Zorro
Zorro's JournalTesla's new Supercharger slashes charging times
Tesla is rolling out a third-generation Supercharger that is designed to dramatically cut charging times for its electric vehicles as it seeks to keep its edge over new competitors.
The V3 Supercharger, which was unveiled Wednesday at the company’s Fremont, Calif. factory, supports a peak rate of up to 250 kilowatts on the long-range version of the Model 3. At this rate, the V3 can add up to 75 miles of range in 5 minutes, Tesla said.
Improvements to charging times are critical for the company as it sells more Model 3 vehicles, its highest volume car. Wait times at some popular Supercharger stations can be lengthy. Early adopters might have been content to wait, but as new Tesla customers come online that patience could dwindle.
Tesla says its improvements will allow the Supercharger network to serve more than twice as many vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/teslas-new-supercharger-slashes-charging-times
Obama Demands to See Trump's Elementary-School Diploma
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Former President Barack Obama ignited a firestorm of controversy on Wednesday by demanding to see President Donald Trump’s elementary-school diploma.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Obama called on Trump to prove “once and for all” that he had completed a K-through-five program.
“While the U.S. Constitution does not require the President to have graduated from fifth grade, it would still be nice to know that he had done so,” Obama said.
By insisting on the release of Trump’s diploma, Obama joined a growing movement of so-called schoolers, who contend that Trump never attended school.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-demands-to-see-trumps-elementary-school-diploma
There's more at the link!
How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all
Charles Dahan knows from first-hand experience how badly people get ripped off when buying eyeglasses.
He was once one of the leading suppliers of frames to LensCrafters, before the company was purchased by optical behemoth Luxottica. He also built machines that improved the lens-manufacturing process.
In other words, Dahan, 70, knows the eyewear business from start to finish. And he doesn’t like what’s happened.
“There is no competition in the industry, not any more,” he told me. “Luxottica bought everyone. They set whatever prices they please.”
https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-glasses-lenscrafters-luxottica-monopoly-20190305-story.html
Juan Guaido Returns to Venezuela, Facing Threat of Arrest
Source: New York Times
Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader who defied a travel ban and left the country more than a week ago, returned Monday in what could turn into a new showdown with President Nicolás Maduro.
“Back in our beloved homeland!,” Mr. Guaidó said in a Twitter posting from the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, near Caracas, where he landed on a commercial flight from Panama. “We just got through passport control and will head where our people are!”
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Guaidó would be detained by government security forces. But Mr. Maduro’s government has said Mr. Guaidó violated restrictions on his travel and could face arrest.
Mr. Guaidó returned and was welcomed by cheering crowds in Venezuela as the Trump administration escalated its warnings to Mr. Maduro’s government not to carry out its threat to seize the opposition leader. Mr. Guaidó is recognized by President Trump and more than 50 other heads of government as Venezuela’s rightful president until new elections can be held.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/world/americas/juan-guaido-venezuela.html
February storms wash away drought conditions. Will San Diegans continue to conserve?
February storms have left California flush with water, relieving concerns the state could quickly slip back into the drought conditions that plagued it for much of the last decade.
Less than 3 percent of the state is now experiencing drought, down from nearly 84 percent just three months ago, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. At the same time, the state’s frozen reservoir of mountain snowpack is already 124 percent of average for the season.
San Diego County remains one of the few parts of the state to still be labeled as abnormally dry, according to the drought monitor. While rainfall this winter has already exceeded average, the region is still recovering from a severe deficit in precipitation, and researchers say impacts to vegetation and reservoirs linger.
Still, the San Diego region, which imports nearly 80 percent of its water, has more than adequate supplies to meet urban and agricultural demands. Water managers, in fact, said they are in talks over storing water the region gets from the drought-stricken Colorado River at Lake Mead.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-drought-conservation-habits-20190304-story.html
Trump hates science. Sad!
Like many girls growing up in the late 1960s, I was intimidated by math and science throughout my school years and into college, where I avoided lab units in biology and chemistry whenever possible. But something happened that made me a late-blooming science fan. At age 57, cancer hit.
As I’ve written about before in the Los Angeles Times, I underwent the standard healthcare regimen for my condition (surgery, chemo and radiation), but the cancer metastasized anyway and I was given a “yearish” to live. Then, in July of 2015, I became a human science project, a participant in clinical trials at UC San Francisco, one of the top cancer research centers in the world. Today, I’m well past my overdue date, as are many of the other Stage 4 cancer patients, thanks to breakthroughs in immunotherapy and cutting-edge treatments that arrived courtesy of tenacious researchers, the lives of many mice and the evidence-based, peer-reviewed work of medical science.
