Month: August 2014

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R&T chases down a burglar in the million-mile Miata

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Road and Track Million-Mile Miata

Is the answer always Mazda Miata? We discussed this in passing on the Autoblog Podcast earlier this week, and most assuredly the answer is "no." For example, the little MX-5 would be a terrible people carrier, and it’d be useless off road. You can’t really tow anything of substance with it, either. Still, if push came to shove, it’s satisfying to know that the diminutive roadster could eke out a career as a chase vehicle for the police.

That fact was proven when Road & Track editor Chris Cantle did something that he himself recognizes as "stupid." Upon returning home, Cantle discovered a "twenty-something" actively burgling his home. The resulting story is easily one of the more entertaining episodes to come out of the 1990 MX-5’s service to the team at R&T and, we’re guessing, will be one of the highlights of the Million-Mile Miata challenge.

Be sure to head over to Road & Track for a full retelling of the chase from Cantle, as well as a follow-up on the saga.

R&T chases down a burglar in the million-mile Miata originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Physics Week in Review: August 2, 2014

Looking for a few good popular math books? In the latest New York Times Book Review, I look at five terrific recent ones: Jordan Ellenberg’s How Not to Be Wrong, David J.

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

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Do Your Potato Chips Have A Security Flaw?

Well, this is a bit creepy: Researchers have shown that they can recover various types of audio, including human speech, by filming and analyzing the tiny vibrations that sound creates in objects nearby. In one example, a person recited words, and this sound vibrated a nearby bag of potato chips. The researchers filmed the bag of chips with a high-speed camera, through sound-proof glass, and were then able to reconstruct what the person was saying with relatively good quality–you can make out the words, and recognize the person’s voice.

Check out the video explaining the research, mostly done at MIT, here: 

The scientists could also reconstruct speech and sounds by filming vibrations on the surface of glass, aluminum foil, and even a house plant, according to the statement.

For these analyses, the researchers used a high-speed camera that captures 2,000 to 6,000 frames per second. But they showed that an impressive amount of information about the audio (although not its content) could also be recorded with a regular DSLR that films at 60 frames per second: the gender (and possibly even the identity) of the speaker, as well as how many people are talking. 

This is the most impressive–and somewhat disconcerting–demonstration of eavesdropping without a microphone that I have seen. But there are also laser "microphones" that can reconstruct speech or audio by measuring vibrations in objects near a speaker, from a long distance away.  

The researchers will present their work at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics conference.




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The Best Part Of Waking Up: Coffee Brewing Alarm Clock

This is The Barisieur, a fancy coffee brewing alarm clock that looks like a mini meth lab designed and built by Josh Renouf. Because when you wake up, you need coffee, and you need it f***ing NOW. Not a…

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