Shuff's General Chat Thread ... #73 - Talk about anything and everything...  

Bike and car cleaned, tomorrow i'll be joining the unemployment life. Finally resigned after we received a new manager who couldn't tell his head from his ass,done sweet fcuk all and hid in the office. Being a 3 man warehouse,it was annoying picking up the slack of a lazy fcuk so finally had enough.

what to do with yourself now. endless possibilities

Apple stands to make billions from Pokémon Go

Apple Inc. may rake in $3 billion in additional revenue over the next two years because of the runaway success of Pokémon Go, according to a new report from Needham analyst Laura Martin.

The company, which charges a fee to host apps on its App Store and pays itself a portion of the revenue spent on and within iOS apps, keeps roughly 30% of the money spent by users on Pokémon Go, she said. To give some perspective, Apple made $2 billion in the first two years of availability for another popular mobile game, Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Candy Crush Saga.

Apple might even make more money from the game than Nintendo at the moment, Martin said. The Japanese videogame company owns just a 32% stake in the Pokémon Company, which jointly developed the game with Niantic Inc., a spinoff of Alphabet . CLSA analyst Jay Defibaugh said last week that Nintendo may receive “little direct profit” from the game, given its minor stake. Nintendo’s stock has nevertheless doubled since the launch of the game.

“We think Apple’s near-term cash flow from Pokémon Go is higher than Nintendo,” Martin said.

The huge success of the game comes at a great time for Apple, which has been trying to grow its software and services business in an effort to offset decelerating hardware sales. Last quarter, revenue from software and services topped Mac sales for the first time. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook called services a “large and important source of recurring revenues” for Apple.

In a note to clients on Wednesday, Nomura reiterated a buy rating on Apple’s stock, saying new data from its own survey results indicate “very healthy growth” in iOS downloads and revenue trends.

While iPhone numbers “look uninspired,” Nomura analyst Jeffrey Kvaal said, Nomura believes that the company’s iOS subscriber base continues to grow “at a healthy, if not robust, pace.”

Terror attack on Sydney police station after a man drives a car packed with gas bottles into the building before setting himself on fire

A man has driven a car filled with gas and petrol bottles into a Sydney police station carpark on Thursday night in an attempted terror attack.

The man, who is known to police, set himself on fire but the gas bottles did not explode after he rammed the vehicle into the underground carpark of Merrylands police station in western Sydney.

The man is in his 60s and police described it as 'a very deliberate attack'.

A police source said it was an attempted terror attack and the man was arrested about 8pm after the incident occurred at 7pm.

The station is a well-known target of radicalised Muslims, and has previously received letters threatening attacks on ‘non-Muslims’ and pictures of severed heads.

By now you might have heard that there was a very rare Koenigsegg that crashed on the Nurburgring recently. These cars are so incredibly rare, with only seven examples of the One:1 in existence. Well, after this wreck, it looks like there are only six working examples in existence now. To see that lovely carbon body twisted and cracked, with burn marks over the back of the car will break any true gearhead’s heart. The One:1 is an engineering marvel, and to see it get trashed like this is a punch in the gut!

Koenigsegg is blaming Monday's wreck of a One:1 hypercar at the Nurburgring on a problem with the left front ABS sensor, according to a lengthy crash report released Wednesday.

Koenigsegg says the sensor failed right before the driver engaged in hard braking. While a warning light illuminated, the driver – wearing a helmet – likely didn't see it. He also might not have noticed a change in braking feel until he was engaging in an aggressive stopping maneuver.

"It was our severe misfortune that this fault occurred just prior to the first instance of ABS-braking into a corner during high-speed testing on the world's most demanding test track," Koenigsegg said in a statement.

There are seven One:1 models in the world. They make 1,341 horsepower and belong to an exclusive class of extreme performance machines known as hypercars.

