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Tuesday, October 2, 2012

I Can’t Stop Reading This Sub-Reddit About The Worst Cars On The Road

October 2nd, 2012Top Story

I Can't Stop Reading This Sub-Reddit About The Worst Cars On The Road

By Raphael Orlove

I Can’t Stop Reading This Sub-Reddit About The Worst Cars On The RoadAmerica's roads are filled with cheap, rusty cars half-broken and fixed with duct tape. Eventually they have to go into the shop. When they do, they go to the best sub-reddit there is.

This is r/Justrolledintotheshop. It's only a few months old, but it's already filled with the most disheartening, frightening, and hilariously bad cars I've ever seen. To say these beaters suffer from deferred maintenance sells them short.

We're talking tires patched with tape, engines running with broken pistons, and brakes worn down to nothing. That's just the front page.

A particular favorite is this more than slightly out of tune Honda Civic. The owner came into the shop complaining about a "strange grinding noise." Yeah, it's probably because your wheel wobbles more than a drunk frat boy at Mardi Gras.

Click to view As one mechanic points out, "someone was driving around like that."

We would also direct your attention to this shredded tire that came into the garage with the note "repair if possible."

The sub-reddit isn't all about deferred maintenance, though. You can also follow the ongoing saga of a 19-year-old whose parents bought him a Ford Raptor. He's broken the truck twice doing some probably sick jumps. It's still updating.

It's hard to tell if the people bringing their cars in really understand quite how bad their cars are, let alone how dangerous it is that they've been driving around in them. Either way, the sub-reddit will teach you a lot about the condition of cars on the road today.

I Can’t Stop Reading This Sub-Reddit About The Worst Cars On The Road

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read Parking Lot Mechanic so that I never find my own car featured on r/Justrolledintotheshop.

Photo Credits: Reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop

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Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02

October 2nd, 2012Top Story

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02

By Whitson Gordon

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Now that Mountain Lion's out with a shiny new version of Safari 6, we thought it time to revisit our browser speed tests. As always, we're pitting the four most popular browsers—this time, on a Mac—against one another in a battle of startup speed, tab loading prowess, and lots more.

We've been testing browsers for awhile, and we've refined our method pretty well. It's a good mix of both manually timed user experience measures and hardcore JavaScript and CSS benchmarks, plus some new tests aimed at features like Chrome's prerendering or Firefox's on demand tab loading can really do. All tests this time around take place on a MacBook Air using a built-in SSD (which is why startup times were so quick). Since it's on a completely different machine and we refine our tests a bit each time, don't compare these numbers to our old tests—just look at the results of the tests we ran this week.

And, as always, remember that speed is not the only thing each browser has to offer. Each browser has a number of unique features and characteristics, all of which you should factor into making your choice of which to use. However, while most features can be listed on their home pages, you can't easily compare their speed just from each browser's changelog, and that's why we've put this together. It's just one more way to compare the browsers as you make your decision. Also remember that everyone's computer and setup is different, and your numbers may differ from ours depending on your resources, the extensions you use, and the sites you visit, but this should give you a good idea of how each browser handles day-to-day use.

Cold Boot-Up Winner: Safari!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Having an SSD in our computer made all of our browsers start up insanely fast, and it's one of the reasons we recommend an SSD as your next upgrade. However, there were still some differences between each program, with Safari inching in at almost a second to start up. Opera was the only other standout, taking above 1.5 seconds on average.

Tab Loading Winner: Firefox!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Firefox shockingly took the front spot when it came to loading nine tabs at once, taking a mere 7 seconds to finish loading all nine. Chrome was close behind, with Safari taking about 9 seconds and Opera coming in last place with over 10.

URL Loading Winner: Chrome!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Once again, Chrome's prerendering feature shows its genius, opening pages nearly instantaneously when visited from the menu bar—as long as we had visited that page once during that session. Safari was surprisingly close behind, with Firefox in third place, taking a bit under a second. Opera, on the other hand, didn't fare so well, more than doubling the time of the next slowest browser.

Cold Restore Winner: Opera!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02This is still our toughest test. It's designed to test Firefox's on-demand tab loading feature, which aims to make the browser usable more quickly when it restores a large session of tabs. As such, we tried to test a cold restore with nine tabs and stopped the timer when the browser finished its initial "work"—that means Firefox and Opera smoked the others, since they only loaded one or two tabs at a time (and then stopped or loaded the others leisurely), while Chrome and Safari tried to load all of their tabs at once, crushing the browser and making it slow down. Despite Firefox's "load one tab only" approach, Opera still does a fantastic job of loading your first tab and being ready to go in just a few seconds flat.

