McLaren 12C: Hunting the Italians McLaren's first road car in decades has a tough job to do - it's got to take on Ferrari, Lamborghini and co. Does it have what it takes?

McLaren 12C: Hunting the Italians

McLaren's first road car in decades has a tough job to do - it's got to take on Ferrari, Lamborghini and co. Does it have what it takes?

Laren is a name steeped in history. Racing successes and world-record-smashing cars make up its past, but the 12C is an indication of its future. And it's looking pretty rosy.

Fresh off the back of a collaboration with Mercedes on the SLR hypercar, McLaren decided it wanted to build a world-beating supercar. Something to make Ferrari and its ilk run for the hills in fear. It would have to be light, fast, comfortable, and good-looking. It would have to be absolutely perfect.

Thankfully, using techniques refined over years of road and race car practice, the 12C is an utterly stunning piece of machinery.

A fusion of style and substance is something that many try for, but rarely manage -- the 12C appears to have nailed it. Its carbon-fibre tub, which takes only a few hours to manufacture, is a thing of beauty. Its exposed weave greets you as you enter the car and gives you a hint as to the 12C's true capability.nside you sit low and to the centre of the car. The vertical dash stack takes a bit of getting used to, but the car's ICE hub almost winks at you and gives you the impression that what you're about to experience is nothing short of brilliance.

Prod the starter button and 3.8 litres of V8 makes itself known not only to you, but to whoever happens to be within a 5-mile radius. It's not subtle, this thing. Its turn of pace is unbelievable, and mostly unusable outside of a track/Germany. No matter; McLaren's engineers have made a car that's comfy pootling about town (while making all manner of noise) or haring along some twisty bits of Wales.

It steers incredibly, giving you all manner of feedback that most mortals (me included) will probably never be able to decipher. It's been precision engineered to be the best car you'll ever drive.

And this, with the arrival of the P1 Hypercar and no doubt many more in the coming years, is just the start for McLaren Automotive.

The 12C's job is to make people's "must-drive" lists. It's got to be the car that people want to drive, want to love. It's got to be the car that some would die to own, or even drive for a second or two. No, McLaren doesn't have the heritage of some of its competitors, but what it has got is expertise.

Bring it.

Specs
Engine	3.8-litre twin-turbo V8
Power	616 bhp
Torque	443 lb. ft.
0-60 mph	3.1 seconds
Top speed	207 mph

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The more you use Facebook, the more miserable you get -- study

A disturbing piece of research from the University of Michigan intimates that increasing use of Facebook among young adults creates an increased lack of well-being. Oh.I have always found people from the University of Michigan to be rather full of themselves and devoid of wit and dress sense.

I don't pretend for a moment that this discovery holds any universal truth. I might have encountered only two or three of these people at the most.

However, I wonder how you will respond to a piece of research from that same university that suggests Facebook and happiness may be virtual opposites.

I am miserably indebted to CBS Philadelphia for noticing this study and its implications.

The study has a portentous title: "Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults."

It offers some even more portentous sentences. For example: "The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time."

This study was performed among 82 young adults, whose emotions are, surely, as consistent as the British weather.

Still, these researchers believe that their methods offered a disturbing indicator.Here's another sentence that strikes fiercely into the caring world of sharing: "On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it."

Amateur psychologists -- I believe they're called life coaches these days -- will say that those who used Facebook for long periods are seeking some sort of relief from misery in the first place.

When they see that everyone else is having far more fun than they are, they get even more miserable.

The researchers resisted this hypothesis. They saw no evidence that people turned to Facebook as a pick-me-up. (Young adults normally turn to beer or drugs, don't they?)

As with so much (all) research, it would take a much larger sample to see if these results could be replicated and, ultimately, understood.

One hypothesis, though, immediately comes to mind: Somewhere deep inside, people on Facebook wish they were doing something more enjoyable. Yes, even with someone else.

