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Mercedes-Benz is recalling hundreds of thousands of cars in the UK for a software update to reduce their nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.

Almost every new diesel bought over the past six years is affected by the move, which the company said was voluntary and would involve owners being contacted to be offered the upgrade.

German owner Daimler said it was taking the action across Europe covering three million vehicles in total.

It refused to give a country-by-country breakdown but said one million were sold in Germany. It is believed the UK numbers are still being finalised.

The UK is one of its biggest customers in the EU - with 170,000 Mercs sold in the country last year alone.

The vehicles affected have diesel engines meeting the Euro 5 standard - implemented in 2011 - and the existing Euro 6 rules which further limited the output of NOx and particulates - blamed for thousands of deaths each year.

Sky News was seeking clarification from the company on whether the upgrade would have any effect on a vehicle's performance such as its acceleration.

Daimler said it was taking the action, at a cost of 190m, to "reassure" customers as many manufacturers move to shun diesel technology in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal of 2015.

VW admitted then it had fitted so-called defeat devices to diesel cars sold in the US to cheat emission testing regimes.

It has since been forced to pay billions in fines and compensation in the US.

The company also remains the subject of criminal and regulatory scrutiny in Europe and is facing civil action by drivers in the UK who are demanding compensation, claiming they were also duped. VW denies it broke EU law.

The controversy prompted VW and its rivals to concentrate their development power on electric and hybrid technology as campaigners demand the brakes are applied to diesel technology on health grounds.

Dr Dieter Zetsche, the head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, said: "The public debate about diesel engines is creating uncertainty - especially for our customers.

"We have therefore decided on additional measures to reassure drivers of diesel cars and to strengthen confidence in diesel technology.

"We are convinced that diesel engines will continue to be a fixed element of the drive-system mix, not least due to their low CO2 emissions."

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Mercedes recalls diesel cars for emissions software update - Sky News

Fstoppers

Fstoppers Reviews VueScan 9 Scanning Software Fstoppers It's difficult to review a software package without comparing it to other packages that I'm familiar with, so in this review, I'll be comparing VueScan to Epson Scan, the free software that comes with any Epson scanner, and SilverFast 8.8. I'll step ...

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Fstoppers Reviews VueScan 9 Scanning Software - Fstoppers

A top-notch imaging program that's free for home use Thank you

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By Jon L. Jacobi

Freelance contributor, PCWorld | Jul 17, 2017 11:30 PM PT

Macrium was one of the first to release a free version of its backup software. Ten years later, to the benefit of users everywhere, Reflect Free 6 remains a stable, reliable way to quickly image and restore your system. It doesn't offer as much functionality as Aomei's Backupper, but there's something to be said for a backup program that hasn't failed its fans in over a decade.

Though Reflect is a bit old-school in appearance, the look somehow works better with the free version. Fewer options, less clutter, cleaner lines. Reflect Free is limited to imaging disks or individual partitions (no cloning, file backup, or other choices), but there's an option to select only those partitions required to restore the Windows operating system.

If you want file and folder backup, you'll need one of the pay ($70 or more) versions. Same deal with incremental backup, though the free version does support differential (all changes since the initial backup). Note that even the pay versions back up only folders, not individual files. You can always drag files to a folder, but it's still a slightly puzzling omission.

Reflect Free offers extensive schedule options and differential backup.

You may not be able to back up specific files or folders with Reflect Free, but there are extensive scheduling options and retention rules (how long to keep and what to delete when space is low), and jobs are saved as standard XML files. Password protection and email notifications are availableonly in the pay versions.

Several flavors of the Windows PE boot environment are supported by Reflect Free 6

Reflect Free supports both MBR and GPT disks (it was late to the GPT game), and it has a great boot media creator, which lets you change flavors of Windows PE to best suit the operating system being backed up. It also lets you choose the drivers you want to install. PE allows driver injection (adding them at restore time), so you're likely okay there anyway.

Macrium claims increased performance for the latest version 7, of which a free version is promised soon. That might be nice, as Reflect Free 6 took just over nine minutes to perform our 115GB system backup. That's about two minutes slower than any of the competition, though CPU usage was minimal. Backup generally takes place during off hours or in the background, so we don't lend performance a lot of weight in our evaluations.

On the bright side, the free version of Reflect spawns only a single background process, down from the three that the pay versions create. And much better than the six invoked by Acronis True Image.

If all you want to do is image your system or data, then Macrium Reflect Free 6 is a great way to do it. We've been using it for seemingly forever, and it's never let us down yet. That counts.

