FEATURED WOMEN WHO MAKE SOUTH AFRICA WORK
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The future of trucks is here!
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AUGUST 2018 RSA: R42,90 Other countries: R37,30 excl VAT
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FROM THE EDITOR
YOU NEED TO THINK SMALLER.
C O V E R P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S ; T H I S PAG E : I S T O C K P H O T O
That’s where the true progress happens. It’s the tiny details, behind-the-scenes preparation and anonymous effort that gets the biggest results. It took travelling to six countries to bring this magazine together and for me to realise the true power of details. Volvo Trucks flew us out to its home in Gothenburg to unveil what I, at least, thought was the big Tesla-fighting announcement. This wasn’t a long-haul electric truck with an incredible spec sheet, but rather a litany of iterative innovations on existing technologies.
Ducati bagged two MotoGP wins on the trot – we were there for the Barcelona one – on the back of equally tiny updates to the way they do things. In the Far East, Taipei, Nvidia and Synology seized Computex as a platform to release products the companies had spent months of small changes creating. I guess my point is that we sometimes get swept up by the hype of giant leaps and don’t celebrate the small victories enough. It’s Women’s Month in South Africa and we interviewed four extraordinary women who, in their own right, drive the nation forward. They’re not the absolute leaders of their companies, but perform tasks that help get the work done for us normal folk. These women have to wake up every day and go to work in male-dominated industries. Their fortitude in the face of gender-based obstacles is truly inspiring. We may not notice it, but its hard for a woman to make it in the Popular Mechanics world, and the more we can do as South Africans to normalise the appearance of women in these spaces, the better. These women spoke at length about their experiences, but obviously we needed to edit out some of it to make room for all of our awesome content this month. You can read the omissions on popularmechanics.co.za. The short version is that we’re doing okay in terms of progression towards a more inclusive society, but need to accelerate our efforts to create a world where everyone can feel comfortable to contribute. Elsewhere in the magazine, we take a dive into the behind-the-scenes magic that makes the big-budget blockbusters happen as well as try all the body-mod biohacks that are so on-trend right now. The August issue is a collection of the tiny steps that it takes to make the world work, and celebrates the many small victories needed to get us there. It was an absolute pleasure to produce and I know that you’ll enjoy it. Until next month, @SharpSchutters
COMPETITION WINNERS Details online at www.popularmechanics.co.za
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AUGUST 2018
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EDITORIAL Editor Lindsey Schutters Assistant editor Brendon Petersen Intern Asheeqah Howa Chief copy editor Jonathan Meyer Senior copy editor Rhynhardt Krynauw Copy editor Shaneen Noble CREATIVE AND PRODUCTION Art director Tauriq Loofer Designer Leigh Taylor Intern Mhlanguli Gcobo Freelancer Yolande Verhoef DIGITAL Group developer and support manager Cicero Joseph Webmaster Lizelle Leonard SALES Sales director Ryan Nicolle ryan@ramsaymedia.co.za Group sales manager Wayne Willmore Account managers Charles Duke, Mark Geyers Lindi van den Heever, Ingrid Versfeld, Donovan Matthews Buyers’ Guide: Joanne Thompson, Patrick Kennedy, Debtors manager Cecelia Jooste MARKETING, EVENTS Commercial director for show and events Group events manager Group Events co-ordinators Circulations and Subscriptions marketing manager
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CONTENTS
AUGUST 2018
I
V O L 17, N O 0 1
I I
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PG
T H E W AY T H E W O R L D W O R K S
On the cover: Blockbuster movies are getting bigger budgets and even more incredible special effects. We go behind the scenes to find out exactly how special-effects wizardry is achieved in 2018.
HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS 15 SUPERSONIC JET NASA has a new experimental plane and it’s hoping you won’t notice any noise 18 AI UNDERSEA MICROSCOPE Robots are being used to study the underwater world without causing too much of a disturbance 21 NVIDIA CHANGES THE WORLD NVIDIA is gearing up to do more than just make GPUs 22 FAST TRACK SUCCESS With a Lenovo wind at its back, Ducati Corse is racking up MotoGP wins
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COLUMNS 25 GREAT UNKNOWNS 27 ASK ROY
TECH 26 TECH BATTLE ROYALE 28 THINGS COME APART 30 GREAT NEW STUFF
FEATURES 38 BIG DATA SA We look at the only neutral data centre in Africa 54 BIOHACKING The future of augmented humanity 62 THE WOMEN WHO MAKE SOUTH AFRICA WORK The tech and motor industry is a boy’s club, but here are some of the women making waves and taking their seat at the table 70 THE FUTURE OF LONG HAULING Realistic truck innovations
TESTED 81 TOOL TEST Are these the best pocketknives you can carry?
DRIVING 85 THE FUTURE OF AERODYNAMICS Cars are starting to look the same and its because of physics
MONTHLY 3 From the Editor 10 Letters 12 Calendar 13 Time Machine 98 DIY 6
AUGUST 2018
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LETTERS WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
WINNING LETTER
WHO SAID CARBS WERE BAD? I was drilling a hole through the tiled bathroom wall when I was suddenly hit by a stream of cold water. It took a few seconds to realise I had hit the cold water supply. So I turned off the mains supply, swore an awful lot and put the kettle on – I’ve always believed a cup of tea and a biscuit can resolve a lot of issues. I got to work removing said tile and chiselled away the plaster to reveal a hole in the pipe. I cut out the damaged section and fitted a new piece of pipe with capillary-type couplings, first preparing the joint with a vigorous clean and a good rub using steel wool. Now appears my handy blowtorch, mystery sticky stuff and a length of solder. I then make a neat joint and turn on the water. Joint’s not holding. Leaks abound. I repeat the process four times. Still no joy. The wife is due back soon, so in desperation, I send for plumber. WRITE TO US, ENGAGE US in debate and you could win a cool prize. This month you can go wireless: Like all Makita’s 18 V cordless range of tools, the 13 mm DHP482Z Impact Driver Drill has been engineered using the latest technology. The DHP482Z is both lightweight and compact, with variable speed delivering up to 28 500 impacts per minute. It has an electric brake, reverse drill mode and 21 torque settings with a maximum fastening torque of 62 Nm. The singlesleeve keyless chuck allows for easy bit installation and removal. Charging time for the 3 Ah battery is 22 minutes. The kit includes a Cordless DHP482Z Impact Driver Drill, two 3 Ah 18 V batteries and the DC18RC fast charger all in a handy carry case. For further information onMakita Industrial Power Tools, visit makita.co.za or find us on Facebook: MakitaPowerToolsSA.
He gives me a look that confirms this is above my pay grade. He tells me the problem is that there is still water in the pipe. Then he asks me if I have any bread in the cupboard to which I reply, ‘Sliced or unsliced, brown or white?’ Again, he gives me the look. ‘Only white will work,’ he says. I think he’s taking the p*** but drive to the cafe and buy a loaf. When I get back, he’s drinking tea and eating my favourite biscuits. He then removes the replacement pipe, stuffs pieces of white bread in either side of the joint, puts back the piece of replacement pipe and with a great deal of showmanship, solders the joint. Water on again. Perfect seal. ‘What about the bread?’ He opens the nearest tap and behold! The bread flushes out, the lesson being two cups of tea, biscuits and white bread stops a wife from being so smug about my efforts. KEITH NORTON
That’s quite a story, Keith. Here’s a brand new drill for your efforts. We’ll run this solution past Dr Noakes to see if he approves. – Lindsey
YOUR OPINION COULD WIN!
ROBERT COWLEY
Makita Impact Driver Drill worth R5 199!
Send your letter to: POPULAR MECHANICS, PO Box 180, Howard Place 7450, or e-mail popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za Please keep it short and to the point. Regrettably, prizes can be awarded only to South African residents.
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AUGUST 2018
WHAT THE DIY? As an ardent Popular Mechanics reader for many years (I am 80 years young), I was very excited when I opened the page showing the ‘Time Machine’. When I glanced at the old May 1968 article, I got very excited because I thought that it displayed a plan of a model aircraft. I remember the good old days when Popular Mechanics had all sorts of plans for the hobbyist. I myself built an engine hoist – out of the April 1983 Popular Mechanics – with which I have removed and replaced many car engines (see above). As a matter of fact, I was the first electrician of a very large fencing company in the Western Cape. One of the directors, who I believe started the company, was known as the Popular Mechanics engineer later in life. They would say that if you ever got stuck anywhere, be it desert or sea, you’d wish you had him at your side. In reading just the last three issues, I’ve noted the following: 22 per cent is advertising, 12.3 per cent would be more suitable for CAR magazine and only 6 per cent is aimed towards DIY. Please give Popular Mechanics its dignity back by giving us something we can do or make with our hands. I hear you, Robert. The short answer is: original DIY projects are hard to come by and our resources have been needed elsewhere. Without a steady stream from the US, it is even more difficult. But I think you’ll notice a big improvement over the next two months. I don’t want to give too much away, but we will have regular new projects for you. – Lindsey
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WRITE TO US, ENGAGE IN DEBATE
SUMMER IS COMING I might as well submit two tips, both of which I used quite productively when, all on my own, I recently fitted two sets of leaf catchers, first-flush systems and downpipes from gutters to a water tank: Summer is on its way in the Winelands and we had better be prepared this time around (see image below). I encountered two issues: 1. The fittings, connections and pipes from the local hardware store were all plastered with bar-coded stickers. Each one of them left a messy gluey residue after it was peeled off. 2. The pipes then only fitted into the rubber-sealed sockets with a lot of difficulty.
grease on the messy spot. It did the trick. Quick, simple and very effective. Fitting pipes to rubber-sealed fittings or sockets As a pen-pushing office Johnny, I relied heavily on a ‘How to install a rain water system’ YouTube video when I had to fit my leaf catchers, first-flush systems and pipes. The YouTuber conceded that the seals in the socketed fittings are tight and thus quite difficult to connect. But, he made connecting the pipes and the socketed fittings (bends or elbows) to one another look as easy as pie. ‘Just lubricate the seal with
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S L E T T E R S A R E E D I T E D F O R C L A R I T Y, S P E L L I N G A N D G R A M M A R
Getting rid of the glue residue left by price tags When peeling price tags from any purchased item, one is more often than not left with the chore of then removing the messy, sticky residue the sticker leaves behind. My wife Annette taught me to use a little bit of Brasso on an old rag and to apply that while adding a little bit of elbow OMEGA MAN My thanks for the copy of Popular Mechanics (March 2017). I naturally turned to the page, ‘Mecha Mechanical Monsters’ (page 30). After reading it with much interest, memories of my early childhood came flushing back. In the 1971 film Omega Man (based on the 1954 novel I am Legend), Charlton Heston, did not have what we would call a superior intellect, but he had a goal – to kill his victim. We are in possession of slaves, which are persistent plodders. Computers do many things brilliantly. In 1994, one of them defeated the chess grand master Gary Kasparov. When taught the rules of a game, they can often defeat their own teachers. They are able to sort through billions of pieces of information in seconds, solving problems in mathematics and data processing that no human would be even able to attempt. But, they can only do one thing at a time. Now, a new method of programming computers has been discovered, software that may not only enable machines to outperform the human mind, but may also enable machines to actually think for themselves. The creatures we create might not like the human race as we do. The obvious danger is that we might not be around much longer, or we might lead just a slave-like existence. People who say it will never happen are not being realistic. If something is more intelligent than us, we will not be ‘Top Dogs’ on Earth any more. This is the logical conclusion of work in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. It is frightening; I don’t like to think about it. But if machines
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washing-up liquid and squish it in,’ was his advice. Not so simple, I established – not even when connecting the ones I could connect while I was firmly anchored to Mother Earth, never mind squishing the pipes into the sockets higher up against a wall while balancing on a ladder! The YouTuber managed to do all of it so effortlessly – and all on his own, too! After sweating, pushing, slipping and sliding with the first half of the project while following the YouTube instructions to a T, the second half connected much faster and easier – but only after I filed the blunt edges of the pipes away as I would if I were sharpening a big, hollow 110 mm pencil! I simply used the file from my Leatherman and voila! Only then did the pipes indeed slide into the sockets like child’s play, even while working high up the wall – albeit with a little help of the washing-up liquid … and the YouTuber. MICHIEL KIRCHNER
Hi Michiel. This was too good to publish in DIYW. Also, good use of YouTube, you should’ve filmed your fix. – Lindsey
can be made as intelligent as humans, then that’s really it for mankind. It will not be difficult, in the near future, for malicious people to build killer robots. It may be, of course, that an Omega Man scenario will never come into existence. But it nevertheless remains as one of the terrifying possibilities of the not-so-distant future. To the Popular Mechanics team, thanks for the interesting and amazing magazine. KRISH DE CHESARAE PILLAY
Take it easy, Krish. – Lindsey
AUGUST 2018
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CALENDAR · AUGUST GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR MONTH
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
1.
2
3
4
11
Herman Melville (MobyDick) was born on this day in 1819.
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6
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7
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15
9
10
Celebrate all women in your life this Woman’s Day.
Oppikoppi: Nomakanjani From 9–11
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The music and culture festival all others want to replicate – Woodstock – began outside Bethel, New York, 49 years ago today.
International Youth Day
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8
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Orville Wright, one half of the aviation pioneer Wright Brothers, was born on this day in 1871.
26
Vesuvius erupted on this day in 79 CE, destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum.
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August issue on sale
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AUGUST 2018
31 African Traditional Medicine Day
THURSDAY
Oppikoppi themes are used quite loosely, but the Zulu phrase nomakanjani implies that this year’s festival is getting things done. The line-up this year features an eclectic blend of electro, pop, hip-hop and good oldfashioned rock, and will see both veterans and newcomers take the stage.
30
09/08
FRIDAY
24/08
The latest volcanic eruptions to make the news were Hawaii’s Kïlauea and Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala. A key difference between the two is that Fuego’s magma is higher in silicates, which results in more viscous magma and explosive, rapidly moving eruptions of hot rock, ash and gas – pyroclastic flows. Kïlauea’s magma contains more magnesium and iron, leading to a less viscous (runnier) flow. Here, lava flows out slowly, rather than exploding out, and this is why Kïlauea has been less deadly than Fuego.
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P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
5
TIME MACHINE IT MADE PERFECT SENSE AT THE TIME
anuary 1967 Too Dangerous to Drive! POPULAR MECHANICS talks to some of America’s toughest car inspectors to find out why many cars wouldn’t pass a road-safety check.
J
F
ebruary 1967 US Helicopters In Vietnam In this issue, we paid tribute to the US helicopters of the Vietnam War, which was still in full swing at the time.
une 1967 Good Color Reception Depends On Even way back in the analogue past, you knew you could rely on POPULAR MECHANICS to help you get the most out of your brand-new colour TV.
J
arch 1967 The Fantastic Camera Tricks Behind ‘Grand Prix’ For this exciting cover, POPULAR MECHANICS delves into the innovative techniques needed to film the racing scenes in the 1966 film Grand Prix. Believe it or not, some of the shots were even captured in-car during the Monaco Grand Prix.
M
uly 1967 Build This Underwater Aquaplane In the US summer of ’67, this DIY aquaplane was touted as being ‘a lot like water skiing, but with more thrills’. Being towed at skiing speed, but underwater? We’re calling it a ‘maybe’.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
J
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS THE QUIET SUPERSONIC JET
THE QUIET SUPERSON
IC JET NASA HOPES YOU WON’T EVEN NOTICE ITS NEWEST EXPERIMENTAL AEROPLANE. B Y J AY B E N N E T T
the 1960s, the US Air Force was testing supersonic planes over Oklahoma City. Residents complained of broken windows and dishes falling from cupboards, the result of sonic booms up above when the jets went past 1 235 km/h, outpacing the noise from their engines and air resistance. The related shock waves coalesced into pressure that would release like biblical thunder, damaging houses thousands of feet below. That side effect is why, even 71 years after
I VATE SUPERSONIC PLAYERS
THE P
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
IN
Chuck Yeager’s first supersonic flight, you have to be in the military if you want to fly faster than the speed of sound over land. (That’s also why the Concorde flew supersonic only over the ocean.) But Lockheed Martin has an idea. Its engineers have designed the LowBoom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), a plane with aerodynamic technology that allows it to fly beyond the speed of sound without a typical sonic boom. Lockheed engineers started with a long, Concorde-like body and delta wing, perfect for high-speed, longdistance travel. Then they added on canards, extra wings toward the front, and a small T-tail at the rear. At speed, these extra features interrupt the
pressure build-up that causes a sonic boom. According to Lockheed, this will reduce the typical 105-decibel thunderclap to a 75-perceived-leveldecibel rumble, barely audible from the ground. NASA has given the company a contract worth $247.5 million to build the LBFD, with first take-off scheduled for summer 2021. After those first survey flights, pilots will take the LBFD up to Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet over populated areas of the United States. NASA will then canvass the people living below to find out whether the sonic booms were tolerable. If successful, the LBFD’s findings will help dictate the future of manned flight.
A
RSeveral American aeronautics companies have been quietly building their own high-speed civilian planes. [A] Boom Supersonic, founded by a former Amazon executive, has produced a two-seater prototype jet, the antecedent to a 55-seat passenger jet. Boom says it already has 76 pre-orders, with commercial flights planned for the mid-2020s. Meanwhile, [B] Aerion Supersonic and [C] Spike Aerospace are building supersonic private jets. These smaller craft can hit the speed of sound, manufacturers say, without a loud sonic boom. All three companies are aiming for first flights within the next three to four years.
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B
C
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS QUANTUM COMPUTERS
We’re closer to practical quantum computing solutions than ever before… Almost. BY T I A N A C L I N E
Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga won the Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deepploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles’ in 1965. And now, decades of research later, quantum computers have finally arrived to solve problems classic computers never could. Finally, we’re stepping outside the research lab with an exciting new way of computing to solve problems once considered unsolvable. Kind of. There are many problems we can’t solve today, which is why exploring fundamentally new ways of doing computation may open up new doors. The first of these new machines you’ll probably encounter is IBM Q, described as ‘an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science’. IBM believes that while quantum computing may be a researcher’s playground right now, in five years’ time, it could become part of the mainstream. Unlike a classical computer, in which binary digits, or ‘bits,’ can hold only one 16
AUGUST 2018
value (a ‘1’ or a ‘0’) at a time, quantum computers are made up of quantum bits, or ‘qubits,’ which have the potential to hold multiple values simultaneously. What’s more is that every quantum computer’s power scales with its qubits – so the challenge is really in building enough qubits to reach critical mass of computational power, and then keeping them in a state of equilibrium, where they’re working together and their power can be harnessed. ‘A quantum computer is not your typical desktop computer or server,’ explains Arvind Krishna, director of research at IBM. ‘Quantum states are inherently fragile … and anything can interfere with their functioning – heat, noise, electro-magnetic interference. For that reason, we keep the chip inside a refrigerator colder than outer space.’ Quantum computing may be a radically different computing paradigm, but IBM
is not alone in its quest to bring the quantum dream to reality. Microsoft announced a new quantum-computing programming language and computing simulator that was designed specifically for this field. Intel is also working to create qubit processors. At CES 2018, Intel unveiled a 49-qubit super-conducting quantum test chip code-named ‘Tangle Lake’. ‘In the quest to deliver a commercially viable quantum-computing system, it’s anyone’s game,’ said Mike Mayberry, the managing director of Intel Labs. ‘We expect it will be five to seven years before the industry gets to tackling engineeringscale problems, and it will likely require one million or more qubits to achieve commercial relevance.’ From the world of science-fiction to seeing it in reality – this is only the beginning of the road to practical quantum computing.
TL; DR take-away Quantum computers have the ability to solve exponential computational challenges, breaking through big data-processing problems and doing analysis that go far beyond the capabilities of today’s binary computers. From climate science and optimising transportation logistics, to building molecular structures (by simulating the complex interactions of molecules and atoms) and economics, the new data unit of the future is the qubit – the quantum bit that will change the face of computing. www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
The SUPREMACY ULTIMATUM
HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS LEGO IN THE REAL WORLD
BRICK BY BRICK This is what happens when the world is run by people who grew up with LEGO, and it’s awesome. We’re the latest generation raised by
plastic building blocks to inherit the Earth. Of course, the first thing we’d do is let our imaginations run wild. In celebration of Africa’s first LEGO Certified Store opening in Sandton City, here are two real-world builds inspired by the beloved little plastic bricks that illustrate the direct link between these toys and actual realworld engineering.
