Author: Duncan Geere
SHINY VIDEO: Quad vs Dual – how many cores do you really need?
Just before Christmas, Dan and I took delivery of a dual core and a quad core machine, and we thought we’d see if it’s actually worth putting four cores into your computer, rather than two. We ran four processor-intensive concurrent tasks – a virusscan, a DVD encode, a 3D game, and then we measured how long it took to unzip a zip file.
The results? Well, you’ll have to watch the video to find out. I’ll just say that I was surprised by the outcome. Let us know your experiences of Quad core vs Dual core chips in the comments below.
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Hackers planned massive bank swindle using keyloggers
Let me tell you a story. In 2004, in the dark of night, a gang of hackers broke into Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in the City of London. With the help of a security guard who was their ‘inside man’, they crept through the dark aisles of cubicles, installing keyloggers on the PCs to record employee’s login details.
USB lunchbox pumps out 60°C of face-melting heat
This scares me a little. It’s a little bag with a heating element in, which claims to cook your lunch when plugged in via USB. In reality though, 60C is barely warmer than a cup of tea – certainly not enough to kill any bacteria. Don’t rely on it to grill a steak beyond “rare”.
On the other hand, if all you’re doing is heating up your cous-cous, then my objection isn’t so pronounced. Who knows? Maybe in the hands of Heston Blumenthal it could be a force for good. Now there’s a program I’d like to see – Heston Blumenthal’s USB Lunchbox.
Thanko (via Oh! Gizmo)
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AmpliVox SW915 – an all-in-one, very loud, portable amp
I’m not sure how many all-night-rave organizers read Tech Digest, but you can never tell with the internet. The SW915 Digital Audio Travel Partner is a whopping great big box on wheels that contains, variously, a speaker, an amplifier, a CD player, SD card slot, and wireless microphone.
Basically, you roll up in an abandoned warehouse, pop Rave Anthems 2 into the cd drive, and then go nuts, occasionally shouting “Bo! Bo! Bo!” over the wireless microphone. 250 watts over up to a 30,000 sq. ft. area should ensure that the complaints start rolling in and the police show up sooner, rather than later.
Still, when they do, you’ll be able to flick it off, grab the handle and leg it before the fuzz can catch you. Then start up all over again the following weekend. I wouldn’t try dragging it through the Glastonbury mud, though – those wheels don’t look like they can take that kind of punishment.
Amplivox (via Born Rich)
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How to clear landmines in 2009
Landmine clearance is a dangerous, time-consuming job. It used to involve tools like flail trucks, plows and the simple metal detector, but none are good enough to hit the 99.6% standard set by the United Nations for humanitarian demining.
A Canadian company, Mine Clearing Corp, is trying to change all that. It’s got a helicopter-mounted detection system that uses a ground-penetrating radar and metal detection system to detect buried objects from as high as 200ft up in the air. The location can then be pinpointed to as close as 20cm.
Once that’s accomplished, minesweepers on the ground can use a tool called the Fig8 to locate the mine. Quite niftily, the swinging back-and-forth motion generates kinetic energy which powers the device, so it doesn’t need batteries – useful in the third world. Considering that the UN estimates that someone dies every 20 minutes from a landmine, this should help step up the de-mining procedure.
(via CNET)
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Man gets bored, builds trebuchet, launches 7kg fireballs
This was a candidate for YouTube video of the week tomorrow, but it was so awesome that I just had to post it today. A man’s built a TREBUCHET and it throws FIREBALLS. Oh, and it’s called “Mongo”. That’s all you really need to know. Skip to 2:55 for the best bit. Have you built a siege weapon in your back garden? Take some photos and send them to us, and leave a comment below.
Geeks are Sexy (via CrunchGear)
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Tweetminster lets you follow your MP on Twitter
It’s nice to see Twitter going from strength-to-strength, and I genuinely believe that it’s got the potential to do for status updates and IM what Facebook did for social networking. The latest application to sit on top of the service is a TheyWorkForYou-style service called Tweetminster that lets you search for your MP and see whether or not they’re on Twitter.
Unfortunately my MP, Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t Twittering yet, but he’s the kind of guy who might, so I’m hoping he picks up on it soon. In the meantime, I now know that Jude Robinson [Lab] “is steaming over the Lib Dems’ Airport Inquiry” and Jo Swinson [LD] is “so heading home to change and go into Parliament”. Exciting stuff.
Tweetminster (via @jordanstone)
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Winter: the survival-horror Wii title that was canned for not being a kid's game
Do you ever wonder why every Wii game takes about ten minutes to play? It’s because long-session, “adult”, games are being denied funding for the console. With very few exceptions (Twilight Princess springs to mind, but there are few others) the console’s games are all short-play affairs that focus on bright colours and cutesie avatars.
Well, IGN has an extensive look at a very promising game called “Winter” that never made it, thanks simply to its more ‘adult’ nature. Despite being a hit with publishers, the sales and marketing departments found the idea of a ‘survival horror’ game on the Wii to be “simply too big a leap for them, regardless of the enthusiastic support of the PD department and the Wii’s total domination in the marketplace.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica admits defeat – allows users to add content
Encyclopaedia Britannica has for years resisted pressure to join Wikipedia in allowing just anyone to submit content – relying instead on 100 full-time editors and 4,000 ‘expert contributors’. As a result, it’s slow to react to events and studies have shown that it’s comparably error-ridden .
In the next 24 hours, however, the Encyclopaedia’s website will begin accepting user-generated content. However, it still won’t be as free as Wikipedia – any changes or additions will have to be vetted by the site’s “experts”, and any would-be editors will have to register their real name and address(!) before being allowed to contribute.
Still, any changes made will eventually appear in the printed version of the Encylopaedia, which only gets reprinted every two years. I’ll stick with editing Wikipedia, thanks, and take my chances with the spammer police, endless bureaucracy and edit wars.
Leyio Personal Sharing Device – a pimped out, wireless, flash drive
The Leyio Personal Sharing Device, or PSD as they’re calling it, is an interesting proposition. At its heart, it’s just a 16GB flash drive, but it comes with added security and sharing functionality. It utilizes UWB (Ultra-wideband) radio technology, normally used in tracking and radar, to transfer data between itself and other Leyio PSDs.
UWB operates at low energy levels, so it’s less subject to interference, but it’s short range. It enables fast transfers though – Leyio claim a 3MB photo can be exchanged in 0.3 seconds. My A-level maths suggests that that’s a 10MB/s transfer rate. Not too shabby.
