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Filed under: Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Mercedes-Benz, Luxury

Beginning in 2015, Mercedes-Benz is revising its nomenclature strategy for many of its models. This isn't shocking news, nor is it anything new in the industry - look at the recent Q-ification of Infiniti, or the forthcoming CT/XT strategy being deployed at Cadillac. But unlike those luxury brands, Mercedes isn't shaking up the whole system, and it's actually (kind of) making things a bit easier to understand. Here's how.

First, the German automaker's crossover and SUV lineup will go fully "G," and will correspond with the class lines on which the vehicles are based.

• GLA - Unchanged; Merc's new small crossover based on the A-Class
• GLC - Currently the GLK
• GLE - Currently the M-Class, also known as ML
• GLE Coupe - The swoopy new BMW X6-fighter that we've already seen testing
• GLS - Currently the GL-Class, now to be thought of as the S-Class of the SUV line
• G - The Geländewagen, and the pinnacle of the brand's SUVs

Things remain relatively unchanged in the rest of the lineup - sedans and four-door coupes (CLA and CLS) keep their current names. The only other notable model name change is in the roadster range, where the smaller SLK now becomes the SLC. That said, the German automaker is switching up its drivetrain designations. Things like "BlueTEC," "Electric Drive," "CDI," and even "Hybrid" are being phased out in favor of one-letter add-ons. Standard gasoline models won't get any special designation, and 4Matic will continue on as the name for the automaker's all-wheel-drive system.

• c - Compressed natural gas, currently "Natural Gas Drive"
• d - Diesel, currently written as "BlueTEC" or "CDI"
• e - Electric, which wipes out "Plug-In Hybrid," "BlueTEC Plug-In Hybrid," and "Electric Drive"
• f - Fuel cell, or "F-Cell" currently
• h - Hybrids, including diesel-hybrids

So, by this logic, what we currently know as a GLK250 BlueTEC will become a GLC250d (when the new GLC makes its debut). And something like the current E400 Hybrid will condense its name to E400h. But wait, there's more...

Continue reading Mercedes renames utility vehicles, repositions Maybach as sub-brand

Mercedes renames utility vehicles, repositions Maybach as sub-brand originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 11 Nov 2014 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My kids and I went to the new Lego Store in the Flatiron this weekend, and I again noticed how freaking expensive Lego sets are. The Death Star set is $400 + tax and even small sets are $30-40. Afterward I wondered if renting Lego sets would be an economically viable business and sure enough, someone is giving it a go: Pley. It works a bit like Netflix's DVD service: you pay a flat subscription fee each month and can check out as many sets as you want, one at a time. Doesn't look like they rent out Lego Stephen Hawking or Lego Mona Lisa though.

Tags: business   Legos

The dazzling Fulton Center, opening Monday, is seen by some as Lower Manhattan’s answer to Grand Central Station.

Some people play games like Halo for the story. I play for the competition.

For me, multiplayer games are simply a collection of mechanics. I look at things like player movement, bullet dynamics, and level design, and what drives me is understanding how they work and then mastering them. Few games grab me enough to warrant devotion. Halo is the one that grabbed me the hardest.

I prefer the more competitive, simplified online experiences found in games like Halo 2 and Halo 3. The maps...

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President Obama:

I believe the FCC should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online. The rules I am asking for are simple, common-sense steps that reflect the Internet you and I use every day, and that some ISPs already observe. These bright-line rules include:

• No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business.
• No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences.
• Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet.
• No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.

It saddens me, and almost surprises me, that this issue has become so polarized along party lines.

This tweet from Republican senator Ted Cruz is utter nonsense:

“Net Neutrality” is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

That’s just word soup. The only similarity to the Affordable Care Act is that Obama supports it. There may well be a rational, reasoned argument against Net Neutrality, but Republicans aren’t making it, and neither are the cable companies or cellular providers. Be wary of the side that can’t express their argument in clear, plain, unambiguous language.

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety

Drivers in New York City are being asked to slow down just a little bit more as the default speed limit has been dropped from 30 miles per hour to 25 on most streets in the nation's largest city. The lowered limit is part of New York Mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio's (above right) "Vision Zero" plan, and is seen as a way to reduce roadway fatalities.