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY IMAGES
LEGO HOUSE
In September 2017, the ribbon was cut on LEGO House, also called Home of the Brick. The 12 000 m2 structure was built on the site of the former City Hall in Billund, Denmark, where the famous bricks were invented. Construction of the 21 overlapping rectangular spaces, each treated as a separate building, started in 2014. The blocks are arranged to frame a 2 000 m2 LEGO block that sits atop the building, illuminated through the cracks and gaps between the volumes. ‘LEGO house is a literal manifestation of the infinite possibilities of the
LEGO brick. Through systematic creativity, children of all ages are empowered with the tools to create their own worlds and to inhabit them through play,’ said architect Bjarke Ingels, who designed the building, at the opening. ‘At its finest, that is what architecture – and LEGO play – is all about: enabling people to imagine new worlds that are more exciting and expressive than the status quo, and to provide them with the skills to make them a reality. This is what children do every day with LEGO bricks – and this is what we have done today at LEGO House with actual bricks, taking Billund a step closer towards becoming the Capital for Children.’ SUPER AWESOME MICRO PROJECT
So an Australian and a Romanian once collaborated on a project. No, that’s not the start of a lame dad joke, but rather an amazing 2013 project that actually worked. he engine is made of standard LEGO pieces and runs on compressed air, configured as four orbital engines with
Top: Lego House was designed to resemble 21 overlapping bricks. Middle: More than 500,000 LEGO pieces were used to build this working car.
a total of 256 pistons. The full build took more than 500,000 LEGO pieces and the car can reach a top speed of around 32 km/h. The build was done by self-taught Romanian engineer Raul Oaida and then shipped, in several parts and in secret, to Melbourne, where his collaborator, entrepreneur Steve Sammartino lives. The project was crowdfunded after a single call to action, a tweet from Sammartino.
 The Sandton LEGO Store opens on 28 July 2018 and you can watch LEGO House – Home of the Brick, the story of how the LEGO House was built, on Netflix right now.
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS
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SWIMMING WITH THE FISHES
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
WHETHER YOU CHOOSE to acknowledge it or not, the robot apocalypse is underway. Robot vacuum cleaners are zooming around our houses, sucking the dirt from our carpets with finesse (and sometimes taking domestic cats along for the ride). hey’re out in our gardens, mowing our lawns down to the precise millimetre. hey’re teaching our kids how to code. That said, robots for the home are only a small peek into how this kind of technology is changing the world around us. We are currently overwhelmed by ecological issues around climate change, plastic pollution and how overfishing is wreaking havoc on ocean life. We’ve seen major retailers such as Woolworths and Pick n Pay taking big steps to eliminate their plastic packaging. But the images on social media, which show animals entangled in plastic, dead sea birds in bulk, divers swimming in a swathe of junk, and beached whales with bellyfuls of our rubbish are only one part of the story. Researchers are now talking about microplastic pollution: As they’re almost invisibly small, these materials get ingested by the smallest sea creatures and may travel all the way up the food chain to humans. We are not yet sure about the long-term consequences, but the chemicals that are absorbed from the layer of marine litter can be dangerous to human and marine health..
MEET SOFI In March of 2018, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled SoFi – a versatile undersea robot that looks and swims like a fish. SoFi, which is short for Soft Robotic Fish, will swim among
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other fish, giving scientists a new way to observe sea creatures without disturbing them. And unlike most remote-controlled machines, for example, SoFi won’t startle the creatures around it – in her trial swim around Fiji, she had fish swimming right alongside her. Daniela Rus, a researcher from MIT’s CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), exclaimed that: ‘[SoFi] is elegant and beautiful to watch in motion. We were excited to see that our fish could swim side by side with real fish, and they didn’t swim away. This is quite different to when a human diver approaches.’ SoFi is 45 cm long and can swim at 23 cm a second up to 18 metres below the surface for 45 minutes, until its battery runs out. Researchers at MIT believe that the robot will be able to provide useful information about ecosystems affected by climate change and pollution by collecting data on ocean behaviour. While SoFi is not the first autonomous underwater robot by any means, because the robot is not tethered to a boat, or requires power from bulky and expensive propellers, it has a big advantage under the sea. SoFi has a camera system – with a fisheye lens, as luck would have it – that communicates using ultrasound, which, unlike radio signals, propagate relatively well underwater. Improving on previous autonomous underwater vehicles, SoFi is much lighter and simpler. It houses a single camera and an electric motor, and runs on a lithiumion polymer battery essentially the same as you the one in your phone. Movement comes from a hydraulic pump system – the motor alternates between pumping water into two reservoirs in SoFi’s tail. As one reservoir expands, it bends and flexes to one side. When the water is then pushed into the other reservoir, the tail flexes in the other direction. These alternating actions create a sideto-side motion that mimics the movement of a real fish. This biomimicry makes it a clever way to help biologists monitor the health of marine habitats without the risk of causing their fishy friends lots of distress. SoFi has the potential to be a wholly new type of tool for ocean exploration and to open up innovative new avenues for uncovering the mysteries of life under the waves. ‘We view SoFi as a first step toward developing almost an underwater observatory of sorts,’ concludes Rus.
Did you know that two-thirds of the oxygen we breathe is released by phytoplankton? They’re tiny plants, after all. But thanks to fossil fuels and microplastic pollution, plankton and other microorganisms are dying. And when plankton die out, we’ll also stand to lose countless organisms that feed on them. This is what led inventor Tom Zimmerman (and his team of scientists at IBM Research) to build artificial-intelligencepowered robot microscopes that can be placed in bodies of water to track real-time plankton movement. Instead of moving plankton to a lab, they get to monitor these tiny wanderers in their natural environment to help predict behaviour and health. It’s an exciting combination of remote sensing and AI that Zimmerman invented using AI chips. So, while SoFi may have a smartphone battery inside, these underwater microscopes house image sensors like the ones found in smartphone cameras, and reprogrammed AI chips, like the ones used by your phone to tell your child from your cat in your image gallery, to monitor plankton. ‘Not only that, I can recognise their behaviour, like eating,’ said Zimmerman in March at an IBM Research 5 in 5 Science Slam. ‘It turns out, plankton like to eat plankton and that’s good, because it balances the ecosystem. Nature is all about balance.’
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS THE SWARM KILLER
DEFENCE
/ MORE POWER , FA S T E R he microwave beam’s pulse relies on a very high and fast power peak to crack the crystal structure of semiconductors beyond repair.
The Swarm Killer
A
The latest threat: swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles designed to overwhelm their under-equipped target. Isis combatants abroad and hostage takers in the United States have started using squadrons of offthe-shelf drones to annoy and surveil, and even to drop munitions. But there’s a new way to fight back.
B / PULSE GU IDANCE he disc and tilting square on top of the HPM system are relectors that aim a microwave beam at targets.
BY A L E X A N DER GEORGE
C / DRONE TR ACK E R To track multiple targets at the same time, the HPM uses a phased-array radar, with sets of antennas that can be pointed in different directions.
A
B
C
I L L U S T R AT I O N : TAV I S C O B U R N
ARMED FORCES and law enforcement have surprisingly few effective anti-drone tools, and none – that are declassified – to target multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or swarms. Shotgun shells that fire nets to snare the propellers work only at close range. Missiles, such as the halfa-million-rand Stinger, aren’t really costefficient for taking out R12 000 drones. And high-power lasers and signal jammers are effective, but must be fixed on a target for several seconds before they disable a UAV. Earlier this year, Raytheon released details on a new type of drone defense using high-power microwaves (HPM). The same electromagnetic energy you use to reheat pizza can knock out drones in less than a second. HPM beams work on the atomic level, passing through a drone’s exterior and distorting the fragile semiconductors that keep the drone aloft. Once the target is in sight, as little as a microsecond’s worth of silent, invisible microwaves moves at the speed of light, frying the circuits, says Don Sullivan, a director at Raytheon who worked on the HPM. And critically, the beam can be manipulated into a cone shape, creating an effective field that can quickly knock out multiple UAVs, with an energy cost of less than R14 per kill. The system acts largely autonomously, detecting, identifying, and tracking its targets with AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar. It’s the same radar found on modern fighter jets. AESA uses an array of thousands of modules that change direction almost instantaneously, detecting targets more quickly and more accurately than an older spinning-disc system or infrared systems that may not pick up the minimal heat signature from a quadcopter. Though the HPM system requires little human input, the order to engage targets remains with its operator.
HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS NVIDIA
TIMING IS EVERYTHING While other brands launched increasingly consumer-focused products, Nvidia used the Computex stage to change the world.
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY IMAGES
I
t could be said that Computex is the most important technology exhibition of the year. It may not have the scale or flash of CES, the unveiling of flagship smartphones like MWC or all the smart-home innovations of IFA, but Computex is the place where the chipsets and other technology behind all of our best-loved devices finally get to see the light of day. Nvidia – known for GPUs – unveiled some of its new products in Taiwan during Computex 2018. The gaming-laptop market is seeing an upturn, with many people coming to appreciate the raw-power advantage over the everyday laptop. The problem laptops had before was that if you were after better frame rates, improved visual detail or true 4K, a desktop PC would have been your only answer. Now, gorgeous 18 mm-thin laptops boasting up to 70 per cent better gaming and equipped with GeForce GTX 1060, 1070 or 1080 GPUs are a reality thanks to Nvidia’s new design approach: Max-Q. According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Max-Q laptops offer 60 per cent improved performance over the standard PlayStation 4. Making this even more exciting is the fact that Max-Q laptops are designed
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to run at a maximum of 40 dB with a new WhisperMode that makes your laptop quieter when plugged in. MAX-Q was designed with a number of the leading OEMs, so you will be able to get the most advanced laptop-gaming experience from your favourite brands, including ASUS, MSI Alienware, Hewlett- Packard, Gigabyte, and Lenovo. If, like me, you were hoping that Nvidia would be unveiling new GPUs, you’re out of luck. According to Huang, the next generation of GeForce GPUs will be ‘a long time from now.’ To temper the disappointment, Huang showcased the DGX-2 supercomputer Nvidia calls ‘The World’s Largest GPU’. One node provides two petaflops of oomph and a 512 GB buffer rate, has 1,5 TB of system memory and can replace 300 servers. AI is the buzzword in tech. Huang calls AI the automation of automation. To help Nvidia achieve ever more advanced AI
‘AI is the automation of automation,’ says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The company is enjoying growth in this pre-quantum computing world.
capabilities, the company has created Jetson Xavier, according to Huang the most complex SoC (System on a Chip) ever made – the ‘world’s first intelligent machine processor’. It houses nine billion transistors in a 350 mm2 area (on the 12 nm fabrication node), and has a Volta Tensor Core GPU with 512 cores. Huang also announced Nvidia Isaac, the company’s robotics platform powered by Xavier, with the early access devkit available from August 2018 at a cost of US $1 299 – around R17 000. The company also announced it was partnering with the city of Taipei to ‘supercharge’ the city with Nvidia’s AI tech, with a focus on manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and the smart city. There’s one clear takeaway from the Nvidia announcements at Computex: As the world becomes more reliant on technology, more heavy lifting will need to be done by machines, which means more powerful GPUs. This puts Nvidia in a prime position to become the infrastructure of the future, powering most of your devices in one form or another.
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS HOW DUCATI USES DATA
FAST TR AC K
PE R FOR M A NCE Lenovo and Ducati have a mutually beneficial racetrack development agreement that is rocketing each brand to the pinnacle of their respective fields. This is how it works when the rubber hits the road.
B
esides for a 10-times bigger team of race engineers, Formula 1 has a massive data upper hand over its two-wheeled motor-sport cousin. Each car is packing around 150 sensors and can transmit about 2 GB of data per lap, which can extrapolate up to 3 TB of raw data in a full race. Much of that gets flushed out by specific software and algorithms, and the usable volumes settle down at around 200 GB per weekend. It’s not
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a far leap for MotoGP and its 150 GB per race weekend. But gathering data is one thing, processing it is another. In April 2018, before the Gran Premio Motul de la Republica Argentina (second race of the season), Lenovo signed on as a sponsor for Ducati Corse. Later on, the team did a one-two at Mugello and claimed another win at Gran Premi Monster Energy de Catalunya. This is where we meet them, atop the podium and clutching Lenovo hardware. ‘As a racing team we need financial support, but there is a lot of data,’
says Sporting Director Paolo Ciabatti. ‘There is also a lot of work for the engineers and we need fast, reliable computers and servers. More than that we’re also discussing ideas for the future with Lenovo, products we can maybe develop jointly.’ As a team, Ducati employ about 100 people, and 70–80 of those employees are engineers. The development team is split into component task groups focusing on chassis, electronics and engine, and those three main engineering www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: L I N D S E Y S C H U T T E R S , D U C AT I C O R S E
focus areas each come with its own unique hardware demands. ‘We divide the team into two main areas. Those at home who design the bike and those at the track who try to put all of the bike’s race potential on the ground,’ explains General Manager Luigi ‘Gigi’ Dall’lgna. ‘It’s important to exchange information between these two areas in the most efficient way possible. On Monday morning, after the race weekend, the people at home should start working on the problems we found at the track, because those solutions and new parts must be ready for the next event.’ That turn-around time is usually around 15 days (race day to race day) and includes the mammoth task of bike prep on the race weekend. Each race bike is dismantled and rebuilt after every session on a race weekend. Free practice and qualifying, every time the bike goes out on to the track. It’s on the Friday and Saturday that the engineers try and make the bikes as fast as possible under the track circumstances. That’s effectively building a full race-ready steed twice a day for three days. There’s beauty in the symmetry of the work. The engineers describe the process as arriving at two equally fast machines ready for one incredible qualifying lap and then nursing them through the full race distance. ‘This is my real office,’ proclaims Dall’lgna as he waves his Lenovo X1 Tablet around. ‘This contains all the tools and information I need to do my job. Not only on the racetrack, but also in Bologna. I don’t use paper anymore and have data on here that stretches back to probably 2015, and its really important for me to have this kind of instrument to work with.’ The best thing about MotoGP is that technologies developed here take about three to five years to make it on to the street. Under race conditions, however, there isn’t such a lengthy development period. A data link to the engineers in Bologna keeps information current and devices such as the tablet mean the decision makers always have the reference materials at hand when forced to make judgement calls. Gabriele Conti is the team’s software and strategies manager, and heads up development for any software that runs on the bike. ‘Gigi is using the X1 Tablet, like me, that’s connected to the team server. This device is just www.popularmechanics.co.za
a small part of what we need, but an important part. On the bikes there is a data logger that makes about 100 GB of data on a weekend. We have to wait until the bikes come in to download the data, because the telemetry is limited by regulations of MotoGP. ‘It takes about five minutes to download the data then we have to interpret it, discuss with the driver, and change calibrations and upload to the bike. We use the laptops to do these downloads and uploads, and save the collected data on our central server, which is shared with our Bologna headquarters.’
It’s within these specific use cases that there arises the need for specialised products and joint solutions development between Lenovo and Ducati. The race team is also the perfect testing ground for pro-level hardware that Lenovo want to take to market because engineering tests workstations to its limits like no other job on Earth. Ducati rider Jorge Lorenzo blitzed the field in qualifying and went on to a dominant victory on race day in near perfect conditions at Montmelo. It seems the Italian giant has finally woken from its years-long MotoGP championship slumber.
Clockwise from top: A pit walk on qualifying day has engineers busy prepping for that one hot lap. Jorge Lorenzo beams in a small press conference, confident in the speed of his bike on the weekend. Ducati Corse engineers discuss changes.
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HOW YOUR WORLD WORKS SHORT STORIES
THE BACKPACK BUILT TO CARRY THE KITCHEN SINK
The North Face’s new Prophet 100 was designed for – and tested on – snow-capped mountain summits. But every adventurer hauling a few days of supplies down a trail can benefit from the technology that makes the Prophet not just supremely capable, but one of the most comfortable packs available. The backpack is light (2.58 kg), and made from abrasionresistant and ripstop fabrics that will last decades, but North Face wanted a pack that made even the ugliest endeavours easier by focusing on the fit, mobility, and balance, says product manager Alex Goulet. ‘It’s built for the ultimate suffer-fests.’ As in, carrying 60 metres of rope, ice axes, and
a base camp, including the kitchen, into thin alpine air. The 100-litre aluminium-framed pack (±R5 500) and 85-litre model (±R5 200) are the first to use The North Face’s new Dyno Carry System, which lets users tailor fit without stopping or removing the pack. A tab on the back panel adjusts the pack’s torso length and how close the load sits to your body, which is nice for gradient changes. You can also adjust the sideto-side weight distribution by The North Face pulling a buckle on the right tapped into the shoulder, if you loaded the many guides at weight to one side. And a Alpine Ascents International to bearing at the base of the pack test prototypes lets the hip straps pivot up and over three-day down with your stride while trips on Mount Rainier in the US. keeping the weight stabilised.
THERE WILL BE BEER IN SPACE
TURN YOUR IPHONE INTO A PRO-GRADE LIGHT METER
The first low-Earth-orbit hotel, Aurora Station, aims to welcome space tourists by 2022. Though the unbuilt four-guest luxury hotel has countless technical hurdles ahead, one vacation amenity is covered: the beer. Jaron Mitchell, co-founder of Australia’s 4 Pines Brewing, saw the growing interest in space tourism in 2010 and began developing a recipe to satisfy travellers in microgravity. ‘The challenges are carbonation, taste, and pouring,’ says Mitchell. Because there’s no up in microgravity to direct carbonation, a terrestrial beer will separate into large beer-covered bubbles that result in uncomfortable wet burps. And astronauts have reported a dulled sense of taste, so the beer had to impress blunted palates. 4 Pines settled on an amplified Irish-style stout, rich with heavily roasted barley, that still felt and
tasted like great beer with minimal carbonation. Next, 4 Pines partnered with Saber Astronautics to create the first beer bottle for space. ‘With no gravity to pour, beer is stuck in a bottle from surface tension,’ says Jason Held, CEO of Saber Astronautics. Astronauts use squeezable bags and straws to drink, but Saber and 4 Pines wanted to recreate the experience of drinking from a bottle. Taking a technology used in fuel tanks, Saber put a wicking insert in the bottle that pulls the liquid out, and tested it in flights on a reducedgravity aircraft-similar to NASA’s infamous Vomit Comet. Thirsty space travellers press a button on the bottle to open the cap and let the stout flow. Held recommends bringing the bottle up to your mouth but not tipping it back. In low-gravity tests, this sloshed the liquid around the bottle.
When I decided to become a good photographer, the hardest part, after accepting the cost of truly good lenses, has been measuring light. My full-sensor digital-camera body and 55 mm ƒ/1.2 prime lens get adequate exposures on the dreariest days with the automatic settings. But those ‘average’ a picture to mediocrity: Everything is in focus, but nothing stands out. You need a light meter to measure the layering of light. That way, for example, you can add your own backlighting for a more dramatic effect. Decent light meters cost upward of R6 800 and often don’t measure colour temperature, the way a colour looks based on the light. The Lumu Power (±R4 100), however, plugs into any iOS 8+ device to measure flash, ambient exposure, and colour temperature, and determines ideal flash exposure. Just select two of the three critical values (shutter speed, ISO, or aperture) and pop your flash. – Dan Dubno
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P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
The 4 Pines Stout is currently available in Australia. The space-ready Vostok Space Beer Bottle (far right) will go on sale next year for R1 200.
BIG QUESTIONS ɛ GREAT UNKNOWNS ANSWERS YOU CAN’T FIND ON THE INTERNET
How much money is my data worth
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E
when companies like Facebook sell it off? hile Facebook’s spokespeople didn’t reply to our inquiries, we will offer one clarification in their defence: They do not ‘sell off’ data, technically. What they sell is a service to advertisers. Looking to peddle your hemp-rope macramé vests? Facebook will happily take your money and use algorithms to serve your ads up to a carefully curated subset of its users. Those with no taste, perhaps. Or no arms? As for the ‘worth’ of all your data, to derive a (very) crude estimate, one could just take Facebook’s 2018 first-quarter revenue (R160 trillion), divide by the number of active users (1.45 billion), and come up with about R110.34 per quarter, or R441.36 a year. But that isn’t a useful calculation. In fact, it would be well nigh impossible for anyone outside the company to figure out exactly how much an individual’s data was worth, and it might be difficult even for Maestro Zuckerberg himself. That’s because users are not parcelled out individually, but rather as constituents of large populations – tuba players, or owners of diabetic cats. Note, also, that not everyone’s info is equally valuable. But this, of course, is no reflection on you as a person – we’re don’t doubt you’re the pride of your monastic yoga retreat – but merely accounts for the reality that some people are juicier marketing targets than others. Are you a humble subsistence farmer who fashions all his own footwear and ventures beyond his native village only to barter handicrafts for cloudy witblits and used bicycle parts? Yeah, you’re worth, um – let’s just do the maths here … oh, approximately nothing. Thanks for playing.
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On the other hand, suppose that you’re a pipesmoking MBA student living on your refurbished tugboat with a vintage necktie collection, assorted parrots, and enough credit cards to spin roulette wheels blindfolded. Now we’re getting somewhere. ‘If you’re educated or wealthy, people will pay more for you,’ says Rahul Telang, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Security & Privacy Institute. ‘If there are certain life changes going on, like you’re buying a house, or getting married, or getting divorced, or you’ve been sick, all of that probably leads to more money being given to target us.’ Matt Hogan, co-founder of the start-up Datacoup, which pays folks directly for their data (a relatively commendable approach, we’d say, though a little similar to paying people to donate their kidneys), says companies traffic in more than social details. ‘Financial data remains extremely powerful for forecasting,’ he explains. ‘Future consumption, the propensity to make payments or go delinquent, all that stuff.’ Undoubtedly, as data collection keeps getting increasingly personal, the effects on your life may become much more serious than toaster ads that chase you around the internet. Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, says a profile of your data could be purchased by a healthcare plan and used to decide your premiums. Or, if you were applying to a university, they might buy your data to find out if you can afford tuition before deciding to admit you. The real question, then may not even be what your data is worth to others, but rather what it’s worth to you.
