I can think of a few different reasons people might want a red microwave in their kitchen. They may be Ferrarri fanatics, for example, and are irrationally passionate about the colour red.
Or perhaps they are butchers, who slaughter their meat in the kitchen, and want to disguise the drops of blood that splatter across their microwave oven.
Who knows? But if you are either of these things, then Sharp has released a microwave for you. It costs just $252 and has 1100W of power to go with its large 32cm tray.
If you’re not into the colour red, maybe this isn’t for you.
[Sharp]
The bitch about using 1.8″ drives in computers is that they run at a sluggy 4200rpm, as opposed to the 5400rpm commonly clocked in 2.5″ laptop drives. Toshiba today announced a 1.8″ drive that runs at 5400rpm in capacities of 80GB (MK8016GSG) and 120GB (MK1216GSG).
French engineering firm Alstom unveiled its successor the the TGV today, the AGV. Standing for Automotrice Grande Vitesse, the train, which boasts an individual engine beneath each carriage, can travel at speeds of up to 360kph. Up to 700 passengers can be transported at a time, and less fuel is used, as the AGV is lighter than its elder sister and consumes up to 30 per cent less energy. More info below the gallery.
Micron and Intel have co-developed a new 8-gigabit SLC NAND chip, which has data-read speeds of 200 MB/second and write speeds of 100 MB/second: five times faster than previous SLC NANDs. The 50nm-process node devices are available as samples to OEMs now, with bulk manufacturing planned for late this year. This means that sometime soon we’ll have access to memory cards and SSDs for our cameras and laptops that are way speedier than existing ones, though you might expect insanely high prices for that speed hike—especially since SLC is expensive in the first place. [BusinessWire]
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]
That dude who drove his electric motorcycle into a minivan while showing off for reporters at Wired Nextfest got out of the hospital and put some 300 extra Li Ion cells on his bike. Then he broke the electric vehicle world record in the quarter-mile running it at less than 8 seconds @ 168MPH. [TG Daily]
Japanese researchers have come up with a method using quadrature amplitude modulation to cram hundreds of terabits of a data a second through standard fiber optic cable. HD movies in seconds, here we come. [Digital World Tokyo]
newVideoPlayer("fastelevator_gawker.flv", 475, 376);
We thought that elevator zipping us to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower was fast, but this one in the Taipei 101 building has been named the world’s fastest by the Guinness Book of World Records. This one moves so quickly, it needs to be aerodynamically designed, roaring from the fifth floor to the 89th floor at a breakneck speed of 37.7mph. So is that treacly music they’re playing supposed to make our descent seem even faster, or magical? Ha. Enough of that. Let’s look at some pics of the elevator’s innards.
If this elevator were any faster, they’d have to strap you into a special couch like those used on the space shuttle. Going down? By the time you get to the ground from the 89th floor, your stomach will still be waiting at the top. [Sci Fi Tech]
The super-fast Internet2 backbone that you don’t have access to just got a hell of a lot faster, at least in theory. It used to have speeds of up to 10Gbps, which is pretty crazy fast. But now, by “sending data using 10 different colors, or wavelengths, of light over a single cable,” they’ve ramped that on up to a staggering 100Gbps. Unfortunately for you lovely Giz readers, you won’t be able to use that to download HD porn in half a second anytime soon.
Pop Sci took a trip to Casio headquarters in Tokyo to scope out Casio’s new camera, which uses a CMOS image sensor and a processor that clearly possesses some snappiness to shoot 60 6-megapixel shots or 300 video frames per second. (We saw this at IFA but didn’t get a chance to fire it off.) Unfortunately, this Flash-fast camera is only a prototype (they haven’t even come up with a name yet, the thing is so fast) and it’s entirely possible they might not put out a consumer model, though Sean thinks it “looks pretty darn close to a real product.” Cross your fingers in slo-mo. [Pop Sci more specs on Giz]
