Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2017 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

THE EMAILS BEGAN TRICKLING INTO my inbox in January, about a month after the phone had gone missing*. My heart leapt at the first few words: “Your iPhone 6S was found.” This was what I had been waiting for. I clicked on the link. It didn’t work. Instead, I found myself staring at an error message: “The website you have tried to access is in violation of company Internet access policy.” I did a double take. Went back to the original email. It looked genuine enough. Except there was something not quite right about the grammar… no, actually it was poorly written. Not the kind of thing Apple would do. I hovered my cursor over the link. A bubble popped up, displaying the URL that the hyperlink in the email…

THURS 04/05 Through social media, the Internet and fan conventions, Star Wars fans from all over the world unite to celebrate Star Wars Day. The date 4 May was chosen as a play on the movies’ catchphrase “May the Force be with you”, which sounds like “May the Fourth be with you”. The fun continues into the next day, Revenge of the Fifth – a play on the series’ third episode, Revenge of the Sith. SAT 21/05 For the past 41 years, car enthusiasts from all over South Africa have flocked to the annual Cars in the Park event. This event is all about celebrating the classic, the elegant, the quirky and the unique when it comes to vehicles of all shapes, sizes and stats. Fans can look forward to…

A LOT HAS CHANGED since Fabien Cousteau’s grandfather Jacques started teaching about marine conservation in the 1950s. Sixty years of warming oceans, overfishing, and pollution have left today’s ocean ecosystems significantly damaged. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that a quarter of the world’s coral reefs, for example, are damaged beyond repair, and two-thirds are under serious threat. Luckily Cousteau – a self-described techie – can advance conservation with tools his grandfather never dreamed of. Inspired by advancements in 3D printing, Cousteau and a team of researchers from the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Centre, his non-profit that focuses on awareness, education and research in ocean conservation, are experimenting with printing coral reefs as a method of rehabilitation. This winter a team of divers installed the first artificial reef on the ocean…

Do you have unusual questions about the world and how it works and why stuff happens? This is the place to ask them. Don’t be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Email popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za Questions will be selected based on quality or at our whim. Q In The Empire Strikes Back, what were the original AT-ATs constructed from? A The AT-ATs (All Terrain Armoured Transports, or Imperial Walkers, as they were also known) were fashioned from the crushed hopes and pathetic tears of the Rebel Alliance, dispirited by the Empire’s resilience following the destruction of the Death Star and distraught over the discovery of their doomed base on the ice planet Hoth. And hand-machined aluminium, mostly. Nowadays (as in the excellent Rogue One), such cinematic creations are completely computer-generated. But…

THIS MACHINE IS THE ANTITHESIS OF MODERN GAMING in a world where AAA titles are all about isolating players and forcing them to use online servers if they want to interact with other humans. Don’t believe me? Then answer me this: why are consoles sold with one controller? Nintendo fell into the same trap since the N64. The subsequent consoles didn’t sell well (despite the N64’s superior, industry-leading technology). Yes, Wii was an outlier to my theory, but for the important reason that it was designed for families. I’ve never owned a PlayStation or Xbox, but I had a Family Computer, an SNES and a Sega Megadrive. Important selling points for those consoles? Two controllers. These machines were purpose built for co-op play. When Nintendo started development on the Switch,…

NEW IDEAS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD nikky.knijf@ramsaymedia.co.za JUAN GARCIA MANSILLA, an industrial designer from Argentina, designed Paradoxal as a fast and economic solution to space tourism and business travel. Conceptually, the aircraft would be capable of flying on a suborbital parabolic trajectory to travel between continents within a few hours. “Although its main purpose is fast intercontinental passenger service, the Paradoxal could also be developed and used by other government agencies,” says Mansilla. “The majority of the trip is exo-atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory, so it can be perceived as an aircraft that mixes space tourism with business travel.” What makes Paradoxal unique is its ability to take off from any airfield, coupled with its two Rim-Rotor Rotary Ramjet Engines (R4E). Designed in 2011, the R4E propulsion system was…

There’s no cooler job title: Chief Explosives Scientist. The person who holds it, the FBI’s Kirk Yeager, spent decades in the field, examining tiny pieces of evidence, most of them partially destroyed, and working backwards until he had a bomb, a bomb location, and, more often than not, clues that led to a suspect. “Imagine if you dump out a thousandpiece puzzle, throw out half the pieces, and light the other half on fire,” Yeager says. He’s good at burnt puzzles. Yeager is matter-of-fact, telling stories about a bomb site in Beirut as if he were recounting a trip to the pharmacy. And he has a good sense of humour, even for a guy who doesn’t wear a lab coat every day. Like when he talks about briefing former FBI…

