Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

THURSDAY 21/12 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length animated feature in motion picture history, but Walt Disney had to fight to get the film produced. Both his brother and business partner Roy Disney and his wife Lillian attempted to talk him out of it and the movie industry referred to the film as “Disney’s Folly” while it was in production. He had to sell his house to help finance the film’s production, which eventually ran up a total cost of over a million dollars, but ended up making $418 million for Disney. FRIDAY 29/12 Hosted by Amphitheatre Backpackers, the Smoking Dragon Festival held in Drakensberg is three days of music and fun. Getting its name from the ‘Dragon Mountain’, which stretches across the panoramic view of…

SHOTGUNS READY, we burst into a city centre hotel looking for the reported gunmen. Immediately, a terrorist shoots the hostage kneeling before him. Our SWAT team trades fire, and the shooter goes down. I struggle to carry the wounded hostage outside to the hastily staged EMS triage area. Vital signs indicate he probably won’t survive. “Good try”, says the instructor over the headset. “Now another terrorist has set a hotel room on fire. Escort fire personnel safely to the scene.” Smoke is already rising from the windows. This new virtual training platform for first responders is called EDGE (Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment). The multi-player online environment is built on the same Unreal Engine platform that powers interactive games such as BioShock. But here, the carnage is the opposite of entertainment.…

SINCE THE 1960S, electronic voting has taken place in nearly 20 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Venezuela, the Phillippines and the USA. The thing is, the electronic voting machine is the functional equivalent of an unoccupied Lamborghini left running at midnight in a dodgy part of town. With vanity plates that say STEALME. Recently, hobbyist hackers with no specialised expertise who attended a convention called Defcon were able to compromise four different US voting machines, one in less than half an hour. “Unfortunately, they were much easier than, say, a home router or mobile device,” says Defcon organiser Jeff Moss. Voting machines often run on antiquated operating systems with known vulnerabilities (think Windows 2000), and are not typically updated with the latest or even basic security patches and precautions, says…

WHEN JAMES BOEHM and Matt Salsamendi started their first company in 2011, a Minecraft-server-hosting service, they had 28 years between them. Not years of experience – years of living. By 2014, their company was pulling in R70 million annually. And they kept hearing that their users wanted more. They wanted a place where they could watch and interact with other people playing video games, a growing segment of the R400-billion-a-year gaming industry. The problem was participation. There were plenty of opportunities online to watch gamers, but streaming a video game requires a lot of data – so much that no app allowed you to watch a game without a substantial delay. That delay ruined the possibility of interaction. By the time you tell gamers that there’s an enemy around the corner,…

WE WASTE more than two-thirds of the electricity we generate. Look at your cellphone. It has very different power requirements from those of a refrigerator, yet we plug them into the same outlet. It’s like filling drinking glasses with a fire hose. Also buckets, and eyedroppers. And while the fire hose is bluntly effective, it’s also messy. When fluorescent lights hum, or the cube at the end of your phone charger gets hot, that’s wasted electricity. Chris Doerfler and Anatoli Oleynik, cofounders of 3DFS, want to stop that waste. Ideally, you’d dose each device with the precise power that it needs at any moment. To execute that mission is a two-part challenge. First, you have to precisely measure the flow of electricity in real time, because you can’t fix the…

THE THING about freedom of choice is there’s never enough of it. But things are changing: as a DStv Premium subscriber, get set for choices you never dreamed you’d have thanks to Showmax. In short, that means you now have unlimited access to a huge online catalogue of international and local TV shows, movies, kids’ shows and documentaries. Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Showmax are becoming more and more popular because there are no limits to how much you watch, when you watch or how often. There are also no ads, and you can start and stop your subscription whenever you like. In case you’re still not sure: your DStv Premium subscription suddenly went from brilliant viewing to brilliant value. At no extra cost. THE HIGHLIGHTS REEL Showmax highlights encompass…

VOICE RECOGNITION The acoustic model: sounds into data Your voice is measured by frequency, the wavelengths of sound at a specific moment. When you speak to Alexa, the software breaks down your command into 25-millisecond slivers, then converts each wavelength measurement into digestible numbers. The software compares those sonic signatures with its catalogue of sounds until its confidence scores are high enough for it to be able to assume that you said, “Order more dog food.” The language model: getting meaning Watch your phone screen while using Siri or Google Assistant and you’ll see the transcription swap out words as you speak. That’s the software comparing the words it thinks you’ve said with its stores of example sentences, which inform how it understands syntax and vocabulary. “The language model is…