All this is to explain my ever-increasing alarm at the level of scorn the findings of science now attract in the realm of public policy. President Trump and members of his revolving-door Cabinet have shown no let-up since 2017 in their disdain for scientific truths, mischaracterizing them as opinions that are somehow partisan in nature and expendable.
“The State of Science in the Trump Era,” just published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, says it all. “The administration is radically weakening processes that guide the use of science in policymaking,” it states. The report goes on to detail how U.S. scientists are being excluded from decision-making, removed from advisory committees at agencies such as OSHA, the FDA and the EPA, hampered in the collection of data and, generally, treated with hostility by leaders of the government. In the budgets Trump has proposed, he has asked for deep cuts in science, technology and health programs and research, especially at the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency; science fans in Congress, however, have prevailed.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-welsh-science-trump-administration-20190304-story.html
How Wanda Austin blazed a trail from public housing to a perch as USC's acting president
In the Bronx, Wanda Pompey occupied two worlds: the tenements and public housing projects where she lived and the white schools her mother pushed her to attend.
Teachers paid scant attention to her and the few other black students. But one day in seventh grade, her math teacher, Mr. Cohen, had the class do a difficult algebra problem.
When he handed back the papers, he said, loud enough for the class to hear, “Hey, you’re good at math, don’t let anyone tell you you’re not.”
His praise inspired her. She doubled down on math, skipped eighth grade and was accepted into the elite Bronx High School of Science.
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-wanda-austin-20190304-story.html
Broke, a sheriff in Appalachian coal country struggles to provide law and order
Before making a wave of cutbacks across his department, Martin County Sheriff John Kirk delivered a grim warning to residents of this hardscrabble Appalachian community.
“Law enforcement as we have known for the last four years will not exist,” he posted on Facebook last month. “WE ARE BROKE… LOCK YOUR DOORS, LOAD YOUR GUNS AND GET YOU A BARKING, BITING DOG. If the Sheriff’s office can’t protect you, WHO WILL?”
In a sense, it was political bluster. When he can, Kirk still patrols this remote former coal mining region on the eastern edge of Kentucky, responding to traffic accidents and break-ins, knocking on the doors of suspected drug dealers, serving papers and transporting prisoners.
But with only one other paid law enforcement officer on staff now to help him monitor a 231-square-mile area day and night, his department is stretched to its limit.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-kentucky-sheriff-cuts-20190304-story.html
And yet Obama's somehow to blame.
Fitness and health apps may be sharing the most private details about your life
Do you use an app to help you count steps? Or does your company offer an app to monitor your health?
Nearly every facet of our lives can be tracked now, but they can be detrimental to your privacy. Some health apps are reevaluating their relationships with Facebook FB, +1.95% after a Wall Street Journal report revealed they send sensitive personal details to the social media platform without users knowing, underscoring the privacy risks with such apps.
At least four apps the WSJ contacted as part of its reporting cut off transmission of sensitive data to Facebook. “The apps that made the change include Flo Health Inc.’s Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker and Azumio Inc.’s Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor,” it reported.
“It’s common for developers to share information with a wide range of platforms for advertising and analytics,” a Facebook spokeswoman told MarketWatch. “We require the other app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us, and we prohibit app developers from sending us sensitive data.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fitness-and-health-apps-may-be-sharing-the-most-private-details-about-your-life-2019-02-26
If Michael Cohen can see the light, so can Trump's lackeys - even you, Jim Jordan
Almost the moment he took his seat before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, dumped out a trove of glittering doubloons. Then, for good measure, he emptied two massive lawn bags of breadcrumbs.
The coins were damning facts about the president. The breadcrumbs were names of other witnesses who could bring the committee more gold.
In short order, we got the inside line on how the gray-green Trump sausage is made. You pretend to be rich when you want a loan, you pretend to be poor when you ask “the tax department for a deduction.” You pretend to be a ladies’ man when you think the mic is off; you pretend to be faithful wife by having your lawyer lie to your wife. You tweet that you’re a paragon of health; you pretend to be frail to sit out Vietnam.
All that pretending takes some virtuoso fixing, where “fixing” is breaking the truth and hot-gluing it into the weird garbage art that Trumpworld uses to justify itself.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-cohen-hearings-trump-20190302-story.html
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