The voices of The Grand Tour are now on Waze

These are way better than the default voices.

If you were ever a fan of the TV series Top Gear you’ve likely seen the news of the spiritual relaunching of the series as The Grand Tour over on Amazon. To get you in the mood, Waze has partnered up with Amazon to offer the voices of Clarkson, Hammond and May to guide you on your next trip.

All you have to do is open up the settings of the Waze app, head to “Sound” and then “Voice Language” and look for “Clarkson, Hammond & May.” Going forward, all of the Waze announcements will come from your favorite snarky gearheads. It’s really a match made in heaven, and it could lighten up your commute some.

Anti-drone gun takes down targets from 1.2 miles away

There are numerous systems built to take down wayward or dangerous drones, but they tend to have one big catch: you need to be relatively close to the drone, which could be scary if the robotic aircraft is packing explosives. DroneShield thinks it can help. It’s introducing the DroneGun, a jammer that disables drone signals (including GPS and GLONASS positioning) from as far as 1.2 miles away. Like most rivals, it doesn’t destroy the target drone — it just forces the vehicle to land or return to its starting point. Anti-drone teams can not only disable threats from a safe distance, but potentially locate their pilots.

It’s not the lightest machine at about 13 pounds, but it’s portable enough to be usable by one person. You don’t need technical training, either, so it’s easy for security staff to use.

Whether or not you see the DroneGun in action is another matter. It’s not FCC-certified as we write this, so you can’t legally operate one in the US. Provided it’s approved, though, it could help take down drones at airports, protect soldiers against drone bombs and otherwise help in situations where it’s simply not possible to get close.

Via: Wired

Source: DroneShield

The best space heater

By Séamus Bellamy

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best homewares. When readers choose to buy The Sweethome’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After 79 hours of research, including new 2016 tests on a half dozen heaters and comparisons among 72 competitors, our longtime winners have prevailed: the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat is the best for small rooms and the De’Longhi EW7507EB is the best for larger rooms.

If you need to quickly warm up small spaces of a hundred square feet or less, nothing can beat the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat for its low price, compact size, light 3-pound weight, rapid performance, ease of use, and great warranty—though this heater is a bit noisy because of its fan. For a larger space that you plan to warm for hours at a time, get the De’Longhi EW7507EB. This 14.5 by 6.3 by 25.2-inch radiator-style unit efficiently, silently, and steadily puts out plenty of heat, and it can maintain a set temperature on a schedule with its built-in thermostat and timer.

The best heater for small rooms

Photo: Michael Hession

If you want to quickly heat an office or a small bedroom—or want a compact heater that can easily travel between them—the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat is your best option. In years past and in our 2016 tests, it nearly matched the most powerful heaters we tried. It generated more heat in 20 minutes than almost anything else we’ve tested, and after two hours, it raised our 11-by-13-foot testing room’s temperature to 87.4 degrees Fahrenheit (a 15.3 degree increase) in two hours.

Like all fan-driven heaters, it’s a little loud. We measured 40 decibels of sound from a distance of 6 feet away (that’s like a refrigerator with the compressor running; see this decibel chart for context). This noise level was middle of the road for all of the fan-forced heaters we tested in a previous year. That said, the white noise isn’t distracting. Several staff members have owned this machine for multiple winters with no complaints. The Lasko gives you some of the best performance with easily the best value—for most people using the device only a few months of the year, that’s good enough.

A little more heat for a little more money

Photo: Michael Hession

In previous years, we’ve found that the Lasko 754200 can become unavailable once the weather turns cold. If that happens, get the Honeywell UberHeat HCE200W. It’s a little more expensive than our main pick, roughly $10 more at the time of publication. But for the money, you get slightly better performance. During a two-hour heating test in 2016, the UberHeat warmed up our test area faster than our main pick did, and reached a final temperature (89.4 °F) two degrees hotter than the Lasko heater’s. Because of these results, we briefly considered making the UberHeat this guide’s main pick for small rooms. But a few factors steered us back toward the Lasko: The UberHeat is louder and more expensive, and it’s a newer product that we want to long-term test for reliability.

A quiet heater for lengthy operation in large rooms

Photo: Michael Hession

The best heater for a larger area is the De’Longhi EW7507EB. During testing, it performed almost identically to the now-discontinued De’Longhi TRD0715T Safeheat, which was our large-room heating pick for three years running. Both heaters outperformed similar models at heat generation, thermal retention, and energy efficiency.

