And if it makes you feel any better, Zuck took a page out of Steve Job’s CEO book and has an annual salary of just one dollar.
Investigators continue to dig into Volkswagen’s files to see who knew what and when about the company’s massive emissions cheating scandal, and they’ve made a significant discovery. Seems like the plans to actively deceive diesel emissions testing equipment got rolling in 2006.
How do they know? Well, because a higher-up at VW put together a PowerPoint presentation on how to do it. According to the New York Times, an as-yet unnamed exec showed the presentation to management peoples and the green light was given to install software that could detect when the cars were being tested and automatically bring emissions results into line.
Once back out on the road, the cars reverted to pollute mode, emitting 40 times more exhaust than the legal limit. In fact, even when regulators started sniffing around in 2014, VW kept installing the software for another year. The scandal cost CEO Martin Winterkorn his job and VW is facing fines and repair fees that could top $18 billion. Just last week, they offered to buy back half a million cars in the U.S., and the investigation is just getting started.
The hottest thing in tech today is VR, and during a developer’s conference yesterday in San Francisco, Samsung’s R&D chief said a stand-alone VR headset is on the way. Samsung already makes the $99 Gear VR, which requires a Samsung smartphone to complete the package. But according to Variety, Samsung says the next iteration will be an all-in-the-headset solution, instead of having to be tethered to a PC like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Timeline on the next generation of Gear VR? Let’s just say not this year, but given how hard companies are working to improve VR and untether it from bulky PC’s, we’d say it’ll be here sooner than later.
