STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Razer's Modular Desktop Makes Building A PC Like Playing With Legos

Building your own computer is generally reserved for the hardcore, the devoted, the geeky. But with Razer’s Project Christine, it’s as easy as playing with Legos. Really big, actively mineral cooled Legos. Also it looks like a badass rack of rockets or something, which is cool as ****.

Product Christine is, at its most simple, a modular desktop PC. So are most desktop PC’s but Razer’s execution is simple, pretty, and just all around awesome. Basically, the tower’s spine contains all the PCI slots, and each different oval-ish bar coming off of it is its own component. Video cards, SSDs, CPUs, whathaveyou. They’re all mix and match with a few simple snaps.

But snapping in the modules doesn’t just automatically integrate the parts into the computer. No no. Each module is set up to utilise active mineral oil cooling, so when you plug it in, your coolant solution is automatically taken care of. Not only does that mean this bad boy is whisper quiet, but it also means the component hidden in each model can be factory overclocked by default, for extra performance.

The benefits of such a system are more than just ease of use and upgradability (which is, admittedly a huge feature). If there was a healthy crop of module components out there, this form factor opens up options to all sorts of weird and unusual approaches to desktop gaming. Netflix for video cards? Sure, why not.

But as exciting as this future is to imagine, it won’t be here for a while if ever. Razer isn’t making Project Christine right now, just gauging interest. And if it gets made you can bet it will be mind bogglingly expensive. That’s also not to mention the difficultly of getting graphics card makers and other folks to start producing special “Project Christine” modules based on the reference designs. There are a lot of potential complications

But even if it never comes, these are the kind of crazy designs the PC gaming industry needs to keep itself fresh and to continue to stave off those console peasants. Between stuff like Project Christine and the army of Steam Boxes out there, there’s plenty to get excited about. Let’s just hope it all pays off.

[MIKA27]

Samsung’s Smart Home Platform Wants To Be Tony Stark’s JARVIS

Forget virtual assistants on your phone or tablet. Samsung wants to put one in your house with its new integrated Smart Home platform to make you feel like Tony Stark in your own home.

From your smart device, Samsung will give you power over your washing machine, lights, air conditioners and other gadgets. You can also control it with your voice.

By saying “going out” to your house, you can engage a type of away mode that turns the lights, TV and other devices off.

The good thing about the new Smart Home platform is that all you need is a Samsung device to control it. Either a Smart TV, Galaxy Gear, Galaxy Phone or tablet — even a Galaxy Camera — will get you access to the new Smart Home app.

The Smart Home offering is broken down into three services at launch: Device Control for (obviously) controlling multiple devices; Home View whch allows you to monitor what’s going on in your house through cameras and Smart Customer Service which can help you when you run into trouble.

[MIKA27]

China Finally Suspends Its Ban On Foreign Game Consoles

After 14 years of prohibition, the Chinese government has lifted a ban on the sale of foreign consoles inside the country’s border. This opens the door for Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony to tap in the multi-billion market — though the companies have already admitted it won’t be easy.

It’s so far unclear exactly how far the suspension will go. In a statement posted online Monday, the government said it would allow “foreign-invested enterprises” to manufacture consoles within Shanghai’s free trade zone and sell them in China. It does not, however, say how long the suspension will last or offer details about any other regulations on the industry. The ban went into place in 2000, after China’s government said video games had an adverse effect on the mental health of the youth.

Vague as it may be, the suspension of the ban is also not a terrible surprise. As China saw video game revenues grow by nearly a third from 2012 to 2013 to become a near $US14 billion industry, it’s become increasingly obvious that there was more growth to be had. Without consoles, PC games make up two-thirds of the video game market, and there’s no telling how big the industry could get under a more open policy. Furthermore, the government quietly announced intentions to lift the ban last summer to open up more jobs in the Shanghai area.

Nevertheless, the console companies are being cautious about celebrating too soon. “We are still not sure exactly what we will be able to do in Shanghai, and thereafter in Greater China,” Nintendo’s Yasuhiro Minagawa told Reuters. “Both with hardware and software, there are many things we have to look into and so we can’t say anything concrete.” When tens of billions of dollars are on the line, though, you can be sure they’re scurrying to firm things up.

[MIKA27]

Kingston Squeezed 64GB Onto This Tiny Android-Friendly Flash Drive

Is this tiny flash drive from Kingston with a standard USB jack on end and a smartphone-friendly microUSB jack on the other the first of its kind? Absolutely not. Is it the smallest we’ve seen to date? Most definitely. When connected to your smartphone — boosting your mobile device’s storage by up to 64GB — it’s small enough to forget about.

