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Tag: Engine

  • Companies Vow to Fight Warrantless Browser Data Access

    Companies Vow to Fight Warrantless Browser Data Access

    Following the defeat of a Senate amendment that would have banned warrantless browser data access, a coalition of companies are taking the fight to the House.

    Mozilla, Engine, Reddit, Inc., Reform Government Surveillance, Twitter, i2Coalition and Patreon all signed a letter addressed to four of the US House of Representatives members. In the letter, they state the following:

    “We urge you to explicitly prohibit the warrantless collection of internet search and browsing history when you consider the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act (H.R. 6172) next week. As leading internet businesses and organizations, we believe privacy and security are essential to our economy, our businesses, and the continued growth of the free and open internet. By clearly reaffirming these protections, Congress can help preserve user trust and facilitate the continued use of the internet as a powerful contributing force for our recovery.”

    The companies highlight that Senators Ron Wyden and Steve Daines introduced an amendment in the Senate to ban the warrantless collection of browser data when the USA PATRIOT Act was renewed. That amendment had supermajority support in the Senate, as well as wide bipartisan support, but failed because several senators failed to show up for the vote.

    The companies point out in their letter that web browsing data “can provide a detailed portrait of our private lives. It may reveal medical conditions, religious beliefs, and personal relationships, and it should be protected by effective legal safeguards.”

    While Mozilla does not collect that data, the companies strongly believe there needs to be legislations specifically prohibiting its use without a warrant. Moves like this are one of the reasons Mozilla continues to be one of the strongest voices in the fight for privacy.

  • Spiders Gasoline Huffing Cause Mazda Recall

    Move over, Porsche. Mazda’s got a real spider car.

    For the second time in just a few years, Mazda has had to issue a recall for North American made Mazda6 sedans because of – yep – spiders in the engine. You know, I always knew spiders were demons sent here to destroy us. The idea that some of them thrive in noxious gasoline might slightly disturb some of you too. More importantly than a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, however, is a bad case of being on the inside of a Mazda-tov Cocktail. And this is just what can happen when their woven homes halt vapor release.

    Mazda has thus issued a recall for 42,000 of these 2.5-liter engine sedans from model years 2010 to 2012. Fortunately, no fires have been reported as a result of the issue.

    Why Mazda and not other cars?

    Some scientists surmise the spiders likely stole into hoses at a warehouse prior to being shipped to the actual assembly plant. This specific breed doesn’t just like getting high on fumes. It also thrives on hiding in tubes during day hours and hunting at night.

    What’s happened here is the same as the incident during their 2011 recall, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Yellow Satan Sac spider simply is attracted to the petrol scent. Once inside the car, its silky domicile blocks evaporative canister vent lines.

    The arachnid cascade of events is that the web it constructs restricts fuel flow, that fuel restriction alters tank pressure, that pressure change stresses the fuel tank, and that tank stress can cause cracks and fuel leaks. Boom.

    Actually, Mazda is trying its hardest to avoid more than a figurative “boom” from happening.

    For instance, adding a spring canister vent line was meant to prevent the octo-intruders from gaining entry. While that mostly worked out, there were a good many reports of fuel tanks cracking in sedans that had the spring, so more investigation was needed. Ultimately, engineers deduced that changing the car’s software would halt tank cracking, whether or not spider webs were blocking a vent.

    To mitigate Mazda drivers’ anxieties, the company reports that only this particular model made in a Flat Rock, Michigan plant has aforementioned bug blockage. Car owners to whom the recall applies will be able to bring in their cars to dealers, acquire reprogrammed software, and have their vent line checked and cleared of creatures.

    Party’s over, ya freeloading fuel huffers!

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • 2014 Volkswagen Passat Makes One Big Change

    The 2011, Motor Trend named the 2012 Volkswagen Passat its Car of the Year. That generation of the Passat has been on the market for 3 years now and while winning many awards, has had its fair share of complaints as well. The majority of those complaints centered on the Passat’s 2.5-litre, inline, five-cylinder engine. For most consumer’s, the engine simply didn’t have enough “oomph”. With the 2014 Volkswagen Passat, the German auto-manufacturer hopes to persuade all the previous nay-sayers to come to the dark side with a newly revamped engine.

    While the 2.5 L, five-cylinder engine will still be the base engine for the first-half of the Passat’s 2014 run, it will be offered alongside a new 1.8 L, dual overhead cam, turbocharged four-cylinder engine; the upsides to this switch are quite noticeable.

