Remember the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal? “In the end, after paying huge fines and seeing key executives head to prison, VW agreed to buy back nearly 380,000 of the offending cars in the United States, to fix or scrap,” reports the New York Times.

But this week the director of industry analytics for online car marketplace CarGurus tells them that VW has now added more share in certified pre-owned sales than any other brand.
Jalopnik reports:
The resulting used VWs are surprisingly compelling, which is why — according to a report from the New York Times — people can’t get enough of them… That demand, the story says, is driven by the vehicles’ impressive fuel economy, the warranty that the government required VW to offer on all re-sold vehicles, and the dearth of other diesel car options on the market… It’s an interesting look at how these once vilified automobiles have once again fallen into favor thanks to what what made the vehicles popular in the first place: They are just impressively fuel efficient. Oh, and the government-mandated warranty, too. That helps.

Aexecutive analyst at J.D. Power Valuation Services tells the Times that a used VW now costs about the same as a gas model.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – ‘Cheating Volkswagen Diesels Have Become A Hot Commodity’

“Another coder and I are exploring the possibility of having a video-processing algorithm written in C turned into an ASIC (“Application Specific Integrated Circuit”) hardware chip that could go inside various consumer electronics devices,” writes Slashdot reader dryriver.

The problem? There seems to be very little good information on how much a 20Kb, or 50Kb or indeed a 150Kb algorithm written in the C language would cost to turn in an ASIC or “Custom Chip”.

We’ve been told that “the chip-design engineering fees alone would likely start at around $500,000.” We’ve been told “the cost per ASIC will fluctuate wildly depending on whether you are having 50,000 ASICS manufactured or 5 million ASICs manufactured.” Is there some rough way to calculate from the source code size of an algorithm — lets say 100 Kilobytes of C code, or 1000 lines of code — a rough per-unit estimate of how much the ASIC hardware equivalent might cost to make?

Why do we need this? Because we want to pitch our video processing tech to a company that makes consumer products, and they will likely ask us, “So… how many dollars of extra cost will this new video processing chip of yours add to our existing products?”

There were some interesting suggestions on the original submission, including the possibility of C to HDL converters or a system on a chip (SoC). But are there any other good alternatives? Leave your own thoughts here in the comments.

How do you estimate the cost of an algorithm turned into an ASIC?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Ask Slashdot: How Do You Estimate the Cost of an Algorithm Turned Into an ASIC?

Python’s End-of-Life date is 129 days away, warns the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). “There will be no more bug fixes, or security updates, from Python’s core developers.”

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:

The UK’s cyber-security agency warned developers Thursday to consider moving Python 2.x codebases to the newer 3.x branch due to the looming end-of-life of Python 2, scheduled for January 1, 2020… “If you continue to use unsupported modules, you are risking the security of your organisation and data, as vulnerabilities will sooner or later appear which nobody is fixing.”

“If you maintain a library that other developers depend on, you may be preventing them from updating to 3,” the agency added. “By holding other developers back, you are indirectly and likely unintentionally increasing the security risks of others… If migrating your code base to Python 3 is not possible, another option is to pay a commercial company to support Python 2 for you,” the NCSC said.

The agency warns that companies who don’t invest in migrating their Python 2.x code might end up in the same position as Equifax or the WannaCry victims. “At the NCSC we are always stressing the importance of patching. It’s not always easy, but patching is one of the most fundamental things you can do to secure your technology,” the agency said. “The WannaCry ransomware provides a classic example of what can happen if you run unsupported software,” it said. “By making the decision to continue using Python 2 past its end of life, you are accepting all the risks that come with using unsupported software, while knowing that a secure version is available.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – UK Cybersecurity Agency Urges Devs To Drop Python 2

bobstreo tipped us off to an interesting story. The BBC reports that NASA “is reported to be investigating a claim that an astronaut accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station, in what may be the first allegation of a crime committed in space.”

Anne McClain acknowledges accessing the account from the ISS but denies any wrongdoing, the New York Times reports… The astronaut told the New York Times through a lawyer that she was merely making sure that the family’s finances were in order and there was enough money to pay bills and care for Ms Worden’s son — who they had been raising together prior to the split. “She strenuously denies that she did anything improper,” said her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, adding that Ms McClain was “totally co-operating…”

Her estranged spouse, Summer Worden, reportedly filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Ms McClain has since returned to Earth…

Ms McClain graduated from the prestigious West Point military academy and flew more than 800 combat hours over Iraq as an Army pilot. She went on to qualify as a test pilot and was chosen to fly for NASA in 2013.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – First Alleged Crime In Space?