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THE TECH PAGE
BY ALEXANDER GEORGE
A FRIENDLY GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL AGE.
Tech Battle Royale The world of consumer technology is full of choices, some of them expensive. Here’s some help with the decision-making.
As an Apple loyalist, I have the annual subscription plan, which gives me the radio stations with human-selected new music that comes with the standard monthly subscription, plus the ability to use Siri to change music hands-free in the car. But if you already have Spotify, stay with it. Most won’t miss the exclusives it lacks, and suggestion algorithms such as Discover Weekly are reliably great.
SPOTIFY
WINNER: DRAW
APPLE MUSIC
Now that Uber has scheduled pickups, an option to add stops and tipping, Taxify doesn’t win for features. It comes down to Taxify being less expensive, better profit sharing for drivers and being generally more likeable. Service on both can be iffy at times, so it comes down to cost and which service you’re used to using. Uber’s trump card is the volume of drivers, and it’s currently more widely available.
UBER
WINNER: UBER
TAXIFY
Both apps offer fairly similar features with small differences helping make one of them the winner of this clash. AccuWeather provides satellite images, two-week forecasts and severe-weather alerts. It lacks a pollen count, though, which the app from The Weather Channel has. AccuWeather is more versatile.
ACCUWEATHER
WINNER: ACCUWEATHER
WEATHER CHANNEL
Bose’s patents mean it’s still the best at noise-cancelling headphones. I wear the last-gen QC 35s every day at my desk, and won’t fly without them. Xqisit’s oE400 active noise-cancelling ’phones are the new upstarts giving Bose a run for its money. The noise cancelling is great and it’s so comfortable, it’s basically a mother’s hug. It also costs less. WINNER: XQISIT
XQISIT
Easy menus and voice search make the Roku the best TV operating system right now. But Apple wins for user interface. Besides prettier menus, you can type your Netflix or Amazon Prime passwords on your iPhone or iPad if it’s nearby, instead of moving a square around the on-screen keyboard.
APPLE TV
WINNER: DRAW
KWÉSE BOX (ROKU)
Chrome’s new built-in ad-blocking is effective, but it still uses too much system memory, which can slow down other apps if you have too many tabs open. I use Safari for daily driving because it blocks cross-site tracking and never crashes or slows down.
SAFARI
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WINNER: SAFARI
CHROME
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P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
BOSE
BY ROY BERENDSOHN
ASK ROY POPULAR MECHANICS SENIOR HOME EDITOR SOLVES YOUR MOST PRESSING PROBLEMS
Why is our gas braai so hard to light?
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
First, find out whether it’s a gas-flow problem or a spark problem. Try to light the gas as you would normally, but instead of pressing the piezo igniter button, try using a long match or a long-reach lighter. If the gas lights and burns properly, you probably have an ignition problem. It could be a worn-out spark module, a loose wire or other connection, a dead battery, corrosion or dirt on the igniter tip, or even cracked porcelain on the igniter element. If the braai doesn’t light using the match, check for low or no gas flow. Your problem could be as simple as a low gas tank. Or it could be worse: gas plumbing clogged by insect nests, burners clogged up by rust or spilled food, a malfunctioning gas regulator, or a tripped excess-flow valve inside the regulator (that disc-shaped thing clamped on the gas hose). This valve can often be troublesome. Designed to prevent the fire risk associated with excessive flow caused by a gas leak, these valves are easily tripped. People do this all the time, accidentally, by opening a burner valve before opening the tank valve. When they then open the tank, the valve interprets the outrush of gas as a leak. This trips the valve, which can be located inside the gas regulator. Fortunately, you can easily reset the valve by shutting the braai down, disconnecting the gas tank,
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opening all the burner valves to drain all the trapped gas, reconnecting the tank, and then going through the normal and correct lighting procedure to get it going.
A neighbour sets off fireworks every Guy Fawkes Day that land in our garden. Should I be worried about possible fires? Well, yes. Every year, fireworks are a source of house fires. I had a close call with this several years ago, when I found a handful of charred leaves in a gutter. Probing deeper into the mess, I found the remains of a bottle rocket. But it could have been worse: Another neighbour found a copper-jacketed .45-calibre bullet lodged in his roof. One option is to go see your neighbour about the problem. You might even leave them with some printouts from the web. Search phrases such as ‘bottle rocket lands on roof, sparking house fire’. There’s no shortage of these. The other editors here tell me that this approach has one small drawback: Apparently it makes you look like a fun-smothering killjoy. Maybe try this instead: As late as possible on the day of festivities, wet down all your yard and garden areas with a sprinkler – water restrictions notwithstanding. Take in any materials such as outdoor cushions and close your patio umbrellas and awnings. Use a hose to soak your firewood pile, if you have one. Finally, clean dry debris like leaves, pine needles, and seed pods out of gutters and off roof valleys and flat roofs. It’s especially easy if you have a leaf blower. Then, all you have to do is try to enjoy the show.
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THINGS COME APART
BY TODD MCLELLAN
GA S GRILL
NUMBER OF PARTS:
415
MODEL:
PRODUCED:
TIME TO DISASSEMBLE:
WEBER GENESIS II LX E-440
PALATINE, ILLINOIS
3 HOURS, 52 MINUTES
No one knows the appeal of a charcoal grill more than a Weber aficionado, but there’s a reason the storied grill-maker also sells gas grills. After a set-up process that amounts to ‘pick up gas refill tank from petrol station’, on a grill like this one, you get more than ten hours of grilling time. No chimney, no charcoals, no debate about the merits of lighter fluid. Sure, you don’t get the smoky charcoal taste. But you still get grill lines, and the Maillard reaction, and standing outside and making conversation with tongs in one hand and a beer in the other. Plus: Have you heard of Flavorizer bars? (See ‘Meat’, right.)
NOTES:
The first thing you do is check that you’ve got enough gas. Inside the grill’s cabinet (6), the gas tank hangs on a spring scale (8). The scale is connected to a gauge (7) on the front of the barbecue; pressing the gauge’s button lights up LEDs to indicate how much fuel is left. (The gauge shows the tank’s weight as a fraction of the 12.5 kg weight of a full tank.) Assuming you’ve got enough, you open the valve and the gas, which is liquid under pressure inside the tank, enters the grill’s hose (4) through the regulator (5), depressurises, and becomes a gas. It then flows through the manifold (13), whose four valves (12) direct the gas to the igniters (14) for each burner. Depressing and turning a burner’s knob (2) activates the igniter, whose spark-plug action ignites the gas, so jets of blue flame emerge from the holes of the burner tube (18). MEAT
Close the lid (1) so that the grilling cavity can heat up. (A thermometer (19) on the lid offers a temperature read-out, so you’ll know how hot it’s getting without having to open it up, which would sacrifice heat.) Once the temperature is where you want it, open the lid. Maybe adjust the burners to create zones of direct heat and
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indirect heat. When you’re ready, you throw down some burgers, or some chicken, or a big slab of marinated tri-tip (steak). As the meat cooks, hot grease drips through the cooking grate (3), where it hits the Flavorizer bars (16). Aside from protecting the burners from drips and helping to keep the temperature in the cookbox (15) even, the bars are engineered with a surface area and slope to vaporise just enough of the grease to add flavour to the food, while funnelling the rest to the grease-trap system. GREASE
Below the burners are heat deflectors (17), V-shaped sheets of metal with ports in them. The heat deflectors radiate heat upward into the grill, complementing the effect of the Flavorizer bars, evening out the overall temperature distribution. But the deflectors also help keep the area below them cool. This is important, because as the grease drips past them, it enters the grease tray (10), a porcelain enamel funnel, and seeps into a disposable drip pan (9), which sits in the catch pan (11). If the heat deflectors fail to keep the grease trap cool and it manages to reach the flash point of the grease pool, it could end even the most laid-back of summer barbecues. – Kevin Dupzyk
S T EP 1
S T EP 2
S T EP 3
The night before you want to eat, stab the tri-tip all over with a fork. Put it in a Ziploc. Pour in a 440 ml bottle of Italian dressing and refrigerate it overnight.
Remove the meat from the fridge before firing up the grill. Turn all burners to high, close the lid, and let the thing get screaming hot.
Sear both sides (5–10 min each), then turn the burners to low and roast until done. Medium rare can take more than 30 min, depending on the size of the steak.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
HEAT D I S A S S E M B LY R E P O R T
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GREAT NEW STUFF FOR THE LOVE OF GADGETS
PRECOG Everyone has been trying to remove physical keyboards from laptops, with some going as far as creating virtual touchpads on their laptops in lieu of physical keys. ASUS has joined the party with their Precog ‘laptop’. Currently a concept device, Precog is able to use AI to help you use the device and complete tasks. Smart enough to detect whether or not there’s a mouse or keyboard around, Precog will be able to supply you with virtual ones if there isn’t. It will also be able to predict where your fingers are over the laptop and adjust its keyboard accordingly. And did we mention that it’s also stylus compatible? Basically, this laptop – which will be available in 2019 – is so smart that it will make you even more worried that the machines will outsmart us all and take over the world.
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Compiled by BRENDON PETERSEN (brendon.petersen@ramsaymedia.co.za)
SYNOLOGY ROUTER Synology’s newest routers (not currently available in South Africa) are more than just routers with mesh network capabilities – they’re also some of the smartest, easiest-to-use routers you’ll find. Thanks to new, yet-to-released software, the routers come with built-in parental controls that give you the ability to monitor and/or limit how much access a person has on your WiFi network. You’ll be able to block access to certain devices or profiles during certain times of the day, which makes it perfect for parents who want to ensure that their kids don’t spend too much time online. You’ll also be able to block specific sites or kinds of content, which means that you won’t have to worry about your kids going on to social media sites over WiFi when they’re actually meant to be doing their homework. This also makes it great for business, because it makes your IT manager’s job that much easier. And if you want to set up a mesh network, the Synology router does all the work for you. All you have to do is plug it in and switch it on. The main Synology router will detect the new router, add it to the network and determine what the best type of connection is – whether it’s 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. Should one of the routers in the mesh network fail, all the routers are reconfigured to best work without the problematic one.
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RING When it comes to smart home security, Ring is the OG smart doorbell/security camera. Like many really cool devices, it’s taken its time getting to South Africa, but it’s finally here. Ring devices, unlike many other smart home cameras, don’t require professional installation. All you need is about 10 minutes, a drill and fully charged batteries for the device itself. When someone approaches your door, or when they ring the doorbell, Ring will start recording and transmit that video to your phone or tablet via the Ring app. That way, you’ll be able to see who is at your door without having to get up and take a peek first. The entire range of Ring products will be available in South Africa soon.
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GREAT NEW STUFF
ROG PHONE Way back in the day, Nokia was the ultimate cool kid when it released the N-Gage, a gaming-focused handset. These days, gaming phones have been making a comeback. In 2017, Razer introduced its gaming handset and now ASUS has unveiled its reply. The ASUS ROG phone comes with an overclockable Snapdragon 845 processor, dual front-facing speakers, an AMOLED display and more ports than you’ll find on any other handset. While it’s easily the most powerful smartphone on the market, whether developers will actually make games to take advantage of all of this power remains to be seen.
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LENOVO LEGION 2018 is the year of the gaming laptop, and Lenovo is not missing out. Legion – the company’s gaming division – is barely a year old, and it is already on course to shake up the gaming world. The all new Y series has all the raw power you need from a gaming laptop without the gaudy, in-your-face design you’ll find on pretty much every other gaming device. Machined aluminium and the choice of either an Iron Gray or Raven Black colour, along with sophisticated, subtle design, means that you’ll be able to use just one laptop for gaming and in the office. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GPUs, up to the latest 8th-gen Intel Core i7 processors, 144 Hz Full HD IPS display and Dolby Atmos audio means that the new Lenovo Legion Y series will be able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
STABILA TECH 700 DA For all those DIY projects, the Stabila Tech 700 DA digital electronic angle finder is the perfect tool. It combines three tools: an angle finder, spirit level and bevel gauge, to make home projects that much easier It has an IP54 rating, automatic switch off after 60 minutes, a lock function, and a digital display. Available in two sizes: 45 cm or 80 cm, it’s powered by AA batteries and comes with a handy bag.
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INNOVATION SUMMIT
Crazy e ghts TION SUMMIT OUR SA INNOVA AGE SELECTION INVENTORS GAR S. FOR YOUR VOTE IS IN AND READY
The SA Innovation Summit is the annual flagship event on South Africa’s innovation calendar and serves as a platform for nurturing, developing and showcasing of African innovation while at the same time facilitating innovation thoughtleadership. It was first created to support and promote innovation and facilitate collaboration within its own ecosystem, bringing together corporates, academics thought leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs and policy makers to help amplify South Africa’s renowned competitive edge, and inspire sustained economic growth across Africa. You can help change one of these entrepreneurs’ lives with your vote. We’ve partnered with the SA Innovation Summit and are offering a POPULAR MECHANICS Reader’s Choice award at Inventors Garage. To cast your vote for one of these projects, head over to popularmechanics.co.za right now!
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Hygizone The idea: A hygienic odour extraction system for use in commercial and residential bathrooms.
How it works: The Hygizone system works by extracting air directly from toilet bowls and urinals. It captures and removes odour causing bacteria before it can escape and contaminate the toilet environment. Hygizone eliminates the need for costly air fresheners that are often overpowering and only serve to mask odour problems, not eliminate them. Hygizone transforms the toilet experience, keeping tenants and customers happy. In commercial applications, Hygizone has been shown to use less energy than the traditional extraction systems that consume large amounts of costly air-conditioned air in an attempt
to dilute harmful toilet odour. Less air wasted equals reduced capital and running costs. The Hygizone urinal system can convert water-flushing urinals to waterless urinals, saving thousands of litres of water per urinal per year.
Who is it for: Commercial and residential projects. It’s currently being pitched at architects, property developers and plumbers. European expansion looms, thanks to an agent who has already secured two pilots at NHS hospitals in the UK. There seems to be little direct competition in the market, with just one cistern producer incorporating analogous technologies into its systems. Opportunities exist within SAPS- and Prasa stations. hygizone.com
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Velobiotics The idea: A patented probiotics delivery mechanism able to carry 1 000 times more probiotics to the gut.
How it works: Unlike conventional probiotics, Velobiotics aren’t destroyed by either gastric acid or exposure to the elements, making this the first ready-to-eat probiotic preparation. The core Velobiotics product is the Probiotics Delivery Mechanism that utilises the inter-polymer matrix to protect good bacterial (probiotics) for shelf-life viability and transit via gastric acid. Traditional encapsulation methods in fortified foods and drug-delivery applications present some difficulties for ‘actives’ such as probiotics, which are typically sensitive to exposure to moisture, solvents, temperature or oxygen. Velobiotics technology utilises encapsulation in supercritical carbon dioxide, which avoids exposure to the elements in the encapsulation process.
Using the technology, the company could so derive a range of probiotics products with blends suitable for various market segments in probiotic formulations that were previously deemed unfavourable. Velobiotics has licensed the technology from the CSIR for SA, US, UK, Australia and Japan.
Who is it for: Women between 21 and 55 looking for a probiotic supplement; athletes leading a healthy lifestyle and in need of probiotic replenishment via mealand dietary supplements; growing and active children aged 3–12 in need of probiotic gut replenishment in either meal- or dietary supplementation; people who are recovering from hospitalisation or acute illness, or are living with chronic illness. Velobiotics already has three brands on the market and competes on-shelf against established players. velobiotics.com
Seebox The idea: A self-paced educational tool teaching electronics principles, problem-solving and abstract thinking to learners and technical workers.
How it works: The solution consists of electronic hardware, Windows and Android apps, educational content in the form of videos, experiments, and math modules, as well as a cloudbased learner-management system. Learners watch simple animated videos to learn about the ideas behind electronics or electricity. They will then use that knowledge to progress through a game. Each level contains practical experiments where Seebox checks the outcome of an experiment and, based on what the learner has achieved, they can proceed to the next level. The aim is for the student to gain real practical understanding, not just theoretical knowledge. The user interface works like familiar smartphone apps. Importantly,
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Seebox tracks the progress and abilities of the learner, and because it does the teaching and evaluation automatically, it does not require a knowledgeable teacher to be present at all.
Who is it for: Schools and colleges for technical workplace-skills development. At school level, the
system solves the problem of finding technical teachers, which is a huge challenge even for elite schools, and more so for far-off rural schools. Seebox also solves the problem of costly instruments required for practical lab work. For corporate skills development, Seebox makes training and upskilling of technical workers more accessible, affordable and scalable. Seebox can also be employed to identify young people with potential, so companies can invest in training the right candidates for their future business needs. The system is currently in use at NWU for technical teacher training, the National Library will roll 300 out to 20 libraries across the country by 2019. Seebox is now also engaging with the Abu Dhabi department of education for a possible trial in the UAE’s school system. seebox.education
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INNOVATION SUMMIT
Kasselot Evanesse The idea: Maternity wear and babygrows that incorporate a patentedtechnology fabric that draws leaked milk away from the skin and then evaporates it before showing through on to the outer layer of the clothing.
How it works: How it works: this
Pivot optimiser
The idea: An IOT monitoring and control system for centre pivots and pumps used in irrigation.
How it works: Pivot optimiser performs local control functions
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Who is it for: Pregnant and nursing women. The special technology is patented, allowing the product to be unique. Should another version appear on the market, they have time to build a brand and capitalise the market so prices remain low. A first-time mother who tries the Evanesse range will be more likely to purchase her second and third bra and babygrows from Kasselot through trust and comfort
(which can keep working with no internet connection) and transmits all measured data to a web server. Settings are entered on the web server. The system saves energy (around 25 per cent) by regulating the pump pressure as the pivot moves up and down hills. Pump efficiency is continuously monitored, allowing wear to be detected and maintenance scheduled. Physically, it consists of a main unit (electronics plus firmware) installed in the pump house with a radio link to remote units installed on the pivot. The remote units are powered by a solar panel and measure the pressure of the pivot using pressure sensors. The system monitors water use and is a tool for farmers to reduce water consumption. SMS alerts are sent to operators.
Who is it for: Farmers with centre pivots who need to reduce water
rather than a new type that may emerge. Global expansion will target the bras at LSM 6–10 and bra accessories at LSM 4–5. Internationally, the competition is available through other leak-proof feeding bras, but the technology used is different from what has been used in this case. kasselot.com
and energy consumption. There are 20 000 centre pivots installed in South Africa. Each one has a pump and motor. The motors range from 22 to 75 kW in size and form a major percentage of the country’s energy consumption. Agriculture is a major water consumer in South Africa. The system will also allow the efficiency of any pump to be monitored, which greatly expands the scope of its application into mining. Two Anglo American pumps rated at 450 kW each are now being monitored by the system. There are a couple of competitor systems, but none are IOT systems, and none achieve the same energy saving. Roll-out is intended in the agriculture- and mining sectors here and elsewhere in southern Africa, as well as in Australia, New Zealand and the US. shockwaveengineering.co.za
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P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E S Y I M A G E S
range is not only beautiful in form, but exquisite in function too. A new patented moisture-flow system that gives you the confidence of absorbent disposables. Light to moderate milk moisture protection with 85–95 per cent moisture management requirements filled. Moisture management is less bulky due to evaporation. The conveyance of milk moisture from the inside to the outside of the Evanesse keeps you dry all the time. Promotes milk moisture away from the garment with your natural body heat assisting the flow. The Evanesse has superb style and extra comfort. The Evanesse can be used for your last trimester of pregnancy and breastfeeding. Helps reduce thrush and nipple cracking with no more embarrassing moments. Wash-and-wear convenience.
iHarvey
The idea: A thermoelectric generator, which produces power by converting heat into electricity.
How it works: It’s like a generator. Powering 3 LED lamps and charging any USB device simultaneously, the iHarvey is extremely usable, while also being economical – running for 29 hours on a single litre of fuel with very few emissions.
Who is it for: Off-grid households in rural and
informal settlements. The iHarvey also fits well with the disaster-relief-, campingand load-shedding-is-aroundthe-corner markets. The competitors are smaller thermoelectric units, as well as similarly powerful solar units. Off Grid Innovations is on a mission to reduce carbon emissions, reduce shack fires and enable households to have clean lighting and charging capabilities, regardless of their economic status. offgridinnovations.co.za
Hey Jude The idea: An easy-to-use virtual personal assistant on your handset, available 24/7 for pretty much anything that needs to be booked, researched, quoted, organised or even transacted.
How it works: Requests are outsourced to a team of highly experienced specialist assistants or ‘Judes’ who pride themselves on delivering cutting-edge services. The combination of a human customer interface combined with the best artificial intelligence (AI) systems means Hey Jude has the operational flexibility to respond swiftly and effectively to customers’ requests. Whether it’s finding that special bottle of wine for your wine-snob friend, booking a table at the hippest eatery in town, sourcing tickets to
BioPay
that sold-out concert in London or organising an urgent flight to Dubai, they promise to do their very best to get it sorted.
