Vietnam Considers Limiting SIM Card Access, Suggests 18 per Person is Enough

How many SIM cards do you have in your stash? If your answer is less than three per operator -- of every network provider -- then you may have trouble sympathizing with the apparent plight of some Vietnamese. Proposed legislation from the Ministry of Information and Commerce would effectively regulate each citizen to a maximum of three SIMs per carrier, leading to a theoretical limit of 18 SIM cards per individual, as the country as six operators. The draft law is intended to curb unauthorized distribution in that nation, where SIM cards with student discounts and the like are re-sold without carrier knowledge. 

The proposal could affect businesses too, limiting each company to a maximum of 100 SIM cards -- but there's no word on whether this cap is per network or absolute. Meanwhile, industry officials insist that a limit of five SIMs per operator would be more reasonable, given the number of SIM-enabled devices available to consumers. What's most clear, though, is that Vietnam is awash in marketing opportunity -- just imagine how popular Nokia could be with a mobile phone that supports 18 SIM cards.

All Your iPad Dictations Belong to Apple

Though the new iPad doesn't have Siri, it does have Dictation, which lets you dictate what you want to say to the email, notes, messages, and other apps. And like Siri, Dictation needs an internet connection in order to work, that's because Apple needs to send your phrases to its servers to make sense out of your yapping.

But Apple also stores your messages for an unspecified amount of time when you use Dictation on your iPad. ZDNet notes that though Apple is upfront with what they're doing (there are clear warning prompts), Apple is still unclear on why they're doing it. Specifically, the words and phrase Apple uses—'information like', 'your device will also send Apple other information' and 'Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time'—is incredibly vague.

Of course it's not like Apple is going to use your voice messages against you or something. Apple is collecting data to improve Siri and Dictation. But it's important to remember, especially if you work in a sensitive workplace, that Apple will store your dictations on its servers and once they're on its servers, they pretty much belong to Apple at that point.

Breakthrough Opens Door for 60Tb Hard Drives

Seagate just shattered the record for storage density on hard drives by using a novel recording method to stuff 1 terabit into a square inch. That's nearly twice the old record. Hard drives are about to get huge.

Seagate squeezed all of that data into that tiny space by using "heat-assisted magnetic recording" instead of perpendicular recording to write data to disk. ExtremeTech reports:

HAMR, which was originally demonstrated by Fujitsu in 2006, adds a laser to the hard drive head. The head seeks as normal, but whenever it wants to write data the laser turns on. Reading data is done in the conventional way. Just so you understand how small the magnetic bits are in a HAMR drive, one terabit per square inch equates to two million bits per linear inch; in other words, each site is just 12.7 nanometers long - or about a dozen atoms.

In the short term the technology will result in new 6TB 3.5-inch desktop drives and 2TB 2.5-inch laptop drives. Currently the largest capacity drives are 1TB and 3TB respectively for laptops and desktops. That's already an impressive boost in capacity.

In theory, though, HAMR should allow hard drives to write up to 10 terabits per square inch, which means that in the future you could potentially cram about 60Tb onto a 3.5-inch drive. Seagate.

The New Worst Place for QR Codes: Burqas

They're controversial, confusing, and their presence creates tension across the western world. Now QR codes have found their way onto the burqa—but why? I can't wait to download this app!

The aptly named WTF QR CODES, where the imaged surfaced, provides no context for this strange sight. Is this a new trend in Islamist society? Was this taken at some booth of Consumer Electronics Association? App here.

Nokia Wants Your Call Alert To Be a Vibrating Magnetic Tattoo

Patents come and go all the time, but here's a crazy-ass one from Nokia: magnetic tattoos that vibrate to alert you to your phone. Talk about keeping in touch.

The patent proposes "a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field."

Basically, that means a magnetic field would cause a tattoo to vibrate in a specific way. The tattoos, the patent suggests, would have to use "ink enriched by ferromagnetic or paramagnetic compounds"—not too tricky, given that tattoos already contain metallic compounds. Then, different magnetic fields could be used to provide different sensations, allowing the tatt-wearer to discern between different callers, or different kinds of alerts.

While the patent does suggest that similar technology could be rolled into something else wearable, like a badge, the obvious application is for something truly embedded. At least you can never lose a tattoo. The patent.

In-App Ads Are Destroying Your Battery Life

You intuitively know that all of those applications running in the background on your phone are latently eating away at your battery's charge, but a new study reveals that the main culprit isn't any useful function. It's location-pinging ads.

The study, conducted by a team lead by Abhinav Pathak from Purdue University, analyzed the energy used by several popular free Android apps (PDF) like Angry Birds, Facebook, the New York Times, and Chess. The team developed an "energy profiler" they call "Eprof" that determines what processes within an app are using energy. The results are shocking: 65 to 75 percent of energy consumed by the free apps studied are used by third-party advertising modules within the programs. These apps continue to run in the background even when you're not actually using the app. Only 10 to 30 percent of that energy is used to power the applications' "core functions."

