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T2 Chip Makes a Big Difference When Encoding Video

Charlotte Henry ·

AppleInsider ran an experiment to test the effect of a T2 chip on video encoding. It found that a Mac Mini with a T2 chip encoded video in nearly half the time an iMac without one did.

Considering the possibility that the slow hard drive was the problem, we re-ran the test to both a USB 3.1 type C SSD on the iMac 4K with identical results. Additionally, running the test on an i7 Mac mini with an external 4200RPM laptop hard drive connected by USB 3.1 type A provided identical results with a higher speed encode, effectively eliminating the slow drive on the entry-level iMac 4K as a bottleneck. So, 100 percent of the difference between the iMac 4K and i3 Mac mini with the basic Video Toolkit is because of the T2.

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When I Die I Want You to Delete My Facebook Account

Andrew Orr ·

When I die I want you to delete my Facebook account. Don’t parade my digital corpse around in Facebook’s new Tributes feature.

Facebook is rolling out several updates for memorialized accounts, which are profiles that remain active for people who have passed away. A dedicated tributes tab will let friends and family share stories and memories of their loved one, allowing the late person’s timeline to stay as it was before they passed away.

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An Inside Look at How Charging Cables Work

Andrew Orr ·

Charging cables are a requirement for any electrical device. But have you ever wondered how they work? Rhett Allain tells us.

Inside each of those cables are multiple wires. It doesn’t matter if the cable is used for power or for data—there have to be at least two wires inside. That is because all electric circuits depend on loops. You can’t make a loop with just one wire.

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China Planning to Ban Cryptocurrency Mining

Charlotte Henry ·

China is moving to ban mining cryptocurrency. Bloomberg News reports that having banned coin offerings in 2017, as well as asking local exchanges to stop trading, Chinse officials are preparing to go a step further.

The National Development Reform Commission, the country’s powerful economic planner, this week listed crypto-mining among a plethora of industries it intends to eliminate because they “seriously wasted resources” or polluted the environment. The agency is seeking public feedback on the guidelines and indicated that the crypto-mining ban could take effect as soon as they’re formally issued… While China was once home to about 70 percent of Bitcoin mining and 90 percent of trades, authorities have waged a nearly two-year campaign to shrink the crypto industry amid concerns over speculative bubbles, fraud and wasteful energy consumption.

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Which One is Better for the Environment: Physical or Digital Music?

Andrew Orr ·

A study published yesterday found that streaming digital music led to “unintended” environmental and economic impacts. Despite a reduction in the use of plastics in physical music media, storing and transmitting digital music led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Researchers discovered that the amount of GHGs generated by the streaming and downloading of music online is actually much larger than the amount that was once generated by the production of plastic used to make vinyl records, cassettes and CDs in earlier decades.

The study seems focused on plastic use in physical media vs. storing and streaming digital music from servers. I’d like to see more data, such as how much electricity is used when billions of people play the average CD vs. a digital song.

 

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Secret Service 101 - Don't Plug Random Thumb Drives Into the Computer

Charlotte Henry ·

When a Chinese national was arrested at President Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago resort in March, the Secret Service confiscated a variety of devices from her. These included a thumb drive. Now, you might think the one thing you would not do in such circumstances is plug that thumb drive into a Secret Service computer. According to Miami Herald, you’d be wrong.

Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another agent put Zhang’s thumb drive into his computer, it immediately began to install files, a “very out-of-the-ordinary” event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any further corruption of his computer, Ivanovich testified.