Who is it for: The target market is anybody who is time hungry. We live in interesting times where, on the one hand, family time is vital, but, on the flip side of the coin, at what cost? Hey Jude caters for the individual at home as well as the busy exec at the office.
The idea: A cardless/cashless payment solution that uses only your biometric data.
How it works: BioPay gives you the ability to make payments to any type of vendor, in one step – walk into any vendor, with no card/cash/smartphone on you, and make a payment using only your fingerprint and biometric data. Make purchases online with no registration, faster, more convenient, safer, one step always.
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Hey Jude believes it is able to create more time by allowing Judes to get your to-do list sorted. The company identifies Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa as its main competitors, but none of those have human outsourcing. Global presence is already at 22 countries and agents are available in 17 different languages. heyjudeapp.com
Who is it for: Vendors (traditional and online) and their consumers. Every traditional vendor, every online vendor, and every consumer wants this solution – to figure out the most convenient, easiest way to make purchases. Competitors are Zapper and SnapScan, which rely on QR codes that were first developed back in the 1990s. biopay.co.za
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NEED FOR SPEED Teraco is a co-location data centre and therefore is not involved in its clients’ networks. “Every single network and every single subsea cable that lands in South Africa, even Africa, has networks that are built to end up here,” explains Carla Sanderson, Teraco’s head of marketing. “They all pick up content and then they bring their content to us as well, almost like a distribution point.”
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BIG DATA SA
THE TERM ‘DATA CENTRE’ IS USED WITH A VERY GENERAL AND PERHAPS EVEN SUPERFICIAL UNDERSTANDING. DATA CENTRES GENERALLY STORE INFORMATION, BUT WITHOUT TERACO, THERE’D BE NO INTERNET – AND DEFINITELY NOT FAST INTERNET – IN SOUTH AFRICA AND EVEN UP INTO THE REST OF THE CONTINENT BY C L A R E PE TR A M AT T H E S
T
eraco is the only neutral data centre operating in Africa, giving everyone the opportunity to link without the concern of competition. Friends and foes are all hosted here and everyone just gets along. ‘In terms of Teraco, we are what you would see on a European basis,’ explains Michelle McCann, the head of interconnection and peering at Teraco. ‘We’re a pure data-centre company. We look after the space, the cooling, the power, and the physical security, and those are our responsibilities and what we focus on. ‘It’s what we call neutral data centres,’ adds McCann. ‘That’s why all our resources, including our staff are purely focused on data centres. We employ civil engineers, cable engineers, electrical engineers and diesel mechanics.’ Essentially it’s one big IT firm, but without employing any typical IT professionals. ‘Our clients are the IT companies,’ says Carla Sanderson, head of marketing at Teraco. ‘We are a physical property company focused purely on data-centre construction and operation.’ Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t really. A large data centre is an industrial-scale operation that uses as much electricity as a small town, and here in South Africa with the Eskom roller coaster affecting all provinces, is that fair?
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‘Yes, our power source is Eskom. All our power sources and utilities are drawn from Eskom and, to be honest, we don’t have any alternatives for what we do in this country, because there aren’t multiple providers,’ explains Sanderson. ‘Our alternative backup power comes from diesel generators. ‘Sure, a data centre requires a lot of power to power the equipment inside,’ continues Sanderson. ‘But Teraco is good for the country. The minute data-centre requirements are aggregated, and if everyone puts their data requirements together in one centre, the scale means that the power draw actually comes down. That’s what we do – aggregating many, many requirements that would need many, many data centres in Gauteng and the Cape. Teraco actually draws efficiency from its scale.’ Instead of server rooms for individual companies all over the country that draw huge amounts of power, they’re shut down and moved into Teraco. ‘Here, they get the efficiencies of Teraco, they’re not spending as much, and Eskom and the council can focus on servicing that area better,’ says McCann. GUARANTEED POWER ‘If you look at our location,’ says McCann, ‘a question that often arises is: “Why aren’t you in Sandton?”’ It’s all about the power grid. Teraco is built inside the airport grid for the stability of the power. In Cape Town, it’s right opposite SA Breweries, and the Durban site is in the Umhlanga Ridge, near the heart hospital. ‘We’ve chosen locations where there’s huge availability of power. We tend to stay on the outskirts in semi-industrial AUGUST 2018
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BIG DATA SA
SIZE MATTERS: Bredell is at 6 000 m2. Isando is 5 000 m2 and 4 000 m2. Cape Town is 2 000 m2, but that’s being expanded to 3 000 m2. ‘Durban is currently the sleepy hollow of the internet,’ adds Sanderson. ‘It’s sitting at about 1 000 m2. ‘It’s a small market and, generally, the size of data centres is guided by that market. From an Africa perspective, Joburg is the largest GDP area we service. Isando campus handles multiple countries, from Angola down, and all the network operators are in Teraco. ‘We reach as far as the Seychelles and Reunion,’ Sanderson explains. ‘They peer here. They pick up their content here rather than go through the Middle East to Europe. It’s more reliable because it’s a closer route. The performance for the user is also improved, because if you look at the latency for going southern hemisphere to Europe, you’re sitting, best scenario, with latency of 140 milliseconds, whereas here, you’re sitting at around 20 milliseconds – imagine how that changes your internet experience as a user. Your speeds are simply quicker, and inputs much more responsive.’
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areas,’ adds Sanderson. ‘The power supply to these areas is obviously already higher, and it’s a producing part of the city. But we are considered one of the area’s critical infrastructures.’ The fact that the Ekurhuleni council is a Teraco client helps the cause and, in turn, also strengthens their business relationship. Demand in Cape Town is growing. It is now sitting at 3 Mega Volt Amp (MVA) of power supplied to the site, but this is being upgraded to 5 MVA. In Durban, there’s a 2 MVA supply. Unsurprisingly, Joburg offers the best service – Isando is sitting on 16 MVA of power and Bredell is using
24 MVA. There are plans in the pipeline to build a site using 40 MVA of power.
‘WE CAN’T REALLY DISCUSS STORAGE CAPACITY,’ SAYS SANDERSON. ‘BUT I CAN SAY THERE ARE 50 BILLION SOMETHING BYTES OF INFORMATION’ To offer some perspective, the average home draws around 300 kVA per person, per month. That’s 0.3 MVA
per person per month. ‘And we’re still looking at drawing off of Eskom,’ says Sanderson. ‘The cost of alternate energy sources (like solar) is incredibly high and we’re a commercial data centre. Our clients pay for property and power, and it’s not commercially viable yet to charge that premium for a clean source of energy. Also, the space required to produce the solar power for Teraco is scary – it’s in the tens of thousands of rugby fields in size.’ The relationships between Teraco and local councils are key. Teraco is seen as a key infrastructure point, because it’s the hub of the internet for
WHAT IS PEERING Peering is the ability for a network operator, such as Internet Solutions, to interconnect with a content owner such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MultiChoice or Amazon. ‘It’s literally the cable connection between each other,’ says McCann. ‘The process of me, as the user – called an eyeball – who’s able to route to a content owner, collect the content and come back again.’ Thus, the process of peering is the data transaction between a content owner and a network operator. Because of the magnitude of network operators and content operators in the data centre, Teraco is what is known as critical infrastructure.
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P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E S Y I M A G E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N : I K AT O D / F R E E P I K
ABOVE LEFT: Carla Sanderson ABOVE RIGHT: Michelle McCann
Africa. ‘The huge amount of peering and interconnection that happens among our eco systems is what drives your Netflix, your Google and your Facebook,’ explains McCann. All that hosting means Teraco is a prime target for malicious attacks. ‘In terms of cyber attacks, we don’t get involved,’ says McCann. ‘Essentially, the internet networks connect here and if an attack happens, it hits them first so they can hold that back before it even hits the enterprises. It’s not our thing to deal with.’
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THIS IS NAPAFRICA From an African point of view, Teraco is in the right place at the right time. ‘We’re the most basic layer, but also the most key,’ says Sanderson. ‘We provide something simple, but it’s crucial to have us. Our clients do the exciting stuff and we get excited about what they do. We enable what they do. For us, it’s really just a case of keeping the lights on all the time and also keeping everything safe – we’re the dependable part. We’re the boring bit, but we’re also pretty important.’
‘NAPAfrica is the most exciting thing on the internet,’ says Sanderson. NAPAfrica is a neutral, layer 2 internet exchange (IX) point, located within Teraco. Instead of costly multiple direct links to different providers, a single peering point allows multiple networks and internet service providers (ISPs) to interconnect using an exchange environment. You bring your content and that is distributed to everybody connected. If you want to pick up content, you go there, choose the content, and take it back. ‘The difference,’ McCann says, ‘is we’re neutral; we don’t charge for that. Our core focus is space, power, cooling, security and (as a value-added service), we give everyone access to NAPAfrica. ‘So it helps with the distribution strategy from a content perspective. From a network perspective, it reduces costs and improves the service to the end user. ‘NAPAfrica has been so successful and is the largest exchange on the continent. Right now, there are 305 networks connected on to the exchange, doing 300 gigs of peering traffic.’ On the interconnection side, Teraco runs more than 12 000 interconnects between clients, growing at about 300 physical cables every month, while NAPAfrica has become the eighth-largest internet exchange in the Asia Middle East Africa (AMEA) region in a very short space of time.
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HOME NETWORKING
E M HO
, G N I K R O W NET
T U B E AN EY D A LY 18 H EX 20 ECHNICAL T U P COM E LESS T ER. HERE DS. N H M ON T D CONSU P TRE O T E E MIND ME OF TH O ARE S
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L P M I S
D E I F I L
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HOME NETWORKING
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY IMAGES
GET MESHING The Synology MR2200ac mesh router is equipped with Qualcomm IPQ4019 quadcore CPU and tri-band WiFi, enabling you to expand your WiFi coverage by way of flexible deployment. Only one platform – SRM – can then be used to manage all of your WiFi connections and devices. Additionally, both settings and remote management can be operated through either a web interface or a dedicated mobile app called DS router. SRM 1.2 comes with more granular configurations than before, including user profile creation, detailed traffic management, advanced web filters, and a number of white-listing features. With the integration of third-party databases such as Google Safe Browsing and DNS/IP threat intelligence, home users and IT admins alike can enjoy a hassle-free, but still powerful network management experience within this year. Mesh routers make for a much better WiFi solution than stand-alone routers, because they basically create a system of multiple, connected WiFi stations, which work together to cover your home or office with a wireless connection. That means no more dead spots or having to buy WiFi extenders. The great thing about Synology’s mesh router software is that it’ll automatically detect other routers – whether Synology products or not – and set up the mesh network for you. And should one of the routers in your mesh network fail, the software will attempt to reconfigure the whole network to compensate for the failed router. GOING VIRTUAL The only non-consumer trend for 2018 is business-grade seamless backups and virtual machine management. Synology’s Active Backup for Business brings with it complete protection for various workloads from PCs, Windows and Linux servers, and virtual machines. This product was geared directly at IT managers – Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology will only back up modified blocks, not everything every time, and global deduplication finds and deletes duplicated files. These methods enhance backup efficiency and reduce unnecessary storage consumption. ‘More and more organisations and companies are operating across physical, virtual, and cloud platforms. This phenomenon presents a tremendous challenge to IT departments for ensuring the safety of the growing data in this cross-platform 44
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environment.’ said Jia-Yu Liu, senior manager of the Cloud and Backup division at Synology Inc. ‘To tackle this problem, Synology provides a new, all-in-one solution that closely integrates software and hardware for businesses of varying scale.’ Some of the key features of Active Backup include PC and server protection for image-based backups to protect your Windows PC or Windows server workloads; virtual machine protection by just using VMware vSphere info; and running on VMM, giving you the ability to create the same IT environment as the product site and serve as a temporary Disaster Recovery solution, export/import objects and an upgrade testing environment. VMM gives you the ability to run virtual machines in a cluster infrastructure with up to seven Synology NAS (Network-attached storage) devices. Thanks to its flexible scalability and a live migration tool, VMM can optimise load balancing and resource allocation. The new VMM Pro supports schedulable backup and replication of virtual machines to another Synology NAS, which serves to safeguard your digital business assets. GOING LIVE If you have been thinking about setting up a smart home security camera system, but you’re still uncertain as to which system to get, then this is for you. LiveCam, a new application in Surveillance Station 8.2, can turn your spare smartphone into an IP camera. All you need is to download the applications and utilities, which can be found in the upgraded Application Center, set up your spare/old phones and place them around your home or office as you need them. NO-FUSS NAS After going through over 71 000 different network-attached storage (NAS) units in a gruelling eightmonth-long beta programme, Synology settled on one that would be launched as the DSM 6.2. It proved more reliable, efficient www.popularmechanics.co.za
and secure than any NAS that has come before it and supports the new Advanced LUN (logical unit number protocol, which increases sequential writing performance by 46 per cent. This, in turn, enables lightning-fast snapshots and instantaneous recovery. This set-up is combined with the revamped Synology High Availability (SHA) 2.0 technology, which significantly cuts initial cluster set-up time, as well as brand-new system overview and resource monitoring that allows admins far greater control over passive and active servers. These advancements are also built into the full suite of new NAS models – DS1019+, DS2419+, DS619 slim, and 1U XS – to satisfy a wide range of user needs and deployment configurations. This approach should decrease service downtime across the board. ‘Most modern-day companies compete based on the speed at which they generate, process, and use data to drive innovations,’ Lu continued. ‘By integrating Intel technology, we are now putting a compact powerhouse in every SMB. It will allow them to take advantage of all that untapped throughput to give their company that extra edge.’ One of our favourite new Synology NAS devices shown was the DiskStation DS1618+, a 6-bay NAS that features the Intel Atom C3538. It’s perfect for technology enthusiasts, home users and smallto medium-sized businesses. It is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom processor C3538 and 4 GB DDR4 non-ECC SODIMM, which can be expanded up to 32 GB in ECC SODIMMs. The storage capacity can be upgraded to 192 TB when connected to two further DX517 expansion units, providing fastgrowing companies a data-storage solution that can easily scale with their business. LEFT: Synology showed its wares in a private installation, away from the madding crowds of the Computex show floor. We were one of the select outlets to get hands on with the new tech and you can see it on our YouTube channel.
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With Synology’s M2D17 PCIe adapter card, DS1618+ can house dual M.2 SATA SSD, taking advantage of the SSD cache to boost maximum throughput and reduce the I/O latency. By alternatively installing a network interface card via the PCIe slot, DS1618+ supports up to two 10GbE ports to reach a maximum throughput of 1 551 MBps reading and 586 MBps writing. ‘Small- to medium-sized businesses need powerful, secure and scalable storage solutions to efficiently manage growing levels of digital content,’ said Dan Artusi, the Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Connected Home Division. ‘Through our collaboration with Synology, their DiskStation NAS products based on the Intel Atom processor C series have the performance and configurable high-speed I/O to help businesses quickly store and manage their most critical data.’ SMART MEDIA MANAGEMENT Moving away from pure tech hardware, Synology also has great entertainment solutions for home users. Video Station gives you the ability to manage and watch all the movies, series and videos stored on your Synology NAS. What makes it great is that it is able to stream all of this to a variety of devices including your PC or laptop, smart TV, smartphone and tablet, as well as a range of set-top boxes such as Apple TV. Moments is Synology’s picture-storage solution. You can think of it as its version of Google Photos. Moments provides the same functionality to Synology product owners, also without having to subscribe to, and pay for, an image-storage service. You’ll be able to sort and search for your images via place, person or subject, and you’ll be able to share them with friends or family any time you want. And there’s something similar to handle your massive music collection. Audio Station – and its app, DS audio – give you the ability to manage your music library, listen to online radio and create and share personal playlists with friends, no matter where you are. What makes it even better is that you can not only stream music to various devices, but also stream it in the hi-def FLAC or DSD formats. The DS audio app works on Android and iOS. Overall, Synology is a company that provides an entire ecosystem of smart solutions for your home or business. It leverages its knowledge to help you scale up or down without having to sacrifice quality or expertise. AUGUST 2018
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LAR U C A T C SPE MOVIE STARS, IG B . IG B S O O D G O E E FFE C T S . T H I S W Y L L O H R ISUAL E AR , EVERY Y ETS AND HUGE V RE SPECTACUL A O G M ES BIG BUD OLOGY IS EHIND THE SCEN N H C E T YE AR’S IN 2018. WE NT B E E D W A . R M E IS TH A N E V W MAGIC O H E E S TO 46
AUGUST 2018
www.popularmechanics.co.za
MOVIE SECRETS
THE
M O VIE
JURASSIC WORLD : FALLEN KINGDOM
BY
ANTHONY SIMONAITIS, pyrotechnics supervisor
THE PLOT
After a volcano destroys their island, the dinosaurs are brought to a sanctuary in the US, where, instead of being protected, they are sold off to the highest bidders. The bad guys then genetically modify an even more ferocious dinosaur. It escapes. THE SCENE
As the characters run from a volcanic eruption, blobs of lava slam into the ground around them, throwing up dirt and setting fires.
ALL THE LAVA and debris flying through the air was CGI, but the visual-effects people needed a practical effect when it came to the blobs splattering when they hit the ground. Wherever the lava interacted with the terrain, they also needed us to create ribbon fires that would be shown burning the vegetation, with smoke rising off of them. For the lava bombs, all our charges were made of something called detonating cord, a small-diameter cord filled with explosive powder. We spool out the length we need and wrap it into a flat disc we call a Frisbee. That goes into a heavy steel tray that we can set on the ground and conceal. We put material in the tray that will blow into the air and look like whatever the indigenous dirt is. The goal here was to create a simulation of these hard chunks of lava hitting the ground and kicking up dirt. We wanted it to look like the dirt was being thrown out to the sides, as if some object was splashing into a mud puddle. So we put it
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MOVIE SECRETS
A photo of a shell-shocked World War I soldier was inspiration for the Indoraptor’s eyes.
on top in the middle, then covered that with a layer of mulch, thicker around the edges. Then, when the charge blows, since the sand particles are small and light in colour, you don’t really see them, and they hold down the explosive energy in the middle, forcing the mulch out the sides. To create the fire lines that the burning blobs of lava left behind, we used LP gas. The gas runs up through a hose that goes to a pipe that has slots cut into it, just like a burner on your stove. Probably 1 km of slotted pipe for the burners, 1 km of pipe to get the gas up to the burners, and then 300 m of 5 cm hose that connects the gas to the burner system. We cut it, threaded it, and slotted it. It took us weeks and weeks and weeks. And the logistics of getting some of it up into those jungle roads was quite a challenge. We usually used cans of chafing-dish fuel as pilot lights, but we also had a mixture of biofuel and sawdust that doesn’t contaminate the soil, and burns away clean. Then there’s the small matter of safety. We put additional pilot lights on the downhill side of the whole system. LP gas is heavier than air, and the crew is all at the bottom of the hill. So if we had a leak, and the leak didn’t get ignited and started rushing down the hill, you could have a giant cloud of gas enveloping the crew and finding a source of ignition. And that would be a disaster. 48
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HOW TO MAKE A
BY
DAVID VICKERY, VFX supervisor
NEAL SCANLAN AND I started creating the Indoraptor (above) in August 2016, with the creature concept artist, Jama Jurabaev, and the director, JA Bayona. JA knew what size he wanted the Indo to be. He wanted it to be black, with oily snakeskin, so that it felt like a deadly shadow. Early on in production, he showed us a picture of a shell-shocked soldier during World War I, this haunting image of a man with the craziest eyes you’d ever seen. JA wanted those eyes on the Indo. We got concepts from Jama that JA would tweak. And we used those to create a detailed study of the head. That’s when we had Steven Spielberg come in and approve it. From there, Neal and his team added some details and created a full-scale arm, leg, head and shoulders. We used those for up-close shots with the performers. We also created a large foam-sculpted version. Pieces of paper were laid over a 3D-printed scaled version, then peeled off and used like a dressmaker’s
pattern. The pattern pieces were transposed to a piece of flexible high-density foam, and were then cut out and assembled. At Industrial Light & Magic, we also started animation testing. We used a 3D model to render the dinosaur’s skeleton and musculature and see how it would actually move. We wanted it to walk like a raptor, on its hind legs, but also to get down on all fours like a big cat. But when we made him walk like that in the renderings, we noticed that his legs would collide with his elbows. We had to elongate the proportion of his body from hip to shoulders and shorten the arms slightly. When it came time to shoot, we wanted to use as much practical animatronics as we could. The Indo gets so close to people. We really wanted that reaction from the actors. Once we got into post, however, we ended up replacing the Indo scenes with CGI. It let us get those special details, such as the texture and colour of his irises. The cheeks blowing in and out or the throat creasing as he swallows. He has a lot of damage and scarring on his body, as if he’s been mistreated. Very rangy. And very muscly. JA thought of him as a malnourished street dog. We even gave the Indo crazy synaptic twitches, so his muscles and skin would twitch like a horse’s. www.popularmechanics.co.za
THE
M O VIE
SK YSCRAPER
BY
COLIN ANDERSON, camera operator THE PLOT
THE SCENE
An FBI agent turned security consultant (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) has to protect the world’s tallest building – plus save his family and clear his name – when a terrorist group frames him for setting the building on fire.