If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is,” the man said, referring to artificial intelligence, “it’s probably that.” He continued: “We’re summoning the demon.” It’s a quote you’d expect from a TV news guest or a sciencefiction author. But that was Elon Musk, the guy running Tesla while testing rockets and planning Mars colonisation. He has AI hysteria, too? So, in typical Musk fashion, he did something about it. He gave R130 million to the Future of Life Institute, where board members such as Stephen Hawking and Morgan Freeman focus on ensuring that new artificial-intelligence systems are designed to benefit humanity, not narrow interests. Then, Musk, along with eight other backers, put R13 billion into OpenAI. Its mission: to design AI that prioritises humans, and ensure that…

We can buy battery-powered versions of mainstream vehicles (Ford Focus, VW Golf), hyper-efficent EVs (BMW i3), even a gull-wing mini-van (Tesla Model X). The one thing you can’t buy, though, is a pick-up. Sure, weight and aerodynamics make range an issue, but the high-torque, lowmaintenance characteristics of electric motors are a natural for everything pickups do. If somebody built an electrified version of a Land Rover Defender, I’d be all over that*. Which is why I’m in Hobart, New York, to grab a ride in the very first Bollinger B1. Its creator, Robert Bollinger, must’ve been reading my diary, because his company’s debut vehicle is like a mash-up of a Defender and a Tesla Model S. It looks like it was sketched with a pencil and a rafter square. The…

WHEN YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN The Mini SOS Kit is the ideal companion for the adventure enthusiast. Stocked with essential tools to assist with unplanned scenarios, it’s likely to hold just the tool that you need to get you safely back to base. Features include a pair of adaptable pliers that incorporate an LED torch and a lightweight tool card that incorporates three different wrenches. Also enclosed are a flint, straight screwdriver, multitool, fretsaw, compass and survival whistle. Visit www.lgtools.co.za to find out more and locate your nearest store. Recommended price: R299. MULTI-SKILLED TIMEPIECE This unique and longawaited watch combines the Tread™ band’s interchangeable multiple tool links with a premium, Swiss-made timepiece based on a precision quartz movement that’s as suited for the job site, through airport security or out…

Richard Chung dreads the thought of visiting his doctor for regular check-ups. “It’s too much of a hassle,” he told his audience at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. His solution: a biometric seat that can relay your vital signs to your doctor while you’re on your way to work. From anyone else, that might sound fanciful. From Chung, not so much: he’s vice president of global innovation and design for automotive interiors and seating specialists Adient, one of whose brands is Recaro. So Chung is well qualified to describe his talk at Frankfurt as, “How we’re taking the seat to its limits.” Adient unveiled its AI17 automated driving seating system, which highlights adaptive, modular innovations that are focused on consumers and their interactions instead of face-forward driving. Because we’ll be…

JUST THE BASICS ENGINE I-4, turbo diesel OUTPUT 133 kW at 3 500; 430 N.m at 2 500 TRANSMISSION 8A DRIVE RWD/4x4 AFTER-SALES 3-year/100 000km manufacturer’s warranty and a 5-year/90 000km service plan with 10000km service intervals. PRICE 2WD R570 000; 4WD R600 000 There’s a reason the mediumsized SUV based on a pickup chassis is so popular. Actually, there are many reasons. So it really isn’t surprising to see the runaway success of Toyota’s Fortuner and Ford’s Everest. With its new Pajero Sport, Mitsubishi – now included in the Alliance with Renault and Nissan – is eyeing a bigger slice of that pie than it’s been able to manage up to now. On the plus side: styling that’s easy on the eye, a practical approach to the seven-seat configuration,…

RANGE ROVER VELAR The Velar is the latest in a procession of bridging models that not so much fills a niche as create an entirely new one, like the Range Rover Sport and the Evoque before it. In Land Rover’s words, “a new type of Range Rover for a new type of customer”. You might well say, if you want a sporting SUV why not just get stablemate Jaguar’s F-Pace, but of course then it wouldn’t be a Range Rover. Designed using the principle of reductionism, the Velar has been sculpted both outside (its 0,32 drag factor makes it the most aerodynamically efficient Land Rover ever produced) and inside, where physical switchgear has been eschewed in favour of virtual controls in the hidden-until-activated Touch Pro Duo infotainment system that forms…