If you want sync or plain file copying, then look at the equally free Aomei Backupper Standard or Paragon Backup & Recovery. There's no rule against having more than one backup program installed.

on https://www.macrium.com/

This venerable freebie offers more than enough power for the average user. If all you want to do is create backup images of your system and disks, Macrium Reflect Free is a very reliable way to do it. Read the full review

Jon is a Juilliard-trained musician, self-taught programmer, and long-time (late 70s) computer enthusiast living the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Macrium Reflect Free review - PCWorld - PCWorld

Bitcoin reversed steep losses as miners began using new software which aims to bridge an ideological gap that has threatened to divide the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoins community has been at bitter odds for more than two years about how to solve its scaling problem, which has hampered the cryptocurrencys growth and allowed rivals like ethereum to steal some of the spotlight.

The new software, known as SegWit2x, is seen as a compromise for the two sides of the debate: miners who deploy costly computers to verify transactions and act as the backbone of the blockchain, and developers known as Core who uphold bitcoins bug-free software. While both sides have incentives to reach a consensus, bitcoins lack of central authority has made reaching agreement difficult.

The price of bitcoin rose to as high as $2,356 before trading at $2,348 as of 2:22 p.m. in New York. The digital currency slumped to as low as $1,758 over the weekend on Coinbases exchange. Bitcoin, which has more then doubled this year, climbed to just shy of $3,000 on June 12.

SegWit2x was formally released over the weekend and has already gained adoption by large miners Antpool, BTCC and Bixin. About 55 percent of blocks mined in the last 24 hours were done with SegWit2x, according to coin.dance, which monitors blockchain activity.

If support reaches 80 percent and maintains that threshold from more than two days, it will move bitcoin closer to avoiding a split.

Traders are excited by the prospect of a resolution to the scaling debate, which is why the price has rallied, said Thomas Glucksmann, head of marketing at Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Gatecoin.

Read more about bitcoins civil war.

Despite the progress with SegWit2x, some warned that bitcoin isnt out of the woods yet. Many Core members still vehemently oppose the software, which they say hasnt been properly vetted for bugs. Also, not all miners support SegWit2x, which they say is a flawed compromise that doesnt solve the root scaling problem.

This price rally is a bounce, we are very bearish in the near term for a number of reasons, said Harry Yeh, managing partner at digital currency dealer Binary Financial, who cites the lack of support from Core developers as one of his biggest worries. Anytime the price rockets up quickly, it will be followed by a strong correction which we are starting to see. We are definitely headed for some turbulent and volatile times in the short term.

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Bitcoin Jumps After First Solution to Major Ideological Divide - Bloomberg

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Free & Fair, a startup developing transparent, cyber secure and verifiable elections systems, today announced it has been selected by the State of Colorado to develop a high-assurance, open source software system to help state and local officials implement risk-limiting post-election audits.

A risk-limiting audit (RLA) is an evidence-based method that checks the integrity of election outcomes by comparing a random sampling of paper ballots to their corresponding digital versions. Colorado is the first U.S. state to require RLAs on a regular basis, starting with the November 2017 off-year election.

RLAs are better and more efficient than the random post-election audits they will replace in Colorado, because they generally require a smaller number of ballots to be audited but still provide a much higher statistical probability that the outcome is correct. At the same time, election experts also consider RLAs an essential component of a secure election process that can protect against both inadvertent tabulation errors and malicious cyberattacks.

Supporting Quotes: Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams Over the past decade, in academic journals and elsewhere, a large number of accomplished political scientists, statisticians and election integrity activists have advocated the theory and benefits of risk-limiting tabulation audits. In simple terms, and with a high level of statistical probability that has never existed before, RLAs will limit the risk that Colorado or any of its counties will certify official election results if the outcome is not correct.

Neal McBurnett, nationally recognized expert on implementation of election audits and a member of the Free & Fair implementation team Colorado has been a pioneer in moving election audits forward since 2004, and risk-limiting audits represent the most innovative work on the planet on efficient tabulation audits.

Dr. Joseph Kiniry, Free & Fair CEO and internationally recognized security expert Colorados leadership in elections auditing should be a beacon for the rest of America, and we look forward to seeing risk-limiting audits deployed in the other 49 states. And because the new RLA software system will be open source, other jurisdictions around the country will be able to use it at low cost to audit their own election results.

Ron Rivest, world-renowned cryptographer and Turing Prize winner "Using paper ballots, ensuring effective chain of custody of those paper ballots, and confirming the correctness of election outcomes with statistical post-election audits are among the very best tools we have for securing our elections."

About Free & Fair

Free & Fairs mission is to bring open source, high-assurance elections to the world. Based in Portland, Oregon, Free & Fair provides elections services and systems meeting higher reliability and security standards than the US federal government demands for national security.

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Colorado Selects Free & Fair to Develop Software Tools for First ... - Business Wire (press release)