Exclusive: Jay Leno on the Bailout

Once you Lose American Manufacturing, It’s Gone Forever. In an exclusive interview with PM, Jay Leno gives his take on the auto bailout.

I think we should bail them out. To me it’s like class warfare. The white-collar guys get a bailout and the blue-collar guys don’t? That’s crazy. You know, I’d rather help a guy with a wrench in his hand than some guy sitting in front of a keyboard.

We’ve given the banks $700 billion. Does it seem like anything has actually happened with that money? No. But when a factory closes, boy, you’ll see the effect of that right away. You’ll see towns go under and you’ll see lives ruined. That town will never be a manufacturing center again. At best those old buildings will become a mall or a Wal-Mart.

I look at it this way: I don’t necessarily want to loan my brother-in-law money, but he’s family. To me, GM, Ford, Chrysler and the suppliers that go along with them are our family.

We barely make anything in this country anymore as it is. And once you lose this manufacturing infrastructure, it’s pretty much gone forever.

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3 Dirt-Cheap DIY Electric Cars for Under $2k

So you want a 100% electric car for commuting or running errands in your town or small city.

Maybe you’ve dreamt of whipsering down the road in a clean, quiet Tesla roadster … and then you woke up screaming at the thought of the $109,000 U.S. price tag.

In that case, may we present the other end of the EV spectrum: a trio of street legal electric cars converted from gasoline to battery power for an average price of $1450 each. (No, that’s not a typo.)

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"I Made A Fake Facebook And Had 100 Friends In 4 Days"

Facebook is by far one of the top social networking sites on the Internet, with millions of users, How security conscious are the people that use it? Basically you just have to be aware of your own security online. Do not post information that other people shouldn’t have and always second guess yourself when wondering whether you should do something that could compromise your online safety. And as pointed out from above, check who you friend on Facebook.

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Meraki Releases World’s First Solar-Powered WiFi Device

day, wireless networking provider Meraki started shipping the world’s first solar-powered WiFi mesh device. Meraki’s groundbreaking energy-independent device is powered by a single solar panel and solar-charged battery. Since the unit requires no grid-derived energy, it can be set up in areas lacking power supplies, like parks, golf courses, rural areas, and resorts.

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Economy, opportunity seen leading to $599 Apple netbook

Faced with the perfect storm of a bleak market and a boom in ultra-budget portables, Apple is believed by some to be readying its own take on the netbook for the first half of 2009.

Gottheil dismisses the notion of an artificial premium on Apple products, noting that they often compete well for the features, but is certain that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has reached a breaking point where perceived quality can't override genuine financial woes from customers.

Crucially, he also takes to heart Jobs' assertion that $500 systems are typically "junk" and believes that Apple will price the system at $599. The figure would be just low enough to draw customers who would pass over the plastic MacBook but high enough to avoid the risk Apple's co-founder perceives in dropping the price particularly low.
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The Kit That Turns Gas Guzzlers into Plug-In Hybrids

Sitting in a Connecticut warehouse, the very first Poulsen Hybrid looks like a standard Honda Civic with immobilizer boots attached to its rear wheels. It is, one would have to say, not the most visually elegant of solutions to the pressing problem of using electric power to extend the range of the internal-combustion automobile. But it's also both practical and affordable.

The concept is relatively simple: Two of the company's seven-horsepower (five kilowatt) disc-shaped DC electric motors are bolted onto the rear wheels of the host car, connected by cables to a controller, battery charger and 4.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack in the trunk. The system, adding approximately 200 pounds to the car and taking up 20 percent of trunk space, acts as range extender. The motors do not drive the car, but kick in to provide a power boost between 15 and 60 miles per hour. Regenerative braking helps keep the batteries charged.

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Apple investigating graphics issues on new MacBook lines

The first issue, which some are calling "the black screen of death," manifests itself on unibody MacBook Pros during game play. Users report that their screens go black after just a few minutes of gaming, while the system locks up and the audio enters into an infinite loop.

Once the systems lock up, users say they lose control of their cursor and are left with no other option but to restart their Macs through a hard reset. The issue exists under both Windows and Mac OS X, affecting a wide range of titles that include Call of Duty 4, World of Warcraft, Ages of Empire III, Command and Conquer, Oblivion, Company of Heroes, an

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