FEATURES
These are the Top 10 Toyota Engines of All Time
Toyota’s legacy as an engine designer and producer is inextricably intertwined with the inline-six. After all, four of the power plants on this list fall into that configuration, including the desirable 2JZ-GTE from the A80 Supra. But Toyota’s talents go beyond six-cylinder engines. Think about the high-revving V-10 from the Lexus LFA or the flat-four the company co-developed with Subaru for the 86 and BRZ. More Videos 6 Reasons Why the MKIV Supra Became a Classic 2005 New York: Scion t2B Concept Video Of The Year: Scion xD – Motor Trends 2008 Car of the Year Contender Video SUPER STREET’s 8 Favorite Cars of SPOCOM Anaheim 2018 Rare Metals: Classic Cars of the 1990s at Throwback Meet II Behind the Wheel: the 2020 Toyota Supra Watch This! The Lexus LF-30 Electrified Need t...
How Lenovo is Pursuing Sustainable Supercomputers
The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Munich, Germany, contains no ordinary supercomputer. Sure, it has thousands of servers, or nodes, stacked in rows in a windowless vault with technicians working diligently on huge data crunching conundrums for research organisations; running simulations to try and better predict future natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes. But it is eerily quiet. Almost too quiet. The familiar whir of hot air being whooshed away by power-hungry computers is almost entirely absent. Where are all the fans? Almost all gone, as it turns out. The LRZ SuperMUC NG, which uses massive arrays of Lenovo’s ThinkSystem SD650 servers, requires nearly no fans at all – just those for cooling the power supply units and in the in-row-chillers on every eighth row. As a r...
Watch This 5-Year-Old DJ Shred House Music Live on Vinyl
At the age of five, when kids start to develop early interests like Pokémon card collecting or tee-ball, most parents can safely cross DJing off the list of potential hobbies. Most parents. The parents of five-year-old DJ Archie are not most parents. At a time when other kids his age are learning how to color inside the lines, he is dropping house heaters on his way to becoming a barnstorming international EDM artist. The son of renowned British television host and award-winning “Dear Lovejoy” podcast Tim Lovejoy, entertainment courses through DJ Archie’s veins. Essentially, it was only a matter of time before this miniature prodigy made waves in the music industry. He’s like a can of soda—too much energy on the inside, and it explodes. And we ar...
Future Cars: 2021 and Beyond
They may be out of favor right now, but traditional three-box cars will never go away. To make sure, automakers around the world are pouring enormous resources into design and engineering to keep sedans, coupes, and convertibles as interesting and as compelling as possible. Whether they’re built for fun, luxury, a bit of both, or just to get you where you need to go, the cars of the near future will offer more style and technology than ever as they try to woo you away from joining the SUV herd. Cadillac Celestiq See all 13 photos What’s New: The Celestiq is a massive four-door, four-passenger, full-size electric car with big wheels and a hatch instead of a trunk. It will be a hand-built grand tourer with tons of executive-style space in the very wide back seat. A tinted glass r...
New Device Uses Shadows to Generate Electricity
Sourced from Royal Society of Chemistry, Singapore. In an interesting twist in emerging technologies and the energy sector, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has created a device called the Shadow-Effect Energy Generator. The device is able to create an electrical charge using the contrast between shadow and light. It sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel, Yahoo News reports that the team behind the device capitalised on the illumination contrast caused by shadows as an indirect source of power. “The contrast in illumination induces a voltage difference between the shadowed and illuminated sections, resulting in an electric current. This novel concept of harvesting energy in the presence of shadows is unprecedented,” says research team lea...
What’s New On the 2020 Mazda CX-9?
The current-generation Mazda CX-9 has been around since 2016, and it represented a critical step forward for the automaker. Based on the SkyActiv platform, Mazda’s midsize crossover got a polished look thanks to the new Kodo design language, making it more premium inside and out. Like with all Mazdas, the CX-9 is one of the best-driving SUVs in its segment thanks to its punchy turbocharged engine and well-tuned transmission. For the 2020 model year, the CX-9 got a midcycle refresh, and that includes important updates to its interior, as well as an increase in torque. More Videos Need to Know: Mazda CX-9 Signature 2015 LA Auto Show Mazda CX-9 First Test: 2019 Mazda3 From the Pressroom: the 2019 Mazda CX-5 2019 Hot Wheels™ Legends Tour: Charlotte 5 Cool Things: the All-New 2020 ...