You know that rotating movement you make with your index finger to indicate that someone has lost the plot? Well, if you trace a circle in the air aboard the new BMW 5 Series, a 3D sensor near the centre console translates the action into a command, and Rihanna’s Love on the Brain subsides from a captivating ballad to a gentle background murmur. Rotate the same digit in a clockwise direction, and the volume is cranked up just in time to catch the soulful plea, “Can we burn something, babe?” Forty-five years and 7,9 million sales later, BMW has every expectation of setting the market afire with the 7th generation of its “athletic business saloon”. It’s lighter (by up to 100 kg), quicker, more spacious and more fuel-efficient than its…

Macarthur Award recipient, inventor, crowdsourcing guru, educator – and not yet 40. Luis von Ahn whose thinking most of us interact with on a daily basis in the form of the CAPTCHA, is a man on a mission to teach the world to speak as many languages as it wants to, for free – and while having fun. We caught up with Von Ahn at the Design Indaba in Cape Town, where he was presenting his vision of how the world should learn languages, Duolingo. Specifically, the (burgeoning) language app’s first African language course, Swahili. ENLISTING CROWDSOURCING TO HELP bring language to the masses is the kind of thing you’d expect of a computer scientist. Thing is, it seems to be working – and how. It’s the idea that is…

FOR THE LOVE OF GADGETS (lindsey.schutters@ramsaymedia.co.za) ONCE YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED just what an air-con can do for your wellbeing in our traditionally hot and often humid (in the east and north, anyway) summers, you won’t be able to imagine life without it. Unless you’re in an openplan office, when suddenly you’ll discover that, like Goldilocks, some prefer their climate control icy cold, some like it moderately cool and others prefer to work in a sauna. Samsung’s Wind-Free wall-mounted air conditioner could be the solution to overcoming the heat while keeping everyone at the office happy. The new AR9500M air conditioner has Samsung’s exclusive breathless cooling technology integrated into its design, which enables customers to obtain both a cooler indoor climate and optimal energy efficiency, without having to experience uncomfortable direct…

IFROGZ CODA WIRELESS It’s crazy that you can now spend R700 on a pair of wireless headphones that have a wired audio option via 3,5mm, sound better than cans twice the price, offer 10 hours of battery life and have some of the best Bluetooth connection performance outside of Beats devices. I haven’t even mentioned the superb sound isolation from the cups, although people with bigger ears won’t experience the same seal that I got. iFrogz have absolutely nailed this product; get it at takealot.com and Musica. HP SPECTRE PRO 13 These gorgeous looks and svelte dimensions come at a price. The first is only USB type-C ports, one of which is charge locked for USB C standard charging, pretty much only the charger that comes in the box. The…

OVER THE PAST DECADE, tiny homes and compact living has become popular as cities become increasingly crowded and more people want the convenience of owning a home with the flexibility of travelling. Kasita is a step up from these “traditional” tiny homes. After living in a 3m² dumpster for a year to experiment with the limits of human habitation, company CEO Jeff Wilson was left with an incredible experience and a new outlook. He then designed Kasita as an ultra-stylish yet practical home with a small footprint. The units are rectangular and can slot into almost any space or be adopted into mass housing developments like complex blocks or government housing. They’re stackable, thus allowing multiple units to be incorporated into areas with limited development potential. Another plus is practicality…

A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO an experiment to grow potatoes under Martian conditions kicked off. The project was conceived by the International Potato Centre (known by its Spanish acronym CIP) in an effort to understand how potatoes could grow on the Red Planet and to see if they would thrive in extreme conditions. And just in case future Mars colonisers needed a side of fries with that freeze-dried main meal, of course. The first tuber was planted in a specially made environment called CubeSat. The environment was built by engineers from the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima from designs and advice received from the NASA Ames Research Centre (ARC). Inside the CubeSat is a hermetically sealed container that holds the soil in which the potato…

In Track Mode, the dashboard folds down to become a tiny sliver showing only the essentials: r/min, gear, and speed. Any time British supercar maker McLaren releases a new model, it’s news: the latest example of its engineers chasing the company’s unique understanding of perfection. Cometh the 720S. It out-accelerates all but a few road-legal vehicles ever made. Its hydraulic suspension cushions your tailbone against potholes, but stays stiff through corners. It has swing-up doors. It has Apple CarPlay. To adjust Drift Control on the centremounted tablet, you move the sliders as a little animated car shows how much you’ll kick out the tail in real life. For the few who must weigh these features against a Ferrari or Lamborghini, understand this: you don’t see McLarens in paparazzi photos. This…

