If I were to tell you GM is the new BMW you’d probably laugh at me. But driving the 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP just a couple of months after the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V and Corvette ZR1, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. Equipped with a 6.3-liter, LS3 V8 making 415 HP and 415 lb-ft of torque, the G8 GXP isn’t just the fastest car Pontiac's ever made, but based on GM’s new global rear wheel drive platform (the same one as the new Camaro) and fitted with lower, stiffer suspension and a six-speed manual gearbox it strikes the right balance between supercar performance and real world practicality. Think E39 M5, but with a Corvette engine and better steering.

Driving in LA is a strange mix of sitting still in hellish traffic and driving flat out on the best roads in the world. Get on one of the highways at the wrong time and it’ll take you three hours to go 30 miles, but hit the canyon roads to the North or East and it’s easy to forget that you’re within mere miles of the most populous metropolitan area in the country. The G8 GXP excels in both environments.

In the city it’s easy to drive and comfortable, belying the potential of its performance. LA’s rutted concrete highways and constant construction fail to upset the suspension or disturb the peace of the quiet interior. Keep it below 3,000 RPM and, with the aid of its anonymous styling, you’ll probably avoid speeding tickets too.

But after four days spent trying to keep my temper in check in traffic it was time to head for the hills. More specifically Deer Creek Road in Malibu. Mostly first and second gear hairpins with no guardrails and 500-foot drops into rocky gorges, it’s not the kind of place you’d typically want to drive a traditional GM product. But it is the kind of place you’ll want to drive this GXP.

This isn’t just some overpowered muscle car, the GXP can seriously handle. Throw it into a sharp corner and it’ll hold its line tightly without even a hint of understeer; pushing the tail wide on exit with the immense torque before rocketing down the short straights. Nothing in here feels wallowy; instead the overall impression is of lithe performance.

That’s thanks to lower, stiffer FE3 suspension over the 2008 Pontiac GT’s FE2 setup. GM tuned the handling, as is the fashion these days, on the Nurburgring, where the engineering team set an unofficial fastest time of 8 minutes and 30 seconds. That’s a similar suspension setup to the CTS-V, with which the GXP also shares its Brembo front brake calipers and Tremec 6060 6-speed.

Of course, the GXP isn’t all perfect. It doesn’t have SatNav (based on an Aussie-market Holden, the screen violates some pointless US angle regulation and the G8 is too small a production run to reengineer the interior) and the interior isn’t up to the standard of contemporary European or Japanese competitors. But with an estimated MSRP of $37,000 (excluding gas guzzler tax and destination, figure $40k to drive it off a lot) we’re prepared to forgive those foibles and instead concentrate on the performance: 0-60 comes in 4.7 seconds and it’ll run the quarter in 13.0 seconds at 108mph. All while carrying five people and plenty of their luggage in comfort. Fuel mileage is estimated to be 14 MPG city, 20 highway.

So where does BMW come into this? There was a time when — before exclusively focusing on overweight, overcomplicated, boring-to-drive, ugly cars — that it produced vehicles that rightfully deserved the “Ultimate Driving Machine” title. They were simple, well-engineered and put driving first. They had solid, well-built black plastic interiors, manual transmissions and pretty big engines driving only the rear wheels. They don’t any more. They used to combine practicality with fun in just the right proportions. They don’t any more. This Pontiac does. So do the Cadillac CTS, the CTS-V, the G8 GT, the Corvette and the best car in the world, the ZR1. But, unlike even the old BMW, all of the above are, for their classes, very affordable. GM isn’t just the new BMW; it’s better than that.

This review has to come with a slight disclaimer. The G8 GXP is scheduled to go on-sale in February. At this point, we don’t know for certain if GM will still be in business then. I’m not of the opinion that GM and its counterparts are the wisest place to invest our tax money, nor do I entirely believe their apocalyptic forecasts of job losses and economic collapse should we allow them to go out of business. I'm wearing my Save GM T-Shirt for one reason and one reason only: If they're going to keep making cars like this, I really want to keep driving them.

1968: Karen Schroeder, a second-generation resident of the Love Canal neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, gives birth to an infant girl with multiple birth defects. The enormity of the neighborhood's affliction will take a few more years to come to light.

Love Canal was a never-used, late 19th-century hydroelectric channel that was sold to the Hooker Chemical company in 1942. Between then and 1953, Hooker used the site to bury 22,000 tons of chemical wastes in barrels.