And when it’s available sometime in the next few months in various capacities, it will certainly be a must-have addition to your pocket toolkit. [Kingston]

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Brave People Are Building Futuristic Farms On Japan's Radioactive Soil

What does radioactive salad taste like? How about rice sprinkled with nuclear fallout? Well, if you’re truly curious, consider taking your next vacation in Fukushima, where some intrepid farmers have begun the daunting task of farming the region’s tainted soil.

Construction just began on a rather futuristic project in the Fukushima prefecture. The so-called Renewable Energy Village is both a farm and a solar park with 120 photovoltaic panels that generate 30 kilowatts of power, which are sold to a local utility company. The “solar sharing” layout means that the crops grow beneath the solar panels. There are plans to add windmills and possibly an astronomical observatory on the land as well.

But the big question remains: Is it really safe to grow crops in Fukushima’s radioactive soil? The answer is complicated. Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to grow food in soil that’s been contaminated by nuclear fallout. However, if the radiation levels in the soil are low enough, and if farmers pick the right crops — some absorb radiation more than others — consuming the plants can be harmless.

Farming started up in Fukushima last spring for the first time after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Rice was one of the first crops grown, in small quantities at first. Some farmers first treated the soil with minerals like potassium that reduce the amount of cesium and other radioactive materials. Once harvested, the rice also underwent extensive radiation checks before being sold on the open market.

Nowadays, locals are warming to the idea of farming on the land again, since consumers are getting comfortable with the idea of eating their crops. Late last year, the major fast food chain Yoshinoya announced that it would start to grow rice, onions and cabbage in the Fukushima prefecture. The company said in a statement that it believes “this will lead to support for reconstruction”.

And the region needs it: Agriculture has traditionally been the lifeblood of the local economy, and the region was hit hard as farming was brought to an abrupt halt after the disaster.

The creative approach taken by the Renewable Energy Village seems like a good next step. Even though the crops they’re growing (rapeseed in this case) are safe, just think of it this way. If farming doesn’t work out, they can just focus on the solar energy business — one of Japan’s burgeoning markets.

[MIKA27]

Listening For The Earth's Heartbeat Inside The World's Deepest Hole

In September 1990, a group of scientists put a drill head to the ground in southern Germany, where two landmasses once merged to form the supercontinent Pangaea 300 million years ago. Their goal? To drill the deepest hole ever made into the earth, a “telescope” into its core.

The German Continental Deep Drilling Program, aka the KTB borehole, got almost 10km down before funding ran out. It passed through shifting seismic plates, boiling hydrogen, and temperatures reaching 315C, stewarded by 120 scientists and employees working from the surface of the earth.

The deep-drilling experiment yielded huge surprises about the structure of the earth, including maps of rock temperature, new information about seismic pressure, and beautiful models (PDF) that show layers of rock wrapped around each other like ribbons — illustrating how the crust is far from a neat layer cake.

At 9km, the KTB Borehole is now the deepest accessible hole in the world. But, lying dormant above the Arctic Circle is its deeper, older cousin: The Kola Superdeep Borehole, a project begun by the Soviets in 1970, on the Kola Peninsula northeast of Finland.

The Kola reached so deep into the frozen tundra — almost eight miles — that it hit rocks more than 2.5 billion years old. But it, too, eventually lost funding, and the site was abandoned in 2008. Today, the drilling station is ruined and the borehole is covered by a simple plate of metal:

For geologists and other earth scientists, feats like the KTB and Kola borehole are pinnacles of exploration — a peek into the inner-workings of the planet. But what did these insane engineering projects reveal outside of the realm of the scientific? How did they smell, for example, and what did it sound like down there?

Dutch artist Lotte Geeven answered the latter question this year through an extended collaboration with geoscientists from the German Research Center for Geosciences, which controls the KTB borehole now that drilling has stopped.

With the help of the scientists, Geeven set out to discover what the borehole sounds like at its furthest depths. The recording she brought back — accompanied by photos of the crew and a seismic reading — is an intense, almost warm audio landscape of echoes and crunches. It’s the closest we can get to hearing the sounds of the earth’s core.

Geeven isn’t alone in being curious about the sounds of the earth’s massive, unstable crust.

Doug Aitken, the artist behind this year’s Coast to Coast exploits, lives in a California home called the Sonic House. The foundation contains nine geological microphones, each designed to pick up the murmurs and creaks of the tectonic plates miles below. Inside its rooms, the creaks and booms of shifting rock echo day and night.

