speed

Speed camera gives ticket to stationary car

Something's wonky about technology in Baltimore.

Earlier this week, I shivered at the idea that the city had been at the forefront of putting audio surveillance in its buses.

Now I hear that its speed cameras appear to have been buying street drugs from extremely disreputable sorts.

You see, a Baltimore camera issued a ticket to Daniel Doty. It claimed that he and his Mazda wagon were going 38 mph in a 25 mph zone.

I hadn't been aware that Mazda wagons could go that fast. Doty, on the other hand, hadn't been aware that you can go 38 mph while standing completely still.… Read more

iPad 4 impresses in speed tests

What the iPad 4 loses in style, it gains in performance versus the Mini.

As I wrote last week, the Mini's style, size, and weight make it hard to put down. But after upgrading from the third-generation iPad 4G/LTE model to the fourth-generation iPad with 4G/LTE and after a week of pretty constant use, I found the 4's performance compelling.

It feels fast and benchmarks fast. In most -- but not all -- cases, Web pages pop, apps load, and graphics render faster than the Mini.

And the 4's performance is supported by my own … Read more

Google inaugurates its super-high-speed Internet service

After years in the making, Google announced today that it has started connecting people in Kansas City, Kan., to its ultra high-speed fiber-to-the-home Internet service. Acting as guinea pigs of sorts, these locals will be the first people in the world who get to test out Google's new service and decide whether it lives up to the hype.

When Google first announced its nationwide Google Fiber project in 2010, around 1,100 U.S. towns and cities applied to get in on the deal. When Kansas City won out, Google Access General Manager Kevin Lo said, "new high-speed … Read more

Maximize your old Mac's performance

While slowdowns in a Mac system are likely caused by errors, be it corruption in the file system or a similar problem that ought to be addressed, over time as program and OS developments demand more out of a system, you may find an older system simply does not seem to keep up. While the system may not severely bog down, you might find many tasks begin to take a little longer. While purchasing a new system is one solution to this problem, it often is not a feasible or even necessary option.

In many cases, older systems do have … Read more

Test and report the speed of your drives

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is a tool designed to test the speed of your drives. Why bother? Well, if you are accessing or storing video or other real-time demanding applications, you want a drive that can keep up with the read and write demands of those applications. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is designed to let you know how fast your drives are and report their speed changes over time. The app is free and installs easily.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test launches with a dialog sporting two rotary speed gauges, one for reads and the other for writes. Below those two … Read more

Running-jumping treasure-hunting game

Temple Run is a treasure-hunting game with shades of a few other popular games thrown in. It installs quickly and launches with a short tutorial that teaches the game mechanics in about 60 seconds. Temple Run is a free download, but you'll want to buy some extra coins to buy upgrades and new capabilities.

Essentially, in Temple Run you need to run through a maze of paths, jumping or sliding over and under obstacles, collecting coins or gems as you go, using different swipes of the screen and by tilting the iDevice. There are power-ups and special abilities (like … Read more

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier -- again

Chuck Yeager was 24 when he became the first human to break the speed of sound. And to celebrate the 65th anniversary of that history-making event, the 89-year-old former test pilot and now retired Air Force brigadier general did it again, flying in the rear seat of an F-15 that broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. on Sunday.

Yeager, whose exploits were chronicled in the book (and film) "The Right Stuff," gained worldwide notoriety when his Bell X-1 -- a 30 foot, 11 inch plane with a 28-foot wingspan -- reached a speed of 700 … Read more

The 404 1,148: Where we all get a little closer (podcast)

If you're a gamer or at least marginally interested in videogames, today's show is for you. With Justin Yu out of town for the day, Jeff invited gaming industry all-stars Russ Frushtick (Polygon) and Scott Jones (EP Daily) to take on a handful of gaming-related topics. Laughs were had, tears were shed, but at the end of the day we all got a little closer.

Topics from today's show:

- Scott is really digging Fieldrunners 2.

- If there's one thing we're all in agreement on, it's that Dishonored is already a top 3 game of 2012 -- and that Russ' new nickname is "Ghost."

- Will Need For Speed: Most Wanted finally give us the Burnout-esque game we've been asking for?

- What the hell is going to happen with the Wii U?

- Just how Assassin's Creed-y will Assassin's Creed III be?… Read more

How important is PC processor speed, really?

In the old days, choosing a computer was easy: you bought the one with the fastest processor you could afford. And you knew which processor was fastest (more or less) by its numerical clock-speed rating.

These days it's a lot trickier. Only hard-core techies (and those with the patience to search in Google) know the difference between, say, an AMD A4-3305M and an Intel Core i3-2350M.

And even then, does it really matter? There's a strong argument to be made that processor performance, even in low-cost, entry-level PCs, has reached a level that's good enough for most … Read more