WINNING LETTER WE NEED DRONE DIALOGUE I recently completed the ground school component to get my drone pilot’s licence. I was actually quite amazed at the legal requirements and especially how vague they can be in some cases. For instance, there’s the explanation as to what comprises a drone (for work) and what comprises a drone for hobbyists. Essentially it boils down (assuming the pilot to be an adult) to “potential to earn”. If the drone is fitted with a camera and can record, then one has the ability to potentially earn by selling that data and it is therefore, no longer a hobbyist activity. This was covered quite well in your recent magazine article, but it still leaves one with a sense of dissatisfaction; it is as if the…

ZAKEEYA PATEL is a presenter and actress. Her favourite gadgets are her Hauwei P9 and her Aria curling wand. P9 Q What are some of the things that you do on your Hauwei P9 that help you in your career? A I do everything on it. It wakes me up; it directs me and is my complete workstation. I don’t have a laptop anymore – I use this phone for literally everything. How long have you had your Huawei? I got it as a Valentine’s Day gift this year. Would you say that this is a must-have gadget for somebody in your profession? Social media has really upped the ante in my line of work. For posting, editing, taking photos and switching between apps, this phone is very effective. I…

Compiled by POPULAR MECHANICS and sponsored by HP Sprocket HP is a go-to name when you want to get serious about ‘traditional’ of_ ce printers. Sprocket proves that the company not only has a sense of humour and whimsy, but also the ability to adapt to the ever-changing wants and needs of the broader consumer market. Sprocket is HP’s answer to a portable printer. Admittedly, it’s not the only portable printer on the market, but it is one of the most fun. The 5 x 7,6 cm prints are at 313 x 400 dots per inch (dpi) resolution and can be sourced from your local device gallery, Google Photos, Facebook or your Instagram feed. You connect all your accounts in the connected HP Sprocket application (iOS and Android) interface and…

THE CURRENT SITUATION in cancer research is a little strange. Suddenly, the most soughtafter researchers are people who spent more time in school learning about T-cells (the immune system’s killer cells) than about tumours. Researchers like Roberta Zappasodi, who works at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City. Her focus, immunotherapy, is a new type of cancer treatment that involves hacking a sick person’s immune system so that it can recognise and kill cancer the same way it would fight a cold. Though immunotherapies work so well in some cases that they can bring patients back from the brink of death, they don’t work for everyone, and doctors often spend valuable time waiting to find out which patient falls into which category. With Zappasodi’s work, they don’t have…

IT WAS A VISIT TO BOTSWANA earlier this year that set Johannesburg academic Deon Kruger thinking. More specifically, it was seeing the ubiquitous local boat, the makoro, being paddled everywhere in the Okavango Delta. Kruger, lecturer in project management at the University of Johannesburg, is the man who helps set the rules for an annual concrete boatfest and in his mind began forming an opportunity to kill two birds with one chunk of concrete. Many families in the Okavango Delta are dependent on the makoro for their livelihood. It’s used for fishing, transport and ferrying tourists about. The sort of stuff you do with a lightweight narrow boat, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by a standing or kneeling poler or paddler facing the direction of…

IMAGE QUALITY MEETS STYLE Canon’s EOS M100 may be small enough to keep handy at all times and stylish enough to match designer outfits, but it also promises incredible image quality. Its array of creative filters and wireless connectivity allow you to shoot stunning images and upload straight to social media in just a few seconds, too. To help you learn to use that to best effect, the EOS M100’s intuitive touchscreen makes switching between your smartphone and the camera effortless. Mastering camera settings is made simple thanks to on-screen explanations: whether you want to blur the background or brighten your subject, EOS M100 will give you the ability to create professionallooking images you’ll keep forev If you’re vlogging or taking a selfie at a mustshare location, EOS M100’s handy…

To spatchcock is to remove a bird’s spine and lay the body flat. It originated to cook small birds evenly, but it’s just as effective on your holiday turkey and will cut the cooking time at least in half. You’ll also get crispy skin and meat that’s easy to carve. The only drawback is that most roasting pans are limited to about a 7-kilogram bird. But thanks to the low height you can roast two birds on separate oven racks. STEP 1: Night-before prep Start with a thawed bird the night before you’ll roast it. You’re going to cut and dry-cure it now so that tomorrow it goes straight into the oven and comes out juicy. With the turkey breast-side down, remove the giblets and neck from the body. Then…