There’s also “Sounds of Seismic“, a platform that broadcasts real-time seismic noises from dozens of sites across the globe. Or take the US Geological Survey’s “Listening to Earthquakes” site, where you can download and remix seismic sounds.

A decade after 9/11, the sound artist Mark Bain released an audio file that contained the seismic noises made beneath New York City as the towers fell:

These moans aren’t all that unique from the sounds beneath the boreholes, but they feel different to our human ears. Geoff Manaugh describes them as a “melancholic howl,” while Bain himself says they are “a bell-like alarm denoting histories in the making.” Either way, we have our own ideas about what these cracks and grumbles articulate about the secret world below our feet.

When I was little, we’d go to Pittsburgh’s Museum of Natural History to ride an “elevator” down to the earth’s core. This was, unfailingly, the most exciting part of the trip — long after I realised the eerie noises and jostling floor were fake. These artists and geologists, too, are obsessed with the idea of digging into the undiscovered parts of the planet — and then, by dropping microphones and sensors miles down into the earth, bringing back the acoustic results.

[MIKA27]

Astonishing Satellite Image Shows China Covered With Pollution

The smog situation in China is getting even worse, with pollution levels as high as 30 times the limits set by the World Health Organisation. Check out this image taken in late December, 2013 by NASA’s Terra satellite. You can’t barely see anything because of the crap floating in the air. It gets even worse at full size:

So gross and dangerous. From NASA:

The dense, grey haze obscures almost all the land and much of the coastal waters from view south and east of the Taihang Mountains. Clearer air covers the region north of the mountains, although fingers of haze roll through most river valleys. The cities of Beijing and Hebei, both west of the Bohai Sea are complete enshrouded.

On December 24 the pollution level reached 30 times the limit set by the World Health Organisation:

The concentration of PM2.5, which are fine air particulates, were reported at 421 micrograms per cubic meter at 2 p.m. near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, while levels were 795 in Xi’an and 740 in Zhengzhou. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 concentrations no higher than 25 micrograms per cubic meter.

The situation is getting dramatic thanks to the use of coal in power production and homes:

According to Michael Greenstone, a Professor of Environmental Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), [...] noted life expectancies were about 5.5 years lower in the north,owing to an increased incidence of cardiorespiratory mortality.

Fortunately, the country is working to reduce the pollution. Their plan includes the shutdown of all coal-burning plants by 2017.

[MIKA27]

Beautiful Aerial Picture Of New York City Covered With Snow

The folks from Elysium Weddings took this neat picture of a snow-covered New York City from an aeroplane. You can see Manhattan in the middle, with Queens and a bit of Brooklyn on the top right corner and New Jersey on the bottom left corner.

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Monster Machines: China's J-15 Flying Sharks Are Actually Russian Knockoffs

No surprise here. Like some of China’s other new planes, its new J-15 fighter jet is really just a clone of an older Russian design. But can a clone surpass its master copy? China hopes the answer is yes.

The J-15 Flying Shark is a derivative of the Russian SU-33, which entered service in the mid 1990s. However, the indigenous Chinese weapons platform is outfitted with domestically-produced sensory systems, weapons, and engines. It measures 22m long and 6m tall, with a 13m wingspan, and it’s powered by a pair of 900kg after-burning turbofans, which reportedly give it a top speed of Mach 2.4 and a range of about 3200km.

The Flying Shark was first unveiled in 2010 and was met with immediate scepticism from military analysts around the world. While the debut of the J-15 was quite surprising in terms of its technological advancement and flight capability, analysts quickly realised that much of the plane’s modern avionics were, more than likely, closely copied from existing American and Russian technology.

According to Colonel Igor Korotchenko (Ret.), a member of the Defence Ministry’s Public Council, per the Ria Novosti newspaper, the J-15′s highly-publicized landings on China’s new Liaoning aircraft carrier were no fluke — given that the Su-33 had no problems doing so on Kuznetsov Class aircraft carriers upon which the Liaoning is based.

“The Chinese J-15 clone is unlikely to achieve the same performance characteristics of the Russian Su-33 carrier-based fighter,” said Korotchenko. “And I do not rule out the possibility that China could return to negotiations with Russia on the purchase of a substantial batch of Su-33s.”

China’s spokesman of the Ministry of National Defence, Geng Yansheng, responded to these allegations in November of 2012, saying, “the world’s military affairs have an objective law of development. Many weapons have the same design principle and some command and protection methods are also similar. Therefore, it at least is non-professional to conclude that China copied the aircraft carrier technology of other countries only by simply comparison.” Nearly as unprofessional as shamelessly reverse engineering an ally’s weapons systems, when negotiations for the real thing stall out.

