Ruh roh, some Toyota owners are claiming that the little metal shim installed in their pedals haven’t stopped the cars from fits of sudden acceleration. At least seven complaints have been filed in the last two weeks to the NHTSA stating they are still having the problem. This isn’t going to end well if it’s true.

Those seven complaints are just a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1,000,000 vehicles Toyota dealerships serviced over the last few weeks. The claims are so far unverified. The agency will need to investigate before any action takes place as there are no doubt at least seven whack jobs out there capable of filing false claims. But if you’re an owner of the 10,000,000 recalled Toyota’s, please, please let your dealership know if you’re having acceleration issues after they installed the supposed fix. It starts and ends at the dealership, not with a government agency. [LATime via Autoblog]

Government agency, in contest designed to gauge participants’ social-networking savvy, plans to award $40,000 to the first person who pinpoints red weather balloons placed across States.

Originally posted at News – Cutting Edge

Maybe someday a human will walk on Mars. The last couple of generations has always told their children that they will be the ones to do it, but we’re still stuck on this planet. Anyway, 6 crazy Ruskies just emerged from a 1970’s Soviet-era testing facility after spending 105 days in isolation to simulate the voyage to Mars. I don’t know why some random Russian government agency spent so much money conducting this probably expensive experiment though. Don’t they get the reality TV show Big Brother over there?

All they had to do is turn on the crappy show Big Brother to find out what happens to people when they are isolated from the outside world and stuck with each other. They fight, throw food, and sleep around. That’s it. Money saved.

I’m mean, this test sounds just like the show.

They are locked in a wacky environment,

The interiors had hatches similar to a submarine’s and were paneled in faux wood according to Soviet style of the 1970s, when the structure was originally built for space-related experiments.

that’s equipped with everything needed to survive.

Common facilities included a gym and a small garden, and the modules were equipped with the new European and Russian exercise and training equipment for biomedical research. The crew also specially prepared meals and used toilets closely resembling those on the space station.

Plus, communication with the outside is limited.

They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment’s controllers — who also monitored them via TV cameras — and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight.

And just like the real Big Brother, they fight and sometimes fool around.

The experiment was the second for the institute, whose previous effort in 1999 ended in scandal when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls.

And who says that watching TV doesn’t teach you anything?

[Photo credit: AP]

Man, I wish I had crazy money like the OQO fanboy that spend $4,500 on a used, but still unreleased, OQO model 2+. I mean, it only makes sense to spend that kind of money on a device that is only marginally better than a Viliv X70 thanks to the physical keyboard and double the RAM.

But then again, maybe this model 2+ was scooped up by a black ops government agency for a real life Jack Bauer-type to display building schematics pulled up by a real life Chloe O’Brian in his never ending fight against crazy Russians funded by a washed-up US Senator whose daughter is held by the Chinese governement.

Ebay via Engadget

By Andrew Liszewski

This Manual Hard Drive Destroyer kind of reminds me of those hand-cranked quarter stamping machines you see all over touristy towns like Las Vegas. But this contraption doesn’t leave your hard drives imprinted with an image of the Luxor. Oh no. Once you’ve inserted your drive, using one of the drive height adapters as needed, you simply turn the handle 8 full rotations and the hard drive will be bent in half ‘approximately’ 90 degrees. And that mangling will pretty much guarantee the platters won’t be able to spin any more, preventing unwanted users from accessing its data.

Now I’m not 100% sure if the data is completely destroyed via this method, as there has to be some government agency with the ability to read even a bent drive, but in a pinch it could at least buy you some time before an incriminating file is recovered.

[ The Model MHDD - Manual Hard Drive Destroyer ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

Apparently, thanks to ubiquitous equipment like cordless phones, baby monitors, and something called “cell phones” and “wireless routers”, the FCC can demand access to American homes.

That’s because the FCC claims that newer gadgets that use radio waves (or are subject to the same rules that have dictated the government agency’s actions in decades past. In other words, the power to search for non-certified equipment and pirate broadcasters without a warrant.

There’s a reason why the FCC wields such authority. After all, it was created to ensure that transmitting and broadcasting entities play nice and within the allotted frequencies, and prevent the disruption of communications that may have potentially life-and-death consequences. Home privacy and FCC impetus hardly conflicted when radio devices weren’t commonplace as they are today.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case nowadays, and there may be unforeseen complications. If Wired’s interpretation of case precedent and the law is accurate, this kind of unfettered access could have bad consequences:

But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or an unregistered gun — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident. In the 1987 case New York v. Burger, two police officers performed a warrantless, administrative search of one Joseph Burger’s automobile junkyard. When he couldn’t produce the proper paperwork, the officers searched the grounds and found stolen vehicles, which they used to prosecute him. The Supreme Court held the search to be legal.

The same article also illustrates a case where a man refused entry to an FCC inspector: “Winton was later fined $7,000 for refusing entry to the officer. The fine was reduced to $225 after he proved he had little income.”

Post from: The Gadget Blog