Indeed, one observation here was that those who had regularly seen people during the study -- you know, in real life -- experienced greater misery from prolonged Facebook use.

Kids, your parents will always tell you that money doesn't make you happy. It seems that Facebook won't make you happy either.

The Smiths should immediately get back in the studio to record this:

I just spent 10 hours on Facebook.

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

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NAruto Shuppide Eppisode 325 watch online

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Former Microsoft VP thought dead after his plane crashes into Connecticut homes

Bill Henningsgaard, a former sales VP at the computing giant, is presumed dead, along with his 17-year-old son and two younger children, after his plane crashes into two homes while approaching an airport.A former Microsoft executive, along with his 17-year-old son and two younger children, are presumed dead after the man's small plane crashed into two Connecticut homes Friday.

Bill Henningsgaard, 54, held various marketing and sales positions at the computing giant -- including vice president of sales for the western United States, Australia, and New Zealand -- before leaving in the early 2000s to focus on philanthropy. He was on a trip to explore college options with his son when his plane went down while approaching Connecticut's Tweed New Haven airport. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.

An East Haven Fire Department official told the Associated Press that four bodies -- two from the plane and two from one of the houses -- had been recovered. The bodies have yet to be identified by the medical examiner, but two children -- a 1-year-old and a 13-year-old -- have been missing since the plane crash.

Henningsgaard's brother told CNN there was no reason to think anyone other than Henningsgaard and his son were aboard the plane, and Social Venture Partners, a philanthropic organization that Henningsgaard worked with as a board member, posted an item on its blog Friday evening lamenting over Henningsgaard's death.

"Many of you know first-hand how the extraordinary and visionary leadership of Bill Henningsgaard was visible all over this community," reads the item from SVP, a group of partners who pool their money to have greater charitable impact on local nonprofits. "He worked tirelessly to build partnerships and facilitate efforts that put us on the path of engaging the community to actively support every child, step by step, from cradle to career. Bill walked the talk to make our community stronger."

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How Roku can build a Chromecast killer

Roku's streaming dongle hasn't caught fire like Chromecast. Here's what Roku can learn from Google's hot new streamerGoogle has shaken up the world of streaming video with its new (and hard to get) Chromecast. The $35 unit effectively turns any "dumb" HDTV into a smart TV with Netflix and YouTube, and uses any iPhone, Android phone, or tablet as a remote.

Some pundits were quick to declare the ultra-affordable Chromecast the new top dog of the streaming media world ("Google's miracle device"), suggesting that it would leave current market leaders Apple TV and Roku as roadkill. While some of them made these declarations before actually using the product, there was no doubt from the level of general Web enthusiasm that Google was making consumers sit up and take notice. (The official CNET take: we like what the Chromecast has to offer for the price, but we feel that it needs some feature upgradesbefore it can be recommendable to a wider, non-techie audience.)

Somewhat lost in the Chromecast hullaballoo was the fact that Roku already has a Chromecast-like streaming dongle called the Roku Streaming Stick. It's basically the guts of theRoku 2 XS (the 2012 flagship Roku player, now discontinued and replaced by the Roku 3) crammed into a the form factor of -- you guessed it -- a stick.

Like the other Roku boxes, the Streaming Stick bests the Chromecast's meager built-in app selection with a panoply of channels including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, Pandora, Crackle, Spotify, Vudu, and HBO Go -- to name just a handful of its hundreds of mainstream and niche offerings. But Roku seems to underplay the existence of the Streaming Stick -- it's tough to even find it on the company's website. But the frenzy over the Chromecast suggests to me that this would be a perfect time for Roku to revisit the Streaming Stick.

What follows are my suggestions to make a (theoretical) Roku Streaming Stick 2.0 a better product. The result might not be a full-on Chromecast killer, but it could be something that would at least be far better than the current model -- and possibly the best Roku to date.