The J-15 does sport a more modern avionics system than its Su-33 predecessor. However, the Flying Shark remains unproven in its abilities as a carrier-based multi-role fighter. Hopefully, we won’t have to see how these stack up against the F-18 Hornet, America’s closest analogue, anytime soon.

[MIKA27]

British Fighter Jets Are Flying With 3D-Printed Parts

BAE Systems, which helps the UK’s RAF put together its aircraft, has revealed that some Tornado fighter jets have been flying with spare parts built using a 3D printer.

Flights heading out from BAE’s Warton airfield in the UK have seen Tornado GR4s flying off with 3D printed cockpit radio covers, support struts and power take-off shafts. All those parts have been built using 3D printers, which build up layers of metal to create replacement fittings.

It’s not just for show either: the dream is to shave $US1.8 million off the RAF’s maintenance costs over the next four years. Plus, it may be possible to install printers in front line scenarios, speeding access to parts in remote war zones.

[MIKA27]

Insane Biker Survives Suicidal Attempt To Cross A Flash Flood

Michael Henao is a lucky man. You can argue that he’s insane, sure. Perhaps an idiot too. What else would you call someone who encounters a flood and tries to cross it? But, ultimately, he’s a lucky insane idiot who survived a suicidal — and failed — stunt.

In early September 2013, Colorado suffered severe damage from a historic flood event. In an attempt to cross a flash flood, Michael Henao loses control and possession of his motorcycle. Nearly 2 weeks later, Michael was able to recover his bike and begin the rebuilding process.

It gets really bad at one point. Lucky man indeed.

[MIKA27]

Garmin's Tiny Dash Cam Never Forgets Where Or What Happened In A Crash

Russia seems to corner the YouTube market when it comes to crazy dash cam videos. But that could soon change when Garmin’s new Dash Cam hits the market in February. The tiny camera sits inside your windshield and records everything that’s happening in front of your vehicle through a wide angle lens. And in the event of an accident, it automatically time-stamps and geo-tags that footage so in the event of an insurance claim or police investigation, there’s no debate as to how events unfolded.

As soon as you start your vehicle, the Dash Cam automatically starts recording everything it sees to an included 4GB microSD card, but that can also be upgraded to a 32GB card if you live and drive in a particularly dangerous area. Using a built-in sensor the camera automatically detects incidents or accidents based on braking or sudden stops, and then stores the relevant video files with the added location, time, speed, and directional data. Otherwise, the video is just recorded over when the card fills up, until something happens.

A relatively tiny 2.3-inch LCD screen ensures proper framing when attaching the Dash Cam to your windshield, but also allow incidents to be replayed at the scene. And the camera can be quickly removed for taking snapshots of damage or other pertinent information when and if something happens. A cheaper version of the Dash Cam lacking GPS capabilities will also be available for $US220, but the added location data might just be worth it if the video ever ends up as a piece of evidence in court. Australian pricing and availability is yet to be announced.

[MIKA27]

This Trewgrip Backwards Keyboard Gives You An Absurd New Way To Type

The Trewgrip mobile QWERTY keyboard for iOS and Android devices is absurd. It’s a handheld keyboard that puts the keys behind the board but arranges the letter in a weird way that somehow makes sense. So you hold the keyboard like you would a game pad and type by pressing keys on the back. It tries to make sense without making sense.

Though the keys look like they’re in complete random order, they’re actually laid out in QWERTY. If you place your index fingers starting on the F and the J key, the rest of your fingers will align to how they’d be on a keyboard (ASDF for the left hand, JKL; for the right hand). Basically a standard keyboard is split and rotated around. It’s a weird way to look at typing but the idea is to keep handheld devices like phones and tablets handheld (albeit with an overly large handheld accessory).

The prototype (it’s not expected to go on sale until Q4 of this year) connects to both iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth and has a battery that’ll last a day of heavy use. Trewgrip says that once you learn its typing method (and it takes about 10 hours of practice), you can add about 15 words per minute to your typing (compared to an on-screen keyboard). It could work for situations where you don’t want an ordinary keyboard. Like if you’re on the couch or something. I guess.

It’s going to cost a fortune though, the backwards keyboard is expected to retail for $US250 to $US350. Crazy keyboard, crazy price.

[MIKA27]

Watch 46,939 Litres Of Beer Ferment, Get Wild

What you are about to watch is beer getting weird. Before California-based brewery Sierra Nevada bottlesBigfoot, its classic barley wine-style ale, the wort goes through a six-day fermentation process that sees a whopping 90,849L of liquid appear to bake like bread, roil like a contaminated foam party in Ibiza and overflow like a sentient creature from a 1950s horror film.