Apps shouldn't continue to serve you ads when you're not locking at the apps. It's a bug, or something more nefarious. According to the researchers, developers don't notice energy consumption problems—bugs or otherwise—because most apps are "energy oblivious," meaning that the developers don't pay attention to how much energy apps use.

Sleeping Bag Hammock Lets You Relax Under Any Weather Conditions

Hammocks aren't designed with cold weather camping in mind. Even sleeping bags are helpless against the slightest chill.Grand Trunk's hammock compatible sleeping bag solves this by turning your hammock into a toasty insulated cocoon.

In a normal sleeping bag, the insulation on the back gets squished to oblivion as soon as you get inside, leaving nothing more than a thin piece of fabric protecting your back from the elements. Grand Trunk's hammock compatible bag gets around this by letting you pull your entire hammock through the bag.

Now instead of a sleeping bag pressing against a hammock, you have a hammock inside a sleeping bag. That means the insulation stays lofty so you can stay toasty, even when it's freezing outside. It's one size fits most, so long as hammock apartments don't become the next big thing. It's available for pre-order today for $180 here.

This Tiny Display Measures Less Than an Inch But Still Packs As Much Resolution As the New iPad

Cramming a QXGA display with a resolution of 2048x1526 into a device as small as the iPad might seem like an impressive accomplishment. But Forth Dimension Displays have managed to squeeze that same number of pixels into a display that's smaller than an inch.

And since Apple claims that it's impossible for the human eye to discern individual pixels on their Retina Displays, you might wonder what's the point of having so many pixels on such a tiny display unless you intend to hold it right up to your eye. But that's exactly what they've been designed for.

Forth Dimension Displays is hoping to revolutionize near-to-eye microdisplay hardware, like virtual reality goggles that have so far been a disappointment thanks to their low-resolution displays that don't exactly draw you into the action. In fact, by next year they're hoping to have a high-end gaming accessory on the market using the hi-res displays which would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500 to $2,000. And if more OEMs started adopting the company's technology, that price would certainly drop over time. More here.

How a Particle Accelerator Works: Explained With Donuts and Chocolate Bars

Using a fried dough and Kit Kat stop-motion animation, the folks over at Elements explain how a synchroton particle accelerator—like the Large Hadron Collider—accelerate particles up to the speed of light.

And who knows, if high school teachers used baked goods as educational aids, maybe more kids would be excited about pursuing a career in science. More here.

St. Patrick’s Day Hero Attempts To Drink a Gallon Of Shamrock Shake

Guinness is certainly the most popular drink on St. Patrick's Day, but McDonald's Shamrock Shake probably comes in at a close second. It's only available for a limited time every year, which inspired Sam Jordan to drink a gallon of the minty concoction.

Or at least try to.

Filling an empty one-liter milk jug required six of the shakes, which amounts to just over 5,000 calories, or more than twice Sam's recommended daily intake. He started out drinking it with a straw, but it soon became obvious that chugging was the only way to go. Sadly, the sheer volume of Shamrock deliciousness got the best of him about halfway through, but since he's alive to tell the tale, more here.

Steve Wozniak Was Doing his Regular Waiting-in-line Thing

Sure it's marketing, but it's also a nice little ritual. Speaking to an interviewer from What's Trending, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak acknowledged he doesn't have to wait in line for his new iPad, but said he'd "rather be genuine, like the real people". They're the ones you can see pretending to sleep / read in the background.

The New iPad Has a Gigantic 70-Percent Larger Battery

The new iPad guts are nice, at last with 1GB of much needed RAM to accelerate all that web browsing. But the most impressive thing is the new battery, which takes most of the space. It's a gigantic 70-percent larger!

The iPad 2 had a 25-watt-hour Li-ion battery. The iPad 3 has a 42.5 watt-hour battery! That's 70-percent more than the previous capacity. 70-percent more magical battery unicorns, people.

The battery life hasn't changed, however: it's still ten hours of use, nine with average use of the cellular data network. So why the increase? Obviously, that big screen and the more powerful processor are hitting the power big time.

This Desk Hides Your Mess

Nika Zupanc calls this elegantly minimal workspace her Homework Table. But work is probably the farthest thing from your mind when you feast your eyes on it since the table's devoid of drawers and clutter thanks to a clever retracting accordion file.

A small brass crank on the side of the table looks like a few turns will result in a scary jack-in-the-box clown jumping out at you. But it's instead used to raise and lower an expansive set of folders that can be used to hide documents that would otherwise take away from the table's stripped-down aesthetic. More here.

Meditation Makes Your Brain Quicker

Most people dismiss meditation as a bunch of hippy nonsense. But no longer; scientists have established that meditation, if done regularly and for long enough, is linked to the brain being able to process information faster. Take that, skeptics.

The research, undertaken at UCLA, used MRI scans to compare the brains of 50 meditators to 50 non-meditators. What they discovered was that long-term meditators display large amounts of something known as gyrification in the brain. Gyrification is just a fancy-pants term for the amount of folding in the cortex—it's what gives the brain its unique, ridged appearance. Furthermore, there's a heap of evidence supporting the fact that the more folded a brain is, the quicker it can process information.