1. Add a real YouTube app.
This is still the Achilles' heel of all of Roku's boxes, from the $50 Roku LT to the $100 Roku 3. Yes, using the free Twonky app on an Android or iOS device allows you to get any YouTube video on your TV via the Roku (ironically, using Chromecast-style mirroring). And yes, as a Roku rep pointed out to Gigaom, many of YouTube's key third-party video providers -- Machinima, Vevo, College Humor, and others -- are already available on Roku via their own apps. But a real YouTube app on Roku boxes would remove the asterisks and workarounds, and make things easier for real-world users. (Whether Google, YouTube's owner, wants to cooperate and make its video service available on Roku -- which is now, arguably, a hardware rival -- is tougher to answer.)

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

2. Make the remote optional.
Chromecast doesn't have a dedicated remote. Instead, it uses the Netflix and YouTube apps already on your smartphone or tablet -- you just click an icon, and video from your handheld screen instead appears on your big-screen TV. Some people -- presumably, those of you who "watch TV" while simultaneously interacting with your Facebook or Twitter stream -- love this idea, and prefer your touch-screen controls to an old-fashioned clicker. While a smartphone screen is certainly a great way to search for and choose content, I still prefer the dedicated hard buttons of a real remote control.

The good news for Roku is that it already offers the best of both worlds. The company alreadyhas an Android and iOS remote app, so anyone who doesn't like the company's minimalist clicker can toss it in a drawer after initial setup. Roku could potentially work with other app providers -- Netflix, YouTube, whoever -- to add the "play to Roku" option that works identically to the existing Chromecast one.

The point is, so long as the Streaming Stick can work without the need for the hard remote, you can pull it out of the box and make it an optional add-on. Given that the current Roku remotesells separately for around $34, that would help get the Streaming Stick price closer to $50.

3. Add screen mirroring.
This one isn't a big deal for me, but I know that a lot of geeks some to love the Chromecast's screen mirroring function, which lets Macs and Windows PCs beam the contents of the laptop screen directly to the TV. (We found this beta feature to be less than 100 percent reliable when streaming video sites like Hulu on the Chromecast.)

Because it was already competing with Apple TV's nearly identical AirPlay functionality, Roku's remote apps feature a "Play on Roku" function that streams any music or photos on your phone to the TV. Roku just added video support to the iOS version, too. For now, it only works with self-shot video that's sitting on your iPhone. But if Roku has gotten that working, it makes me think that PC/Mac mirroring shouldn't be too hard to pull off, either.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

4. Add USB power.
This is the big one. The Roku Streaming Stick is designed only to work with TVs that are equipped with MHL-capable (Mobile High-Definition Link) HDMI ports. Unlike standard HDMI, MHL ports provide enough power to charge connected mobile devices -- or, in this case, to keep the Roku Streaming Stick up and running, even when the input is powered off.

It's a nice idea -- the Roku is "always on," ready to be toggled on. (Otherwise, the Roku would have to go through its full reboot sequence whenever the TV was turned on -- no fun if you want to jump straight into a Netflix movie.) But the "feature" limits the Streaming Stick to only MHL-compatible TVs. You'll find more of them in 2013, but it's still not a widely supported feature, especially if your TV is more than a couple of years old.

Chromecast has an easy workaround: the dongle is powered by a micro-USB input, just like most cell phones. Sure, it's a bit unsightly -- no one wants more wires -- but it works like a charm. (Google throws a USB power adapter in the box, but many TVs also include a USB port with enough juice to power the Chromecast.)

If Roku were to adopt the same design change to the Streaming Stick -- just adding a USB power port -- it would effectively remove the product's biggest caveat. Instead of compatibility with just the handful of MHL TVs, it would work with nearly every HDTV on the market. That's how you get from niche to mainstream.

5. Lower the price.
Chromecast's biggest asset is its rock-bottom $35 price tag. That undercuts Roku's current low-end options, the $50 Roku LT and $60 Roku HD. (Those two units are nearly identical, with the HD offering a remote that has an "instant replay" button not found on the LT.)