The action takes place in four traditional open fermenters with an assist from 551.6kg of whole-cone hops and 453.6kg of pure brewer’s yeast. Watching the whole thing is fascinating and terrifying at the same time, and I’m almost tempted to give it a taste at its most freaky state.

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Ghostly Photos Reveal Subzero Shortcuts Through Post-Soviet Cities

Photographers do extraordinary things in pursuit of the perfect shot. To find the poetic and the ineffable, for example, Latvian photographer Alnis Stakle traipses into unnamed and virtually uninhabited places, in the dead of night and in subzero temperatures, for his series Not Even Something.

“When I am shooting, the temperature is around -10C to -15C, and most of these places are so dark that it is hard to move about, you cannot see beyond your next step,” Stackle says.

Stakle makes landscape photos on the outskirts of Latvia’s capital Riga, where he lives, and in Daugavpils, the country’s second-biggest city. His photos seem well-lit, and some of the photographs are even bright, but this is because Stakle’s exposures are between 2 and 5 minutes, sucking in details hidden in the dark.

“Subjectively, I am most interested in a peculiar sense of movement and transformative thinking that I experience during long spells of solitude, at night and in seemingly dangerous places,” he says. “I am interested in the way people create new routes and itineraries. I see something of the instinctive and animalistic in it, something that is encoded in the deepest layers of human consciousness and defines human nature — to find your way, to find home.”

Much of the project has been experimentation. When he began the project, Stakle hoped using Fuji Reala 100 and Kodak Ektar 100 film in his Hasselblad would capture the sinister mood of the places, but he was bitterly disappointed with how his early photos contained some motifs of benign — even safe — Romantic paintings.

“I don’t think that the eerie quality of my pictures is spooky enough to adequately depict these places and give them justice. Having processed the first films, the images gave a diametrically opposite impression to the one I felt [while photographing] in these places.”

Stakle values photography that somehow changes the photographer; images that transform the author’s personality and relationship with the surrounding environment. Consequently, he’s suspicious of photographers who come and go quickly, and he is particularly unconvinced that photography can authoritatively report on current social events and processes. For him, shooting these landscapes allows time to reflect on his country’s history, present and future.

“It is imperative to understand that in post-Soviet countries both urban and social environment generally is a testimony to the times gone by,” he says. “I do not mean the big city centers with their blatant effects of capitalism and free market but rather the periphery which covers a much larger territory than the tourist-friendly urban areas. There, one can see the grim Soviet architecture and the impersonal planning of the bedroom communities.”

It’s a fine balance to strike when recent representations of former Soviet states has veered from its oppressive architecture and knackered public transit to the drab weather and pastoral simplicity of rural life. On the other hand, Stakle finds some truth in Russian sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev’s satirical portrayal of his countrymen as Homo Sovieticus, people with nihilism bordering on complete passivity.Homo Sovieticus is indifferent to the results of his labor, unperturbed by petty theft against the state and resigned to state-imposed restrictions.

“Socially, we are only a short distance away from the Soviet thinking,” says Stakle, who believes things, outside of the main towns at least, will continue to move at a slow pace.

“It mostly depends on the further development of Latvia, which does not bode any imminent change in the coming decades since we are still facing the consequences of the dropping birth rates of the 1990s and the present-day emigration boom,” he says. “The territory of Latvia is much greater than the number of people actually living here really need.”

[MIKA27]

Razer Joins the Band, Launches a New Wearable Device

We were promised a flood of new wearable devices at CES this year, and our friends in the industry have been kind enough to deliver. But this one is a few ticks left of center: Razer has released its own body-tracking wristband called the Nabu.

It’s odd to see a wearable lifestyle product emerge from a company best known for fancy gaming accessories and pricey gaming laptops. But Razer is also a company with a long history of smart design and innovative twists on familiar ideas, so the Nabu is actually a product that should make other wearable-makers pay attention. For one, though it does track your steps and sleep, it’s more than just a body monitor. It also functions like a smartwatch by pairing to your phone and serving you notifications from connected web services.

As you can see from the photo above, the Nabu looks similar to other Razer products: matte black with bright green accents. It pairs to a companion app on both iOS and Android, it syncs over Bluetooth LE, it’s splash-proof (wear it in the rain, but not the shower), and Razer says the battery will last 7 to 10 days on a single charge.

