumers today, that battery life claim comes with a caveat: “Under ideal conditions.”

Update: You can check out the full specs over at Electric Pig

The due date is an ambiguous “end of the year” and no price is given, although it doesn’t sound cheap (even if it is coming from Asus). [Times Online via Engadget]

Filed under: Budget, Truck, Scion

We know that Scion will launch a new tC coupe and a tiny little iQ minicar before the end of the year, but what comes after that? Yoshi Inaba, president of Toyota Motor North America, admits that the Japanese automaker hasn’t yet decided what future products make the most sense for the youth-oriented Scion brand, but Scion General Manager Jack Hollis tells Wards Auto that a truck is a possibility.

Take a look at the current pickup truck market and you’ll see that the only currently available machine that even remotely fits into the compact role is the Ford Ranger, which hasn’t been updated in eons and sees its sales dwindle every single year (55,600 in 2009). This being the case, there may be room for a small urban pickup from Scion, though the automaker indicates it would need to be careful not to infringe on the class-leading Toyota Tacoma.

If Scion did indeed build a true compact pickup with an eye toward reasonable fuel efficiency, what would it look like? Perhaps an xB with a small bed? Or might it look something like the Hako concept from the 2008 New York Auto Show (perhaps in modified form)? Refresh your memory of that odd-looking show car by perusing our high-res image gallery below.

[Source: Wards Auto]

Will Scion inject freshness into America’s stale compact pickup scene? originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Car Buying, Classics, Coupe, Performance, Ferrari

For many, it’s a dream to own a Ferrari. For some, that alone is not enough. They need to own a specific Ferrari. We understand. We all have our favorites. Our man Jonny, for example, would probably agree to several waterboarding sessions and a you-can-only-listen-to-boy-bands-forever music restriction in exchange for a 288 GTO. (Jonny would agree to the latter because the GTO’s engine noise would obviate the need for music ever again.)

Others among us (cough) would likely dip a toe into the kidney black market for one of the Berlinetta Boxers, whether it be a 365 or a 512. From a practical perspective, choosing between the two varieties is somewhat akin to waking up in 1986 and being asked who you’d rather date: Kathy Ireland or Paulina Porizkova. It’s pretty much a no-lose situation. As such, we enjoy perusing the classifieds, anticipating a mythical future in which we have bottomless pockets and are on a first-name, Christmas-card-list basis with every Ferrari mechanic on the eastern seaboard. Yeah, yeah – we know. Don’t blow the fantasy, okay?

Anyhow, we think we may have found a winner this week after scanning the “for sale” listings at Octane magazine’s website. Offered through Tillack & Co., the ‘84 BB 512i you see above shows 27,000 miles on the clock, and at $135,000, it’s cheaper than your garden-variety F430 (and everyone has those, right?). Plus, it has that classic Pininfarina wedge shape, big NACA ducts, those eternally-cool knock-off hubs, is sufficiently rare (just 1,007 BBi’s produced in total), and lets everyone know you laugh at their child-friendly paddles as you work the old-school gated shifter. But these are aspects you’ll get with any old BB. What puts this one over the top is its provenance: it was once owned by the legendary A.J. Foyt (with a signed dash and owner’s manual to prove it).

Not only does this critical element let you say stuff like, “I have A.J. Foyt’s Ferrari” in conversations, breaking any and all ties regarding whose machine at the valet station reigns supreme, it also elevates your Man Status to a point where you can (possibly) impregnate women simply by making eye contact. So if you decide to visit the folks at Tillack and spring for this particular ride, drive it well. And be careful where you look…

[Source: Tillack & Co. via Octane]

Classified Ad Find of the Day: Former A.J. Foyt ‘84 Ferrari BB 512i originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Telephone wiring isn’t very hard to do. Almost anyone can learn to work with telephone wiring in under an hour. In addition, telephone wiring is very safe to work with because it uses low voltages.

Inside your home, telephone wiring uses the simple RJ-11 connector. The RJ-11 connector has six positions for wires, but most often only four wires are actually present. Of those, only two wires are normally used!

The two wires are known as tip and ring. Tip uses the 4th position on the RJ-11 connector and ring uses the 3rd position. The way to count the pins is to look at an RJ-11 connector with the little tab pointed downwards.

The wire known as tip is normally green and ring is usually red. Telephone connectors come in two types: female and male. The male connectors fit into the female outlets. For more data on telephone wiring, refer to Telephone Wiring and Telepone Wiring.

