This week Tom brings the joyous news that Nintendoland is coming! Ray wants fast passes to the Mario Kart ride. But none of the guys want to ride on a Boeing 787 after Ray tells the guys that some of the planes are turning off… in mid air. Not good. Oculus finally announces a consumer model of the Oculus Rift. People are breaking/not breaking their Microsoft Surface 3 tablets. Twitter broke MS-DOS games, and Tesla just brought the future one step closer to today. All that on this week’s episode.

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THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Nintendo Theme Park

Who is up for Mario Kart in real life? Nintendo announced during an earnings call this week that it is partnering with Universal Parks and Resorts which runs the Universal Studios theme parks to create Nintendo-themed rides and attractions. Nintendo has not announced specific details on which of its properties it would adapt, but it seems like a safe bet that it will leverage long lasting and popular characters and games like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. In fact, Universal executive Tom Schroder said pretty much exactly that in a press release: “The immersive experiences will include major attractions at Universal?s theme parks and will feature Nintendo?s most famous characters and games.”

Have you tried turning your plane off and on again?

The FAA sent out a warning on May 1st that Boeing 787s may have some computer problems that could cause your terrible, terrible death. Mashable reports that the administration discovered the computers in 787s have a “software counter” that periodically shuts down all electrical systems, which results in “loss of control of the airplane.” Now, I’m not an aviation expert, but I think that is a bad thing. Am I right in assuming that guys?

Boeing is working out a software update that will eliminate the problem, but until then, they have issued a work around. If you work in the IT industry or have ever worked technical support you are probably familiar with it:

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Yes folks, it’s the I.T. Crowd fix.

Call Roy and Moss or your plane will crash to the ground.

Oculus announces “Q1 2016” release for Rift

In other news that is sure to have gamers everywhere jumping for joy, Oculus announced this week that the first commercial release of their hotly anticipated virtual reality headset the Oculus Rift will be in early 2016.

The company also released promotional images of the sleek final consumer product after several years of prototypes.

Oculus first made a splash at the E3 gaming expo in 2012, followed by a very successful Kickstarter campaign. They also kicked off a virtual reality race, with other big companies like Sony and Valve and HTC working on releasing their own VR products.

How low can you go?

One of the most interesting tablets to come out, other than the iPad, has definitely been the Microsoft Surface. Sure, it’s had its share of troubles. It came out with Windows RT, which was this weird, stripped down version of Windows. It had two interfaces, the desktop and the “tablet” UI which really confused people. But, it was an incredible design that really changed the market, making it a serious contender for a laptop replacement. One of its signature features was the coveted kickstand that can hold the tablet in one of three positions. Well, now the Verge is reporting that Redditors have discovered a secret fourth position for the Surface 3 kickstand. Apparently, if you keep pressing the kickstand back after the third position it will break away and fold all the way back.

Microsoft said in a statement that the kickstand “contains a safety mechanism unique to Surface 3 to help protect the device, but the mechanism is not designed for use as a fourth kickstand position.”

So it might work once, twice or maybe even a few times, but it’s probably going to ruin your Surface 3.

The lesson here is, don’t play too rough with your toys. Just like a Slinky, once you bend it out of shape, you can’t bend it back, no matter what happened in Toy Story.

MS-DOS games on Twitter update

Last week we told you how you can embed and play classic MS-DOS games in tweets. Sadly, it looks like Twitter has put a stop to that.

It was discovered last week that Twitter users could embed these games from the Internet Archive?s site into tweets using Twitter?s Cards widget (that?s the system that allows videos, images and other media to be displayed in-line in the Twitter stream). But it turns out that embedding interactive media, specifically games, is against the terms of service for Twitter Cards.

You can, however, still play the MS-DOS games at the Internet Archive?s site, archive.org.

Powerwall

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the maker of powerful electric sports cars recently announced that his company will begin manufacturing batteries for homes. This week Elon Musk announced that demand for their ?Powerwall? batteries was ?crazy off the hook?. He said they have received over 38,000 reservations, a level of demand which could take them up to a year to fulfill. Orders included over 2,500 from companies for their commercial-ready Powerpack.

The Powerwall batteries are designed for a 24-hour charge-and-discharge cycle, which would be ideal in combination with a solar power system that could charge them during the day letting them run the house at night. The batteries are designed to be mounted on the wall and a 7kWh unit starts at $3,000.

Note from Ray: The Powerwall is apparently not nearly as bad as the Power Glove.

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If Google can do it, we can too! The title of this episode is this GIF.