The first cool feature is that it has two screens. There’s one on top that just displays notifications. The little OLED square tells you what type of alert has arrived: a text, a phone call, an email, a Twitter @reply, flight status, whatever. Then, you flip your wrist over to see the second, larger screen, which is concealed on the inside of the wrist where it allows for more privacy. This screen displays more information, like the caller ID of the incoming call or text message, or departure details of the flight you’re about to miss.

Cool feature number two: fitness-tracking on the Nabu can be set up however you’d like. There are on-board sensors and tools for collecting biodata (steps taken, distance traveled, stairs climbed), helping with your sleep (tracking duration, sleep patterns, and a vibration alarm), and logging your location as you move about during the day. However, in the companion iOS and Android apps, you can select or unselect exactly which types of data you want to log and collect. Maybe you want to turn the GPS off, for example. It’s a nice touch.

The third cool feature is a social component that feeds this data to various web services, and allows for automatic communication with other Nabu bands nearby. Let’s say that you want to auto-check-in with Foursquare whenever you arrive at a new venue. Or that you want to tweet your steps at the end of each day. You can already do this with any of the other web-connected trackers (or even your smartphone) just by setting up some IFTTT recipes, so it’s not entirely new. It’s just simplified.

Also, if there are other Nabu-wearers nearby, the bands can passively recognize each other and talk to each other. For example, you can set up your band to gather the Twitter handle of another Nabu-er, and when you shake hands with that person, you automatically follow them on Twitter. Of course, for this to work, it requires both parties to be wearing the same device on their hand-shaking wrist (so it can recognize the gesture) and for both parties to have agreed to make all the relevant information sharable with other nearby bands. Still, this gives an interesting glimpse as to the sorts of behind-the-scenes actions that we’ll begin to see as wearables become smarter and more fully automated.

For these sorts of passive interactions to work with third-party services, significant buy-in from developers will be required — which is why Razer is going to ship Nabus to developers first. Any software hackers who are interested can get their hands on a beta version of the Nabu this month for only $50. Consumer-ready bands will follow in March or April for the full retail price — there are no pricing details yet, but we’d expect it to cost around $100, maybe just a little more.

[MIKA27]

Audi’s New Dashboard Gives Us Beautiful Information Overload

The new dash of the Audi TT will be fully configurable, with a choice of a map view or traditional gauges.

Dashboard gauges are so 20th century. The dash of the future is a flat, high-resolution, and fully customizable. And that’s what the next Audi TT will have when it lands in showrooms later this year.

At CES Audi showed off a full-sized mockup of the TT’s new interior, and the crown jewel is a 12.3-inch LCD screen behind the steering wheel that can toggle between a traditional tachometer and speedometer and a massive map with infotainment and navigation displays flanked by small virtual gauges.

Inputs are handled through Audi’s next-generation Multi-Media Interface control knob mounted behind the stick. It has fewer buttons but gets the latest iteration of Audi’s touchpad that allows you to write characters with your finger rather than endlessly scrolling through the alphabet.

The other notable bit is the removal of the traditional climate controls in the center console. Instead, the driver and passenger can change the interior temperature by twisting a knurled metal knob in the center of the vents, complete with a TFT display showing the fan speed and air temp.

Climate controls and temperature read-outs are exactly where they should be: in the vents.

[MIKA27]

Fortress Sochi: Russia’s Security Plan Risks Killing the Olympic Spirit

On Jan. 7, as Orthodox Christians across Russia marked the birth of Jesus on their religious calendar, residents of the Russian city of Sochi got an odd Christmas gift from their government. A special security regime, amounting in essence to martial law, went into effect that morning in preparation for the Olympic Games to be held in Sochi next month. More than 30,000 police officers and Interior Ministry troops (equal to roughly 10% of the city’s population) will put Sochi and its suburbs on lockdown over the next two months in the hope of preventing a terrorist attack during the Games. They may succeed. But by sealing off the city, the state has shown that the terrorists have already managed to taint the mood of these Olympics with fear.

“It is certainly not an atmosphere of celebration here,” says Vladimir Kimaev, a local businessman and environmental activist. “It’s more a feeling of resignation to wait this thing out and then get on with life.” Kimaev’s transport business, which picks up and delivers trucks and other heavy machinery in the area, has already been forced to close up shop until the end of March, when the security regime will be lifted. The Games themselves will last from Feb. 7 to Feb. 23. But in the Kremlin decree that imposed the Olympic precautions, President Vladimir Putin ordered them to last two months longer, just in case, from Jan. 7 to March 21.