Tags: wiring, tip, ring, telephone, phone, wire, jack, line, pair, box, need, home, jacks, pin, nid, new, standard, color, cable, installation

Novatel’s MiFi Mobile Hotspot, sold by both Verizon Wireless and Sprint as the MiFi 2200, may have multiple security vulnerabilities which would allow a remote user to access the GPS location of your device and change the wireless settings of your MiFi, effectively terminating your internet connection and forcing you to reset your device back to factory settings. Adam Baldwin of nGenuity supposedly discovered some gaping holes in the web interface for this mobile hotspot that can be exploited for the above nefarious purposes. Purported security holes available for exploit include:

• MiFi does not require a valid session to commit changes to its configuration settings
• GPS can be enabled without the users knowledge by visiting a malicious website. The user may be presented with a “login required” request but most users won’t bat an eye and will just click on through
• The web interface does not protect against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) so a malicious website could “do evil things like change the wireless settings of the MiFi”
• Certain portions of the web interface improperly encode data back to the data, an example is the key field for the Wi-Fi settings which exposes the clear text of the field

Baldwin posted a proof of concept video on his website and has reportedly contacted Novatel about the vulnerabilities. We have no way to confirm his findings but supposing they’re true, any MiFi users out there feel a little less safe today?

[Via Phone Arena]

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This week, controversy sparked as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether the federal government can hold prisoners past the end of their sentence if they are considered “sexually dangerous.” Although the court seemed likely to allow the government to continue the process, Justice Antonin Scalia gave U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan an earful about the issue.

Hard for me to say, but this is one of those rare days when I’m actually on board with Scalia here.

More than 20 states have laws that permit keeping mentally ill or sexually violent prisoners behind bars, even after they’ve served their sentences. Such laws were sanctioned in a 1997 Supreme Court ruling, but whether or not the federal government shares that power is still up in the air. In 2006, Congress extended this policy to federal prisoners in the Adam Walsh Act, and now with the case U.S. v. Comstock, the Supreme Court is considering whether the policy oversteps its bounds with the law.

In this particular case, the defendant, Graydon Comstock, was six days from finishing a 37-month sentence for child pornography when he was declared “sexually dangerous” by the attorney general and kept incarcerated. He and other similarly treated inmates have sued the government, arguing that Congress is seizing powers reserved only for the state.

As Scalia has said, “This is a recipe for the federal government taking over everything.”

By contrast, the government argues it has identified only 105 prisoners as “sexually dangerous”  — a tiny fraction among the 15,000 federal prisoners with a history of sexual violence or child molestation.

The last problem we have in this country is too-short sentences, but in certain cases, if we need to hand down longer terms (with the possibility of parole) at trial, that practice would be far preferable to the practice of the federal government locking up these inmates indefinitely.

To be sure, there are some prisoners in our country who pose a threat to our society and shouldn’t be released. But it’s the role of our court system — not Congress, not prosecutors — to sentence them and decide.

More from SCOTUSblog, WSJ Law Blog and Reuters.

Photo Credit: Rob Crawley

When Swedish developer GRIN (makers of Capcom’s Bionic Commando) closed its doors last year, some former employees revealed their last project had them partnered with — of all companies — Square Enix for a new Final Fantasy game. While we’ve seen leaked concept art of this game (codenamed Fortress) before, now a mysterious YouTube poster has leaked what he purports is tech demo footage of the game in action.

In the info panel of the YouTube video, the poster claims this is “an action game set some time after the events of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, and is intended for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows platforms.” The poster also claims that although GRIN closed down, the project is still alive, possibly at now-Square Enix-owned Eidos Montreal (and note that GamesIndustry.biz reported last September that an anonymous source said the project was still alive at another developer, too).

Of course, this is all completely unsupported with a lack of any cited sources, and impossible to verify at this time. So in other words, consider this a pretty big rumor for now. But if the game really is still in development, when will Square Enix make it official and show it to the world?

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We’ve seen several bike-related concepts in the past few weeks. If, in fact, alternative transportation is on the rise, bikes will become a larger part of our transportation mix. To be really effective and to find wide acceptance, these three may help make bikes more of an option.

Copenhagen wheel

A group of MIT researchers developed the Copenhagen wheel, a versatile electric bicycle wheel which was given its debut last month in Copenhagen during the COP-15 summit. The wheel combines a regenerative brake, a battery, an electric motor, and a variety of sensors and a bluetooth connection. Combining regenerative braking and electric assist acceleration helps make it easier for bike commuters to deal with starts and stops. With the Copenhagen wheel, the bike can also track speed and distance traveled, as well as monitoring local smog conditions and tracking the proximity of friends. The Copenhagen wheel also acts as a smart lock to prevent unauthorized use of the bike.

YikeBike mini-farthing

Weighing in at 10 kg (22 lbs), the YikeBike is a small folding electric scooter with a large-wheel/small-wheel combination like the a “pennyfarthing.” It folds into a space of 150 x 600 x 600mm (approximately 6 x 18 x 18 inches) and can be unfolded and ready to ride in about 15 seconds. The YikeBike has a range of 9-10 km (5.5-6 miles). It is expected to be commercially available soon at a cost of around 3,500 Euros (roughly US$5,000).