Hooker sold the site to the Niagara Falls School Board for $1, and the board built an elementary school there in 1955. A blue-collar suburban neighborhood flourished around the disused industrial site.

Flourished is probably the wrong word. Schroeder's parents found black sludge seeping through the walls of their basement starting in the late 1950s. A woman who ran a beauty parlor in her basement developed a debilitating weakness and had to give up working. Trees and shrubs died. Noxious chemical smells hung over the neighborhood.

Schoolchildren developed strange rashes and vague, unexplained allergies. Sometimes, they played with phosphorus-laden dirt that exploded with a crackle when lumps of it were thrown to the ground.

Baby Sheri Schroeder was born with an irregular heart beat and a hole in the heart wall, nasal bone blockages, partial deafness, deformed ears and a cleft palate. As she grew, her family realized she was mentally retarded. Her teeth arrived in a double row on her lower jaw, and she suffered from an enlarged liver.

Heavy rains in the mid-1970s caused groundwater levels to rise. Swimming pools lifted up out of the ground. The buried waste rose closer to the surface.

The Niagara Gazette began reporting in October 1976 about chemicals seeping into basements in the Love Canal neighborhood, with stories of harm to humans, pets and plant life. Chemical analyses showed 15 organic chemicals, including three toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state and county health departments began to take notice, testing the neighborhood's soil, water and air, as well as blood samples from residents. Still, it was August 1978 before the state health commissioner declared a state of emergency, closed the school and ordered an evacuation ... but only of pregnant women and children under age 2.

Soon it was learned that Hooker had buried 200 tons of dioxin at Love Canal, that residents suffered a high rate of miscarriages, birth defects and chromosomal damage, and that 10 percent could develop cancer.

U.S. Rep. Al Gore (D-Tennessee) charged in 1979 that the tragedy had been avoidable. He publicized a 1958 internal Hooker Chemical memo, describing three or four kids burned by materials at the Love Canal waste site. The first lawsuits were filed in 1979.

Early amelioration work released noxious smells in the neighborhood, and the evacuation area was widened. More schools were shut down. Government programs bought condemned homes and tore them down. Hundreds of families evacuated, but 60 families remained behind. Cleanup costs have been estimated at $250 million.

A federal judge eventually found Hooker Chemical negligent but not reckless, and parent company Occidental Petroleum settled with the EPA for $129 million.

An EPA regional administrator called Love Canal "one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history."

The core area around the dump is still off-limits, but new buildings have been built nearby. The neighborhood is now called Black Creek Village.

Source: Various

Filed under: Gaming

Modder haphazardly shoves an N64 into a Wii shell originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week I mentioned that adding &fmt=18 to a Youtube URL, or &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the embed code URLs allows you to view and embed Youtube clips in nice looking 480x360 resolution, encoded with the H.264 codec. The result is a much better playback experience than the standard 320x240 sorenson encoded clips, but a post today on webmonkey gives us another tweak that can produce even better results for some videos.

Above is an example of Collin Cunningham's brilliant LED investigation in high def.

By changing that fmt variable to &fmt=22 or tacking on &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the embed URLs—that's right, turn it up twice past 11—Youtube will kick out compatible videos at a whopping 720p resolution.

Here's some example embed code:

The only downside to embedding videos this way is that it really raises the bandwidth requirement for viewers. On my home connection, it can take several seconds before the video begins playback, and depending on how well my wireless is behaving, it's not uncommon that the download rate will be slower thank playback, requiring quite a bit of pre-buffering. On the other hand, some videos are just worth the wait.

How To: Watch YouTube Movies in Full 720p HD Glory

Engadget HD reports that Apple customers are now experiencing problems playing movies on some monitors and TVs that aren't HDCP-compliant.

Some Netflix customers have experienced a similar HDCP problem with Netflix streaming, all because the studios are worried that pirates will be able to make a copy of the movie, and yet it's easy to rip DVD & Blu-ray movies. No matter what the studios use to protect content, it's typically only a few days before the pirates are able to break it.

I'm having a DRM problem with my Windows XP Media Center PC. It's been my DVR for almost 3 years, and after recent updates I'm now unable to play some unprotected TV shows (and I'm not the only one with this problem). I've spent a few hours trying to figure out what went wrong, and it's incredibly frustrating -- it stops playing the TV show about 10 minutes before the show is over and gives the following error:

Between Netflix and Hulu, most of the shows I want to see are available online or on DVD, but DRM has crippled my Media Center PC.