Johnson flees down a stairwell before retreating back up the stairs and out the window. All while a camera trails him and tries not to get in the way.
THE STEADICAM RIG that I wear is connected by a mechanical arm to a harness on your body. It weighs about 27 kg. The arm has a whole bunch of springs in it that act like shock absorbers, so you get smooth shots even if you’re running or going up and down stairs. Steadicam shots are often what we call a ‘oner’, where the entire shot is Steadicam – there’s no cutting to other cameras. For this scene, I was about one metre away from Dwayne the entire time. The shot lasts 90 seconds, and it took half a day to get it.
4
1 3 2
1. The camera (and cameraman) follow Johnson out the door and into the hallway, while filming over Johnson’s shoulder. 2. When the bad guys shoot at Johnson, he turns and runs back to his apartment – toward the camera. 3. In order to clear the hall without stopping the shot, Anderson needs to get out of the way. When he gets near the apartment door, two men pull back a section of wall that’s been built on casters and five-foot rails. Anderson steps into the cavity just as Johnson runs by. To mask the cut-out, the set painter painted strips of tape the same colour as the walls and put them over the seams where the wall pulls back. When the wall is pulled away, the tape stays attached to the non-moving part of the wall, and then when it’s slid back into place, the tape remains to cover the seam. 4. Anderson pans around with Johnson as he runs by, then follows him into the apartment. The wall rolls back into place just in time for Anderson to film Johnson closing the door from inside his apartment.
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Neve Campbell and Dwayne Johnson.
HOW TO LIGHT A FIRE BY ROBERT ELSWIT, director of photography Everything in the film takes place in a building that exists only on a computer. For a fight scene near the end of the movie, the flames would be added in post-production, but we had to light the scene so that it looks like it takes place with a huge fire burning around it. Fire has a very specific colour temperature. If it’s a big fire, it’s lower than your light bulbs. It’s much redder. So we measured the colour temperature of fire with a meter. Then, with gel packs in front of a tungsten light, you can very accurately recreate the colour of fire. We hooked our lights up to boxes that vary the voltage at high intervals, so they appear to flicker. As many as 15 to 20 of these units created the effect that the building above the actors – which doesn’t exist – was on fire.
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A PYROTECHNICAL GUIDE TO E XPLOSIVE FUELS METHANE
Best for indoor fire effects, since it burns clean and doesn’t make fumes or much smoke. PRO PA N E
Makes lots of black smoke and soot – good for outdoor fires. PROPYLENE
Makes even more black smoke than propane, and red flames. DY N A M I T E
Creates some high-velocity explosions, and it’s not too smoky. The problem is shipping: In the US, you basically have to hire a special truck to move one case at a time. D E T O N AT I N G CORD
Similar uses as for dynamite, and easy to ship in the US. B L ACK POWDER
Makes lots of smoke, and lower velocity than dynamite. According to Anthony Simonaitis, pyrotechnics supervisor for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, ‘You could still be hurt by it, but it won’t shoot a pebble through your head.’
www.popularmechanics.co.za
MOVIE SECRETS
The tank used for surface scenes was 40 m wide and one to 3 metres deep.
THE
THE
M O VIE
MEG
HOW TO BUILD A
BY
LORENZO DI BONAVENTURA, producer THE PLOT
A prehistoric monster shark called a megalodon, thought to be extinct, attacks a research vessel. Then everyone else. Jason Statham has to kill it and save the world. THE SCENE
Nearly all of them.
A trench in the middle of the tank provided room for equipment for stunts.
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WE PLANNED TO shoot a fair amount of underwater live-action sequences in the ocean near New Zealand. We did our research and picked a time of year when the water was always clear. Of course the water wasn’t clear, and the two weeks we planned for shooting in the ocean were compressed into one day. So we built our own ocean. We built two water tanks. One was for surface scenes. It was shallow, with depths of up to three metres and built like a trapezoid. One end was built like an infinity pool, so CGI could be used to extend the water. A trench in the middle can be rigged up with equipment for stunts – like for, say, a scene in which a boat gets overturned by an enormous shark. The other tank was 57 metres around and five metres deep. We used it for the underwater scenes. Unlike in the ocean, where you have to figure out how to light and shoot at depth, in a tank you can control the conditions. The real limitation is that you can’t pull back to a wide shot in a tank. But since you’re already using CGI to mask the tank itself, you can set the scene exactly as you want it. The tanks took 12 weeks to build. AUGUST 2018
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BY
MARC WOLFF, aerial coordinator THE PLOT
Ethan Hunt has to save the world. This time, it’s from the threat of nuclear terrorism. THE SCENE
The bad guy (Henry Cavill) chases the good guy (Tom Cruise) in helicopters through a narrow canyon. To escape, Cruise dives his chopper over the edge of a cliff in a tight, nearly vertical, spiral.
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TOM STARTED TRAINING to fly helicopters years ago. In several of the films I’ve worked with him on, he’d always be going to location and flying as much as he could. For this movie, though, we needed to give him very specific flight training. I taught him close-formation flying, and then we had Airbus’s chief helicopter instructor work with him. To practise flying through the narrow canyon, where his blades would be five to six metres from the canyon walls, he flew around a racetrack. He could weave and play around, and if he got it wrong, he’d just stray off track. We gave him distractions – emergencies and mechanical problems – so he could build up the responses he’d need in a live situation. When we flew in formation, we would purposefully put him in turbulence so that he could feel what it was like to lose control of the aircraft. When you do a big dive like this in a helicopter, the risk is that the rotor speed goes too high. A governor automatically keeps the blade speed within 30 to 40 rpm of the 390-rpm average. In a dive, it gets confused. It feels the airspeed increase, and instructs the blades to move more quickly, even though they don’t need to. That
could damage the blades and the devices that control them, or throw a blade. The other danger is an engine stall, when the blades spin on their own until they lose momentum. It’s called freewheeling. We had Tom practise landing with freewheeling blades. Then we had him practise the dive in free airspace with an instructor pilot. Once we all agreed that the margins were safe, the instructor got out and Tom went for it. During filming, there were three helicopters in the canyon, including Tom’s. The command and control helicopters – with the director and other crew – were above that, and another was even higher. Protocol requires each helicopter to be one rotor disc apart, or about 12 metres. The rotor disc is the saucer shape the blades make when they spin. One disc’s distance gives you leeway if you get too close or the lead aircraft changes its speed unexpectedly or you get into some turbulence. That was what we were dealing with. Tom, however, also had to act. And direct: Most of the cameras for the scene are fixed to his helicopter in different positions. He has to imagine the background those cameras are seeing. So he’s flying, communicating with the crew, acting, as well as operating the camera. www.popularmechanics.co.za
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Always Visible
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With proven medical treatments for ageing, brain disease, insufficient sleep, and low productivity years, (or even decades) away, some people consider self-experimentation to be the fastest route to a healthier, happier, longer life. They call it
BIOHACKING. But does it work? For two months, I hacked myself to find out. My goal was to separate the science from the BS. If I ended up stronger, smarter, faster, healthier, calmer, more creative, and more productive, that would be okay, too.
By JACQUELINE DETWILER
Cryotherapy tanks blast -168°C nitrogen gas on your lower torso in an attempt to reduce inflammation, relieve depression, and burn calories.
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Photography DAVID BRANDON GEETING
AUGUST 2018
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BIOHACKING
CRYOTHERAPY WHAT IS IT?
Cooling the body with nitrogen WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Reduce inflammation HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
R1 200 per session WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?
Standing on your porch in a blizzard
hand my robe to Michael Margulies, one earnestfaced half of the husbandand-wife team that owns NYC Cryo, a black, lowceilinged basement gym in New York City, and I am practically naked inside an eight-foot-tall silver cylinder. Fog seeps over the top as though it’s been pumped in from a stage performance of Macbeth. I start marching in place in my thick black crew socks and rub my nubby white gloves together. Margulies tells me not to be nervous, but I am. Three years ago, a technician died during an after-hours solo session at the cryotherapy spa in Las Vegas where she worked. Authorities believe that the platform was set too low, so she inhaled too much oxygen-poor air, then passed out and suffocated inside the treatment unit. With how much Margulies is talking, it’s almost as though he’s the one who’s nervous. ‘The benefits of cryotherapy are that it reduces inflammation, helps
AN ABBREVIATED OF BIOHACKING
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sports recovery, and helps you to get deeper sleep by increasing REM,’ he says. ‘It helps with depression, and it burns between 400 and 800 calories a session.’ I’m not totally sure that last bit is even possible, but the treatment does sound intriguing. It’s part of a slate of cutting-edge medical treatments called biohacks that promise various radical improvements in health, happiness, productivity, and longevity and have been sweeping the internet healthscape lately. Cryotherapy, in particular, has been employed in Japan to treat rheumatoid arthritis since the 1970s. It’s like putting ice on a sprained ankle, only much more expensive – and less scientifically proven. I plant my hands on the lip of the chamber, like a meerkat about to be stewed in a cauldron. Margulies turns a knob and a -168°C mist of nitrogen gas blasts on to my lower torso. It is more surprising than awful. I up my marching speed. My skin gets rosy. Margulies gives me periodic updates. ‘One minute,’ he says. ‘Two minutes. Just thirty seconds left now.’ Margulies has been training people since 1994. He’s seen his clients have more trouble recovering from injuries as they age. A number of years ago, he tried out cryotherapy for the first time after finding out he needed a hip replacement. ‘It helped me go to work every day while I was waiting for surgery, and it helped me recover after,’ he explains. Margulies was so convinced of the benefits that he put down R750 000 to purchase his own chamber, charging R1 200 a pop for three-minute treatments. Back in my robe, my skin is numb from the ribs down, but I can feel the
FLOAT TANKS WHAT IS IT?
Sensory deprivation meditation WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Reduce stress, improve sleep HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
R700 to R1 750 WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?
More or less absolutely nothing
blood seeping back, as if I’m sitting in front of a fire after a long day spent playing around in the snow. I can’t tell if it’s the treatment or the relief of having survived, but I feel incredible – glowy, clear-headed, and happy. ‘You’re smiling,’ Margulies says. ‘Everyone always smiles when they come out.’ The feeling ends up lasting the whole thirty-minute walk back to my office. Of course, that could have been the pleasant spring day. Or the contagious effect of the smile. It might have been the exercise of walking. But also: It might have worked. echnically, any treatment that has the potential to improve the body should count as biohacking. Such as yoga, for example. Or cutting back on Oreos. But after a few weeks of reading blogs and listening to podcasts, I learned that legitimate biohacks typically tend to fit within
c. 300
1713
1932–33
1964
2004
Ancient Olympic athletes attempt to boost testosterone by eating sheep testicles.
Pierre Jartoux, a Jesuit missionary in China, reports increased energy and improved appetite after eating ginseng, kicking off the international ginseng trade.
US engineer Buckminster Fuller tests his ‘Dymaxion’ sleep schedule: napping every six hours for a total of two hours’ sleep per day. He ultimately stopped because his co-workers refused to adapt to his habit.
Romanian chemist Corneliu E Giurgea synthesises the first ‘nootropic’, or cognitiveenhancement drug, piracetam.
British artist Neil Harbisson, born colour blind, has an antenna-like sensor implanted in his head. The sensor translates visible wavelengths into vibrations, allowing him to ‘hear’ colour.
a few themes: temperature-related interventions, drugs and supplements, diets, and treatments meant to boost the effects of meditation. Float tanks, such as the one I’m now bobbing around in at Infinity Float in New York City, would belong in that last category. The womb-like pod, warm and shallow, and with no discernible distinction between the water and the air above it, is supposed to help me achieve the deeper state of mindfulness I’d normally have to meditate for weeks or months to reach. Here’s a non-exhaustive index of the claimed benefits associated with mindfulness: improved attention span, sleep quality, and memory; decreased anxiety and depression; reductions in inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6; increased neuroplasticity; and less painful pain. In the tank, I’m so buoyant I actually can’t push my body down all the way to the bottom. My muscles freak out
SPECIALISED NUTRITION WHAT IS IT?
Restrictive, focused dieting WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Reduce weight, improve health HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
Anywhere from free to R5 600 and up. IS IT SAFE?
It depends. Ask your doctor.
trying to make sense of their lack of sensory input. My mind becomes a dirigible. Am I seasick? Am I moving? I am a glacier. A planet. There are little LED star lights against the ceiling of my pod. Weightless death scenes from Gravity pop into my mind. That movie was stressful. Stop it. Concentrate. There is nothing to pay attention to. Nothing at all to… And then the music comes on to tell me it’s time to go. It’s been forty-five minutes. I rinse off the salt water and descend, like a submarine, out into the street. Did it work? Let’s just say that
bullet shifts, from carbs to protein to fat to avocados to kale, and everyone seems to continue feeling unhealthy, no matter what. ‘I think my story is not uncommon: way too much work, too much flying, probably too much booze, not enough sleep, not enough exercise – things we know we should be doing and just aren’t getting done,’ says Neil Grimmer, who founded a personalised nutrition start-up called Habit. For somewhere from R4 200 to R6 000, Habit will test your DNA, fasting blood sugar, and reaction to a high- calorie ‘challenge shake’, then tell you exactly what
I’ve never felt this mellow after yoga. A man roughly bumps me on the train. ‘Hmm?’ I say, dreamily.
to eat to become a healthier, better, and slimmer version of yourself. When I tried Habit, I lanced my fingers one at a time, squeezing my forearm to get enough blood to drip over three greedily absorbent tests. I swabbed my cheeks for DNA. The 950-calorie shake made me want to simultaneously puke, die, and punch myself in the face. There was a lot of groaning. The test results would take two to four weeks to arrive, which gave me just interim enough time to try an exceptionally popular one-size-fitsall eating plan: the ketogenic diet. Developed in the 1920s to control seizures in children, keto involves getting roughly 70 per cent of your
iet accounts for a very important part of any biohacker’s arsenal, and not in the 1980s way, in which the right one will make you look good in a weird highwaisted bikini. A biohacker’s diet has a superior calling: It should improve brain function, heal the gut, prevent cancer and autoimmune diseases, improve sleep, and, ideally, also make you look good in a weird high-waisted bikini. But it’s difficult to know what to munch to make any of this happen. Every five years, the nutritional magic
Dec 2010
June 2014
Aug 2017
Oct 2017
Feb 2018
April 2018
Dave Asprey posts a recipe on his blog for a mixture of coffee, butter and oil, he claims aids weight loss and boosts mental acuity, this becomes Bulletproof Coffee.
Phil Kennedy flies to Belize and pays R420 000 to have a set of electrodes implanted in his brain, in an attempt to build a brain– computer interface. Results are mixed.
Australian Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma MeowMeow is fined for traveling without a valid train ticket. He had implanted the chip from the ticket in his own hand instead.
Josiah Zayner, CEO of biohackingpromotion start-up The Odin, publicly injects himself with CRISPR-edited DNA in an attempt to modify his genes and get bigger muscles.
Aaron Traywick, CEO of genetherapy-testing start-up company Ascendance Biomedical, injects himself with an untested herpes treatment – live on stage.
Traywick is found dead in a sensory deprivation tank of unrelated causes.
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BIOHACKING calories from fat, with 25 per cent from protein and less than 5 per cent from carbohydrates. The principle is to mimic starvation to engender positive changes in brain chemistry – after a few days on keto, the body depletes its stores of its preferred fuel, carbs, and shifts its attention to burning up fat reserves. ‘Your liver breaks fat down into ketone bodies, and ketone bodies can pass through the blood–brain barrier and be used as an alternate fuel source for the brain,’ explains Dr Mackenzie Cervenka, director of Johns Hopkins Adult Epilepsy Diet Center, who has studied how modified keto can combat seizures and an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma multiforme. For some reason, burning ketones for energy appears to protect the brain in ways that your normal metabolism doesn’t. ‘It’s also been shown to be anti-inflammatory, and it can decrease free-radical production,’ Cervenka says. These benefits may translate to other brain diseases,
including Alzheimer’s, which is why people are so excited about it. Here’s where keto gets tough: As little few extra carbs a day, even from vegetables, can knock you back out of ketosis. I tracked my nutrient profile through an app, Keto Diet Tracker, and ate so many avocados and macadamia nuts, Hawaii’s agriculture board should send me on a free trip. I used pee-stripand finger-prick tests to check ketone levels in my blood and my urine. For someone who experiences a hundred seizures a day, like some of Cervenka’s patients, this may be worth it (though she says her lab has a 50 per cent sixmonth attrition rate, even among its epilepsy patients). But for a normally healthy person, it was awful. If I can explain the ketogenic diet in one meal, let it be the time I tried to prepare a smoothie out of coconut milk, nut butter, cacao powder, and half an avocado. It came out as bitter as baker’s chocolate, but with a weird consistency, as if a chocolate shake had farted into a cup of hair mousse. Also, AN AVERAGE DAY ON THE
B RE E A KF F AS ST B A fried egg, a whole avocado, smoked salmon or bacon; or a keto ‘smoothie’ (see right)
S S NA AC K Coffee with butter and coconut oil or macadamia nuts
NCH LUN Spinach salad with olive oil, sunflower seeds and feta
D D INN N ER R Broccoli-chicken casserole made with cauliflower rice, a ton of cream, and Parmesan cheese on top
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Recipe TH H E K E TO O G EN N IC C ‘S S MO O OT T H IE E’ 1 tbsp cacao powder 2 tbsp organic seedand-nut butter ½ can coconut milk ½ avocado ice Blend until smooth.
INTERMITTENT FASTING WHAT IS IT?
Temporarily restricting food WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Reduce weight, improve health AM I GOING TO BE HUNGRY ALL THE TIME?
Yes IS IT SAFE?
Depends on your history. Ask your doctor.
it was grey. I ate it out of a coffee mug with a spoon, forcing down each bite as if I were a toddler and this whole excuse for an article really ought to be banned by the Geneva Conventions. Once I managed to confirm ketosis, I still felt strange as heck. As promised, I was preternaturally calm, but in a bad way. It was impossible to do anything at all. I tried to play a dice game and confused the number 50 with 500. My hands tingled when I went for a run. My mouth tasted like burnt corn nuts. Keto adherents refer to the diet’s unpleasant induction period as the ‘keto flu.’ To get through it (for the purpose of journalism), I imbibed electrolyte supplements and drank prepackaged ketones that were so bitter I’m pretty sure I would have rather drunk industrial solvents. Five days later, I came out the other side. A blood test confirmed that I was still in ketosis, but I could do math and think again. However, I still did not feel good. Keto devotees say that by the time you’ve been doing the diet for a while, you can feel when your body is burning fat for fuel instead of carbs. For many people, that shift is marked by feelings of steady energy and wellbeing, along with a satiety that helps with weight loss. In my case, it was marked by hiccups, terrible heartburn, and a fluttery feeling in my chest as though I was about to descend into cardiac arrhythmia. After twelve days on the keto diet, I felt like a saltwater fish in a poorly calibrated aquarium. I yelled. I stank. Somehow I’d gained a kilo and a half. Literally in the middle of an argument with my long-suffering boyfriend – about … um … appropriate sock storage www.popularmechanics.co.za
incorporate 5:2 into my actual life, even if it does freak me out that it’s basically play-anorexia.