Confession: the i10 is my preferred rental car. Even up at the Highveld. Its surprisingly punchy engine/gearing combination is well up to the challenge of lugging two adults around. Never mind that they’ve got luggage that’s a little more than just overnight, because the boot’s 256 litres is kind of just enough. Drop the rear seats, of course, and you add a little under 1 000 litres more. In the second quarter of 2017, the Grand i10, which is halfway through its current model cycle, was subjected to a makeover. There’s been some body restyling, including a new-look nose and new alloy wheels. The integrated rear roof spoiler probably has more to do with aerodynamic efficiency than ultimate downforce around the Nurburgring, but it does provide space to hang the…

JUST THE BASICS Premium Spec Subaru XV 2.0i-S ES CVT ENGINE Boxer 4 OUTPUT 115 kW/196 N.m TRANSMISSION CVT AFTER-SALES 5 years/150 000 km warranty; 3 years/75 000 full maintenance plan (5 years/150 000 km optional) PRICE R439 000 The driver of the car alongside at at the traffic lights made the familiar twirling motion and so I rolled down the window. She gave me the thumbs-up. “Nice colour.” She wasn’t talking about my outfit. As she was sitting in a black Subaru XV, and I was in a spanking new Cool Grey Khaki XV, clearly she was well aware of the charms of this spunky compact crossover. But the grey – one of two new colours – is just one of the more obvious features of a comprehensively reworked…

THE RUNNING STITCH Description: Used to bind two pieces of fabric together. Handy for shortening clothing, fixing a falling hem, or adding a patch to a bomber jacket. Instructions: Poke the needle through both pieces of fabric, then push it back through the fabric about 5 mm over. This creates one stitch. Continue to the end of the seam. To close the stitches, push the needle through the fabric without pulling the thread all the way through to create a loop. Run the needle back through the fabric and loop to create a knot. Repeat two to four times. Use it to: Shorten a pair of pants. Turn the pants inside out and cuff to the desired length. Pin to secure. Poke the needle through the topmost edge of the…

1970 Cars of today can do almost everything on their own. In the ’70s, a UK man modified his car so that he could start it from his bed using a walkie-talkie. He also added a moisture sensor to set off the windscreen wipers and a light-sensitive cell to switch on parking lights. Much like Volvo’s autonomous trucks in this month’s How Your World Works, his vehicle could largely control itself. 2002 Imagine a floating island in the middle of the wide blue yonder. French shipbuilders Chantiers de l’Atlantique imagined exactly that, but could not raise the R30 billion they needed to make their dream come true. The floating island, called Ile d’Arz, was to be made up of 5 000 apartments with a capacity of 10 000 inhabitants. Best…

Top Gear ruined it for everyone. And by Top Gear, you know which one I mean: the particular iteration of the BBC franchise hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, buttressed by a massive budget and blessed with the best writing and production said budget can buy. After that show dissolved in 2015, Amazon created The Grand Tour, reassembling all those ingredients down to the hosts and producers. Now on season two, it’s the latest in years of foolish attempts to re-create the magic of the original. I should know. I’ve been part of the problem. My TV aspirations began more than a decade ago, when I hosted an on-demand cable show called The Cars You Want. It went well enough for me to make it on to…

TECH OF THE YEAR: NINTENDO SWITCH You could call this pick controversial or you can take it as a reward for a category-defining product with a litany of consistently excellent games. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is obviously the marquee release claiming ‘game of the year” plaudits from all critics, but the platform deserves at least some of the credit. The game would be a lot less immersive were you not able to seamlessly transition from the couch to the airplane seat without missing a beat. It’s the Switch’s dual roles that deserve the most rewards. Nintendo combined the best bits of its legacy – portability of the Game Boy and the interaction of the NES – into a single device that didn’t cheapen the experience, whichever…

AN ENEMY ROUND tears through the Marine’s Kevlar vest, passing through the Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) – ceramic trauma plates held against his chest, back and sides – through a small protective cushion, through his uniform and into his flesh. Between 2001 and 2011, nearly 1 000 US troops died of potentially survivable injuries because they couldn’t get to a treatment facility in time. But this Marine is wearing his treatment facility. The layer of cushion is filled with packets of gel and a painkiller. When pierced by a bullet or shrapnel from an IED, the cushion releases the gel, which turns into a foam sealant and forces the painkiller down into the wound, staving off shock and stanching blood loss The palliative cushion is the vision of Marine…