The only people inconvenienced by DRM are the paying customers, as it doesn't seem to slow the pirates at all.

Debbie from Wesabe is breaking up with Netflix because of the economy:

It’s a crappy time to be a discretionary spend and I don’t mean to kick you while you’re down, but I need to start looking out for myself. And so 163 rentals and nearly a thousand dollars later, I’m calling it quits. This really is good-bye, so I hope you don’t cheapen what we had by sending me perky “one month free” emails or flyers.

Are you increasing your plan, decreasing your plan, or leaving Netflix because of the economy? Are you cutting cable TV or other entertainment spending?

Like Oblivion before it, Fallout 3 is a great game. And like Oblivion before it, Fallout 3 launched fundamentally broken. And broken across all three of the game's platforms. If you're lucky, all you've had to contend with are crashes, lock-ups and graphical glitches. If you're unlucky, like me, you've been unable to even play the game. Well, a few weeks of silence on Bethesda's part has been broken, with a comment on the game's support forums revealing that the company "are currently working on a patch for all three platforms". With the amount of problems in the game that was bound to happen eventually, of course, but it's nice to hear something from the guys on the subject. We were starting to think you didn't care!

[Bethesda Forums, via Bluesnews]

If you're a gadget lover, the last thing you want to do is stand out in a crowd, but these geeky beverage coasters let you do so subtly -- includes iPhone Apps, floppy disks, and even Mario. Click here for first picture in gallery. Here's a bit more info on the ones pictured above:

Created by the guys over at Brazil's Meninos design (the same guys who make these awesome hard drives), these icon coasters are a great gift for any iPhone addict. All your favorite applications are there.

It may sound bizarre at first but Yamaha’s portable rooms, dubbed myroomII [JP], do make sense. Yamaha says it’s the perfect product for all people wanting some alone time without having to move into apartments with more rooms.

In the product catalogue [JP, PDF], the company suggests watching movies, working on your PC, reading, studying, Karaoke, listening to music and playing instruments as the main examples for use. The room could be especially useful in Japan (where it’s available exclusively at this point), where apartment buildings with super-thin walls are not really rare.

The myroomII is made of dark wood, soundproof, air-conditioned, pretty heavy (340kg) and quite big (1385×1826×2065mm).  One room costs $7,000.

Via Digital World Tokyo

Blu Homes is a relative newcomer to the prefab design world. That being said, they are in the midst of two projects that should be completed by Spring 2009. One is in Blue River, Colorado and the other is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Blu Homes focuses on more than good contemporary and energy efficient design. With a Blu Home, you’ll get a fun and beautiful design, but you’ll also get walked through the whole process from site evaluation, permitting, financing, design, site work all the way through construction and finishing the home. And you’ll know the price right from the start because it’s a package deal. Not many other prefab builders offer that service, especially at the affordable price they’re guaranteeing on their website.

(more…)

Tags: blu, homes, salt, lake, city, prefab, green, housing, sustainable

Update: OH BOY... I'm not sure what's going on here, but I just received a flood of emails from Verizon people letting me know that if your BlackBerry Storm wasn't ordered before 2pm EST today that it will not be shipping until DECEMBER 5th!

Update: Posted by Reuters - Hundreds Wait at Verizon Stores for BlackBerry Storm! >>

Update: I think we can safely say Verizon and RIM have succeeded in making the Storm's launch the most anticipated of any BlackBerry smartphone to date. With lineups at Verizon stores throughout the country and in many cases less devices in stock than people waiting outside (and in some cases no devices in stock!), it'll be a day of mixed emotions. A ton of you are going to be pumped to be among the first to own RIM's touchscreen BlackBerry, while some of you are going to be p!$$ed that you chased after the Storm today to have it escape your grasp on Day 1. Keep the comments and forums rock'n with your experiences. Let us know how did!! And let us know your thoughts on the Storm! *

Ok BlackBerry Storm Chasers, today is your day!!! I've been receiving emails from tons of Storm fanactics today - some of you are already camping out as I post this (just after midnight), while many of you are going to show up an hour or two early and see how the situation looks. We've been hearing scattered reports from Verizon employees all day - it seems some stores have received way less than the expected number of units (as in six Storms to sell, but over a hundred units have been pre-ordered from that location), while other stores only a few miles away seem to have plenty. Depending on how things go, you may literally have to chase down the Storm if you want to get one on the first day. Be sure to report back in the comments and let us know how things are going and email in your pics or videos to editorial @ crackberry.com