ANOTHER OPTION: T H E S O U N D B AT H In addition to sensorydeprivation tanks, a number of techniques can increase the effectiveness of meditation. Inscape, a mindfulness centre in New York that also has a mobile app and offers clients guided meditation sessions, progressive muscle relaxation, and sound baths, in which practitioners relax for up to seventy minutes to the sounds of gongs, shakers, and other extremely resonant instruments.
locations? What kind of maniac buys one-ply toilet paper? – my phone pinged with an email containing the results from my Habit test. ‘You are a Range Seeker,’ the page claimed, alongside a whole bunch of recommended recipes for fish tacos and risotto and smoothies and other stuff I normally eat. ‘We recommend a higher-carb, higher-fat, moderateprotein diet.’ You don’t say. octors have known for decades that when you half-starve rodents, they live longer. Caloric restriction can increase the median life span of rats by 14 to 45 per cent, reducing inflammation, oxidative stress, cholesterol, the risk of tumours and cardiovascular disease and triglycerides, and improving the immune system. There’s just one tiny problem: If you’re not a rat whose diet is controlled by scientists, such restriction requires iron willpower to maintain. A 1940s study called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, in which doctors reduced calories by roughly 50 per cent in volunteers, resulted in incidences of depression, hysteria, and irritability, including www.popularmechanics.co.za
one man who went so far as to cut off three of his fingers. Enter intermittent fasting. Starving lite™. One option – time-restricted feeding – is basically eating all of your calories in an eight-hour window. For the 5:2 diet, you drop to 500 calories on two non-consecutive days a week and eat normally the other five. Either will be enough for most people to lose weight, but it’s the other advantages that are most exciting. Skipping food occasionally can lead to some of the same effects as keto. It can also initiate certain cellular processes that enhance longevity, including autophagy, also known as ‘cellular cleansing’, in which the body recycles old cells by eating them. Waste not, want not. I tried the 5:2 diet, which made me so hungry I salivated over cookbooks, buying new eyeliners to distract myself whenever I felt my willpower flagging. (I now have many eyeliners.) But apart from that, intermittent fasting was awesome. Here was the relaxation I’d been promised by the keto diet. The weight loss and the peaceful mind. At the end of each fast day, I experienced a paradoxical bump in energy (maybe my body wanted me to go find food?) that was so pleasant, I plan to seriously
f you decide to try Viome, a start-up that charges R5 600 for a gut-bacteriatesting kit and one year of personalised advice, you’re going to want to bring a trash bag into the bathroom with you. I wish I had. I walked in there with the sleek gray-beige Gut Intelligence kit, yanked up the toilet seat, and strapped the included stool collection paper to my toilet. And then it all went, as they say, to sh--. Viome’s instructions say to ‘carefully deposit your stool’ onto the collection paper, then transfer one infinitesimal scoop of faeces – a pinhead, a bead – to an included tube of solution. And that’s where they leave you, instruction-wise. The glue that stuck the paper to the toilet was so sticky there was no way to make slow, responsible decisions about dumping the remainder of the sample. I tried to flush the whole little bundle, but the collection platform is as thick as construction paper. It crumpled up and lodged itself in the drain. The water started rising. I had company. An old friend was staying on my sofa bed. My boyfriend lives in my apartment. Thank god the kit came with gloves. I reached down into the swirling, impenetrable mess and yanked out the paper and ran, shouting in nonsensical single syllables, into the kitchen to throw the paper, the inside-out gloves, and everything else I had touched into a plastic bag, which I then put into a larger plastic bag, which I put in the corridor before anyone could see it, or me. Hyperventilating, I took a shower. Maybe it was worth it? Last year, while working on a story about cancer, I spoke to a researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center who told me that she thought healthy gut bacteria might be the key to determining who responds well to certain cancer treatments and who doesn’t. She further said it might even explain who gets cancer – and who doesn’t. ‘Everybody’s microbiome is unique,’ explains Helen Messier, Viome’s chief medical officer. ‘But each one can be healthy for that individual. It really depends on whether your microbes are performing the functions that they are supposed to perform to keep you AUGUST 2018
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BIOHACKING
MICROBIOME TESTING WHAT IS IT?
Learning your ideal diet based on your gut bacteria WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Balance the microbiome HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
R5 600 IS IT SAFE?
Yes
healthy.’ What you want, ideally, is a microbiome like a rainforest – with a lot of diversity as well as a high count of each individual species. Eating a lot of fibre can help, as can, Viome hopes, using metatranscriptome sequencing to sort out the creatures living in your gut, and eating in accordance with the dietary preferences of your most useful digestive-tract parasites. Viome’s results were fascinating. I received a whole list of bacteria and viruses that lived in my gut, indicating which were good for me. There were also sliding scales of metabolic fitness and inflammatory activity, and graphs of where my gut health fit in among samples of healthy people and the general public. It was like reading a full-scale scientific study about little old me. The primary challenge here? Ease of implementation. Whereas Habit would provide specific recipes, Viome mostly recommended that I eat foods I already knew were healthy, such as cauliflower, parsley, garlic and beets. Messier also suggested I get five pre- and probiotic supplements, but they would work out to almost R2 800 a month. And that doesn’t include fixing my toilet.
microdose research chemicals. It’s a weird world.’ Proponents claim that minuscule doses of psychedelics can enhance creativity and productivity while also reducing depression, anxiety, and cravings for cigarettes and alcohol. But no one’s really studied it. ‘The most important thing to emphasise is we really don’t know,’ says Matthew Johnson, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies potential therapeutic effects of larger doses of psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Still, the questions being asked are smart, he says. ‘There’s every reason to think tinkering with that receptor system could have antidepressant effects, and it’s never been systematically manipulated in that way.’ I tried LSD once and thought I was a flower for thirty minutes. (I think. LSD time is weird.) So this time, I tried cannabidiol, or CBD, the also-ran of psychoactive chemicals in marijuana, which is lately being sold over the counter as an oil that can reduce pain and inflammation, without the high. Preliminary results from a Mayo Clinic study showed that CBD doses diminishes seizures in children with a disorder called Dravet syndrome by 39 per cent, compared to 16 per cent in patients who received a placebo. Meanwhile, animal studies indicate that the chemical may also prevent tumours, reduce pain, lower anxiety, and treat inflammation. In a 2015 study in the European Journal of Pain, just four days on CBD gel significantly reduced joint swelling in arthritic rats. I asked the FDA about CBD oil. ‘The FDA has not approved a marketing
application for a drug product containing or derived from botanical cannabis and has not found any such product to be safe and effective for any indication,’ the FDA spokesperson said. ‘We don’t have any additional comment.’ Did I like CBD oil? Yes. Did it reduce my inflammation? Maybe! Did it feel like marijuana? No. But also kind of yes. One of the primary problems with unregulated CBD oil is that different concentrations vary wildly, and many formulations contain THC, even if they say they don’t. After a couple of drops, I felt like I was wearing a particularly cosy jersey on the inside of my body. It distorted my perception of time in a similar way to marijuana. Also: It was way too popular around the office to be remotely as non-intoxicating as its proponents claim. t was unclear, from the website, where we were sending our Bitcoins. The transaction record seemed to suggest China, but days later, an email came through reporting that the parcel was coming from Mumbai. The drugs themselves
MODAFINIL WHAT IS IT?
Speed, basically IS IT ILLEGAL?
If you’re being treated for narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, and shift-work disorder HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
About R14 per pill
MICRODOSING
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?
Slightly mellower speed
WHAT IS IT?
Tiny amounts of drugs
ere’s the big thing about taking drugs at work: You think no one does it, but they do. In Silicon Valley, at least, that is. ‘People are microdosing all sorts of things in Silicon Valley,’ says Molly Maloof, a bubbly doctor who runs a personalisedmedicine practice in San Francisco that specialises in helping biohackers try their tactics safely. ‘People microdose mushrooms, they microdose LSD, they 60
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WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO?
Enhance creativity and reduce depression IS IT SAFE
Probably not IS IT LEGAL?
Not in most places
came in two silver blister packs in a square white envelope. The box labelled ‘gift’ was indicated on the customs form. And what a gift! Twenty thick white pills of a wakefulness-promoting agent called modafinil, which the FDA approved in 1998 to treat narcolepsy. It wasn’t until the Air Force tested whether it could be used to enhance performance in fatigued F-117 pilots in 2004 (short answer: sort of), that its off-label use skyrocketed. A 2013 www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: I S T O C K P H O T O, C O U R T E SY I M A G E S
report seen in Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine said the number of people taking the drug had increased tenfold over the previous decade. One of those people? Molly Maloof, the bubbly doctor from San Francisco. ‘I was just like, Oh my god, fighter pilots are taking medicine that can make them not have to sleep. If I didn’t have to sleep, I could do so many things,’ says Maloof, who herself took modafinil a handful of times around four years ago. To hear Maloof explain it, the drug appeals to the kind of super-highachieving people who make it to the top of industries such as finance and technology. The kind who’d power through fifteen-hour work days and then train for a triathlon. The kind who think sleep is for people who are lazy or dead. I learned the hard way in college that you can always take more of a drug, but never less, so I took a quarter of a 200-mg pill. Thirty minutes later, a cocaine-like rush zinged through my upper body. This is great, I thought. Oh, this is great, great, great. Sound died down and I could multitask as easily as toggling between computer screens. I made calls I’d been putting off for months. I googled directions between Osaka and Kyoto because I realised I didn’t know where they were in relation to one another. It was like a clear forest path had opened ahead of me, which led only to the joyous, peaceful occasion of learning facts and answering emails. I very much enjoyed modafinil. But it also made me feel like a crystal space robot that was confused by human emotion. Maybe I’m bad at drugs, but everything I took for this story felt like tuning a piano with a sledgehammer. Did I want to be better at email? Great. Here were some drugs from India that could make me stay awake through an entire day of work, a two-hour dinner, and then a whole three-act opera. Did I want to go to sleep afterward? Good luck waking up within fourteen hours of taking these innocuous-seeming over-the-counter sleep supplements. Modafinil was like some kind of hyperliteral genie from a fable – the kind that would set up a deer conservation centre at your house because you asked for a million bucks. I told Maloof that the drug made me feel like Bradley Cooper in Limitless – www.popularmechanics.co.za
all floating equations and brilliant quips and visions of promotions, along with some mild dizziness. ‘What have you noticed with your memory, though?’ Excuse me? ‘It makes you feel super-human, but I was starting to experience memory lapses,’ she said. ‘That’s why I stopped using it.’
BIOHACKING?
Meditating YES Y
hen I agreed to become a biohacking test subject, I’m not sure I realised how hard it would be on my body. I didn’t worry if I might still feel strange weeks later. I just said yes. The promises sounded so good. Sleep four hours a night like Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body. Lose 45 kilos like Bulletproof Coffee’s Dave Asprey. Control your core body temperature like Wim Hof, a Dutch athlete who climbed Kilimanjaro in a pair of shorts. How could I know what would happen? There aren’t pills to make you psychic. Yet. All things considered, I feel good, although ever since keto, a tiny bubble of heartburn has blazed stubbornly at my sternum. I went to a regular, boring doctor, who gave me a regular, boring diagnosis: acid reflux. Here’s the thing about trying to hack the human body the same way you would hack a computer: There are many people who know how to build a computer. Nobody knows how to build a human body. While it is intriguing that we may, as a culture, be on the verge of some very exciting medical developments, many of our own inner workings remain occult and mysterious, even to the smartest people on Earth. But, as time marches ceaselessly on, our arteries hardening, tendons fraying, career options narrowing, the only certainties are getting older and slower and, eventually, dead. Can you blame anyone for wanting the tiniest measure of control? For researching the latest biological science and transforming it into a plan? There’s something to be said for believing a new, untested treatment will help you overcome your problems. Over the decades, taking a sugar pill, receiving a useless injection, or even just visiting a doctor has been shown to reduce pain, lower blood pressure, and relieve depression. Doctors like to call this the placebo effect. We call it hope.
N NO
Running Y YES
N NO
The paleo diet Y YES
N NO
Standing on a vibration plate YES Y
N NO
Mood rings Y YES
N NO
Vegetarian Y YES
N NO
Swallowing a fitbit Y YES
N NO
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WOMEN
Women who make
South ica
A fr
ork W
BY BRENDON PE TERSEN
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“
Fifty years ago, if women wanted to gather in a room, well, it had better be about babies or charity work. And the brown women would be in one room over there and the white women would be in another room over here… From then to now, we’ve all made such an incredible leap. Think of all of them. Fifty years ago, trying to get out of separate rooms; thirty years ago, trying to not serve breakfast or be groped by their bosses; fifteen years ago, trying to make clear that they could run a department as well as that guy over there. All the women, white or black or brown, who woke up like this, who came before me in this town. Think of them. Head up, eyes on the target. Running. Full speed. Gravity be damned. Toward that thick layer of glass that is the ceiling. Running, full speed, and crashing. Crashing into that ceiling and falling back again. Crashing into it and falling back. Into it and falling back. Woman after woman. Each one running and each one crashing. And everyone failing. How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice?
”
This is what Shonda Rhimes had to say in her book Year of Yes when she made it on to The Hollywood Reporter’s Power 100 list in 2014. That year, The Hollywood Reporter celebrated women who had managed to break through the glass ceiling and in doing so, had empowered women everywhere to keep pursuing their dreams. The women we interviewed all follow in the same vein – of having had to work twice as hard in order to ensure they were never asked why they had a seat at the table. www.popularmechanics.co.za
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WOMEN SIYANGA MADIKIZELA
GABI GOLDBERG
MICHELLE ATAGANA
Popular Mechanics: Please tell us your full name and describe your job.
Siyanga Madikizela: I am the public relations manager for Volkswagen South Africa (VW); this falls under the communications department. It’s a demanding job, but also incredibly exciting, fulfilling and rewarding. Strategic communication is a very important aspect of my job. The most important role that I play is to safeguard VW’s reputation in the media space. My job is about cars and showcasing the amazing cars that we have in the brand. I am also the liaison between the media and VW, and write media releases on new models introduced to our market, as well as corporaterelated activities. I also oversee and run VW’s news account on Twitter (@VWSAnews) – this is one way of communicating the company’s activities in an interesting, relevant and timeous way. All of VW product PR activities are run through the publicrelations budget, which I head. We work with quite a few suppliers, and I am responsible for maintaining these relations between VW and the suppliers – essentially supplier management. We are also an important channel for information and strategic communication coming from our parent company in Wolfsburg, Germany. Michelle Atagana: Most people call me Mich. I am the head of communications and public affairs for Google South Africa, sometimes touching Southern Africa. What do I do? The core of my job is external communications for Google, meaning press, social influencers, key opinion formers, and sometimes working with our government-relations person to
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draft messages for our government and so forth. I spend a lot of time working on messaging and documentation around what we do, who we are, and why we do what we do. And about how our roles can help both externally and internally. I help tell the Google story to people, as well as why we are useful as a company, and demonstrate that usefulness. Gabi Goldberg: I am the marketing manager for Snapt. Snapt is a global networking software provider, and we offer leading load-balancing services used by the world’s largest businesses to deliver their applications and keep their services running at peak performance. The Snapt ADC is the ultimate load balancer, web accelerator and web-application firewall for DevOps. Companies such as Target, NASA, MTV and Intel trust Snapt to stay online while always being secure. Nomonde White: Co-head of infrastructure services, at Absa’s technology division. Infrastructure services is one of the largest technology divisions in our bank, and is unique in that it touches every component of our business. Every single employee in Absa at some point in time uses, needs or depends on infrastructure services, either for the computer equipment they need to do their work, or for the networks, systems and connectivity that help them to do it properly. I like to compare my role to that of a highway, with a mass of off-ramps, on-ramps, intersections and traffic flows: I need to keep everything moving to ensure there is no congestion and to help everyone get to where they need to be as quickly as possible, without incident.
www.popularmechanics.co.za
PM: Can you recall the defining moment that put you on your current career path?
SM: There wasn’t one defining moment per se. By June of my matric year, I was confused as to what to study at university, and I had also contemplated a gap year thanks to this confusion. In September of that year (through some pressure from my mom) I finally decided on Journalism as my first choice, with PR as my second choice. I loved doing history, languages and creative writing in high school, so those two fields appealed to me more than anything else. Funny enough, after varsity, I thought I would go into hard news. I was jobless for about six months after graduating and when the Nelson Mandela University called me saying that VW was looking for young graduates to join the company, I jumped at the opportunity. MA: This is an interesting story, because when I was 19, at the fantastic UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus (the original campus), I’d finished my degree and I was starting my honours, and I wanted to focus on the relationship between technology and storytelling – how people use technology in terms of media and how media works. I focused a lot on the game The Sims. I was also working on a movie at the time that was a little more macabre. My honours at the time was split in two parts – a media part and a film-making part. I started reading a lot of blogs. I was talking about how The Sims was a way of escape and story creation for humans, and yet most humans were spending a lot of their time in chat rooms. So my whole thesis was a juxtaposition between The Sims as a video game you played where you get lost in a world you created and you were the only one who made all the decisions – you
were in charge – whereas if you go to chat rooms such as mIRC, it was still a world you were making, but you were a contributor to a very big world that a bunch of other anonymous people created. That really got me interested. I mean I’ve always loved technology – I’ve been on the internet since I can remember. That really just got me into storytelling and story creation through technology. After I completed my masters, I started working with Matthew Buckland on Memeburn and ended up launching Ventureburn. This was kind of my own little piece of the Burn world that I was really passionate about, just telling more stories. At that point, I simply knew I was going to be in technology forever, and Google just happened to be the most logical step. GG: It’s been a very interesting journey. I have just under a decade of experience in content and technical writing, and I’ve also had a really great journey with US-based B2B and B2C experience. I also have a really huge passion for start-ups and technology, which I’ve documented well over the years. It has all been very stimulating. Basically, I’ve spent my time helping techbased start-ups scale their marketing, and developing and executing on their go-to-market strategies. So, in addition to that, I’ve done content writing for Telkom and Apple, and just brought that together to find my home at Snapt. NW: It was a chance conversation in an executive’s office at UCS Solutions, where I was working as a firstline support consultant to help pay for my law degree. I needed a document signed by an executive by the name of Jane Canny, who was the executive for service delivery at the time. While looking over the document, she asked me what I wanted from my career, which led to a heartfelt conversation and her hiring me as a service delivery manager. That was the start of my career in technology. It takes a special kind of leader to recognise potential in someone and take the time to do something about it. Jane was one of those people.
‘I help tell the Google story to people, as well as explain why we are useful as a company, and help to demonstrate it’
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‘Infrastructure services is one of the largest technology divisions in our bank and touches every component of our business’
move be?’ and three days later, I got a call from my predecessor at Google going: ‘I’m leaving my job. Don’t you want to apply for it? I think you’d be great at it.’ So I think I’ve been quite lucky and if I want something, I work quite hard to get it. People usually ask me: ‘Do you put a lot of pressure on yourself to succeed?’ and I usually say no, but that’s actually a baldfaced lie. I put an intense amount of pressure on myself to achieve my dreams and succeed at everything I do. I think it’s fair to do that if you want something. If you want something bad enough, go out and get it. Do whatever it takes – legally – to get it.
PM: What kind of difficulties or lucky breaks did you face getting into a maledominated industry?
SM: I had a very lucky break when VW went on a recruitment drive for young graduates, and because the NMMU still had my details. Obviously I said yes, so that was where my journey with VW began. I didn’t apply to get into the industry, but I did go through an interview process.
MA: You know what, I’ve just been really, really lucky in my life. I grew up in a family where nothing was impossible. If I really want something, all I have to do is kind of speak it to the universe. I know this sounds a bit kooky and New Agey, but that’s really the truth of my life. A fun example of this: I said to Stuart Thomas once when we were at Burn, going ‘Ugh, I really wish I could to go South Korea – it sounds like such a fun place.’ And I tell you no lies, a month later, I got an invitation to attend a conference in South Korea. Same with Google, I was thinking: ‘What should my next
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GG: It’s been a really incredible experience. As I said, I’ve been working in the industry for just under a decade and I’ve worked as a journalist, a content writer well within the start-up ecosystem. It’s really about taking risks and working hard, and adding value wherever you can. I believe that, regardless of your gender, that’s something that is defining of both a startup and a corporate business experience and about the ability to look at the bigger picture and take risks – calculated, of course – and just see how everything ties in. NW: I have been fortunate enough to work for some exceptional men and women from whom I learnt a great deal about the kind of leader I did and didn’t want to be. Working for high-achieving women in the technology space gave me unique insight into what it takes to be tough in a technically demanding, maledominated industry, but without having to lose your femininity or the attributes that make women so well suited to this environment. I was also fortunate to hold several senior roles at a relatively young age. I believe being thrown in the deep end is the fastest way to learn that you are capable of so much more than you think.
www.popularmechanics.co.za
PM: Do you feel equal to your peers or are there still challenges? If there’s still some inequality, what do you think should be changed to make it feel more inclusive?
SM: I feel that most of my peers do respect me and they treat me accordingly. I am aware that this is not always the case in the company and industry with all people. You cannot force people to respect you, but for remaining professional and aiming to be the best at what I do, I believe most people will treat me with respect. As one of the new PRs on the block and also being one of the younger ones, you do realise that when it comes to experience within the PR- and larger motoring industry, there’s still a lot to do and learn. And for me, that’s okay, because each and every one of us has to earn our stripes, no matter what industry we’re working in.
is because they weren’t allowed to previously. So, now, they’re trying to get into it; they’re learning. Right now, we have first- and second generations of black South Africans learning computer science. They weren’t able to learn it before. They’re learning it for the first time. So it might take us another generation to really see the tech space filled with black people, but actually it shouldn’t. All these black graduates should be able to get into that field right now. Also, why don’t we have enough women engineers? Because previously, young women weren’t encouraged to study engineering and when they were, they got into a class where there was one girl versus 90 guys. Can you imagine the pressure and the intimidation of what that means? Where you have to work twice as hard to get half as much? So I think a lot of it is more challenges and assumptions than it is innate separation.