MY DAD’S DAD WENT BALD in his 30s. My father’s response was lifelong use of vitamins, hair tonics, and a medicine cabinet full of other treatments. He’s made it to 60 with a full head of hair, but not without preaching the same daily prevention regimen to my three brothers, aged 20 to 31. You’d think in the 50-some years since my grandfather lost his hair, we’d have figured out better solutions to male pattern baldness. Not yet, though experts think we’re getting closer. Traditional balding treatments, like my father’s, prevent hair loss. Until recently, there was little that could be done if hair had already started disappearing. But increasing interest in hair loss has led to new research that holds promise even for those already balding, says Wilma Bergfeld,…

IF YOU’VE EVER SEEN POP SINGER PINK PERFORM, you’re already really familiar with suspension yoga. If you think what she does looks difficult, you have no idea. Suspension yoga may look pretty and relaxing, but it is a gruelling workout. After just an hour swinging in a hammock, I was exhausted, aching and drenched in sweat. Antigravity yoga was invented by former gymnast and Broadway choreographer Christopher Harrison. It involves performing a series of exercises inspired by yoga, Pilates, calisthenics and aerial acrobatics in a hammock-like apparatus, in order to achieve a total-body workout. In 1999, while rehearsing at the Metropolitan Opera House, Harrison and his team were captivated by a piece of fabric being used like a climbing rope in an adjoining theatre. Inspired, he bought his own fabric…

SOCIAL ENGINEERING IS THE manipulation of people for gain by fraudulent means. This is tied to cyber crime and, more often than not, takes the form of phishing scams. So how do you protect yourself against what the experts call a people-based attack? We turned to the experts for an answer: specifically Jenny Radcliffe, who presented at the IT Leaders Africa Summit in Cape Town. Radcliffe built her career on equipping various institutions, including private corporations and public service agencies, with the tools to protect themselves from such attacks. “Your employees know how to hack your system,” she says, “and (criminals) are looking for when they do it so that they can copy it.” Social Engineering is the name given to the practice of manipulating people in the modern age,…

HAZARDOUS DEVICES SCHOOL On a chilly winter afternoon, five men stand in a circle outside a strip mall, their lips pursed and brows tight with concentration. The group includes a police officer from Monroe, Louisiana; another from Manatee County, Florida, wearing a hunter’s orange stocking cap; and an eager young member of the Arlington, Virginia, fire department in his darkgreen fireman’s jumpsuit. The men are talking deliberately, with long pauses, as they think through how to deal with the nasty problem at hand: a hundred metres away, in the strip mall, they have just discovered a hotel room filled with explosive material. Inside the room at the Rocket City Hotel, the bed frame has been thrown up against the wall. A piece of brown parchment paper covered with chemical equations…

WAY BACK IN 1962, about the time a teenage Donald Trump was starting to take a serious interest in girls*, a Californian band called the Routers released a song called Let’s go (Pony). Its disarmingly simple “lyrics” (clap clap, clap clap clap, clap clap clap clap Let’s go!) quickly became a favourite of cheerleaders, football supporters and other interesting people in stadiums across the world. Fast-forward to Saturday, 18 March and the Santos de Bakke seaside resort in Mossel Bay, home of the annual Buffalo Rally and playground of people who are convinced that superbikes – if played right – can be transformed into fine musical instruments. More specifically, they believe a rhythmic twist of the throttle produces a version of Let’s go (Pony) that will beguile any audience, even…

anthony@ramsaymedia.co.za The first indication that things were going to be a little out of the ordinary (okay, make that a lot) was the warning that proceedings would start at 5 am. The second out-of-the-ordinary thing: as I started out for the launch venue, the rain began falling gently. Then it began teeming. Then it started going horizontal. Bear in mind that this was midsummer, in the throes of a parched Cape’s lingering drought. So we were a little edgy about Leg 1 of our one-day 500-kilometre adventure, a bumpy switchbacked track leading to the summit of Kanonkop Hill in Durbanville, northeast of Cape Town. On a clear day, you can see almost forever, but on this pitch-dark morning in driving rain and low cloud with visibility down more or less…

1 AUDI A5 + S5 Maybe it’s a good thing that I got the S5 thing out of my system early. My first drive of the new ’5 was at the wheel of the flagship (until the RS5 arrives) S5. Added to what’s already a distinctly superior and remarkably civilised conveyance in the form of the A5, the S5 adds seemingly bottomless reserves of drama. Whether you’re summoning as many of the 3,0-litre V6’s 260 kilowatts as you need, or marvelling at the all-wheel-drive chassis’ ability to keep the car glued to your chosen cornering line. This didn’t quite prepare me for the pleasant surprise of the lesser A5 2,0-litre diesel. With “just” two-wheel drive, it’s surprisingly wieldy in the corners and though the diesel growl may not be as…