Chevrolet Cobalt

The Chevrolet Cobalt is a compact car initially introduced by Chevrolet in 2004 for the 2005 model year. The Cobalt replaced both the Cavalier and the Prizm as Chevrolet's compact car. The Cobalt was available as both a coupe and sedan, and is based upon the GM Delta platform also shared with the Chevrolet HHR and Saturn Ion. Also available was a high performance, Super Sport variant.

A Pontiac version was sold primarily as the Pontiac G5 in Canada for its entire run (where it was briefly known as the Pontiac Pursuit and later Pontiac G5 Pursuit), as well as the Pontiac G4 in Mexico for 2005–2006, and in both Mexico and the United States under the G5 name for 2007–2009. In all cases, the G5 replaced the Cavalier-related Pontiac Sunfire. While the Cobalt was available as a 2-door coupé and a 4-door sedan in all markets it was offered in, the G5 was only available as a coupé in the United States while a sedan version was sold alongside the coupé in Canada and Mexico.

Faulty ignition switches in the Cobalts, which cut power to the car while in motion, were eventually linked to many crashes resulting in fatalities. The switch continued to be used in the manufacture of the vehicles even after the problem was known to GM. On February 21, 2014, GM recalled over 700,000 Cobalts for issues traceable to the defective ignition switches. In May 2014 the NHTSA fined the company $35 million for failing to promptly recall the cars.

Cobalt

Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Like nickel, cobalt in the Earth's crust is found only in chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal.

Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass, but the color was later thought by alchemists to be due to the known metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue-pigment producing minerals; they were so named because they were poor in known metals, and gave poisonous arsenic-containing fumes upon smelting. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), and this was ultimately named for the kobold.

Today, some cobalt is produced specifically from various metallic-lustered ores, for example cobaltite (CoAsS), but the main source of the element is as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Zambia yields most of the cobalt mined worldwide.

Chevrolet

Chevrolet (/ʃɛvrəˈleɪ/ shev-rə-LAY), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet and ousted General Motors founder William C. Durant started the company on November 3, 1911 as the Chevrolet Motor Car Company. Durant used the Chevrolet Motor Car Company to acquire a controlling stake in General Motors with a reverse merger occurring on May 2, 1918 and propelled himself back to the GM presidency. After Durant's second ousting in 1919, Alfred Sloan, with his maxim "a car for every purse and purpose," would pick the Chevrolet brand to become the volume leader in the General Motors family, selling mainstream vehicles to compete with Henry Ford's Model T in 1919 and overtaking Ford as the best-selling car in the United States by 1929.

Chevrolet-branded vehicles are sold in most automotive markets worldwide, with the notable exception of Oceania, where GM is represented by its Australian subsidiary, Holden. In 2005, Chevrolet was relaunched in Europe, primarily selling vehicles built by GM Daewoo of South Korea with the tagline "Daewoo has grown up enough to become Chevrolet", a move rooted in General Motors' attempt to build a global brand around Chevrolet. With the reintroduction of Chevrolet to Europe, GM intended Chevrolet to be a mainstream value brand, while GM's traditional European standard-bearers, Opel of Germany, and Vauxhall of England would be moved upmarket. However, GM reversed this move in late 2013, announcing that the brand would be withdrawn from Europe, with the exception of the Camaro and Corvette in 2016. Chevrolet vehicles will continue to be marketed in the CIS states, including Russia. After General Motors fully acquired GM Daewoo in 2011 to create GM Korea, the last usage of the Daewoo automotive brand was discontinued in its native South Korea and succeeded by Chevrolet.

Planet Nomads

Planet Nomads is an upcoming Science fiction Sandbox video game developed Craneballs Studio.

Development

Craneballs began working on Planet Nomads in January 2015. It is the first desktop video game developed by the studio who's previous games were all released for mobile devices. The developers decided to fund the game through Kickstarter, however while in the campaign video they say that they can fund the game via their mobile games, the Kickstarter funds would allow for more time to be invested in the development. Preparation began in Summer 2015 and the campaign was launched on 21st of January 2016. The kickstarter campaign goal is 70,000 Pounds. As of the 25th of January, the game has already surpassed 30,000 Pounds.

Gameplay

The player is an astronaut who crash-lands on an extraterrestrial planet. The player is then tasked with surviving with his equipment and skill. He can create new equipment, vehicles, build shelters, etc... The developers say the game was inspired by games such as Minecraft, Space Engineers and No Man's Sky. The game is mainly about exploration of the surface of the planet. There are multiple biomes that player can come across to. The main threats to the players survival are alien wildlife living on the planet, extreme weather or radiation. The planet itself is procedurally generated and the landscape is voxel-based.

Honda Civic

The Honda Civic is a line of compact cars manufactured by Honda. Originally a subcompact, the Civic has gone through several generational changes, becoming both larger and more upmarket. It currently falls between the Honda Fit and Honda Accord.

The first Civic was introduced in July 1972 as a two-door model, followed by a three-door hatchback that September. With an 1169 cc transverse engine and front-wheel drive like the British Mini, the car provided good interior space despite overall small dimensions. Initially gaining a reputation for being fuel-efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly, later iterations have become known for performance and sportiness, especially the Civic Type R, Civic VTi, Civic GTi and Civic SiR/Si.

The Civic has been repeatedly rebadged for international markets, and served as the basis for the Honda CR-X, the Honda CR-X del Sol, the Honda Concerto, the first generation Honda Prelude, the Honda Civic Shuttle (later to become the Honda Orthia), and the Honda CR-V.