The One:1 was going 106 miles per hour when it locked up on a part of the circuit called the Fuchsrohre. The car then hit the fence at 68 mph, which launched the One:1 about 72 feet in the air. The driver put out a small fire in the back of the car. He was hospitalized and released the same day.

Koenigsegg did an extensive accident reconstruction Wednesday. It said it will implement a software fix to prevent the ABS fault from happening in other cars. The company also plans to rebuild the wrecked One:1.

Body locked inside Perth Hungry Jack's toilet cubicle ‘for up to three days’ before being found

The body of a man was reportedly inside a toilet cubicle in Westminster for up to three days before being found.

Police were called to the Hungry Jack's on Wanneroo Road at 9am on Monday morning following the discovery of a man’s body.

It is believed the man had been inside the locked toilet cubicle for three days.

A spokeswoman for WA Police would not confirm whether a staff member had alerted police to the body.

“There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death, so we’ll prepare a report for the coroner,” the spokeswoman said.

Marvel Announces DAREDEVIL Season 3!

Marvel just announced that Netflix has renewed Daredevil for a third season! I know we all had a feeling that this was going to happen, but now we can all sleep soundly at night because it's official! Executive Vice President of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment Joe Quesada made the big announcement during the Marvel/Netflix panel at Comic-Con today.

Marvel started their whole Netflix journey with Daredevil and the insanely violent adventures of Matt Murdock and his posse will continue in season three. I have no idea what's in store, but there's no doubt that it's going to be awesome! Will it be better than the last season? Only time will tell, but I'm confident that Marvel is going to give us another incredible season.

There's no word on when Daredevil Season 3 will be released, but it probably won't happen until after The Defenders.

VHS is dead, but at least it outlived Betamax by nine months

Last remaining VHS tape producer will cease manufacturing cassettes at the end of this month, bringing the 40-year-long analogue videotape era to an end

The 40-year-war between Betamax and VHS is finally over, but while victorious 28 years ago, VHS only managed to outlive its rival by 9 months. The last VHS tape will roll off the production line at the end of this month.

It’s the end of the home analogue magnetic video tape era. Japan’s Funai Electric, the last remaining VHS tape manufacturer after Panasonic pulled out several years ago, has ceased production citing a sharp decline in sales and trouble sourcing parts.

“A company that was making parts for us said it was too tough to keep making them with sales at this level so they stopped, which led to our decision - we can’t make them without that part,” said Funai Electric, which has since been overwhelmed with desperate calls from Japanese VCR tape owners.

In recent years the US has been the biggest consumer of the firm’s VHS tapes, sold under the Sanyo brand among others, but sales have dropped from 15m in their heyday to just 750,000 in 2015. Frankly, most will be amazed that they’re still made and sold at all anymore.

But while many left VHS and the humble video cassette recorder for dead many moons ago, replaced first by DVD recorders in 1999, then personal video recorders (PVRs) such as Sky’s + box in the early 2000s, around 58% of US households still had a VCR according to a Gallup poll.

While Sony’s Betamax could offer better video quality, VHS cassettes could run longer, were produced more cheaply and had the backing of the porn industry VHS won out in 1988 when Sony conceded victory by producing its first VHS VCR, therefore shunning its own format.

Originally about the size of a briefcase with a top-loading slot for videotapes, VHS VCRs became popular in the 70s and 80s spawning a whole new industry: the humble video rental shop.

Like VHS tapes, the once giant rental chains such as Blockbuster video went the way of the dodo after gaining a brief reprieve with the launch of the DVD player in the late 90s, before succumbing to the success of streaming video and video on demand services from the mid 2000s on.

VHS isn’t the only analogue magnetic tape still in circulation. Analogue audio cassette tapes first released back in 1962 are still popular in Japan, and have seen a retro resurgence in some countries. One of the few remaining audio cassette tape manufacturers in the US, National Audio Company, reported a 20% rise in sales following production of 10m tapes in 2014.

But while videos and memories captured on VHS might live on with new formats, the last standing analogue magnetic tape for home video is will now fade to dust.