Watch the Elite: Dangerous Launch Trailer

Frontier Developments has released a launch trailer for its space sim Elite: Dangerous.

Notably, this is the first trailer for the game that doesn’t feature any actual gameplay, instead showing off a pre-rendered space battle that is probably much more fast-paced and bombastic than anything you’ll experience in the game. For a good laugh, check out the parody of the launch trailer posted to Reddit by YouTube user [RPS] Jaguar Skills.

If you want to watch actual gameplay, we have no shortage of those videos as well.

Frontier Developments also released the sizeable Gamma 2.00 update to the game alongside the trailer, which adds more ships, route planning, slavery missions, and a very long list of tweaks and fixes which you can read in full on the developer’s official forums.

Elite: Dangerous will release on December 16. For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s previous coverage.

Emanuel Maiberg is a freelance writer. You can follow him on Twitter @emanuelmaiberg.

For all of GameSpot’s news coverage, check out our hub. Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

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ETC: 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona could be world’s first great ‘condo find’ [w/video]

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1971 Ferrari Daytona 'condo find'

Barn finds are the absinthe of the collector car world right now. They’re highly intoxicating and a bit of the ‘flavor of the month.’ An actual barn isn’t necessary, just some form of out-of-the-way long-term storage that involves a car being out of circulation for a long period of time, remaining complete with the time-capsule-like detritus of their slumber-yellowed newspapers, vintage eight-tracks or real pay dirt like a telex printout from Howard Hughes or a receipt from the Playboy Club. RM Auctions has just announced perhaps the first ‘condo find’ in a 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona coupe that had been stored in a Toronto condominium building for a quarter century.

Like any good barn find, this Ferrari is still covered in a layer of thick dust (the removal of which would likely devalue the car considerably) and still has a cartridge entitled "Disco Rock" shoved in its original eight-track player. And while the one and only owner’s taste in music may have been questionable, his taste in cars wasn’t. The Daytona was the last front-engine V12 two-seater Ferrari produced during the so-called Enzo-era, when founder Enzo Ferrari was still in command of the company. With its 172 mph top speed, a Daytona was famously used by Dan Gurney and Brock Yates in setting a coast-to-coast record of 35 hours and 54 minutes to win the first Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in 1971.

An impulse trip to the Geneva Motor Show in the same year by a Toronto businessman saw him purchase the Daytona where he spent a month touring Europe before sending the car back to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth II. He drove it for eighteen years and put a whopping 90,000 kilometers – 56,000 miles – on the car prior to putting the car up on blocks in a condo garage before a trip to Asia that he anticipated would last just six months. The car remained in that spot until November 14, 2014. The car that originally sold for $18,000 in Geneva, Switzerland in 1971 is expected to bring in excess of $600,000 at RM Auction’s Amelia Island sale in March. Carwash not included.

Continue reading 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona could be world’s first great ‘condo find’ [w/video]

1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona could be world’s first great ‘condo find’ [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Dec 2014 19:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Report: MI senator says 276% car loans are not ‘predatory’

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A woman walks past a firm offering cash

A fight is brewing in the Michigan state legislature over whether to allow auto title loans (pictured above in California). This type of lending allows people to borrow against the value of their car while they keep driving it, but the money often comes with astronomical interest rates. Critics allege it’s a form of predatory lending, but Michigan Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) disagrees.

Richardville introduced the bill on November 6 that would consider auto title loan companies as pawnbrokers in Michigan. According to The Detroit News, the state limits pawn interest rates to 3 percent a month or 36 percent a year. The proposed law would allow for an additional 20 percent per month as a usage fee to create 276 percent annual rates for people borrowing against their car. The House is also trying to pass such a provision.

Dozens of groups have come out against the bill, including the Michigan Pawnbrokers Association. According to The Detroit News, one in six people who take out an auto title loan eventually lose their vehicle from not being able to pay back their loan. Lobbyists in the state allege that the proposed law is backed by one of the country’s largest title lenders. "We don’t allow predatory lending," said Richardville to the press, according to The News.

There’s no set date for the Senate to vote on the bill. Though, according to The Detroit News, it was introduced in such a way to avoid going through committee and could be decided at any time.

MI senator says 276% car loans are not ‘predatory’ originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Coating Cools Buildings, Beams Away Heat

Stanford engineers have invented a revolutionary coating material that can help cool buildings, even on sunny days, by radiating heat away from the buildings and sending it directly into space.

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