lamboblogging

👋 Good morning! It’s “Männertag” or Father's Day here in Germany today.

🍻 What’s fun is that it’s always on a holiday day, so men are given license to wander the streets and parks with beer, cook up various foods on grills, and all get very sunburnt together. The reason it’s so popular? There are four days to recover until Monday!

-----

This new Ferrari can be charged by plugging it in

May 30, 2019 - Ferrari's new EV hybrid

On this Father’s Day here in Germany (yes, a few weeks before the U.S. brethren!) it just so happens that Ferrari have some news: its fastest ever supercar (or hypercar, as this elite tier of car is truly known) is also a plug-in hybrid.

• The new Ferrari SF90 Stradale (meaning road in English) is a 986bhp (735 kW) all-wheel-drive beast capable of 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds, and 124mph in 6.9 seconds.
• But it’s also rather unique in that there’s a silent mode: for the first time, a Ferrari has a plug-in battery pack for silent cruising.
• The Stradale can travel up to 25 kilometers (~16 miles) on electricity alone, with a 7.9-kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion battery pack.
• A twin-turbo V8 does most of the work, with three electric motors split between front and rear saving you a few gallons of fuel during a stop-start cruise.
• There’s also a 16-inch fully digital HD screen.
• All in all, what matters is that even the 90-year old Italians are embracing hybrids in full-production cars.
• Ferrari isn’t saying how many will be made, and didn’t give out price or availability details just yet.

Of course, looks matter - although Ferrari weren’t letting anyone take photos at the launch in Maranello in Italy, releasing just a few rendered-looking snaps:

https://i.redd.it/shca9n34cf131.png

https://i.redd.it/d0u7ngg4cf131.png

More: TopGear and CNET.

-----

Round Up:

🍎 Apple released a website defending its besieged App Store, called App Store Principles and Practices(Apple.com). I contend within even the first 18 words, Apple isn’t telling the truth: it made the App Store to make money. The Verge has a nice take on many other reasons Apple’s words are hollow, noting how hard it is to compete when you can’t offer a default app on an Apple device, keeping the playing field uneven.

🚫 Google’s Chromium team relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users only (The Register).

👨‍✈️ In two years’ time, Wi-Fi on airplanes might finally stop being garbage (Android Authority).

🤔 Is the Pixel 3a what Google Pixel should have been from the start? (AA).

💻 Epic custom PCs from Computex: the Iron Throne, a working beer dispenser PC, and more that arguably should not exist (AA). Jokes, I love PCs that make no sense.

💱 How to return a Steam game – Everything you need to know (AA).

🚔 Google Maps speed limits and radar locations arrive in over 40 countries and on both iOS and Android, though not France or Germany because laws (Engadget).

🗣 Amazon attempts to improve Alexa privacy, hilariously fails (Gizmodo).

💸 Google CEO Sundar Pichai turned down part of his bonus, again (Bloomberg).

🚖 Uber will start banning passengers with low ratings (AA).

🎢 “I flew the Millennium Falcon and it was good” (TechCrunch). “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” opens tomorrow at Disneyland, California.

🎮 Enormous arenas are being built with esports experiences top of mind (NY Times).

👽 What we know about the Navy’s UFO problem (Jalopnik).

Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Entry is a war zone: Behind the scenes, editors are fighting a brutal, petty battle over every word (Slate).

📔 “People who have signed NDAs that have now expired or for whatever reason are no longer valid: what couldn't you tell us but now can?” (r/askreddit).

-----

Throwback Thursday

There’s been an image of a congested ascent of Mt Everest doing the rounds this week. It was taken by @nimsdai/ Project Possible, and shows a hard to believe queue to reach the top of the great mountain:

I wanted to throwback to 66 years ago yesterday, May 29, 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

• Sherpa Tenzing had been making attempts since the 1930s, and saved Hillary from a fall into a crevasse during the key ascent in 1953.
• The pair ascended together as a team after spending two nights just 91m or 300ft from the summit, when Hillary discovered that his boots had frozen solid outside the tent.
• Wearing 30-pound packs, and conquering a final 12m rock face now known as "Hillary Step", the pair reached the top.
• Heading back down, Edmund Hillary found George Lowe, a fellow New Zealander. Hillary told him: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.”
• Sir Edmund went on to reach the north and south pole as well, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that he organized an expedition to search for the fabled abominable snowman, but couldn’t find any signs of a Yeti. He was also regarded as New Zealand’s most trusted person for decades.

And in 2019? NYT: ‘It was like a zoo': Death on an unruly, overcrowded Everest.

Yours from much closer to sea level.

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.

Pyknus, Revisor.

Submitted May 31, 2019 at 03:56AM by Pyknus http://bit.ly/2QBDbCy