Boffins at Japan's Tohoku University have developed a method to allow standard fibre optic cables to transfer data at hundreds of terabits per second. That means, before you blink, your movie torrent will be downloaded and ready to watch. The promising technique does not involve a new infrastructure for information delivery; it actually revolves around making adjustments to existing protocols.

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation, used in wireless data connections and digital TV tuners, relies on a stable wavelength for the movement of data. The stability is not offered via optical fibres, but the researchers have found a way to alter this fact. A laser is utilized to change the data transmission method via optical fibres, allowing QAM to be implemented for internet connectivity. This in turn gives rise to surprisingly fast, terabit/second connections.

Though this is unlikely to hit any time soon, be warned; when your kids reach the age of puberty, they shall have so much porn in their lives, it shall be difficult to see them past the mountain of HDD backups they collect to store it all. Much like us now—it's amazing how some things never change. [Tech.co.uk]

The Sega Genesis may well be the greatest gaming platform, ever. Who cares about online gaming, does anything beat a session of Sonic 2? Tec Toy knows the Genesis console rocked, so they are shrinking it and making it kinda pocket sized.

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A concise and elegant description of the tech that makes Pioneer's Kuro blacker, from Pop Sci this month:

"Each tiny cell in the [plasma] screen must be primed with an electric charge so it's ready to fire up quickly, and that charge turns blacks slightly gray. Pioneer designed cells that require far less charge...Then it added a screen filter that further dampens excess light and reflects less room light."

The 1080p models fresh out of the oven and according to a few who've played with them, the best sets out there now. [PopSci]

First introduced in 2005, the Rip Saw is about to hit the market with a $200,000 price tag. The custom-built UGV can hit 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, go 80 mph, and can manoeuvre over any surface or terrain a tank can. And the video is pretty good; watch as it drives through a barn as if it were the cardboard boxen your handset came in.

The privately-funded Rip Saw was first built by the Howe brothers for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Though the Rip Saw didn't win, its video certainly turned some heads, enough to find funding to build more than one. I normally don't get too excited about military shit like this, but any machine that can obliterate a wood shack with ease and turn donuts on snow wins my heart. Check out the 2005 teaser vid to see what i mean. [Howe and Howe via Red Ferret via Geekologie]

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I just found Shane Willis's MC Mechanic piece via Joel@BBG. Photographer Shane Willis made this homage to Escher's Drawing Hands 1948 litho, yet his process included not looking at the original. He wanted to infuse his own style and impression of Escher's original so did his by memory. I'm inclined to think this looks like Luke's replacement hand, engaged in peer to peer hardware review. Shane's work is genius, and Joel's not too shabby for still managing to dig up stuff like this after all these years of Gadget Finding. [Photo.net via JJ]

The Microsoft-employee only Zune Citron has turned up in Flickr, and it's got a really nice engraving on back "Welcome to the Social". Oh, and a 16GB tag. I like the black Squircle on citron colour scheme a lot more than the pink or green. [YakPimp's Flicker via Osaka Steve]

Here's some mental math on an untested theory: Yesterday I ribbed the PS3 for lack of a solid game collection. If you ask the Blu-ray consortium why their disc sales have gone so well, they'll reply "PS3". It appears Blu-ray disc playing may be the best use for the machine at this point. A few weekends ago, Variety reported that Halo 3's launch obliterated box office sales. Home or theatre, movies and games compete for similar spaces in our lives. So my thinking is, if PS3 games get a lot better, will that impact Blu-ray disc sales negatively? Or will it be a wash since more consoles will sell? It's just a thought to ponder on this foggy day in SF.

Last weekend we spent some time driving buggies in the middle of the Arabian desert, 40 miles out of Dubai. After an hour of sliding up and down impossible dunes, we stopped to rest. I took out my cellphone to see if it had survived the craziness, which it had, and was surprised to see that I had service available. And not just one bar, but absolutely perfect coverage: the full five bars, EDGE and all. And, according to our friends James and Lu, it gets even better:

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Putting a full-sized USB port in a phone is such a simple idea, even a caveman could think of it. Yet, until now, nobody has. Vincent Palicki's design features such a port by the number keys, allowing devices like thumb drives to plug in and transfer MP3s, movies and documents. Phone makers, pay attention... this is a good idea. [Yanko Design]

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Appropriately, the DVD release of Live Free or Die Hard by Fox next week will come bundled with a copy of the film playable on a computer.

It's a totally academic gesture, as a program like handbrake can rip a DVD to shreds in minutes, and this one only works on PlaysForSure devices, which excludes "Macs, iPods, and even Zunes", writes Wired writer and Giz friend Jenna Wortham. But we're glad to see Hollywood continue to dip their toe into the brave new world where we can actually watch the movies we want to watch, when we want to watch em. Live Free or Die Hard, could be the new warning motto for the industry. How about instead, you bring on the $3 DVDs Paramount and WB are distributing in China? [Wired]

Consumer Reports writes about the pros and cons of LED Christmas tree lighting. In summary:

• Not surprisingly, LEDs womp all over incandescents for power saving, using ~3-33% less power, saving you up to $10 bucks every 300 hours.

• Not surprisingly, LEDs won the durability test, failing to burn out over 4,000 hours, with standards burning one or two out per strand before half that time.

• LEDs were not brighter, but ran cooler—Did you know 14 people a year are killed as a result of Christmas tree fires?

• Surprisingly, LEDs and incandescents tied for initial price, at about an average of 7 bulbs per buck.

No word on the pros and cons of candles vs LEDs in manorahs. What are your experiences? And know any sources for reliable LED tree lights? [Consumer Reports and christmaslights.com]

Girls and boys, Christmas-is-a-coming and you need gift ideas pronto. Socks, hand knitted jumpers and CDs just don't cut it, but how about a gift voucher? May we suggest, a gift voucher that entitles the recipient to private jet travel, which costs only $5 million!

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Earlier this week, we shared breaking news about Seagate selling 1,800 Trojan-horse-infected Maxtor hard drives at retail. I checked in with the company to learn the details, and see if they busted the perp. The official word:

The internal investigation by the contract manufacturer determined that the virus was accidentally transferred by one of its employees and not a malicious act.

But accident, schmaccident: Seagate is taking some severe prevention measures to keep this from happening again, including extra anti-virus software—and metal detectors. The situation was more widespread than we originally knew, and anyone with a Maxtor Basics drive should probably read on.

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If you are into building your own computers, you know how expensive it is to keep up with the latest hardware requirements. That having been said, if you are planning on building a quad-core rig sometime in the near future, you can now step up to 1500W of power (1600W peak) thanks to the latest model in the ThermalTake Toughpower series. No pricing details have been made available, but it is safe to assume that this one will set you back a few bucks — and that's not even considering the smoking crater left in your wallet after the monthly power bill arrives. [ThermalTake via Ubergizmo]