And in a solute to all of the CrackBerry Storm Addicts out there, Verizon has added the What Would You Do for a BlackBerry Storm? Contest Winners to their corporate intranet for all Verizon employees to see. Sweet! We've posted five winning videos so far and still have the remainder to debut on the site over the next couple of days. I meant to get them up sooner (everyone has now completed their To Do!), but between the Round Robin, Storm Craziness, and being sick I fell a bit behind on this. In honor of the Storm's official launch on Verizon, I suggest using a few minutes today to re-watch all of the winning videos that have aired so far! Good Luck Storm Chasers!!!!

CrackBerry.com's feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Chasing the BlackBerry Storm - Today is the Day!!

Filed under: News

In an attempt to foil Microsoft's plans of a flawless NXE Netflix launch, Columbia Pictures (a studio that's owned by Sony) has made sure that its entire Netflix movie catalog is blocked from streaming to the Xbox 360. How rude!

Sony blocks entire Netflix movie library from streaming to the Xbox 360 originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Luke Anderson

How many times have you wanted to take a nice picture, but found that you really needed a tripod in order to pull it off? I rarely ever tote around a tripod, since my DSLR is cumbersome enough by itself. While I’ve seen several rather portable tripods, I’ve yet to see anything quite as interesting as this Bottle Cap Tripod.

Everyone close to me knows that I’m a big Mountain Dew drinker, so there’s a good chance that I have a bottle close by. Now if I just had one of these little caps in my pocket, I’d be all set. This tiny gadget screws into the tripod mounting screw hole on the bottom of your camera, then you slide it over a bottle cap. Sure, it’ll be a bit top-heavy, but in a pinch it would serve its purpose. For just $10, I’d say that it’s a worthwhile investment.

[ CharlesAndMarie ] VIA [ GearFuse ]

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Due to the popularity of the the last post ‘18 truly awesome designer tshirts‘, I present to you my second installment of designer tshirts handpicked from Design By Humans.  All of these shirts come in men and women’s sizes and are on sale from $19 at DesignByHumans by affiliate.

What are your favourites? Mine are the top 5 of this post.

• 18 Truly Awesome HandPicked Designer TShirts (53)

At first glance, it may look like a normal desk calendar, but the numbers actually double as functional matchsticks -- each strip is dipped in a special chemical solution. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Unique calendar made of matches by Ukrainian designer Yurko Gutsulyak. The matches are real and the construction of the calendar is absolutely safe.

This is a good place to learn about wireless communications using an XBee and an Arduino. There are a lot of different sensors that could use this same code with only slight variations.

I managed to put together a wireless accelerometer the other night using my two new XBees, an Arduino XBee shield, an XBee Explorer USB, an ADXL330, and some Python. I struggled a bit with some of it, so here's what I learned.

More about XBee & Arduino wireless accelerometer

In the Maker Shed:


Arduino Mini Board, fully assembled

Filed under: Bad news, General Motors (GM), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI)

Sirius XM (NSADAQ: SIRI) faces a number of problems. Those caused the stock to drop to 20 cents yesterday, down from a 52-week high of $3.94.

Sirius is not only sitting on between $3 billion and $4 billion in debt. It has also never posted a net profit. There are still questions about whether its merger with XM Satellite will yield enough cost cuts to make the operation profitable.

But, none of those things are the final nail in the coffin. If one of The Big Three goes under, especially if it is GM (NYSE: GM), Sirius will lose one of its largest sources of new subscribers. Since some people who take the service drop it every month, which is normal attrition, those customers have to be replaced. For the company to grow, each month has to show net new additions which greatly outweigh cancellations.

Sirius cannot afford to lose its flow of customers from a major car maker. If it does, it debt service will overwhelm it, and finding new capital will be impossible. Who want to lend money to a company which is losing its most important sales pipeline?

If GM drops, Sirius will fall within a month.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Sirius (SIRI) faces bankruptcy and an investor wipe out originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The new Yellow Treehouse Restaurant by New Zealand based Pacific Environments Architects Ltd. (PEL) is a stunning architectural feat perched high above a redwood first. Appearing for all the world like an enormous chrysalis grafted onto a 40-meter-high redwood tree, the project is constructed of plantation poplar slats, redwood balustrading milled at the site, and makes extensive use of natural lighting throughout.