In modern Olympic history, the restriction of movement in and around Sochi will be unprecedented. Any Russian citizens planning to drive to the Games, or simply visit Sochi during the security regime, will be forced to leave their cars outside of the massive seclusion zone set up around the city and its suburbs. Inside Sochi, officials are discouraging residents from driving at all, and police have been given the right to conduct spot searches and confiscate legally registered firearms and ammunition for the duration of the Olympic security regime. The sale of a long list of poisonous or intoxicating substances has also been banned in Sochi during this period, specifically including snake venom, methyl alcohol and derivatives of the kava plant, according to Putin’s decree.

But experts are split over whether such measures would be an effective deterrent for terrorists. In the past two months, three suicide bombings have struck in the nearby city of Volgograd, killing at least 40 people and injuring dozens more. Two of those attacks took place within 24 hours of each other, and even though no one has taken responsibility for them, investigators say they trace back to the terrorist groups in Russia’s North Caucasus region, which lies a short drive from Sochi.

Yulia Yuzik, an expert on suicide bombers from that region, points out that these groups have had more than six years to prepare an attack against the Sochi Olympics, ever since the city won the rights to host the Games in 2007. “Many of them have been waiting for this moment to hit Putin where it hurts,” she says, and they have had plenty of time to set up sleeper cells in Sochi that would be nearly impossible to distinguish from normal residents. Moreover, after each of the recent attacks in Volgograd, security in that city was ramped up dramatically, and it was clearly not enough to stop whoever orchestrated those bombings. “These groups are highly professional and very determined,” Yuzik says. “So if the security regime in Sochi is a deterrent for anyone, it is for the regular fans who would have liked to attend the Games.”

Still, the heightened security has at least managed to turn Sochi into a “hard target,” says Pavel Baev, an expert on the region at the Peace Research Institute, a think tank based in Oslo. In particular, the blanket surveillance of phone calls and online communications in and around Sochi would make it very difficult, he says, to coordinate an attack inside the city. But that will come at a substantial price for the comfort of the athletes and fans. “For both groups, the security conditions in Sochi will come as something of a shock,” Baev says, like trying to maintain the Olympic spirit inside a “besieged fortress.”

Over the past few years, Sochi’s residents have watched the walls of that fortress go up around them, as the presence of federal troops and security services has gradually intensified. So there is little about the Christmas cordon that could come as a shock to them, Baev adds. Speaking by phone from Sochi, Kimaev agrees. This morning, police started checking documents and searching cars at random, and there was much confusion on the roads near Olympic venues as drivers were turned away by the armed troops manning the checkpoints. “But people took it calmly,” Kimaev says. “Of course we’re tired. Everybody’s tired. But people realize that these measures are justified. The threat is real, and we just have to get through these last couple of months.” So for many residents of this Olympic city, the closing ceremony, not the opening one, will be the real reason to celebrate.

[MIKA27]

PODPAD

Podpad is an original and inventive solution for small apartments. The wall-mounted desk and storage unit opens to reveal a work desk, plus several shelves and compartments to store documents and other work related items. It also comes with space for your charging station and a wireless speaker

[MIKA27]

SONY in-car Smartphone Receiver

There are already plenty of ways to connect your mobile device to your car stereo — whether wirelessly, over USB, or using an auxiliary input — letting you listen to music, take calls, and more. But the Sony XSP-N1BT Smartphone Cradle Receiver ($250) is the first system that turns your device into the interface for your infotainment. Its unique clamping system grips your phone in landscape orientation, and when combined with their AppRemote for iOS and Android devices, functions as the complete input for your stereo. Wireless connection is available for Android devices, while iPhones will still have to connect over USB, which also charges your device while it's in use.

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Alienware Steam machine

Forget next-gen consoles — if Valve has their way, 2014 will be the year of the Steam Machine. And with 14 companies cranking out the boxes, it's not as easy as buying, say, a PS3. Which is why we've got our eyes on the Alienware Steam Machine ($TBA).

Crafted by one of the most trusted names in PC gaming, this sleek black box will be powered by an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU, and will (of course) run SteamOS, giving you access to tons of games running natively, and thousands more available via in-home streaming. It's like a HTPC, evolved.

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This pill could give your brain the learning powers of a 7-year-old

Your brain is like a sponge when it is young. Studies have shown that kids pick up up foreign languages faster than adults (though that is up for debate), and that some skills — like "perfect pitch," which allows gifted vocalists to sing notes with unerring precision — are best nurtured from a young age.

But what if it were possible for the adult mind to revert back to a more porous state of learning?