Like all oil-filled radiators, the De’Longhi EW7507EB doesn’t give you instant heat. After 20 minutes, this De’Longhi model was capable of raising the temperature of our test area by only 1.9 °F (the Lasko 754200 heated it by 4.5 °F in 20 minutes). But after two hours of operation, the De’Longhi heated our test area by 14.1 °F to 87.2 °F—only 1.2 degrees less than the Lasko heater could manage in the same period. But where the Lasko’s noisy fan needed to run nearly constantly to turn the temperature in the test area up so high, the De’Longhi radiator makes almost no noise at all, making it a great choice for use in rooms where quiet is important to you. Plus, all of the oil inside the radiator gives it a large enough thermal mass to keep emitting heat for roughly an hour after the hardware turns off.

Similar but slower heat for large rooms

Photo: Michael Hession

If you can’t find our main pick for large rooms, consider the De’Longhi Radia S Eco TRRS 0715E. Its specs are very similar to our pick’s, as is its price (currently, this model is a few bucks higher). The radiator-style heater comes with a digital thermostat, operates in near-silence, and has an overheat detector and an anti-freeze setting designed to protect nearby plumbing pipes.

Despite the similarities, it doesn’t heat as well as our main pick—it’s slower, and, in the end, doesn’t get as hot. It is a few pounds lighter, which makes it easier to move from room to room than our pick, but that reduced weight may be related to its weaker heating performance. Like our main pick, when you unplug it from the wall, you’ll need to reprogram it once you plug it in again.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from The Sweethome: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

The 12 best tech gifts for the entertainer in your life

You know the type: Someone who loves throwing parties. In fact, you will probably partake of egg nog and sugar cookies in their home before the season is up. So why not get them something that helps them do what they do best: entertain. If your friend loves to cook, you might consider an easy-to-use WiFi sous vide, a smart kitchen scale or a smokeless infrared grill. For entertaining, a countertop draft beer system is convenient — and then your friend can serve pour-over coffee as the party is winding down. Finally, we have some ideas on how the hostess in your life can keep guests amused — try the Cards Against Humanity science pack expansion, USB turntable or Lomography instant camera.

For our full list of recommendations in all categories, don’t forget to stop by our main Holiday Gift Guide hub.

Diamonds convert nuclear waste into clean batteries

Nuclear waste is normally a major environmental headache, but it could soon be a source of clean energy. Scientists have developed a method of turning that waste into batteries using diamond. If you encapsulate short-range radioactive material in a human-made diamond, you can generate a small electrical charge even as you completely block harmful radiation. While the team used a nickel isotope for its tests, it ultimately expects to do this using the carbon isotope you find in graphite blocks from nuclear power plants.

The batteries wouldn’t generate much power, but their longevity would be dictated by the life of the radiation itself. Researchers estimate that a carbon-based battery would generate 50 percent of its power in 5,730 years. Most likely, the batteries would be used in high-altitude drones, pacemakers, spacecraft and anywhere else replacing the battery is either very cumbersome or impossible. You could see interstellar probes that keep running long after they lose solar power, for example.

Any practical implementations are likely a long way off, and there are some conspicuous problems. Cost, for one. Diamond is expensive, so it might not be feasible to convert large amounts of nuclear waste into batteries. That’s assuming the technology works as well as intended, too. Still, it raises hope that the leftovers from nuclear reactors won’t just sit there posing a threat — they might actually do us some good.

Via: New Atlas

Source: University of Bristol

Netflix’s ‘White Rabbit Project’ looks like ‘Mythbusters 2.0’

White Rabbit Project isn’t an official continuation of the Mythbusters franchise, but it’s pretty darn close. The show stars former Mythbusters members Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara, and it’s set to premiere on Netflix on December 9th. This time around, Byron, Belleci and Imahara aren’t just investigating strange scientific phenomena or seemingly impossible movie scenes; they’re ranking history’s weirdest inventions, heists and happenings, and seeing how science makes them possible.

In its first trailer, White Rabbit Project shows off a few familiar Mythbusters tropes, including explosions, wacky robotics, big guns and mild torture in the name of science. There’s everything from training pigeons to robot jousting, and even an attempt to eat a fancy meal with electrodes intermittently zapping the hosts’ muscles.

We first heard about White Rabbit Project in September. All episodes of the show will hit Netflix at once on December 9th.

Source: Netflix