In fact, the Roku LT is currently selling for $40 on Amazon -- just $5 more than the Chromecast, despite having hundreds more apps and a dedicated remote.

The current Streaming Stick is selling for $84 on Amazon at the time of this writing. Again, separating out the remote would probably knock about $30 off that price. While the added expense of the USB cable and power adapter would have to be factored in, I would hope that Roku could get closer to $50 and still make a profit. It would be tough, but not impossible.

What about Apple?
Apple doesn't currently have a dongle-based version of the Apple TV, but there's no reason that company couldn't follow this exact same gameplan. Apple TV already has YouTube; it already has remote apps; and it already has screen mirroring, with the excellent AirPlay functionality. Apple would just have to determine if it wants to go with a USB-powered dongle style design, and if the company would want to compete in a price war. Given that its $99 box has already sold more than 13 million units -- and that Apple has traditionally resisted a race to the bottom on pricing -- I wouldn't bet on this. In fact, I agree with my colleague Scott Stein, who posits that we could see the opposite -- a more robust Apple TV box that doubles as a game console. But you never know.

The ball is in Roku's court
Regardless of a curveball from Apple, Roku has a real opportunity to learn from Chromecast here. A cheaper, USB-powered Streaming Stick 2.0 would be a viable Chromecast alternative, and allow the streaming upstart to reclaim the initiative in the field that it pioneered. Best of all, the Roku engineers don't have to start from scratch -- they can just tweak the already promising Streaming Stick that's currently on the market.

Hey, it's something I'd buy for 40 or 50 bucks.

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Despite warning, fans' hopes for D23 'Star Wars' news dashed

At Disney's massive fan-fest in Anaheim, 'Star Wars' fans held out hope for big news on 'Episode VII.' But Disney's warning that none was forthcoming proved true.But short of CEO Bob Iger having a press conference to declare that the company wouldn't announce anything new about the highly-anticipated next film in the series, fans came to D23 holding out hope that Disney just might still drop a hint or two about something significant. Some, for example, had predicted that the main cast of the film would be formally revealed, while others no doubt thought that Disney might talk a little about the plot.

In the end, there was no news at all, leading some in the standing-room only audience for Disney's Saturday presentation of its forthcoming live-action film slate to jeer studio Chairman Alan Horn when he said he had nothing new to share.

The speculation, in fact, reached such a fever pitch that Lucasfilm's Pablo Hidalgo, who gave a very well received talk about the history of the "Star Wars" franchise, to tweet beforehand that not only would he not have any new news to share about "Episode VII," but that Disney would also not be unveiling anything about the film at an upcoming dental convention in San Francisco.

On the other hand, Hidalgo also tweeted that the air conditioning in the Anaheim Convention Center worked fine, a nod to the fact that the recent "Star Wars" Celebration convention in Europe had not had any A/C, while 2015's Celebration, which will be held at the convention center in Anaheim, should have satisfactory climate control.

While there was no "Star Wars" news worth reporting, Disney did throw a star-studded party to celebrate its remaining slate of live-action films coming between now and early 2015.

During the presentation before thousands of Disney fans, Horn, president of motion picture production Sean Bailey, and Marvel Studios president of production Kevin Feige introduced a long series of forthcoming films, including "Thor: The Dark World;" "Captain America: The Winter Soldier;" "Guardians of the Galaxy;" "Cinderella;" "Maleficent;" "Muppets Most Wanted;" "Avengers: The Age of Ultron;" "Bears;" "Into the Woods;" "Tomorrowland;" and "Saving Mr. Banks."

Among the stars that turned up to help promote the various films Saturday were Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Mackie, Tom Hiddleston, Ty Burrell, Chris Evans, and more.

The live-action presentation followed Friday's presentation of Disney's forthcoming slate of animated films, which includes three new Pixar movies, "The Good Dinosaur," "Inside Out," and "Finding Dory," among others.

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