Buy the Moto X Pure Edition, get a free Moto E
Want to buy a smartphone for yourself, but also need to snag a cheap phone for family (or, let’s be honest, a backup for yourself)? Motorola might have you covered. It just kicked off an unusual promotion that gives you a free 3G version of the new Moto E when you buy a Moto X Pure Edition. That’s not so hot if you insist on LTE data for every device, but it’s a no-brainer if you were either set on getting a Moto X or don’t relish the idea of splurging on two phones at once. Don’t spend long deciding what to do, though — Motorola is only running the promo through March 24th.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Lenovo
Source: Motorola
eBay and Sotheby’s high-end auctions will launch next month
You wouldn’t expect to be let in to a fine art auction wearing nothing but tighty whities, but starting April 1st, no one’s going to be able to stop you. Sotheby’s has teamed up with its digital counterpart, eBay, to launch its long-promised digital sales channel. Now, online collectors flush with Beanie Baby sales cash can fight as equals against entitled Manhattan socialites for Ansel Adams’ photography and Andy Warhol watches.
For now, a single auction per day will be streamed live from Sotheby’s New York outfit, with catalogs from the April 1st and 2nd events available to view right now. The biggest item currently listed is the sign from Yankee Stadium from 1976, which is expected to fetch up to $600,000. Let’s just hope no one from overseas wins that particular auction — imagine the shipping fees!
[Image credit: Robert Orion Martin, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Via: Reuters
Source: eBay
Google ditched the steering wheel because people are ‘unreliable’
If you’ve ever wondered why Google decided to build its own car, well, you have at least part of your answer now. During a talk at SXSW, Astro Teller, the head of Google X, told the crowd that they decided to remove the steering wheel and brakes entirely because humans are “not a reliable backup” for the self-driving system.
What does he mean exactly? Well, he believes that Google has already “mastered” highway driving. The company had put in hundreds of thousands of hours, autonomously cruising California freeways. The project had even reached the dog-fooding phase, in which Googlers test out the project in the real world. So employees that didn’t work in the semi-secretive Google X division were essentially invited to beta test the vehicle and commute to work in a robot car — under the condition that they pay very close attention and be the world’s best bug reporters.
Humans are “not a reliable backup” for the self-driving system.
Unfortunately, Teller and his team quickly learned that people are too quick to trust that the car will simply take care of everything. The car had to be driven to and from the freeway before the self-driving could be engaged and in between, passengers needed to closely monitor how the vehicle behaved. Instead, they would immediately check out and engage in what we can only assume is questionable behavior. Teller pointed out that people engage in plenty of stupid activities when actually driving, like texting. So imagine what they would do when able to put their trust fully in the car itself. Teller didn’t get specific; he only said it “wasn’t pretty.”
So now the challenge is to master city driving and completely remove people from the equation.
He also answered a few other burning questions about Google’s self-driving prototype. Specifically why, if the goal is to have no steering, no brakes and no way for a person to take control of the vehicle are there mirrors and a windshield wiper. Well, it turns out that’s just the law. Regulations require mirrors and a windshield wiper, even if they don’t benefit the actual driver. Go figure.
Filed under: Transportation, Google
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