(more…)

We've seen the transparent laptop display, now check out a host of creative PSP billboards created using the same editing technique. Surprisingly, these were not made by Sony, but rather a PSP fan. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Creative marketing campaign for Sony's PlayStation Portable gaming console. Turns out it is just a concept made by Skizo and not a real Sony PSP campaign.

This is hardly official, but at a presentation about the evolution of OS X at the LISA '08 conference last week, Apple's director of engineering of Unix technologies, Jordan Hubbard, pushed up a slide noting a Snow Leopard release of Q1 2009.

That's not outside of the realm of possibilities: Snow Leopard is a stabilization and future-proofing OS X release, and with 14 odd months since Leopard, a Q1 release would still indicate a baking time longer than average.

I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard. Sure, it's not a flashy, feature-filled release like Leopard, but smaller program files, a svelter OS and performance gains for multi-processors are all appealing... especially since Leopard has felt sluggish on my ancient MacBook Pro ever since I upgraded from Tiger.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 Due In Q1 2009 [Mac Rumors]

Mininova, one of the leading BitTorrent sites, is testing a new technology which allows content producers to include subtle ads in their videos. By providing more opportunities to monetize free content, Mininova hopes to attract even more premium publishers.

The new advertising technology, Hyper MP, inserts small clickable ads into the corner of the screen. Aside from the ads, there are no limitations to the video content. Hyper MP is currently being tested on an amateur feature length comedy titled “Battle Therapy”.

Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that Hyper MP is a great alternative to pre and post-roll ads. If it proves successful, there will be more releases on Mininova with these new ads, and Niek said that these new releases might even include some blockbuster movies.

The new advertising technology is yet another great feature to convince premium content producers to publish their work on Mininova’s content distribution platform, which was launched last year. With Mininova’s distribution platform, the torrent files are seeded by Mininova, all the publisher has to do is upload the files. It is a very simple process.

Earlier this year, CBC used Mininova to distribute one of their TV-shows. Tessa Sproule, head of CBC’s Digital Programming told TorrentFreak at the time: “I believe BitTorrent is a terrific distribution technology and absolutely something we as a public broadcaster should be experimenting with.”

Hundreds of premium publishers have already signed up at Mininova. With the new advertising opportunities, more TV and movie studios might be interested in releasing their shows and movies on BitTorrent, and what better way to get exposure than with Mininova, one of the world’s most popular sites.

Post from: TorrentFreak

These noise-cancelling headphones from Hitachi Maxell are unlike many previous similar types since they don't require separate power. Instead they connect to iPods via the dock connector, and can suck on the batteries through there. They do manage about 20dB of noise canceling with an "Active Noise Rejection" system, but the design is curiously crippling: they can only connect to iPods (4th gen or later) and iPod touches—not the iPhone. And to draw power this way means you'll get reduced iPod battery life, which may be as much as 50%. And the iPod's volume control doesn't work, so you have to use the slider on the headphones. Weird, but these HP-NC20.IPs are only about $80 in Japan, so you may still be tempted. [AVWatch]

According to designer Duck Young Kong—probably the best name ever in the history of best names ever—his Lunar Baby Thermometer is great because "it eliminates the need to insert an external tool while holding them in a still position" since it uses the "common and natural behavior of putting your hand on the forehead to measure internal heat of their body". It's a good idea. Until somebody tells you that the forehead may not be the best place to measure temperatures.

For a baby less than 3 months old, the armpit is the best, while a kid older than 4 or 5 years will be better with an oral check. The unlucky babies between 3 months and 4 yours are, I'm a afraid, stuck with the thermometer up their buttocks. Technicalities aside, however, this design is, if not accurate, at least cute and fool-proof: Once it's done, the thermometer will flash a LED light and beep. [Yanko Design]

For the inner composer in you, Sonoma Wire Works created a new iPhone application that allows you to record music anywhere. The process is as easy as sliding the record button to the right, belting out lyrics and hitting the stop button. With its clever interface, the four-track recorder allows you to execute a full harmony by recording one track while listening to the other three, and the WiFi compatibility makes it so you to upload your jam to any computer in WAV format in just about five minutes. Revolutionizing portable music production, FourTrack is a guaranteed hit.

You can purchase the application through the iTunes store for $10.