That's the subject of an investigation by Takao Hensch, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, who is studying a drug that may make it dramatically easier for grown-ups to absorb new skills and information — almost as if they were seven years old or younger.

The key ingredient here is valproic acid. Normally, it's used to treat neurological disorders like seizures and epilepsy, and various other mood disorders. But Hensch claims it may help restore plasticity in the adult brain.

In a new experiment, Hensch used valproic acid to bestow the gift of perfect pitch to a group of adult males between the ages of 18 to 27. Here's now NPR describes it:

Hensch gave the drug to a group of healthy, young men who had no musical training as children. They were asked to perform tasks online to train their ears, and at the end of a two-week period, tested on their ability to discriminate tone, to see if the training had more effect than it normally would at their age.

In other words, he gave people a pill and then taught them to have perfect pitch. The findings are significant: "It's quite remarkable since there are no known reports of adults acquiring absolute pitch," he says.

It's a fascinating development, and one that could theoretically help adults acquire new skills and talents at a later stage in their lives. Of course, the side effects — if any — will still need to be studied closely, particularly on a cellular level. "I should caution that critical periods [of development] have evolved for a reason," says Hensch, "and it is a process that one probably would not want to tamper with carelessly."

[MIKA27]

ISS Astronauts Are Testing Water That Acts Like Fire

Water is normally an excellent remedy for fires. But aboard the International Space Station, astronauts are investigating a novel form of water that actually starts fires. It’s called “supercritical water”, and it could revolutionise terrestrial rubbish disposal.

Here’s how it works. When you compress a sample of water to 217 times its ambient atmospheric pressure and heat it to 373C, it goes supercritical and transforms into a liquid-gas plasma. In this state, any organic material that comes in contact with the water rapidly oxidises — essentially, burning without the flames.

Should we be able to harness this effect at the urban utility level, we’d have an easy means of incinerating waste without the side effect of heavy pollution — because without flames, the process doesn’t actually create any harmful byproducts. The only downside is that the supercritical water generates a good deal of salt that, over time, can rust and corrode the system’s piping. Still, it’s a lot better than throwing a match on your trash in the backyard.

[MIKA27]

I Just Can't Believe This Is An Actual Video Game

For real. I know that we’ve heard it so many times that the phrase has become a tired cliché. But now, for the first time, we are seeing it: Games that can be confused with reality using devices that make our brains believe we are immersed in that reality. Just watch this trailer.

What you are seeing is not pre-rendered. It’s actual footage, claim its developers. I’m speechless.

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Scientists May Have Finally Found A Practical Test For String Theory

String theory a beautiful, elegant piece of science which claims to unify all the forces in the Universe by representing tiny point-like particles as one-dimensional vibrating strings. It’s as clever as it is wacky but is — conveniently — untestable. Until, perhaps, now.

The problem is that string theory, sometimes referred to as the “theory of everything”, uses such extreme energy levels and minuscule physical dimensions — each string should be a quintillion times smaller than the already tiny hydrogen atom — that there’s no apparatus in existence capable of measuring whether it and its predictions are correct. That’s frustrating, but it also allows its advocates to doggedly pursue it, because there’s no need to abandon the idea as long as it could be correct.

But now, researchers from Towson University are claiming that incredibly precise measurements of the positions of solar-system bodies could provide a test capable of proving string theory right or wrong. Slight discrepancies between predictions made by general relativity and string theory, so they claim, could be determined if accurate enough measurements can be taken — crowning string theory victor or casting it as villain. The pair presented their work yesterday at the conference of American Astronomical Society in Washington, DC. Dr. James Overduin, one of the researchers, explains to PhysOrg:

“Scientists have joked about how string theory is promising…and always will be promising, for the lack of being able to test it. What we have identified is a straightforward method to detect cracks in general relativity that could be explained by string theory, with almost no strings attached.”

The test is actually a rather complex extension of Galileo’s fabled experiment, in which he dropped two balls of different weights from the Tower of Pisa. Later, Newton realised that all orbiting bodies are essentially running the same experiment themselves, continuously falling towards each other as they tumble through space.

Overduin’s research suggests that there may be tiny quirks in the way bodies actually orbit each other: departures from Kepler’s Third Law of planetary motion; drift from gravitational equilibrium zones known as Lagrange points; and oscillations in orbit distances due to acceleration toward a third body. To date, these feature have never been measured because the variations involved would be incredibly small.

But the team reckons there are bodies in the solar system where they should be measurable — the Saturnian moons Tethys and Dione, for instance. And if they can be measured, and they do exist, then string theory may yet have its day. For its proponents, it might be time to take a big old gulp.