progressive

Looking a little bit like the light cycles from Tron, but without the glowy bits, the E-Tracer 7009 placed in the top three of the Progressive Automotive X Prize competition in 2010.

Now the two-wheeled, two-seater has been renamed the MonoTracer MTE-150 and is headed to production, according to Auto Blog Green.

The MonoTracer MTE-150 has a Kevlar cabin and runs on a third-generation 150 kW (200 horsepower) drivetrain from AC Propulsion in California.

While the X Prize competitors were challenged to create a vehicle that could reach 100 mpge (miles per gallon equivalent), the MonoTracer could see about 350 … Read more

An unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship loaded with 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment completed a smooth automated docking with the International Space Station today, three days after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It was the first Progress arrival since an August launch failure and the first successful linkup of a Russian cargo craft since June.

The Progress M-13M spacecraft, the 45th launched to the space station since assembly began in 1998, docked at the station's Pirs module at 7:41 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 245 miles above northern China. The docking … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--One of the Internet's most influential investors and entrepreneurs is offering a dire prediction: the pace of technological change is stagnating.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, warned that--despite spectacular advances in computer-related fields over the last few decades--technological progress overall is actually "stalled out."

"There's been insane progress in computers, Internet, and all things related to it," Thiel told a conference here organized by the Technology Policy Institute last night. "It's been offset by incredible failure in energy. To a first order, the two … Read more

Web activist Aaron Swartz was arrested in Boston today, accused of stealing 4 million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jstor, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers, The New York Times is reporting.

It isn't clear why Swartz was allegedly after obtaining the documents, but according to a copy of the indictment, the charges against Swartz by the U.S. Attorney include wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer, and criminal forfeiture. If convicted, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and three years of supervised release, according to a Boston … Read more

When you boot OS X 10.6 to Safe Mode by holding the Shift key after hearing the boot chimes, you will see a gray progress bar appear at the bottom of the initial gray Apple screen. While this bar is showing the system will run various maintenance tasks such as checking the filesystem and clearing some caches, after which it will load into Safe Mode. This process should only happen if you intentionally boot into Safe Mode, but there may be instances in which you see it happen at each boot, even if no keys are held during bootup.… Read more

With Progressive's Snapshot mileage-based tracking device, not just how many miles you drive but also how you're driving them could affect your insurance rate.

Progressive is the latest automotive insurance provider to promote a voluntary program that lets agencies offer discounted premiums based on mileage. The company recently began promoting the campaign nationally on television, and Snapshot is available in 30 states. The program uses a device that drivers plug into their cars to monitor the time of day that they're driving, the distance they travel, and how hard they're braking. Data is transmitted to Progressive … Read more

Progress Energy is moving forward with its plan to spend $500 million to upgrade two of its electric utilities in Florida and the Carolinas to a smart-grid system.

Together the two utilities provide electricity service to over 3.1 million customers. The Raleigh,N.C.-based company is paying for the upgrade in part with a $200 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The grant came out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and is part of the high-profile push by the Obama administration and many state leaders to upgrade U.S. electric grids.… Read more

When you empty the trash in OS X, the system will usually present a progress bar showing the number of files remaining to be removed if the number of items in the trash take longer than a moment to delete. Normally this will only take a few minutes and there is some indication that the trash process is working, such as the number of calculated items increasing, or the progress bar moving across the window; however, sometimes the progress window may appear to hang.

Large numbers of files

The time it takes to remove files depends primarily on the number … Read more

AT&T said Tuesday that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet.

Telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of Internet service, AT&T said, adding that it already has "hundreds" of customers who have paid extra for higher-priority services.

"Our view is that if the Federal Communications Commission is going to be making policy decisions on this front, it should base them on the facts, as opposed … Read more