The bid to improve safety, specifically for children and the elderly, is being hailed by some as a big step in the right direction. Amy Cohen, mother of 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was struck and killed in Brooklyn in 2013, was quoted by a blog on The New York Times as saying in a rally held before the limit was lowered, "Our children should not be sacrificed so someone can shave a few seconds off their travel time."

According to Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg (above left), quoted by CBS News, "When you lower the speed limit from 30 to 25, if there's a collision, you cut in half the chances it will result in a fatality." So far, according to the mayor, there have been 24 fewer pedestrian fatalities in New York in 2014.

It remains to be seen how well drivers in the city respond to the new limits, but if pedestrian fatalities continue to fall, it would be awfully difficult to argue for them to be raised back to 30. That said, we'd welcome your opinions. Should other large cities consider lowering their default speed limits if the safety action proves successful in New York?

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New York City reduces speed limit to 25 mph [w/poll] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's official: following months of negotiations, Google now has an airfield to call its own. The company's Planetary Ventures wing has signed a lease with NASA that lets it manage Moffett Federal Airfield, including three hangars, two runways and...

An upcoming build of the CyanogenMod operating system includes a simple but brilliant security feature called "Scramble PIN Layout." It's exactly what it sounds like: a way to scramble the keypad when you unlock your phone so that people can't peek at your keystrokes and learn your PIN.

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You're not really supposed to kill people with the Besra in GTA Online. The Besra is a training jet, it has no mounted weapons. But that doesn't stop this player from wrecking everyone else with the Besra anyway.

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Approximately one five-hundred-millionths of your dining options.

While other food-industry suckers out there keep paring menus down dozens of items by dozens of items, Pizza Hut is churning full-speed ahead in the complete opposite direction. Today the chain unveiled an "unprecedented" plan for a total revamp at all 6,300 locations that includes, as this might suggest, new stuff, and particularly a lot more of it.

Beginning November 19, you can order 16 new artisan-ish pizzas (here's the full list). These dream pizzas will feature a variety of ten new crusts that include honey sriracha, a "skinny" line, and a Little Caesar's pretzel copycat. There are six sauces, including honey sriracha; five new toppings that are mostly peppers and meats that are Italian in origin; and there are also four finishing drizzles, with — you guessed it — honey sriracha.

If this weren't enough, the chain is also jettisoning the roof logo for one that's a circular sauce swirl, relaxing the look of its company uniforms, and dressing up old toppings with silver-dollar adjectives like "Mediterranean black olives," "fresh red onion," "slow-cooked ham," and "Peruvian cherry peppers," even though, as the Associated Press points out, the ingredients themselves "are the same." If you add these to older menu item carryovers and do the math like chief marketing officer Carrie Walsh did, this comes to a mind-numbing "over 2 billion combinations of pizzas that [customers will] be able to access." Let's just hope that the extravagant age of honey sriracha, barbecue sauce, and balsamic sauce drizzles doesn't come at the expense of a plain cheese pie.

[AP, Dallas News]

Related: Little Caesars Will Roll Out Pretzel-Crust Pizzas

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: the chain gang, pizza, pizza hut, sriracha

President Obama has come out in support of reclassifying internet service as a utility, a move that would allow the Federal Communications Commission to enforce more robust regulations and protect net neutrality. "To put these protections in place, I'm asking the FCC to reclassifying internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act," Obama says in a statement this morning. "In plain English, I'm asking [the FCC] to recognize that for most Americans, the internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life."

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Tomorrow at 5 a.m., the sparkling and expansive new Fulton Center subway hub will finally open to the public. The MTA celebrated the opening of the $1.4 billion transit complex today with officials and media mingling in the glass and steel shell, now the biggest transit hub in NYC. "The center is an important symbol for New York in so many ways," said MTA chief executive Thomas Prendergast. [ more › ]

Apple has quietly released a new tool to make switching between iOS and other smartphones a bit easier. The new web tool lets you instantly deregister your phone number from Apple's iMessage system. The site, first spotted by a poster on Reddit, should solve the problem of disappearing text messages.