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” Forty years ago these words flashed across cinema screens around the world and a modern legend was born. Millions of people would be introduced to a saga that would touch their lives in ways then unimaginable. The original trilogy Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi followed by the prequel trilogy The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith have become defining events for their generations. The last movie, The Force Awakens, having grossed over R25 billion, has followed in the footsteps of its predecessors and The Last Jedi is likely to follow suit. The Star Wars space opera has long provided exciting visual effects that have become bigger…

There’s been a growth spurt of note in the field of brain-computer interfaces in recent years. We have reached a point at which we can, quite literally, contemplate Tweeting to each other using wireless networks implanted in our brains. Whether any of us would want a twitter storm raging inside our heads is, of course, debatable. Aside from the moral and ethical questions, the current big challenges are technological. “Brain-computer interfaces: separating fact from fiction” at the Me Convention in Frankfurt recently dealt with the questions of how far we could – and should – go with hybrid natural and artificial intelligence. Whereas we understand micromputing and technology well, we still have very limited knowledge of how brain circuits compute. Meanwhile, we’re forging ahead: Arto Numikko, professor of engineering and…

THE SILICON POWERING IT ALL Partly by fate, partly by design, how one company built the AI boom. To understand why Nvidia (en-vid-eeuh) made so much money in the past few years, we need one bit of jargon: GPU. The graphics processing unit is a bit of silicon and transistors found in every laptop and smartphone. Unlike the central processing unit (CPU), which balances resources to run browser tabs and email apps simultaneously, the GPU is focused, made for splitting up and processing masses of similar data quickly. It’s a deli slicer to the CPU’s Leatherman. For years, GPUs like the kind Nvidia made were used for rendering pretty graphics, as in Call of Duty or an Audi infotainment system. But in the mid-2000s, researchers realised that the GPU’s design…

LIFT THE LID If you’ve ever wished for an extra pair of hands when trying to load a bulky or heavy object into your SUV, you need a Bestech automatic boot. It’s as simple as pushing a button on your key remote and your boot will open or close automatically. There is even a motion sensor foot control option available on most SUVs with keyless entry. Bestech automatic boots are safe and convenien to use. Their innovative system includes features such as auto-stop to prevent the boot pinching someone or something, sound alert to let you know the boot is opening, and height adjustment to change the boot lid’s opening elevation to suit your height. You can also open and close the boot with buttons located near the driver’s seat…

As we blew in, Tokyo was all about stormy weather: a snap election by Prime Minister Abe, intent on getting a firm mandate from jittery voters and Typhoon Lan about to make landfall on the Japanese capital. But there was no need for concern: Abe won in a landslide, Lan was all mouth and no trousers and, best of all, my luggage arrived at the same time as I did for my first experience of this two-yearly feast of (mostly) Japanese automotive excellence. The Europeans were there, of course, but with most having heavily committed to the Frankfurt Show just a month before, they were understandably low-key at the Tokyo Big Sight venue. But they were clearly felt, as Mercedes-Benz announced its late afternoon press reveal with a gut-punching thump…

To me, it sounds less like a burp than, well, that other rude noise. Actually, the anatomy of that unique upshift sound common to dual clutch transmissions (DCT) makes it more of a belch. Let me explain: the ignition timing is slowed on the up shift, so the excess fuel in the exhaust manifold and combustion chamber then ignites directly after and produces the beloved vrrrpah. Why? Because DCTs don’t shift well under power, so engineers had to include a lift off. So the sound is like the burp you make to make room for dessert. The signature GTI sound is woven tightly into the zeitgeist and my wife absolutely despises it. Not the car; the car is still the epitome of family friendly hatches, but the sound. There was…

EASY WAYS TO DO HARD THINGS AFTER LOSING THREE glass-and-plastic patio tabletops to storms – and having to pick glass shards out of his pool – reader Ray Williams of Simonton, Texas, devised a better outdoor surface. He got a sheet of vinyl lattice and cut it to the shape of his tabletop. Then he used cable ties to secure it to the frame (and scrap aluminium angle strips for reinforcement, where necessary). The holes in the lattice make it hard for wind to pick the tabletop up, and with the cable ties, it isn’t sitting unsecured atop the frame the way the glass-and-plastic surfaces were. Your iPhone has a sleep timer If you like falling asleep to music or podcasts, but don’t want to drain your iPhone battery, open…