MA: I feel that there is inequality, constantly and unfortunately. I say this is unfortunate, because I have such a thick skin to inequality right now that I almost don’t even notice it anymore. I think there’s a ton of inequality still in the tech space and most of it is not intentional. Most of it is just assumed and legacy. No one is purposely going out there to treat women or people of colour badly when it comes to technology. It’s learned behaviour. I would love to really hear people tell honest stories about gender pay gaps and race pay gaps. I really want to honestly have the conversation about why when I go to Cape Town for a tech event, 60–70 per cent of the room is a bunch of white guys. I want to understand why Cape Town tech entrepreneurs feel that they can’t actually survive in Cape Town and they’re all moving up to Johannesburg to build their businesses there. It’s a horrible world that we live in where we have all these assumed prejudices about capabilities and people’s abilities about what they can and cannot do. And I think that’s where the challenges from a tech point of view still lie: we keep thinking these things and not remembering that the only reason these groups of people are not predominant in these spaces
GG: I think it’s mostly just about moving forward. So I think we’re in a great space, especially in South Africa, and there should be some exciting movements on the horizon, with everyone. And I think a lot of it is about seizing the opportunity, working together for the bigger picture and really just putting South Africa on the map in terms of leading technology companies and really just getting the word out there. That’s a great change that I’d love to see and I think we’re working together nicely towards that. NW: It would be naive and presumptuous to expect equality in any corporate space. But do I feel inferior, or that I am less valued? Definitely not. Mainly thanks to the fact that we have a CEO who is committed to building the role of women within technology through collaboration and respect. As you get further up the corporate ladder, you tend to lose the women who want to have families and need to take time out in order to do this. When I became a mother, I was worried about missing opportunities and having to ‘reset’ my career as a result, and sadly, this detracted from the joy of having a new family and child. This could be fundamentally changed if more companies made a deliberate effort to create working environments that are accommodating to mothers, such as having dedicated rooms for breast-feeding moms, flexible working hours and technology that makes it easier for people to connect and collaborate from any location. I also believe that, as women grow in their careers, they should always have their hands out to pull someone else up and create space for other women to grow too. This is something I am passionate about and will always make time for. ‘I communicate all the exciting new products and technologies coming out of this company to the media’
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‘You lose a lot of top female talent on the corporate ladder when they decide to have children. Fortunately, our CEO is supportive of these choices’
PM: What kind of impact do you wish to make on South Africa through your work?
SM: I work for a revolutionary brand and I say that not only because of our incredible vehicles and services, technological advancements and powerful brand identity, but because of the positive impact we make on transformation, investment in the economy of the Eastern Cape and South Africa, and the concerted effort in ploughing back into communities. I want to continue to tell the remarkable story that is VW, especially in South Africa, and now there are even greater opportunities to build the brand with the South African heart in the sub-Saharan countries where it’s expanding into. The South Africa motoring industry contributes about 7% into our country’s GDP, so this a crucial industry for South Africa. In motoring, there are various career fields one can explore, such as engineering, logistics, transport, finance, marketing, PR and communications, legal, IT, HR and so on. So, I hope that by continuing to promote Volkswagen’s products and developments, I will encourage more people, especially young people, to choose careers in the motoring industry. I don’t come from a particularly rich background: my mother sacrificed a lot for me and I also had to work incredibly hard for everything I have. So, on a personal front, I hope to encourage people that no matter who you are, how old you are, what your background is, you can be anything you want to be through passion, perseverance, research and a lot of hard work. Whether you want to go into motoring, aviation, science, medicine, technology … anything is possible. MA: I hope that I can inspire a lot of people to work really hard for what they want and go get it regardless of what people say or what they do. I hope that I can encourage young boys and girls to say: ‘When I grow up, I want to go work for Google, because Mich did it and Fortune (who’s our government-relations person), did it or Zanele (who’s one of our analysts), did it, or Yolanda (who’s our new policy analyst) did it. I want
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to work for a company such as Google because all these young black South Africans work for Google and all these women work for Google.’ So I hope that people can be inspired by that, but then, more importantly, I hope that I can help Google help Africans and I can help tell the story of what we do that can help Africans. GG: Snapt is an incredibly exciting and innovative company, and I know that just sounds like marketing buzzwords, but we really, really are. We’re the only ADC (application delivery controller) vendor in South Africa and on the continent. In terms of the biggest players, the top five are all based in the US and we’re aggressively looking into that market, and the impact we’d love to have is showcasing that you can be an exciting, nimble, flexible company based in South Africa, but have a product offering that rivals and is equal to some of the best in the world and perform on a global scale. We have a huge focus on any business that has mission-critical software or services, and that ranges from banking and e-commerce to health care and data centres. Any time your company needs high availability or redundancy, we work to ensure that you are always online, always secure and always performing quickly. NW: I live by the credo, ‘To whom much is given, much will be expected’. As the child of a domestic worker, I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter how you start, but how you finish, and this is why I want to help give young people the audacity to hope, and the determination not to give up on their dreams. Through coaching and mentoring, as well as through the work I do in my community, I want to help keep young girls interested in school and inspire them to pursue careers in technology and engineering. Ultimately, I would like to see a lot more women and young, intelligent African professionals taking up senior roles in industry. In five years’ time, I don’t want to see them struggling with the same issues that they are now.
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PM: What’s your next career step or, if there isn’t one you can tell us right now, what’s the one trend in your industry that will change how you do business?
SM: I was recently appointed to my role as PR manager. It has been just more than a year, so I’m at a point in my career where I am continuing to learn about the fascinating motor industry, cementing relationships with industry stakeholders, introducing new and exciting ways of doing things (that is the millennial in me speaking) and constantly innovating and keeping up with the various technological- and new trends in the motoring industry. The one thing I am committed and passionate about is always learning and improving myself, so I am going back to school next year to pursue a degree in PR and communications.
‘I’ve spent my time helping tech-based startups scale their marketing and developing and execute their go-to-market strategies’
P H O T O G R A P H Y: S A M A N T H A P I N T O / H M i m a g e s . c o . z a VA L D O S W I E G E R S , I S T O C K P H O T O, G A L L O / G E T T Y I M A G E S
MA: I’m honestly just trying to make it through this week. I’ve been out of the country for a month. Machine learning is a big thing and AI is a big thing, but I’m especially interested to see how we consume content going forward. I have been tracking content consumption since I was 19 years old. Video is a big part of content consumption. We all want to go hands free. We don’t want to type any more: we’re using voice now, so the rise of the assistants, voice search, all of that stuff. We don’t want to read things any more, so we’re watching. Why would I want to read the recipe when I can go to YouTube and watch the video on how to do it? The AI stuff and how we build businesses and how we build products with machine learning is definitely the future. Google has always said it’s an AI company, but personally, I’m really interested in the consumer and how they interact with stuff. GG: I think just, as a whole, the rapid rate at which technology is developing and what we’re seeing from IoT to 5G to big trends, which are going to transform ecosystems and the way we do business. Even just fibre coming to South Africa and boasting strong offerings here in terms of its business capabilities. It’s going to be a really interesting time, but essentially the groundbreaking tech that’s going to allow more inclusivity as well as simply faster, bigger and more exciting ways of doing business are really where we’re looking to. NW: All companies are becoming technology-driven businesses, where value and competitive edge comes not from their traditional products and services, but from how they use digital innovations to add value to those. This is true not only in financial services, but across all industries, and it requires every single leader to think completely differently about how they service their customers, run their businesses, and manage and grow their talent.
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et’s talk about one of the most pivotal revolutions we’ve seen in technology: containerisation. Globalisation and seamless, modern international trade only exist because of the ISO container and its multimodal abilities. he iPhone, for instance, couldn’t be made from African cobalt and copper or even make it into your nearest iStore without a container. The most popular, cost-effective way to move that container from ship or train to its final destination is by truck. From James Brindley’s 1766 narrowboat solution to facilitate coal transport between Worley Delph and Manchester, to Silvio Crespi’s 1928 idea to standardise a container system for both road- and rail transport, we have always strived to find more efficient ways of moving things. Currently the greatest inefficiency is, unfortunately, those cheap trucks. Elon Musk’s well-documented grand plan is to electrify the bulk of transport with super fast semi-trailer trucks. He is on to something, although the launch pricing of R2 million and R2,4 million for the respective 480 km and 800 km units feels a bit low for current battery pricing. The trucks would need 550 and 900 kWh batteries to achieve the stated range in ideal conditions. The estimated cost for the batteries alone is R1,4 million and R2,4 million. While it helps that Tesla also produces batteries and that costs should reduce at the scale of the initial pre-orders (as we reported in May, PepsiCo and UPS have each ordered 100 trucks or more), those low profits won’t please Tesla investors. There’s also the matter of undisclosed unladen weight. Those batteries weigh in at five and eight tons, which leaves ample hauling capacity for goods with power going to four wheels via the same motors used in the Model 3. It seems that for now, the numbers are in the favour of South Africa’s prodigal son and his deep-pocketed customers, especially in the US with its sophisticated charging infrastructure. Down here at the southern tip of Africa, however, we’re not quite ready for large-scale transport electrification just yet. And neither, it would appear, is continental Europe. There are other technologies we are ready to adopt, though. Road trains are a regular sight in the Australian Outback and even in the less 72
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developed parts of our country, but technology is about to take this concept to the highways. A 2018 report by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory used data it got from The Volpe National Transportation Center, National Research Centre Canada and Auburn University track tests to arrive at this conclusion: Drafting, or tailgating, is a more efficient way to drive trucks. Truck platooning (driving a train of trucks close to each other) was found to have the potential for a 3–6 per cent reduction in fuel use, averaged over the platoon. Those indicated savings caught the interests of private industry and Volvo, UPS, Nokia, Intel and Lockheed Martin are all invested in the future growth of this technology. Volvo is so enthused by the possibilities of this technique that it flew Popular Mechanics out to the Stora Holm testing centre in Gothenburg on a typically rainy summer’s day. Platooning in the Volvo Trucks sense is done by using a wireless data link between three trucks and then only controlling the front one. A wireless data link offers the opportunity to have other road traffic weaving between the trucks in real-world conditions, as opposed to a mechanical link. That does detract from the actual reason for these road trains, but allows for greater flexibility and makes a better
ROAD PLATOONS CAN SAVE UP TO 6% FUEL ACROSS THE FLEET. THIS METHOD CAN ALSO ALLOW FOR AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, BECAUSE THE LEAD TRUCK IS WIRELESSLY LINKED TO THE FLEET platform for Volvo (trucks, not cars – two separate companies) to flex its innovation muscle on the road. The whole platooning system is only made possible by the crown jewel in Volvo Trucks’ impressive technology suite: Volvo Dynamic Steering (VDS). ‘After having this system for five years, we’re now at a point where the driver has full control over the vehicle in difficult conditions,’ explains Ulf Andreasson, product range requirement manager for
Volvo’s FM and FMX heavy-truck ranges. The latest evolution of VDS also adds active lane-keeping and customisable driver programmes to the laundry list of industry-leading abilities the original system brought to market in 2013. Let’s walk it back a bit: VDS is an electronically controlled gear that goes on top of the hydraulic steering gear. Besides for adjusting the steering weight dynamically according to conditions, the system will also compensate for crosswinds as well as road imperfections. Improvements for 2018 include the aforementioned active lane-keeping and takes cross-wind control a step further by adding a driver-adjustable centre point for the steering wheel. Andreasson showed off the party trick of this steering innovation by loading us into a truck with no driver in it and then controlling the truck via remote like some sadistic video game. It became apparent later that Europe has been using remotecontrolled trucks for years for working in tricky terrain like forests and mountain slopes where rollovers happen frequently. Technology taking the risks instead of humans has always been the dream. In the future, you could have a convoy of autonomous trucks, led by one driver in the lead truck. When the convoy enters www.popularmechanics.co.za
LEFT: Ulf Andreasson demonstrates the full remote-control functionality that is enabled by Volvo Dynamic Steering technology.
the depot or loading area, an operator could then take over via remote control and move the vehicles into position to be loaded or unloaded. We asked Volvo Trucks about this, but the company couldn’t comment on this theory because of its participation in the European Truck Platooning Challenge. The biggest obstacle for autonomous long-haul platooning in continental Europe is crossing international borders. Different countries have different legal framework relating both to trucks and to autonomous vehicles, which is hampering development. In certain countries, for instance, the platoon is regarded as one vehicle and then needs to meet length www.popularmechanics.co.za
restrictions, as well as being subject to a different set of taxes. Unlike what we discovered with autonomous cars last month (Popular Mechanics July 2018, page 58) commercial trucking actually has fully operational prototypes for the various autonomous applications. You have driverless vehicles operating in many controlled environments such as mines and shipping depots. The big advantage here, though, is that you can develop this for specific circumstances and keep the operating areas away from where human workers would be. Autonomous and Automated Driving Director Hayder Wokil believes that our autonomous vehicle technology is now about at the peak of inflated expectations in its hype cycle. But that’s with regards to applications on public roads. He identifies three hoops that the technology needs to jump through before we can experience widespread adoption: legal aspect, social acceptance and then further technological improvement to perfect it. ‘Aeroplanes can take off, land and fly autonomously since the seventies, but no one thinks about it. The pilot is just there if something goes wrong with the systems,’ he says. ‘But that can only happen because there have been no
significant incidents. The difficulties we face is that we need to do the testing and verification.’ He is referring to the platooning, specifically. It works fine in a confined environment, but can only really be tested on the roads. ‘It will take decades before we have level 5 autonomous systems that adapt to weather conditions and operating conditions that are a big challenge. We then need to verify it in all possible conditions so it can be safe in the hands of customers,’ says Wokil. ‘It’s one thing to do these demos, but another to hand it to you as a driver or customer. We need to develop systems that are user friendly.’ If you add electrification into the platoon equation, you could have even more savings. Currently, Volvo’s shortterm development is focused around potential alternatives to diesel. The frontrunner is liquid natural gas, or LNG, and its 20 per cent fuel potential (fuel potential is the alternative’s total potential market share). This relatively low potential market share takes into account the global access to LNG and the future transition to electric. Out of all the alternative fuels, electricity and methane are definitely the energy sources of the future (with hydrogen still some way off), but LNG (including bio-LNG) AUGUST 2018
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nothing will happen there in the short term. For regional and long-haul, LNG is our fuel of choice. Internationally LNG is between 30 and 70 per cent cheaper than diesel, so for our customers, it’s a very good business case.’ There’s no possibility to run traditional diesel on the Volvo gas engines, though, even though they are basically the same engine. But the company’s relentless focus on customer economics is truly remarkable. While a company such as Tesla shows its start-up dress slip by playing fast and loose with profits to gain market traction, one of the world’s leading truck brands is slowly evolving and still maintaining its number-one
customer satisfaction and desirability status at the same time. There’s is, however, a zero-emissions strategy at play. Except, for Volvo, that includes noise emissions. That’s why, instead of wanting to rule the open road with amazingly fast long-haul beasts, the company is instead showing a nocturnal streak. You see, most major European cities have noise-pollution regulations at night. Volvo want to capture that market by introducing medium-duty electric trucks that can do silent deliveries and waste removal. The company has partnered with its hometown of Gothenburg and Hamburg in Germany to develop an electric refuse www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: L I N D S E Y S C H U T T E R S , C O U R T E S Y I M A G E S
is available at relative scale right now and Volvo is adapting the current diesel engine design to operate on LNG, with impressive results. The current Volvo Trucks gas engines (adapted from its traditional diesel engines) are proving 20 per cent more efficient than Otto gas engines. Volvo isn’t sleeping on electric longhaul, though. It is, after all, 72 per cent of the European transport market. It’s grand plan? The Long Haul Hybrid truck and its stated 30 per cent fuel savings. Total savings are tallied up from three sources: 10 per cent is saved through aerodynamic improvements, 10 per cent comes courtesy of specially developed new tyres – which will eventually be made available to the entire trucking community – and the final third can be attributed to the diesel-electric hybrid technology in place. ‘By making the truck fully electric, you then have the potential to run it on batteries or on a fuel cell,’ explains Lars Mårtensson, director of environment and innovation at Volvo Trucks. ‘The problem with fuel cells is the cost and performance. If you’re going to use hydrogen, how is that hydrogen being produced in a cost-efficient way? The doorway to hydrogen isn’t closed, but
TRUCKS
truck that draws on the company’s experience in electric busses. The city of Gothenburg, according to its head of urban transport administration, Malin Broqvist Andersson, wants to be carbon neutral by 2045. Beyond this, the city is predicted to add 150 000 new residents by 2035. Keeping those residents safe has become a holistic approach, which factors in noise pollution and environmental stress. Electric mobility is a big part of that approach. Under current workloads, these FE and FL trucks will burn through about 60 kWh of battery per 10 tons of refuse. Volvo offers a modular battery system allowing customers to choose their needed capacity and performance, and have even developed a tool to assist that choice. The 50 kWh battery unit weighs in at a hefty 520 kg and the trucks emit 69 dB of driveby noise. Volvo Trucks first introduced electric buses in 2015, so the company is building this strategy on its experience in urban mobility. ‘We need a long certification process before we can drive them (the electric trucks) in real city environments,’ says Anna Thordén, Volvo’s product manager for electromobility. ‘This project has been in development for over a year, but since the 600 V components are the same as in the bus, it was a very quick project. We have developed unique components such as the air compressor and there we took technology from the medical industry and adapted it to the truck environment.’ What the trucks lose from the buses is the nifty overhead fast charging, mainly because it’s very expensive to install the pantograph used to charge them. They
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can, however, be fitted with the charging rails if the infrastructure is in place. ‘We found that you can use the electric motor more efficiently with a two-speed gearbox, which allows us to have a smaller electric motor with good driveability at low speeds and still a high top speed.’ Thordén started in Research and Development and was a project manager there for the launch of the hybrid buses in 2010 before she transitioned over to the trucks. Of course, safety is a major concern for Volvo Trucks and new products will be fitted with forward collision detection and automatic emergency braking. The company is also interfacing with its sister car brand and rolling out a cloud-based connected solution that can give peer-topeer (car-to-truck) early warning of any upcoming road hazards. With regard to pedestrian safety, the company is also educating children about visibility with its See and be Seen initiative. The future will belong to electrified trucks, but the immediate future is still reliant on cheap sources of fuel, or rather serving a customer base outside of highly developed countries. Trucking is a game of economics and Volvo Trucks is spreading its influence to all corners of the market.
LEFT: The Volvo Trucks dream is to operate in European cities at night, as well as zero road fatalities by 2030. BOTTOM RIGHT: Automatic emergency braking was one of many breakthrough innovations on display.
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www.teraco.co.za
www.napafrica.net
PROJECT EASY WAYS TO DO HARD THINGS
Using two principles and a little ingenuity, you can cool your house for not much more than the cost of a pair fans.
START WITH GOOD DATA
Knowledge is the key to an efficient home. You need a good data picture of how your house is operating – and something to turn that data into useful information. LifeSmart IOT devices are easy to deploy and are aimed at meeting consumer needs by combining two of the greatest buzzwords in tech: AI and the cloud. Its nextgeneration CUBE environmental sensor will deliver tangible results with regard to minute environmental changes within your home ecosystem. It monitors indoor temperature, humidity and illumination, which
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allows you to visualise the energy flow of your house in an entirely new way. Connect it to other sensors and to the cloud (Google Home and Apple HomeKit compatible) and it doubles as your home monitor with dynamic notifications when things step out of line. Samples are taken on the minute and the device can operate from -20 to 40˚C, and between five and 90 percent humidity. So now that you have a tool to measure things with, turn over for our pro tips on how to set your house up for maximum energy efficiency.
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PROJECT HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN AIR CONDITIONER
METHOD 1: The Cross Breeze
B est for: SINGLE FLOOR
If there’s a breeze, open a window on the side of the house receiving the breeze, and another on the opposite side. Using a smaller opening on the breeze (intake) side and a larger opening on the exhaust side will increase the airspeed through the house. Strategically open and close doors to force air through the rooms you want to cool. If there isn’t a breeze, you can use fans to create one. The intake window should be on the home’s coolest external wall; put a fan in the window facing into the room to suck in cool air. A fan facing out an open window on another external wall expels warm air.
Okay, maybe it’s not technically an air conditioner, since a true air-con both cools and removes moisture. This won’t do the latter. But, a bunch of ice is much cheaper than a refrigerant loop.
METHOD 2: The Thermal Chimney
r:
PLE MULTI S O FLO R
Open the lowest windows on the coolest exterior wall of the house. Then open the highest windows in the house. Hot air goes out the top windows, creating a vacuum that pulls cool air in through the downstairs windows. That cooler air absorbs warmth, rises, and continues the cycle. This can also cool an attic. Install soffit vents for intake, and exhaust vents at the high point of the roof. A vented attic is generally about 20°C cooler than an unvented attic, and losing that hot air will help cool the upper floors.
OTHER MEANS of STAYING COOL (IN INCREASING ORDER OF EFFECTIVENESS)
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Muscle tee
Cold shower
Dressing like this
Canadian vacation
Cryotherapy (SEE PAGE 56)
1. / Pick up a Styrofoam cooler box from your local supermarket. The lid must be large enough for you to cut out a hole the size of your fan. (A standard floor fan separated from its post will work.) 2. / Trace your fan’s outline on the cooler lid. Cut out the hole. 3. / Trace and cut a pair of holes for air outlets. You want to be able to insert some kind of pipe or tube to direct the air flow. Toilet-paper tubes will work, but elbow fittings are better, because they can be rotated in the hole to redirect the output. 4. / Fill the cooler with ice. (Note: A big block takes the longest to melt.) Put the lid in place, insert the fan face down, and turn it on. www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M A G E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N : G E O R G E R E T S E C K
B e s t fo
SHOP NOTES EASY WAYS TO DO HARD THINGS
HOT WATER (OUT)
COLD WATER (IN)
Tidy your paint cans Always pour paint into a paint pot from the back of the can. This prevents any spill from blocking information such as colour and gloss printed on the front. Also, when tapping a paint-can lid back on, cover it with a rag. The rag prevents remaining paint in the rim from splattering as you tamp down the lid. MODIFIED DIP TUBE
DON’T MARK UP THE WALL
When you need to mark hole locations or a level line on a wall, don’t mark on the wall itself. Instead, use blue masking tape. There’s no mess, and if things change – and you know they will – you won’t be left with ugly marks to paint over.