Many former iPhone users have reported for years that they were not receiving text messages from their friends. The issue stemmed from Apple continuing to route texts through iMessage even after users had moved on to other devices. Since iMessage is proprietary to Apple's platforms, users who switched away from iOS but didn't disable iMessage first would no longer be able to see messages sent from friends with Apple devices. Most users who...

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First revealed at Toy Fair 2014 way back in February, ThinkGeek's Hoverkraft Levitating Construction Challenge game is finally available. It promises all the fun of Jenga and Tetris, but with the added twist that you have to build your tower atop an unstable platform that's actually floating. So all that fun instead becomes maddening frustration.

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 Apple’s Mac marketshare hit record highs during the third calendar quarter of 2014, according to research firm IDC. Official numbers from the firm’s quarterly PC tracker show that Apple’s Q3 shipments topped 2.34 million Macs moved during the quarter in the U.S., giving it 13.4 percent market share and putting it in third place behind HP and Dell. That’s the best… Read More

It's 2014, and this is what a mining accident looks like. A massive fire reportedly broke out at a Bitcoin mining facility in Thailand last month, devastating all three of its buildings and possibly millions of dollars in hardware. The fire might just be a wakeup call to all the startups trying to mine Bitcoin on the cheap.

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David Smith on the imminent release of the first WatchKit SDK:

So to start with we will be given the ability to implement actionable notifications and Glances. This is what I believe we are getting with the SDK release this month.

It will only be later next year that full apps will be possible. It is not a stretch to think that later next year is code for WWDC next June. Likely along with WatchOS (or whatever they call it) version 2.0. There is a delightful symmetry with the history of iPhone OS, where we didn’t get a full SDK until 2.0 (though I’m sure people will similarly jailbreak to get a head-start).

JFK could be getting its own mini "High Line," on top of JetBlue's expansion of Terminal 5, the Times reported today. The addition of the mini-park to the terminal (called Terminal 5i) is intended to bring a similar feel of recreation and relaxation to a place devoid of such leisures: the airport. [ more › ]

The lead from James Trew’s Engadget review of the new LG G Watch R:

I think it’s fair to say by now that smartwatches are no longer the “hot new thing.” It’s an established product category. The paint might still be a little wet on the whole idea, and some might argue there are areas that still need improving, but these clever timepieces are officially here to stay.

I find this perspective to be staggeringly shallow, but it’s an accurate reflection of what I find so inane about mainstream tech journalism. To say that smartwatches are “no longer the ‘hot new thing’” boggles the mind. They’ve never been the hot new thing. It remains to be seen if they ever will be. “Some might argue there are areas that still need improving”? You don’t say. This is as silly a thing to say in 2014 about watches as the same paragraph would have been about phones in 2004, or PCs in 1984.

From law professor James "Public Domain" Boyle: a thrilling, chilling tale of life in an "ecosystem" when the company can arbitrarily "upgrade" the devices you depend on for llfe and limb, while they're hurtling down the road at 100mph. (more…)

You might not be able to play Blizzard's newly announced Overwatch just yet, but in the meantime, you can start learning how every known class in the team-based shooter works. Who knows, maybe you'll find a class that you'll really like.

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Talk about "Double Stuf."

It's getting increasingly difficult to tell real Oreos from the fake ones these days. Sherbet and candy cane are genuine; red velvet and fried chicken, not so much. There's an active Oreo fan community that loves making mock-up packaging for unreal Oreos, and compounding the problem of sussing out the truth is Mondelez International's habit of changing the conversation to its miniatures line, or just issuing blanket denials, like how Tom Cruise's spy bosses in Mission Impossible disavow any knowledge of his existence whenever he blows up the wrong people. Anyhow, all of that is to say that soft Oreo churros are real.