    In all the reviews of the 2014 Passat, drivers seem to be unusually impressed at the power and performance delivered by the new engine, and for good reason. The 1.8 L engine offers significant improvement over the outdated 2.5 L engine, going from 0-60 mph a full second faster (7.8 versus 8.8 seconds), while also besting the 2.5 L engine in the quarter-mile by 0.7 seconds and 3.4 mph (88.5 mph top speed versus 85.1).

    The 2014 Passat also offers a 2.0-litre TDI diesel engine – the engine that is Voklswagen’s most prominent selling-point.

    Besides improving on the engine performance, Volkswagen loaded the mid-sized sedan with features more likely to be found in a luxury vehicle. The center console boasts a newly improved and larger navigation screen, along with hard drive music storage and advanced navigation controls with traffic updates. Leather, heated seats with programmable positioning memory are featured in most versions, along with dual-climate control.

    Perhaps the most impressive innovation for the interior of the car is the new VW Car-Net connected service, a service which closely resembles the On-Star service offered by GM vehicles. The Car-Net service is connected to cellular service in order to offer in-car assistance and to report traffic accidents.

    Volkswagen hopes that the redesigned Passat will help improve its low sale numbers for the beginning of 2014. In February, overall Volkswagen sales were down 16.3 percent from the same time last year, with Passat sales decreasing 19.3 percent.

    Mark McNabb, chief operating officer of Volkswagen of America, believes there is still no reason to worry: “With a full range of fuel-efficient vehicles, seven of which deliver more than 40 mpg on the highway, we anticipate steady demand as we enter the spring selling season.”

    Image via Twitter

  • Rocket Car’s Engine Reaches 30,000 Horsepower In First Test

    Would you ride in a car that could hit speeds up to 1,000 MPH? Most probably wouldn’t, but researchers in Britain are creating that can do just that anyway. It’s called the Bloodhound SSC, and it just passed its first test with flying colors.

    The team of researchers working on the Bloodhound haven’t actually created the car just yet. They’re currently experimenting with the engine to make sure that the rocket-powered car is actually viable. The power required to hit 1,000 MPH on land would completely destroy most engines, but these guys seem to have done it.

    In the below video, you can see the results of the first engine test. According to International Science Times, the engine reached 30,000 horsepower during its 10 second run. By the end of their experiments, they expect the engine to reach 80,000 horsepower and 27,500 pounds of thrust.

    For comparison, the current record holder for world’s fastest street legal car – the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport – has a horsepower of only 1,200. In a 10-second test, the Bloodhound’s engine has already surpassed the Bugatii’s engine by almost 30 times over. The Bloodhound will be a sight to behold once it reaches the 80,000 HP threshold.

    Of course, this first test was closely controlled and monitored by a team of professionals. Once the engine is strapped to a car, anything could happen. Regardless, it’s still amazing that a car’s engine has been able to obtain this kind of power. It will be interesting to see what happens when they perform the first field test.

  • LeapFish Giving Away Cash For Social Media Presence

    Yes, you read that headline right. It does sound kind of “backwards” to me, as well. But, anyhow, Leapfish, a search engine that I have written about before, is turning to social media to give away up to $100,000 cash. Leapfish is calling this the “$100,000 Cash Dash Viral Bonanza“.

    Leapfish is giving away $100,000 in gadgets, prizes and cash to Internet users who participate in leveraging their search engine in unique ways.

    If you want your share of the $100,000 cash from Leapfish, you can use your online social media and social networking presence to earn points towards prizes and cash drawings. By doing this, you will help LeapFish’s goal of 1 million homepages set in 2010. You can earch cash and prizes by blogging, Tweeting, creating a LeapFish Homepage, searching, referring friends, or other ways ways that promote the Leapfish search engine.

    Leapfish

    I guess that just by blogging about Leapfish already I may be in the running, especially since my previous blog post about Leapfish ranks well in the Google search engine for “fastest search engine”. I’ve been a fan of Leapfish for a while now, even though I am still not seeing a whole lot of search traffic from the Leapfish search engine directly. However, using the social media and social networks to promote Leapfish, that may change this year.

    LeapFish is an evolved search engine that captures the traditional, multi-media and real-time Web through a single, connected platform for both searching and sharing content. LeapFish is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton, California.

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