Make this handy bike stand by nailing a looped strap at a height suitable for inserting the end of the handlebars. It’s perfect for a shed or garage wall.
M FRO E TH IVES H ARC 960! 1
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Extend the life of your gas water heater IF SEDIMENT, water scale, or bits of anode fall to the bottom of a water heater’s tank, they’ll inhibit the burner’s effectiveness, and the parts of the tank they cover won’t be protected by the anode and will eventually rust through. You can prevent this with a modified dip tube, which directs incoming cold water to the bottom of the tank. Dip tubes usually point straight down, but a tube with a 45-degree bend in the last 15 cm will cause the water to swirl, never letting sediment rest in the same place. You can buy a pre-bent tube or just bend the tube you already have: Disconnect the power and cold water, drain the heater, and remove the tube. Use a heat gun to warm a section 15 cm from the end of the pipe until it’s flexible enough to add the bend yourself. Once it sets, thread the angled tube through the top and reattach the power and water. www.popularmechanics.co.za
I L L U S T R AT I O N : J A M E S C A R E Y
WORLD’S SIMPLEST BIKE STAND
TOOLS TEST POCKETKNIVES
POCKETKNIVES One of the most convenient tools you can carry. A / Uncle Henry 55UH
A
B
C
A fine knife, but the hinge needed substantial lubrication. And the locking liner was particularly difficult to push to the side. It sharpens to a reasonable edge, and the lanyard hole could be useful. ±R280
B / Böker Plus 21788
This simple lock-back knife is made in China, but its workmanship is good. The blade is made of 440C stainless steel, so it takes a good edge. It’s a little wider and heavier than the Case. ±R280
C / Case Mini Copperlock 61749L CV
Our favourite knife is slim and polished, with exceptional workmanship. The hinge is smooth, the hilt is comfortable, and the blade takes a shaving-sharp edge. ±R700
P H O T O G R A P H Y: A L L I E H O L L O WAY
WHAT WE PUT THEM THROUGH Opening boxes, slicing sandwiches, cutting rope, and whittling. And we carried them around in our pockets for days to test comfort.
MY POCKETKNIFE
Given a choice between carrying only my cellphone or my pocketknife, I’ll take my knife every time. No joke. It has two simple blades. I keep the large one sharp, and long ago let the small one go dull. Big and small, sharp and dull. One blade cuts twine, opens over-packaged products, cuts into the seams of troublesome mail. It is often sharper than any kitchen knife, and so I fillet with it at the grill, trim chicken skin on the coals, peel apples while watching television. The other has a squared-off point, so it can double as a screwdriver in a pinch. I use it for nudging, scraping, prodding, freeing up, prying, and notching. I clean my fingernails with it. Twenty-six years ago, my dad slid that pocketknife to me across his desktop. No special occasion, no engraved initials. At first I held on to it mostly by accident, and eventually I got stubborn with the sentiment of possession. It leaves me feeling capable, useful – a little more clever than I am normally. Yes, my phone allows me to keep my world in order, but it’s jammed with obligation, like a bulky office desk I tote around on one thigh. But my pocketknife is what I carry to get me to where I’m going. I always know I’ll need it when I get there. – Tom Chiarella
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O’Neal stars in the 2018 sports comedy, Uncle Drew
CE N E I C S NEWS
My favourite gadget BY
SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
Four-time NBA champion, 15-time All-Star and star of Uncle Drew.
NATURAL SCIENCE : WHAT CAUSES THUNDER Thunder is the result of lightning – so any time you can hear it, you should be in a shelter, such as a house or car. A bolt of lightning heats the air around it to 27 700°C. As the lightning flashes, the hot air instantly expands in every direction, causing a shock wave: thunder. If you’re close to the lightning, you’ll hear a loud and sharp crack. Farther away, it’s more of a rumble, as the sound travels and bounces off of the ground, buildings and atmosphere. While you can see lightning from as far as 160 km away, thunder travels only 16–24 km before dissipating. 82
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Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos – the guy who started Amazon – caused a big ruckus while walking a dog at a technology conference. That’s because the ‘dog’ was actually a sophisticated robot, built by a famous robotics company called Boston Dynamics. We had lots of questions, so we checked in with Boston Dynamics for answers. Does the dog have a name? We call it SpotMini. Is it modeled on a particular kind of dog? No, but it is about the size and weight of a big dog, like a German shepherd. Can it fetch? Yes, it can fetch a can of cooldrink, sticks and a few other things. We are teaching (programming) it to fetch more things in the future. Does it bite? No mouth + no teeth = no bite www.popularmechanics.co.za
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E SY I M AG E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N : C H R I S WA H L
Robot Dogs
EXPERT ADVICE FROM A SUPERSONIC JET PILOT ‘I hope kids out there get excited about the new jet and study hard in school, especially maths and science. Before I thought about being a pilot, I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and design things like this. Nobody told me I could actually fly them. If you want to do it, don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t. Pursue your goals and make a plan.’ – Jim Less, deputy chief pilot of NASA. Less will be the first NASA pilot to fly Lockheed Martin’s new (quiet) supersonic plane, called the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator. For more on the ground-breaking aircraft, turn to page 15.
25-tooth cog
13-tooth cog
25-tooth chain ring
50-tooth chain ring
HOW IT WORKS BIKE GEARS NO VEHICLE, not even your own feet, can take you farther with less energy than a bike. And when a bike has multiple gears – two or three chain rings next to your pedals and up to 11 cogs on your back wheel – it makes riding even easier, and faster. The size of the gears, and how they’re combined, determines how many times the rear wheel turns – www.popularmechanics.co.za
and how far you travel – with every pedal stroke. If you have your chain on the smaller chain ring and it has 25 teeth, along with a rear cog of the same size (in yellow, above), the wheels rotate once for every pedal stroke. It’s a 1:1 gear ratio. If you shift to your big chain ring, and it has 50 teeth, that’s a 2:1 ratio. Then, every pedal stroke makes the wheels rotate twice. And if you shift your chain to a smaller cog in the back, like a 13-tooth cog (in purple), you get a 3.85:1 ratio. The wheels rotate almost four times with every stroke.
WHEN TO USE DIFFERENT GEARS A lower, easier gear, with the smaller chain ring up front and a larger cog in the back, lets you accelerate faster. This helps you get started from a stop, or when you’re climbing a steep hill. The higher, harder gear (big chain ring, small cog) helps you increase your top speed, but requires more work and muscle to accelerate. You also can’t always cruise in the fastest gear because you face resistance from wind, and your tyres are rolling on the road. Those forces are trying to slow you down and require acceleration to maintain your speed. So, even if you’re not trying to go faster, holding a constant speed takes a lot of muscle and effort because you’re in the largest and hardest gear combination. AUGUST 2018
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NINTENDO SWITCH You could call this pick controversial or you can take it as a reward for a category-deining 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
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the Game Boy and the interaction of the NES – into a single device that didn’t cheapen the experience, whichever way you decide to play. And adding an easy way to share the experience with the JoyCons is effectively what sealed this award. There will be more powerful consoles and consoles that strive to be the only box under your TV, but do those really add more joy to your life? The Switch is console gaming distilled into its core ingredients, yet still accessible to a wide age range and gaming level. It’s fun in a box and you don’t need to overhaul your entertainment system to get maximum enjoyment from it.
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DRIVING CAN YOU TELL THESE APART?
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here is a basic tension between the aerodynamics engineers and the car designers. Each side will say that their missions are in harmony, that good design should not preclude good aerodynamics, and that aerodynamics should not limit design. But that’s not entirely true. The wind doesn’t care whether your grille is distinctive. The wind wants your car to look like a raindrop. Anything else is a compromise. Yes, every sliver of kilometre per litre or range matters, but visual distinction sells cars. ‘I always ask: “Have we perfected the bottom of the car?”’ says Andrew Smith, global head of design for Cadillac. ‘Let’s work on the part that nobody can see.’ The aerodynamicist, then, must please both the designers and the laws of physics, creating shapes that are visually distinctive, but are also aerodynamically anonymous, helping the car slip through the air without any drama.
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Maybe you’ve seen it: three lanes of midsize crossovers that could trade badges and nobody would notice. All those shapes are dictated by interior space, power-train packaging, government regulations, and production feasibility. But most of all, they’re dictated by aerodynamic efficiency. When we started asking auto manufacturers how that works, we realised that it’s not incredible that so many cars look so similar: It’s incredible that cars look different at all.
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GM uses supercomputers to run elaborate fluid-dynamics simulations – but the wind tunnel will produce quicker results. It’s in use 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And this can lead to some novel solutions. Consider the grille found on the electric Jaguar I-Pace. Why does an electric car even have a grille, a relic of the internal-combustion engine? Standing next to a red I-Pace in the parking lot of Jaguar Land Rover’s new North American headquarters in Mahwah, New Jersey, I ask. ‘We’re still building our brand,’ says Wayne Burgess, the production studio director at Jaguar Land Rover. ‘All the other models have a grille, so we didn’t want to abandon that with the I-Pace. But we made it functional even though there’s no radiator behind it.’ He’s referring to how the lower half of the grille feeds air to heat exchangers for the battery’s cooling system, and the top half opens out to the bonnet, creating a path through which air can accelerate over the windshield and roof and down over the rear window to the upright tail. ‘You want to keep the air attached to the car, and then suddenly detach it, to minimise turbulence,’ he says. ‘That’s why, in a plan view, looking down, the sides of the car are flat, but in profile you see 86
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curves at the tops of the fenders.’ It makes sense. When it’s moving, this shape is efficient and distinct, a shark fin moving through water. But Burgess does seem just a little bit wistful when he compares the I-Pace’s flat flanks to the Jaguar F-Type’s more curvaceous fenders. ‘The F-Type has that beautiful Coke-bottle shape,’ he says, ‘but it creates turbulence. The air gets detached.’ You can’t have sexy, flared fenders and low drag. AERO R&D A few weeks later, I’m at GM’s Technical Center up in Warren, Michigan, standing inside GM’s new wind tunnel. The tunnel’s supervisor, Nina Tortosa, fires up the 820 kW fan and spins the rolling road under a 40 per cent-scale Chevy Silverado. These treadmill systems are now standard in wind tunnels because, in the real world, your car moves, but the road and air don’t. The wind tunnel must reverse both A TEACHABLE MOMENT parameters, or else LE MANS, 1999: Cresting a hill + low the results will all downforce = flight. be skewed. Somehow, no one I always thought was hurt. that wind tunnels blew
smoke over cars so everyone could see how the air behaved. It turns out no one really does that. The process is messy, so it’s mainly a stunt for photos or visitors. Naturally, I want to see it. Tortosa points a wand over the top of the overgrown toy truck and the smoke glides smoothly across, tracing the shape of the bonnet and roof before going all chaotic over the bed and tailgate. She moves the wand under the truck and reveals that, yes, the exhaust system, suspension, and axles make for turbulence. It’s an empirical demonstration of why manufacturers use front air dams – and even heightadjustable suspension – to minimise air going under the truck. You want as much air as possible going over the smooth parts up top rather than across the lumpy underbody. In addition, GM uses supercomputers to run elaborate fluid-dynamics simulations, the results of which guide engineers toward problem areas. ‘It showed a www.popularmechanics.co.za
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circulation bubble on the quarter-DOWN AERO-NO E L panel of the Volt,’ Tortosa says. ‘We K MI IC couldn’t see that in the tunnel.’ CS R But a wind tunnel is still essential. T ‘Once I build a computer model, if we change something, it takes a day to run the new calculations,’ says Ken Karbon, global head of simulation for aerodynamics. ‘Whereas, how many The Ferrari 488 GTB uses The AMG GT R uses shutters The Porsche 911 Turbo S different iterations could you test in vortex generators on the controlled by an electric can extend its chin spoiler the tunnel?’ He directs the question to underbody to increase motor to either enhance for less drag. So can … the Tortosa. ‘Thirty,’ she says. ‘We could downforce. Just like … the cooling or lower drag, 2019 Ram 1500, which can try 30 different things in a day.’ It’s Honda Civic Type R, which depending on the situation. lower its front spoiler by a lot of work that results in small but uses the top of its hatch to So does … the 2019 62,5 mm travelling at vital margins. ‘We can affect aero by direct air over the rear wing. Volkswagen Jetta. highway speeds. perhaps 10 per cent one way or the other – so if the coefficient of drag is .30, maybe we can get it down to .27,’ Karbon explains. ‘And that might represent a tenth of a kilometre per litre in fuel economy, depending on the vehicle.’ We go next door to the centre’s original wind tunnel, which is simply This professional aero courtesy does Wagener says. ‘But also, there’s active unfathomably huge. The fan looks not extend to foreign companies. aero. There’s a big wing there, but you like a propeller from the Queen Mary, don’t see it when it’s parked.’ fitted with six beautiful laminated TECHNOLOGY, Active aero satisfies both designers spruce blades – wood is better than NOT COMPROMISE and aerodynamicists because it’s at even carbon fibre, because if a piece Aerodynamic principles are fixed, once effective and mostly invisible. of car flies off and damages a blade, non-negotiable. So how will GM, Lamborghini’s ALA (Aerodinamica technicians can easily repair it. The Jaguar, Cadillac, and every other Lamborghini Attiva) system, as gets space is shaped roughly like an oval manufacturer continue to make deployed on the Huracán Performante, track, so the air circulates through the cars more efficient while avoiding doesn’t look like much more than a test section with the vehicle homogeneity? How do we get wing on the rear deck. But that wing’s and back to the fan, performance cars that have hollow, with airflow through each of VO C A BUL requiring less power. high top speed (low drag) its stanchions controlled by an electric RO A E R LIF T A You could host and high downforce motor – and there’s a similar system The tendency for Wimbledon inside (better handling)? One in the front spoiler to balance front – air trapped beneath the chamber behind answer kept coming up: rear lift. On a straight stretch, the the car to lift it off the fan. Seeing this active aero, cars that motors can channel air under the wing the ground. stadium-size facility don’t just passively zip for low drag. Close the air intakes and in person now makes through the air, but the wing makes high downforce, for DIFFUSER it pretty obvious why manipulate it to their extra grip in corners. And the car can A diffuser slows not everyone has one. benefit. This is the vary the system from side to side for down air as it passes It is a very expensive way you resolve all ‘aero vectoring,’ which gives you even behind the vehicle, creating a low-pressure tool, and a fantastic the compromises more control when steering into tight area under the car. and complicated in performance and corners. Now, I’ve driven the Huracán’s machine, so much so styling. You build a predecessor, the Gallardo, at 320 km/h that no two tunnels Transformer. MercedesDOWNFORCE produce the exact AMG’s upcoming 750 kW The opposite of lift. same results. supercar, the Project One, Using wings or the shape ‘The three is a case in point. of the car itself to push the US companies Before going to New car down and increase the normal force at the tyres’ all have wind Jersey and Michigan, I’m contact patches. tunnels, and we at the Miami International all test each other’s Boat Show with the chief SEMI-INTERESTING cars,’ says Tortosa. design officer for Mercedes, AERODYNAMICS FACTOID NO. 1 ‘We share the results, Gorden Wagener. Looking at a fullThe shape known in physics as the because each wind tunnel is sized clay reproduction of the Project Sears-Haack body produces the different. So we like to know what One, I remark on the cleanliness of its lowest drag per volume at a supersonic speed. Imagine our truck got in Ford’s tunnel, and silhouette. ‘Well, there is a lot going a chubby toothpick. vice versa.’ on under the car that you cannot see,’ www.popularmechanics.co.za
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SEMIdesign and engineering. give those designers INTERESTING ‘Look,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t the flared fenders AERODYNAMICS matter how great your and not sweat the FACTOID NO. 2 aerodynamics are if only small stuff? In In 1999, before helmet rules, a cycling ten people buy the car. other words, team ran wind-tunnel tests to figure out Design matters. And would the aero the most aerodynamic haircut. First active aero helps enable cease to be such place: the mullet – 10 seconds faster than bald. The design.’ But what if, I a big deal? Cody, experiment cost posit, there’s a massive unsurprisingly, R620 000. propulsion breakthrough? appeared aghast that Right now, aerodynamics are tied I would even suggest such to fuel consumption and electric a thing. ‘Even if you had a battery range. What if we had batteries that like that, good aerodynamics gives you were good for 965 km of range and other options. You could have a small could fully charge in ten minutes? battery or make the car cheaper, give Could we stop worrying about every it more space, make it quieter. Aero crease in the bodywork? Could we just will always be important.’
OD Y N A M I C S W O R K S The Lamborghini Huracán Performante’s unique new technology: the ability to adjust its downforce not just between the front and back, but from side to side. Here’s how the next evolutionary stage of aerodynamics handles a corner.
A / When the valve inside the rear wing is closed (left), air flows along the rear spoiler, which is shaped like an upside-down airplane wing. This path creates downforce over the inside wheel, for more grip.
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B / When the rear wing’s valve is open, air flows from inside the stanchion and interrupts the wing’s downforce, reducing drag.
C / When the front spoiler’s flap is shut (far left), the inverted wing creates maximum downforce. Opening up the flap (near left) shrinks the wing, reducing drag.
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on a supersonic runway in Florida, and it was spooky, wandering and floating across the tarmac. I didn’t go that fast in the Performante, though as fast as I did go, it was glued to the road, with none of the Gallardo’s aerodynamic imbalance. Lamborghini has always prioritised top speed over handling, but active aero allows for both. The Performante set a lap record at the Nürburgring, the tried-and-tested measure of high-speed stability. But never forget it will also easily gallop to 325 km/h. Suzy Cody, GM’s head of vehicle performance for aerodynamics, says this technology is the bridge between
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DO IT YOUR WAY USEFUL CLEVER TIPS FOR YOUR HOME
WINNING TIP MAKING IT RAIN I live in an area where water harvesting has become a necessity and I’m forever experimenting with the various different mechanics of the harvesting and storage of the water. During this experimentation, several ways to keep mosquitoes, leaves and other debris from being washed into the downpipe and down to the tank have been tried. I have tried the commercially available one as well as the obvious one of simply cementing a piece of nylon gauze over the entrance of the downpipe. And after years of experimenting, I think I have now come up with the cheapest and most ingenious way of ensuring that no debris gets washed into my storage tank. Cut a plastic bottle of the appropriate size (one that fits snugly on the inside of the downpipe) in half. Stick the funnel side down the downpipe, taking care to ensure it doesn’t fit too loosely, or it will just fall right in! Fill it with a few pebbles large enough not to drop through the open funnel end.
Then fill it up further with finer gravel or sand (the size of the sand determines how fine you want the water filtered). You can also experiment with how much of the bottle sticks out into the gutter. If it’s flush with the bottom of the gutter, tie a piece of rope or wire to the top of the bottle so that you can pull it out once month or so to check whether it needs cleaning. You can also drill 1 mm holes in the bottle so that the water can run into the bottle from the sides. Happy harvesting! PC JONES PS: See attached drawing
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Send us your tip and you could win a Master Lock Hamper worth R2 000. Master Lock One Lock has a 55 mm body with a 7 mm hardened-steel shackle for improved cut resistance. It also has a directional combination padlock that allows for up/down/left/right directional movements to open the padlock and is more secure than a standard combination lock. The One Lock code is resettable to any number of movements in any sequence. Master Lock products carry a limited lifetime warranty. Master Lock – Indoor Bluetooth Padlock gives you the freedom to monitor access and control who is able to open the lock via the Master Lock Vault eLocks app on your smartphone. You’ll also be able to track the history of when the lock was opened and closed via the app. Thanks to its keyless convenience, you’ll be able to share access at specific times on specific days.
Dear PM, With the ever-rising prices of Eskom electricity, keeping truly warm in winter in the evenings is becoming more and more expensive. Gas keeps going up in price. And using a 2-bar electric heater gobbles up 2 000 watts an hour; a 3-bar uses 3 000 watts. Even an inverter air conditioner uses at least 1 500 watts per hour. So, how to stay really warm? Answer: Don’t heat the whole room: Just heat yourself with a single electric overblanket (not an underblanket) that can be purchased for as little as R500. Spread it over your body when you sit in the evenings (or during the day if you work from home), put it on ‘High’ setting – and you stay toasty warm! And the astonishing thing is it uses just 50 watts! Less than the cost of an oldfashioned incandescent light bulb, and only one-sixtieth of the cost of a 3-bar heater! There simply is no better way for you to keep warm this cheaply, and thus save massively on your winter heating bills. Kind regards, DOUG LAURIE
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