RoboHornet Winner: Safari!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Mozilla's Dromaeo tests have not only become outdated, but we've started having trouble with crashes trying to run them. So, we're using the brand-new RoboHornet benchmark that's been the buzz around town. It's a community-driven benchmark that tests things like scrolling, canvas, DOM, SVG, and JavaScript to try and give a more accurate, well-rounded picture of your browser's speed. It's still in the early stages, and it's facing lots of praise and a fair amount of criticism. However, that's to be expected as a microbenchmark, and while it isn't the most real-world test, we'd be remiss not to include it. Safari and Chrome came out on top, while Firefox and Opera lagged behind a bit in their tests. for more information on RoboHornet's scoring system, check out this page.

Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs Open) Winner: Safari!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Safari absolutely smoked the other browsers in terms of memory usage. It wasn't very consistent—sometimes it would take up only 50MB or so, other times it would jump up to 100MB—but it was still nowhere near the huge levels of memory the other browsers ate up. Firefox and Opera took up around 300MB, while Chrome gorged itself on over 500MB of RAM.

Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs and Five Extensions) Winner: Safari!

Browser Speed Tests, Mac Edition: Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Safari 6, and Opera 12.02Even with five extensions, Safari absolutely pummeled the other browsers in memory usage. Chrome stayed absurdly high, taking up over a gig of RAM, while Opera gobbled up enough memory to push Firefox into a nice spot at second place.

Overall Scores

As always, overall scores are pretty meaningless, but everyone likes to see a winner. So for those of you handing out trophies, the scores are:

  1. Safari: 78%
  2. Firefox: 64%
  3. Chrome: 60%
  4. Opera: 46%

Safari just rules on the Mac, which is no surprise since it's literally built alongside OS X for optimal operation. Firefox fared surprisingly well, with Chrome not too far behind (except in the memory tests) while Opera took a pretty distant last place. As always, you should look at the individual scores above to see which browser is faster in the areas you care about—if you don't like Firefox's new tabs on demand, for example, Chrome may be "faster" for you in the ways that matter.


Our tests aren't the most scientific on the planet, but they do reflect a relatively accurate view of the kind of experience you'd get from each browser, speed-wise. Let us know if your experience differs-or if the speed losses are worth the browser's other features-in the comments.

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Which Websites Are Blocked From Britney Spears' Home Computer to Protect Her Mental Health?

October 2nd, 2012Top Story

Which Websites Are Blocked From Britney Spears' Home Computer to Protect Her Mental Health?

By Caity Weaver

Which Websites Are Blocked From Britney Spears' Home Computer to Protect Her Mental Health?A new report from Radar Online alleges that the reason Britney Spears hasn't been responding to your texts or leaving comments when you check in to Saad's Halal on Foursquare is that both her Internet and cell phone usage are "heavily monitored" to protect her from any negative influences like you and your drunk momma and that skateboard crew you roll around with. Also, her former manager says drug-sniffing dogs found crystal meth in her house once.

Spears has been under the conservatorship of her father, Jamie, for four and a half years. In April of this year, she requested that her fiancé Jason Trawick be added alongside her father as co-conservator. This request was approved, and Spears was declared a conservator of Romance.

While it was revealed in August that Britney Spears' initially temporary conservatorship had been extended through December 2008 to, presumably, the end of time as the result of a "serious medical issue," few specifics about the arrangement are known.

Now Radar reports that "a source close to the situation" has revealed that the reason it's been a success is that Britney Spears never texts Bad Boyz or reads anything negative about herself, ever.

"Britney's cell phone and internet use is restricted and heavily monitored, and this is done for her protection. Britney and Jason essentially share a cell phone, and it's routinely checked to see who has been calling. Furthermore, the cell phones have been programmed to block calls from phone numbers associated with [Britney's ex-manager, in place at the time of her well-publicized 2008 breakdown, Sam Lutfi]. Brit's computer usage is also restricted in the sense that certain websites are blocked. Her family doesn't want Britney reading negative stories that would upset her. Again, this is all done with love and for her well-being."

It seems a little suspect that someone computer-savvy enough to have included a ballad called "E-Mail My Heart" on her debut album wouldn't be clever enough to outwit some child protection settings (or just ask to borrow Demi Lovato's iPhone), but, as anyone who has been to a Spears concert can attest, Britney is full of surprises and loves confetti.

The details of Spears' strict home life have emerged just one week after Sam Lutfi alleged in a court filing that drug-sniffing dogs brought to Spears' California home in 2007 "found a cache of crystal methedrine, which was destroyed," or, at it looks to Britney, found a cache of PAGE NOT FOUND.

Lutfi is in the process of suing Spears and her parents for defamation and breach of contract. His request to have the singer take the stand as a witness in his case was recently denied by a judge.

A restraining order filed against Lutfi on Spears' behalf is set to expire later this year.

Click to view

(Radar // NYDN // Image via Getty)

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