Police Department Offer Parking Lot for SAFE Craigslist Transactions



ANKENY, Iowa — The Ankeny Police Department is promoting a new way to keep people from getting scammed.

Local law enforcement promotes a new way to keep people from getting scammed. As people spend time scanning sites like Craigslist in hopes of finding a good deal, they know there’s a chance they could be set up for a scam.

“I think you have to be awful careful with them. People get robbed, and a lot of bad things happen,” said Ankeny resident Gary Franklin. Franklin is leery when it comes to online classifieds.

Des Moines police are investigating two recent Craigslist-related robberies. In both cases, the suspect who placed a motorcycle ad lured the victims to a church parking lot, brandished a black pistol and fled with cash.

“We’re not saying that Internet sales of items are inherently dangerous,” said Ankeny Police Department Lt. Ben Bowersox. “It’s just it gives people that opportunity, and people will take advantage of that.”

In an attempt to prevent similar scams, Ankeny police suggest buyers and sellers meet at their parking lot. Security cameras monitor the property and provide a watchful eye around the clock.

It’s that constant surveillance that helped police nab the man accused of firing shots into the building in 2012. “It just adds a little bit of extra security to people,” said Bowersox.

Ankeny police hope striking the deal at their station will cut down on buyers and sellers falling prey to the next scam circulating on Craigslist. “It would be a lot safer for one thing, and you would have the police right there if anything bad went wrong,” said Franklin.

Police also suggested that buyers and sellers should take a picture of the other person’s vehicle and license plate before the transaction occurs, and buyers should only accept cash or a cashier’s check for sale.

The post Police Department Offer Parking Lot for SAFE Craigslist Transactions appeared first on Finding Guide.



Source: PS4 News – Police Department Offer Parking Lot for SAFE Craigslist Transactions

'A Lot of Hoped-for Automation Was Counterproductive', Remembers Elon Musk

Thursday Elon Musk gave a surprisingly candid interview about Tesla’s massive push to increase production of Model 3 sedans to 5,000 a week. An anonymous reader quotes Musk’s remarks to Bloomberg:
I spent almost the entire time in the factory the final week, and yeah, it was essentially three months with a tiny break of like one day that I wasn’t there. I was wearing the same clothes for five days. Yeah, it was really intense. And everybody else was really intense, too… I think we had to prove that we could make 5,000 cars in a week — 5,000 Model 3s and at the same time make 2,000 S and X’s, so essentially show that we could make 7,000 cars. We had to prove ourselves. The number of people who thought we would actually make it is very tiny, like vanishingly small. There was suddenly the credibility of the company, my credibility, you know, the credibility of the whole team. It was like, “Can you actually do this or not?”
There were a lot of issues that we had to address in order to do it. You know, we had to create the new general assembly line in basically less than a month — to create it and get to an excess of a 1,000-cars-a-week rate in like four weeks… A lot of the hoped-for automation was counterproductive. It’s not like we knew it would be bad, because why would we buy a ticket to hell…? A whole bunch of the robots are turned off, and it was reverted to a manual station because the robots kept faulting out. When the robot faults out — like the vision system can’t figure out how to put the object in — then you’ve got to reset the system. You’ve got to manually seat the components. It stops the whole production line while you sort out why the robot faults out.
When the interviewer asks why that happens, Musk replies, “Because we were huge idiots and didn’t know what we were doing. That’s why.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – ‘A Lot of Hoped-for Automation Was Counterproductive’, Remembers Elon Musk

Chrome is Using 10-13% More RAM to Fight Spectre

An anonymous reader quotes PCWorld:
The critical Meltdown and Spectre bugs baked deep into modern computer processors will have ramifications on the entire industry for years to come, and Chrome just became collateral damage. Google 67 enabled “Site Isolation” Spectre protection for most users, and the browser now uses 10 to 13 percent more RAM due to how the fix behaves.

“Site Isolation does cause Chrome to create more renderer processes, which comes with performance tradeoffs,” Googleâ(TM)s Charlie Reis says. “On the plus side, each renderer process is smaller, shorter-lived, and has less contention internally, but there is about a 10-13% total memory overhead in real workloads due to the larger number of processes. Our team continues to work hard to optimize this behavior to keep Chrome both fast and secure.” It’s a significant performance hit, especially for a browser battling a reputation for being a memory hog, but a worthwhile one nonetheless.
Chrome’s Spectre-blocking site isolation “is now enabled by default for 99 percent of Chrome users on all platforms.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Chrome is Using 10-13% More RAM to Fight Spectre

Interviews: Christine Peterson Answers Your Questions

You asked questions, we’ve got the answers!

Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute’s annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term “Open Source software” for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998.

Christine took some time to answer questions from Slashdot readers.

