Happy Friday! Start your weekend off right and check out some of the best stories we've published in the past 24 hours: An update on Tesla's autopilot issues, some benchmark data that shows just how far Intel has fallen, and a crazy speaker that's filled with ferrofluid. Enjoy!
There are plenty of stylish, tech-heavy speakers doing the rounds in 2021, but not too many are quite like the speaker designed and built by Dakd Jung. A 40-year-old artist living in Ansan, South Korea, Jung has created an unusual speaker that harnesses the power of ferrofluid, a viscous magnetic oil invented by a NASA scientist in the early 1960s, to amazing effect.
Ferrofluid inventor Steve Papell imagined that the innovative substance — made of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid — could be harnessed as a magnetized rocket fuel that would be easier to draw into a rocket's engine in the absence of gravity. It has never been used this way, however. Engineers accomplished much the same goal using elastic sump tanks and aerosol propellants.
Instead, while ferrofluid has gone on to be used in genuine engineering applications (it's utilized in computer hard drive rotary seals and as a contrast agent for MRIs), it has most notably gained a public second wind as a material used by artists to create otherworldly projects -- including this one that employs it to visualize music.
AMD has continued to press its advantage over Intel the past few years, but the gap between the two CPU giants is only now coming into focus. PassMark — an Australian software company that specializes in PC benchmarking and stress-testing tools — maintains a list of the best CPUs based on the average score the processor receives in PassMark's PerformanceTest benchmark. And Intel, which has long claimed the performance crown across verticals, doesn't even show up in the top 20.
The list is washed in a sea of red for the first 20 slots, with AMD's Epyc and Threadripper CPUs dominating the charts. The first chip from Team Blue shows up in the 21st slot. That's the Intel Xeon W-3275M, which earned less than half the score of the AMD Epyc 7763 that sits in first place.
Engineers at Consumer Reports said this week they were able to "easily" trick Tesla's Autopilot system into thinking someone was in the driver's seat, meaning the car could be driven without anyone behind the wheel.
CR engineers performed the demonstration on a private road using a Tesla Model Y vehicle. The nonprofit consumer organization said it decided to conduct the test after hearing about Saturday's fatal crash in Spring, Texas, involving a Tesla Model S that apparently had no one behind the wheel.
Whether you're buying a new iMac or are using a decade-old MacBook, there's a lot you can accomplish with your system that you may not realize you can.
Apple has built a huge number of clever features into its computers that can make things a little bit easier and more convenient, but many remain buried deep within menus and preference panes.
Here are six things you can do with your Mac that you might not know about — as long as you're updated to Big Sur, the latest version of MacOS, which will allow you to access a lot of these features.
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