J&J Snack Foods, makers of everything from food-service funnel cakes to giant lumps of sugar-free cookie dough. The Oreo churro, produced with the blessings of the famous cookie's corporate honchos, is actually three churros — regular, "double twisted," and bite-size. Shipments are already headed out, apparently, anywhere your standard jalapeño-ranch-topped soft pretzels are served, meaning, stadiums, fast-casual restaurants, and other institutional settings, such as particularly festive DMV offices. Best of all, the manufacturer notes they can be served with a "cookie creme dip," conveniently made by the same folks. Here are some spotted in the wild:

Oreo Churros. Available now. pic.twitter.com/BJ4mqWxm3h

— Karl Kuehling (@karlk_jjsnack) November 5, 2014

The Oreo churro is a lot smaller than regular churros. Taste wise it's okay, nothing spectacular. pic.twitter.com/AZFV4Nw1NO

— Inside Universal (@insideuniversal) October 18, 2014

Churro/cookie people: Send any reports our way.

[First We Feast]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: innovations, cookies, oreo churros, oreos

Dustin Curtis on Amazon’s hardware aspirations:

It’s an echo chamber. They make a product, they market the product on Amazon.com, they sell the product to Amazon.com customers, they get a false sense of success, the customer puts the product in a drawer and never uses it, and then Amazon moves on to the next product. Finally, with the Fire Phone, customers have been pushing back. You can’t buy a phone and put it in a lonely drawer, never to use it again, like you would with a Fire Tablet. You can’t dupe your customers by selling them a shitty phone, because a phone becomes a part of its user’s identity.

Kif Leswing, reporting for GigaOm:

Even if you’re uninterested in GT Advanced Technologies, there are a number of details about how much power Apple exercises over its suppliers.

Squiller says that Apple did not ever really enter into negotiations, warning that GTAT’s managers should “not waste their time” negotiating because Apple does not negotiate with its suppliers. According to GTAT, after the company balked, Apple told GTAT that its terms are standard for other Apple suppliers and that GTAT should “put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement.”

GTAT’s take seems to be:

1. Apple doesn’t negotiate terms.
2. Apple’s terms were onerous.
3. We accepted Apple’s terms.

Seven counties and towns in Colorado are pushing back against huge broadband providers for the right to build their own, local internet solutions. Many US states have regulations — often pushed for by Comcast and other major ISPs — that make it difficult for communities to build out their own municipal broadband. But as The Washington Post reports, Colorado's rules are unique in that they allow towns to pursue broadband if residents approve the idea on an election ballot. That's exactly what happened this past week. Voters overwhelmingly favored measures that will allow Boulder, Yuma, and other areas to establish municipal — if the towns decide to push forward. The successful vote doesn't require or guarantee the projects to get off the...

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If you're on Verizon Wireless, the Droid Turbo may be a wiser buy than the Moto X at this point. But for those who prefer the latter device, Verizon's got a brand new, exclusive model for sale. The "football leather" version is exactly what it sounds like: a Moto X with a dark red, stippled leather rear case. It's available immediately for $119.99, the same price Verizon charges for the wood model of Moto's handset. (The plain black version remains slightly cheaper at $99.99.) Other than the exclusive design, there's obviously nothing else different about this Moto X. But if you're looking for something a bit different than the default options — and you're too impatient to bother with Moto Maker — at least a new option's there.

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In an insane marriage that could only come from two XTREME #brands like Doritos and Mountain Dew, Quartz has learned that Pepsi has thrown caution to the wind and created a Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew drink. Apparently, this monstrosity was first discovered by Reddit (naturally), and a Pepsi spokesperson confirmed the unholy beverage's legitimacy with the following statement:

We are always testing out new flavors of Mountain Dew, and giving our fans a voice in helping decide on the next new product has always been important to us. We opened up the DEW flavor vault and gave students a chance to try this Doritos-inspired flavor as part of a small program at colleges and universities.

Thankfully, this insane beverage sounds like it'll...

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Halo is one of the most influential series in the history of gaming, but after spending time with The Master Chief Collection — a compilation of the four main titles remastered for Xbox One — it’s striking to me just how different these games are from almost everything out there today.

While 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved may have been the first truly viable first-person shooter on a console, introducing now-standard features like recharging health, limited weapon loadouts, and easy access to...

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