This week the guys geek out over Tesla adding an autopilot feature to their electric cars, mourn the death of TigerDirect retail stores, and wonder if they can follow in Google’s footsteps and communicate purely through GIFs. Plus, Ray shares his thoughts on the Cogito smartwatch.

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This Week’s Run Down

Tesla Announces Software Update for Cars Which Adds “Autopilot” Feature

Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a press conference this week at which he announced that late model Teslas will be getting a software update that will give them a new feature called ‘autopilot.’ The autopilot feature will bring ordinary Tesla electric cars that much closer to being self-driving, enabling them to stay in their lane on a well-marked highway without driver intervention. Musk claimed that the autopilot technology would enable to a driver to make it from San Francisco to Seattle without steering.

Musk also announced a feature called Range Assurance which will alert Tesla drivers when the charge in their car is getting too low to make it to the nearest charging station.

$10 Million Target Credit Card Data Breach Settlement Gets Preliminary Approval

You probably remember the massive data breach that hit Target during the 2013 holiday season where tens of millions of credit cards were stolen right out of their systems. A class action lawsuit was filed and now Target is preparing to settle? for $10 million dollars.

If that amount seems low to you, it is because Target is not going to do the usual thing and send five dollars to every customer whose card number was stolen. Instead, card holders can only be reimbursed if they can show that they were actually hurt by the data breach. They need to have had fraudulent charges placed on their card that they were not reimbursed for, that negatively affected their credit score, or show that they spent a lot of time and money resolving the problem, or that it harmed them in some other way.

The proposed settlement is only preliminary, and members of the class action suit have until November 10th to object.

RadioShack Puts Customer Data Up for Sale in Bankruptcy Auction

RadioShack is on the auction block this week as its creditors attempt to sell the company?s assets – this apparently includes a large chunk of customer data, including 65 million customer names and physical addresses and 13 million email addresses. Consumer advocates are concerned, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims it may be illegal under state law. Texas does not allow companies to violate their own privacy policies and signage in RadioShack promises that they will not sell their private mailing list.

AT&T is also opposing the sale of data because they say RadioShack is not entitled to personal information it collects from wireless sales. AT&T wants the data destroyed to keep it from falling into competitors hands.

A bankruptcy court still has to approve the deal.

TigerDirect Closing Retail Stores

Speaking of defunct electronic stores, remember Circuit City… CompUSA… Ultimate Electronics? Well, TigerDirect bought them in the late aughts. Well, now TigerDirect is joining them in the electronic retail store afterlife. Two of the former executives for TigerDirect were recently sentenced to 60 and 80 months in jail for a kickback scheme that cost the company $27 million. Apparently that hurt the company enough that the company decided to close all by two retail stores.

It makes me sad because TigerDirect was a “dot com boom” success story. They actually started as a catalog company, but transitioned into internet sales early. When all of the retail computer stores started dying, TigerDirect was holding strong, and they bought up the stores and their IP and entered the retail market. They did a fantastic job of turning stores like CompUSA and Circuit City, which were known for fancy displays and overpriced electronics, into stores with smart employees, simple displays and prices that competed with the Internet.

TigerDirect is going to continue selling computers, electronics and computer components on its website.

No word yet if NewEgg is planning on buying its stores, but that would be the perfect irony.

Facial Recognition Software Leads To Arrest of Jacksonville Man Who Faked His Own Death

Another thing the internet has ruined: faking your own death. Jacksonville businessman Jose Lantigua had been reported dead in Venezuela two years ago. But when he attempted to apply for a new passport under his new, false identity the US State Department used facial recognition software to match him to his original identity in their database. Federal agents then set up a sting operation and caught him wearing a brown toupee and ?a poorly dyed beard.?

Lantigua is wanted on numerous counts of insurance fraud, since his family attempted to collect on his life insurance policy after his death. The insurance company has long viewed this with suspicion.

Google Responds to Reporter with GIF Instead of “No Comment”

This week, Daily Dot writer Richard Lewis published a story about YouTube reportedly planning to relaunch its livestreaming platform with a focus on computer gaming and esports. This is similar to Twitch, which Google tried to buy last year before it ended up being purchased by Amazon.

Lewis reached out to Google for a comment on the reports, and they apparently responded with something only Google could get away with. Instead of the usual “no comment,” the representative sent Lewis this animated GIF of a little girl shrugging. No text, just the GIF.

Lewis at first assumed that this was a joke, and said that he received a “no comment” response from Google in his story. The same representative sent another message saying that the GIF was, in fact, their official response.

Reviews

Ray shares his thoughts on the Cogito swartwatch this week.

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