Items tagged with EPA
The finish line is in sight for Volkswagen, and more importantly, diesel owners that were innocently caught up in the German auto giant’s emissions cheating scandal. Although an official settlement offer is expected to be revealed on June 28th, sources close to Volkswagen are revealing that the company will pay $10.2 billion to settle the matter. That $10.2 billion figure includes penalties that Volkswagen will have to pay to the United States environmental agencies, and funds to buyback affected diesel vehicles that can’t be brought into compliance with EPA requirements the company has cheated for years. Customers will also be given a separate cash payment as a goodwill gesture for their inconvenience...
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This is just the beginning of what will no doubt be a long, public, and very expensive flogging for German automaker Volkswagen. We reported late last week that the company got caught cheating on U.S. EPA emissions tests by using a “defeat device.” To put it succinctly, VW programed the engine control units (ECU) of its vehicles equipped with 2.0-liter diesel engines to operate more cleanly when it detected that the EPA’s usual battery of emissions tests were being performed. However, under normal driving situations, the vehicles were emitting far more harmful pollutants into the air — in some cases up to 40 times the level of nitrogen oxides (NOx) than what’s permissible. Now that VW’s wide-scale...
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Apple took an important step in making good on CEO Tim Cook’s promise to make Apple’s new campus “the greenest building on the planet.” The company announced that it plans to spend $850 million as part of a massive, 25-year solar power purchase agreement with a solar power farm in California. The farm, which will belong to Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar, has yet to be built. However, following its completion in 2016, the farm will supply Apple with up to 130 megawatts of power from what has been dubbed the “California Flats Solar Project.” The Monterey County solar farm will power the ring-shaped Apple headquarters that is currently under construction. “We expect...
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Google-owned Nest finally has something it has been wanting for a long time: numbers. With two independent studies in hand (along with another study commissioned by Nest), the young home automation company can talk to you (with much more credibility) about how much its customers are saving on their heating bills by installing the Nest Thermostat. The numbers are pretty impressive: a Nest house typically saves about $131 to $145 per year. Change the temperature a few times and the Nest learns how to keep you home at the right temp (at the right time). As Nest is quick to point out in its new white paper, the yearly savings amount to about a 15% reduction in heating and cooling bills and mean...
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Intel landed itself on the top spot of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) new list of companies using the most renewable energy to power their business. According to the list, the Santa Clara chip maker uses more than 2.5 billion kilowatt hours of renewable energy sourced from solar, geothermal, low impact hydro, and biomass sources to power 88 percent of its operations. "Our renewable purchase is just one part of a multi-faceted approach to protect the environment, and one that we hope spurs additional development and demand for renewable energy," Intel Presidenta nd CEO Paul Otellini said. Source: EPA Intel's focus on green energy has the environmental impact of taking more...
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency slapped Logitech with a fine worth more than a quarter of a million dollars for claims the peripheral maker made about its cordless desktop MX3200 laser mouse and keyboard combo. Those peripherals are now defunct, but when they were being sold, Logitech touted their ability to protect users from nasty bacteria and microbes. That would have been fine and dandy, had Logitech tested its claims and then registered with the EPA. "Unverified public health claims can lead people to believe they are protected from disease-causing organisms when, in fact, they are not," said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. "The EPA...
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Last year a report from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia said that the particles of toner released by laser printers might be as bad for your health as cigarette smoke. A new study from Germany's Fraunhofer Wilhelm Klauditz Institute (WKI) purportedly refutes that conclusion. The report, interestingly, was done in collaboration with QUT, and states that contrary to the prior study, laser printers are not releasing toner into the air, but rather "ultra-fine particles made of volatile organic-chemical substances (VOCs)." WKI head of department Prof. Dr. Tunga Salthammer said, “One essential property of these ultra-fine particles is their volatility, which indicates that...
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Intel Recognized as EPA Green Power Partner of the Year SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 28, 2008 - At an award ceremony hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last evening, Intel Corporation received a 2008 Green Power Leadership Award and was also named a Green Power Partner of the Year. The EPA recognized the company's voluntary efforts to address climate change through green power purchases and its impact in advancing the renewable energy market. "This is but one milestone in our long-term strategy to help make renewable energy more economically feasible and a realistic choice for individuals and corporations," said William Swope, vice president of Intel's Corporate Affairs Group....
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It's a good day whenever something bad happens to a spammer. That makes today a beautiful day, as a judge in Los Angeles has ruled in MySpace's favor in a suit they brought against two spammers who ran amok on MySpace pages. The damages awarded were worthy of a deposed Nigerian dictator: $230 million dollars.U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles ruled in MySpace's favor Monday after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines failed to show up for a court hearing.Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. He left that company, Cyber Promotions, following lawsuits from leading Internet service...
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Yes, the end is nigh. Not only has New York State's "Amazon Tax" been signed into law, it will take effect on June 1st.New York Internet shoppers, take note: in five weeks, sales tax-free shopping will end on many Web sites thanks to rewritten state rules that are trying to force Internet retailers to collect.At Chrono Tech Watches in White Plains, Jerry Nally is glad the clock is ticking on many Internet retailers that don't charge New York sales tax. Nally says those so-called "e-tailers" steal his customers."They'll come in our store, look at our product, touch it, play with it, look at the warranties, then go back to the web and buy it tax free," says Nally.The fact of the matter is,...
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SEATTLE, Dec 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. as part of a probe into potential antitrust violations involving graphics chips, helping to send shares in the companies lower. Nvidia, the largest independent maker of graphics chips for computers and other devices, said on Friday that no specific allegations had been made against the company and that it plans to cooperate with the investigation. AMD, the No. 2 maker of computer processors, said late on Thursday that it had been subpoenaed. AMD entered the graphics business in October after acquiring Canadian firm ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion. Read more here......
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DigiTimes reports that Intel is preparing to spend $300 million on their campaign to promote the new Centrino Pro (Santa Rosa) platform. Timed around the launch of Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system, the Centrino Pro platform will also introduce an 800MHz FSB, 4MB of L2 cache, Gigabit and wireless 802.11a/g/n, as well as support for Intel's Active Management (AMT) and Virtualization Technology (VT). With market analysts expecting the mobile segment to sustain the 25% growth year over year, Intel's strong push for notebooks seems more than justified. The pairing of Intel's Santa Rosa platform and the Microsoft...
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Well, you know you want one of these. You want to be able to see and record Tiger Woods not sweat, in HD, when he's sinkin' those putts; and you want to rewind and watch his competitors wet their pants while he does it. And now you can. Soon, anyway, if HDBeat's inside source at an electronics store is right. Better bring money: It's no secret that TiVo's on the verge of shipping its HD-capable Series 3 set-top-box -- after all, the company's already notified the FCC, posted a product page, and even ignited a flurry of controversy over Time Warner's CableCARD policy -- but we have yet to hear of a solid release date or retail price for this highly-anticipated device. Well HDBeat's...
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Fudo over at The Inquirer reports that NVIDIA is preparing to launch a new GeForce 7950 GT to combat ATI's upcoming RV570 GPU. The latest addition to the GeForce family of GPU's boasts a 550MHz core frequency and is equipped with 512MB of RAM operating at a healthy 700MHz. Furthermore, the $299 card is rumored to have 24 pipelines, dual DVI link, and native HDCP support. "The card supports HDCP, has dual-DVI link, twenty-four pipelines and 512MB of memory. It will launch on the 14th of September and it scores 4687 in 3Dmark06, some 180 more than ATI's RV570, at least according to Nvidia's own slides...The only trouble for Nvidia is that ATI's RV570 will end up much cheaper than Nvidia...
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