Wait, Kramer Drove an Experimental Chevrolet on “Seinfeld”?
It’s no secret that Jerry Seinfeld is a car enthusiast. In fact, his namesake television show includes numerous nods to his automotive interests: Jerry’s fridge features a Skip Barber Racing School magnet; posters of Porsches line the walls of his apartment; and Kramer, Jerry’s across-the-hall neighbor, drives an experimental 1973 Chevrolet Impala. Yes, Kramer’s green Impala—the car that famously dons the license plate “ASSMAN” in the Seinfeld episode “The Fusilli Jerry“—is no ordinary Chevy, but one of 1,000 1973 Impalas that General Motors furnished with an experimental front airbag system dubbed the Air Cushion Restraint System (ACRS). How do we know? Well, take a look at the car’s interior in episodes such as “The Race” ...
Is Technology Africa’s Biggest Undiscovered Gold Mine?
Technology has the potential to fundamentally transform societies. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and broadband are becoming central to the societal developments around the world – enabling rapid improvements to industrial production and societal services, positively influencing the way we live and interact with our environment. Africa is home to over a billion people and the population is expected to grow in the coming years. It is projected to grow from 17% in 2020 to 26% in 2050 and 39% by 2100 of the global population while the share of Asia will fall from 59% in 2020 to 55% in 2050 and 43% in 2100. It is also a continent with the most growing economies and many from a low base; 9 of the 20 fastest growing in 2020 according to the IMF with rates above 6% of GDP (not ad...
What Is a Targa? A Very Brief History of an Automotive Staple
In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the automotive landscape was awash with targa-top cars. Conventional convertibles required heavy mechanisms (or worse, motors or hydraulics) to work and got rid of a major structural component—ya know, the roof. That in turn sapped performance from sports cars by making them less rigid, heavier, and slower. There were also very real fears among automakers that the U.S. government would ban convertibles in the name of rollover safety in the late ’60s—even though that never happened, the automakers freaked. In fact, there were zero American convertibles built from 1976 to 1981. A solution for all of these problems was to ditch the folding fabric roof of a convertible altogether and replace it with a removable panel mounted to a sturdy roll hoop...
The 50 Best Songs of 2020 (So Far)
Great songs have a freedom that albums don’t because great songs only have to pull off their trick once. It’s like how a great SNL sketch can be a terrible movie or why Vine was an underrated miracle of online comedy. Sometimes an artist can get a lot more done in miniature. When people say that no one listens to albums anymore, they’re obviously mistaken, but they mean that no one listens to certain kinds of albums anymore. They won’t wait to get to the good part, and an industry that’s been padding out their wares for decades has had to adapt to a new reality where the customer is always dope. From Hailey Whitters to Hayley Williams, from King Von to Christine and the Queens, here’s a supercut of just the good parts: The songs that have challenged and delighted and comforted us through a...
Mer de Noms at 20: Musicians Celebrate A Perfect Circle’s Debut
At first, Tool fans were kinda bummed. Word of a Maynard James Keenan side project — while appealing on paper — was met with apprehension and dismay, as it threatened to further delay the studio sessions for the follow-up to Ænima, which they’d already been impatiently waiting years for. When the album finally hit record store shelves on May 23, 2000, those fans weren’t skeptical anymore. As they’d learn fast, A Perfect Circle was no Tool clone. The music was largely written before Keenan ever became involved. Guitarist Billy Howerdel, the creative strength behind the avant-rock outfit, was a former guitar technician who’d worked for Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More. He became friends with Keenan in 1992 after meeting on tour; Tool were opening for Fishbone, who Howerdel was working for. ...
American Psycho: Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP at 20
“I am forever chasing The Marshall Mathers LP. That was the height of what I could do. I just don’t have the rage I did back then.”– Eminem, 2017 Vulture interview “It sounded like something Stephen King would write. It sounded like a horror movie.” – Jimmy Iovine, VH1’s Ultimate Albums – Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP Jan. 20, 2001. The Barker Hangar. Santa Monica, CA. 2.5 miles from the Interscope Records office. He emerges wearing denim overalls and wielding a chainsaw. Chemically blonde hair meets the top of a hockey mask. Behind him on stage, an ersatz brick bungalow modeled after an equally weathered home somewhere between 8 Mile and 7 Mile roads in Detroit. The chainsaw blade is inert, but a recording of violent revving plays as sparks shoot skyward from the stage. When...