Underground bike storage

In an area with extensive bike commuting already in place, storage solutions for the hundreds of bike riders becomes a problem. In Japan, the Eco Cycle is an underground storage facility with a capacity of 144 bikes (18 bikes per level and 8 levels of storage). The automated system can retrieve any bike within 10 seconds, making it quick and convenient. A one month pass for the Eco Cycle garage costs about $30/month (2600 yen).

Thanks again, John B!

The New York Times experimented with paid content before, without much success, but that’s not stopping them from giving it a go again. This time, however, the paid-to-free content changeover might coincide with a certain unconfirmed mystery tablet.

The NYT announcement is expected to arrive in the “coming weeks,” which puts it smack dab in the middle of Apple’s mystery product press conference, slated for January 27. Convenient!

According to New York magazine, the paid content model could also arrive hand-in-hand with an Apple partnership or distribution deal.

It’s all just industry rumor and buzz for now, of course, but the part about a media partnership rings true considering all the Apple meetings and news we heard on that front in 2009. [New York Magazine via CNET]

While Twitter is an incredible platform for tapping into the conversations that are taking place on the web, the real-time stream can be crowded. It’s hard to keep track of back-and-forth communication between users or to keep track of subject-related Tweets based on hashtags. Recently launched Tweeter Clubs aims to create a real-time conversation around the Tweets that are broadcast to the web.

Once you log into the site with your Twitter account, you can enter the tweet on the TweetUp tab. Your tweet will appear in both the club and on Twitter automatically. TweeterClubs will only show the tweets that come from the club members and when you log in, you are automatically a member. At the moment, the site only shows one club, the “Tweetheart Club,” which includes the Tweets of the six women profiled in the controversial Vanity Fair article. But Tweeter Club’s founder Jeff Whitehead says the site is planning to open up so allow anyone to create their own clubs.

Those who are participating in clubs who Tweet with a club-specific hashtag can Tweet from any third party Twitter client, and their Tweets will be aggregated into their Tweeter Club. Users will be able to manage specific clubs by banning members, deleting messages and also seeing statistics on clubs, including the number of members and number tweets per day. Whitehead says that Tweeter Club will also offer an Android app and will open up its API for Twitter clients to incorporate its functionality into their own platforms.

Of course, users can also participate in conversations on Twitter by just adding a specific hashtag to Tweets and then searching for that hashtag. Other startups that help make sense of specific conversations on the web are TweetGrid, and TweetConvo and Bettween.

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Bertazzoni is an Italian fifth generation family-owned company specializing in the production of quality ranges and cooking systems. Their ranges are perfect for anyone looking for a smart buy. This Struffoli recipe is a sweet Italian treat and has been passed down by the Bertazzoni president’s great grandmother to each generation.

Image: Bertazzoni

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon butter, softened
• ½ cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup honey
• Oil for deep-frying
• Colored sprinkles (optional)

Instructions

Whisk until frothy eggs, butter, and the 1 teaspoon of sugar. Then, stir in flour until well combined. Work the mixture with your hands into soft dough.

When it is dough-like, divide it into pieces and roll each one into a rope about the width of an index finger and a foot long. Then, cut the ropes into small regular pieces. Toss the pieces with enough flour to dust them lightly. Shake off any excess flour as this will blacken the frying oil.

Proceed to next step immediately, do not let the pieces to dry on the outside as they may crack when frying.

Fry at 375 degrees F, making sure to put a few pieces in at a time so you don’t lower the oil temperature. The Struffoli are ready when golden brown and puffy.

Drain the Struffoli on a paper towel to remove excess oil.

In a large saucepan mix honey and ½ cup of sugar over low heat. Stir constantly until sugar dissolves into the honey. Sugar in the honey will make the Struffoli more crisp. Heat must be very low, just enough to keep warm as sugar tends to burn easily. Add a few of the drained struffoli at a time and coat on all sides.

Transfer the coated struffoli to a large platter and shape them with wet hands. Shape along the platter rim so to form a large and thick round ring. If you wish to add some fun for the children, sprinkle with the colored sprinkles. Let rest for 1 to 2 hours. Enjoy with the family!

Bertazzoni’s complete line of freestanding ranges, built-in cook tops, ventilation hoods and other design-coordinated accessories are represented through regionally-exclusive distributors and sales offices throughout the United States and Canada. For more information, visit bertazzoni-italia.com or call 1-866-905-0010.

Great Grandmother's Recipe (Image: Bertazzoni)

Post from: Blisstree

Bertazzoni Struffoli