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Source: Slashdot – Interviews: Christine Peterson Answers Your Questions

Lockheed Martin creates its largest 3D-printed space part to date

Lockheed Martin has just finished the final series of quality control tests for an enormous titanium dome meant to serve as caps for satellite fuel tanks. It’s not just any ordinary dome, though: the enormous component measures four feet in diameter…

Source: Engadget – Lockheed Martin creates its largest 3D-printed space part to date

Antarctic Exploration Vessel Which Should Be Named Boaty McBoatface But Tragically Isn't Launches

The RSS Sir David Attenborough—the polar exploration vessel that, in April 2016, participants in an internet poll overwhelmingly voted to christen Boaty McBoatface—launched on Saturday, with defensive research officials still defending their decision to override the results of the vote.

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Source: Gizmodo – Antarctic Exploration Vessel Which Should Be Named Boaty McBoatface But Tragically Isn’t Launches

Tesla speeds up delivery times for new Model 3 orders

When Tesla opened up Model 3 orders to everyone, it was easy to be jaded when delivery would take at least three months. Wouldn’t the situation only get worse? Apparently, just the opposite is true: Tesla has dramatically shortened delivery times for…

Source: Engadget – Tesla speeds up delivery times for new Model 3 orders

Wells Fargo's Scandals Finally Hurt Its Bottom Line

An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Wells Fargo said operating losses surged 77% last quarter because of various problems in its auto lending, wealth management, mortgage and currency businesses. Overall expenses rose by 3%. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo said profit declined by 12% during the second quarter, missing Wall Street’s expectations. The bank’s stock, which has lagged behind the rest of the market, dropped 3% on Friday… Wells Fargo was also hurt by a $481 million income tax bill linked to a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows states to force online retailers to collect sales taxes…
Even though the economy is strong, several crucial metrics at Wells Fargo are shrinking. For instance, average deposits dropped by 2% to $1.3 trillion, led by a drop-off in business from financial institutions. Wells Fargo blamed the decline on actions it had to take due to penalties imposed by the Federal Reserve that prohibit the bank from growing its balance sheet. Lending, the primary way that banks make money, also dipped by 1% from the first quarter at Wells Fargo. It cited declines for commercial real estate and consumer loans, including auto lending. Mortgage banking profits also declined sharply.
If average deposits dropped by 2% to $1.3 trillion — that looks like a drop of over $26 billion.
CNN reports that an analyst at CFRA Research has downgraded his rating on Wells Fargo — to “sell.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Wells Fargo’s Scandals Finally Hurt Its Bottom Line

Elon Musk Is Giving Money to a GOP PAC Because It Helps Elon Musk

Elon Musk—maker of a mini-sub that never got used, hypothetical savior of the Flint, Michigan water crisis, general over-promiser and under-deliverer—was one of the biggest donors to a political action committee with the primary goal of maintaining Republican control in the US House of Representatives.

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Source: Gizmodo – Elon Musk Is Giving Money to a GOP PAC Because It Helps Elon Musk

Telescope Offers 'Clearest View Yet' of Milky Way – Including Plasma Filaments

Chris Reeve writes: The MeerKAT radio telescope was inaugurated in South Africa this past Friday, revealing the clearest view yet of the center of the Milky Way. What is especially surprising about the produced image are the numerous prominent filaments which seem to appear in the foreground.
Herschel made a similar announcement just three years prior that “Observations with ESA’s Herschel space observatory have revealed that our Galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures on every length scale.” Intriguingly, close inspection of yesterday’s SKA image show these filaments twisting around one another, yet without combining — a phenomenon observable in most novelty plasma globes when the filaments are conducting electricity…

The SKA telescopes is one of the first telescopes to witness these filaments because it is 50 times more powerful than any former telescope, but also because it is apparently one of the few telescopes which can observe dark mode plasmas. For these reasons, the SKA telescope will inevitably revive the debate over the underlying physical reasons for filaments which exhibit coherent thin magnetic structure over light-year distances.

The original submission included a comment with more information about the theory of a plasma universe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Telescope Offers ‘Clearest View Yet’ of Milky Way – Including Plasma Filaments

Honda will use electric bikes to test swappable batteries

Honda has teamed up with Panasonic to start testing the swappable rechargeable batteries it debuted at CES this year. The partners are bringing Honda’s Mobile Power Packs to Indonesia, where they’ll be used to power electric mobility products, partic…

Source: Engadget – Honda will use electric bikes to test swappable batteries

After Resignation of HR Chief, Yet Another Uber Exec Faces Allegations of Discriminatory Behavior

Earlier this week, ridesharing giant Uber’s Chief People Officer Liane Hornsey resigned under allegations that she systematically shot down internal complaints about racial discrimination within the company—indicating at least some prior concerns about a toxic company culture of wild abandon during the tenure of…

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Source: Gizmodo – After Resignation of HR Chief, Yet Another Uber Exec Faces Allegations of Discriminatory Behavior