In fact, the researchers found a direct correlation between the number of years participants had been meditating for and the amount of gyrification, which suggests that, over time, people who meditate see an increase in the speed at which they can process information. Speaking to Medical Express, Eileen Luders, one of the researchers, said:

"Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding..."

While the finding will likely make those who meditate smile smugly and say "I told you so", you should attempt to rise above it with Zen-like calm. After all, it might do you good.

The Cheap, Unlimited Source Of the Fizzy Water You Can’t Live Without

SodaStream is secretly the most popular kitchen gadget in the world. It almost doesn't make sense: All it does is turn tap water into sparkling water.

The world's obsession with SodaStream is weird. Can't you just buy a bottle of cheap seltzer when you've got the hankering and deal with tap water the rest of the time? More here.

Microsoft Plans Windows Phone Tango Reveal for March 21st in China

There's no doubt that China's feeling the Microsoft love as of late. After HTC broke ground last week with the launch of the country's first ever Windows Phone handset -- a re-badged Titan known as the Triumph -- Nokia quickly reacted, announcing its plans to unleash unspecified members of the Lumia line on March 28th. 

Now, further fueling MS' mobile momentum in the region, comes word of a major launch event, slated for the 21st, which centers on the official unveiling of Tango: Redmond's lighter, low-end software.

Is CO2 Making You Fat?

There's a never-ending stream of scientific explanations for obesity. The latest suggests that CO2 contributes to our weight gain and that as we pump more of it in to the atmosphere, the fatter we become. But can that really be the case?

The theory is favored by Lars-Georg Hersoug, a scientist from Denmark. He suggests that orexins—hormones in the brain that influence energy expenditure and food intake—are affected by CO2. Affected so much, in fact, that they can shift our metabolism and make us fat.

He has some evidence. Firstly, the rise in obesity in the US was fastest in the period 1986-2010 on the East Coast, where CO2 concentrations are highest. Second, that in animal tests, environmental factors—he can't say exactly which—contribute to weight gain. And third, that inhaling CO2 makes our blood more acidic, something that has been linked to changes in orexins.

Some of this sounds reasonably convincing, some of it less so. But the theory doesn't hold much sway amongst his peers. Speaking to Science Nordic, Thorkild I. A. Sørensen, the leader of the Danish Obesity Research Centre, said:

"[He's] quite right in showing interest for other possibilities. [The] hypothesis is a new and very interesting idea, clearly inspired by studies using animals in captivity that have also put on weight – and a common factor for these animals and people is the air we breathe.

"But there is one problem: the obesity epidemic has developed quite irregularly in time and place, even in a small country such as Denmark, and only a part of the population is affected even though we all breathe the same air."

While it would be wonderful to point to a scientific explanation for the obesity epidemic—espeically one that is out of our immediate control—the fact remains that we're getting fat and need to do something about it. CO2 might cause some very small increase in weight in some of the population, but it's not what we need to worry about. We need to worry about losing weight instead. The most effective way to do that? Eat less and exercise more. More here.

Optical Thunderbolt Cables Arriving This Year

Intel's Dave Salvator has been talking about Thunderbolt's future, promising that optical versions of thehigh-speed interconnect will arrive this year. The copper version currently available is cheaper and can carry 10 watts of power, but it can only be run a maximum distance of six meters. 

While the fiber version loses the ability to power devices, it's reportedly far faster and capable of running to the "tens of meters." Dave Mr. Salvator wouldn't commit to a release date, or how much more we'll be expected to pay for the cables, but given that we're also expecting to see PCI-Express 3.0 bolted on to the standard soon, we'll start saving today.

New Sony Xperia Sola Offers “Floating Touch” For When Touching the Screen Is Too Much Effort

The Xperia Sola aka the Pepper, touting something called "floating touch" for "magic web browsing without touching the screen", because dragging your finger on glass is just so last year.

The Sola fits nicely within Sony's new design aesthetic – it's unmistakably an Xperia measuring up at 116 x 59 x 9.9 mm and 107g. It packs a 1GHz dual-core chip backed up with just 512MB of RAM; 8GB of internal storage; a 3.7-inch 854×480 screen; a five-megapixel rear shooter, and both xLOUD and 3D surround audio to boost its music prowess. On the connectivity front it's equipped with the usual load-out: Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; GPS; NFC with "SmartTags", plus an FM radio to boot. It'll also come with direct access to Sony's new Entertainment Network, but unfortunately is another Android 2.3 Gingerbread throwback. Sony's promising an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich "during summer 2012", which sounds like quite a while to wait to me.

Anyway, the biggest thing about the Sola is Sony's new "floating touch navigation", which allows you to essentially hover your finger over the screen rather than touch it to act a bit like a cursor. Apparently you'll navigate the screen hovering your finger above it; once you've got a link selected, a single tap will be enough to launch it (check the video below for a demo). I'm not quite sure how much better this is going to work than just actually touching the screen – a single tap on a link normally launches it on most phones. Still, it's a novel idea and I'll be interested to see it working in the flesh.

Red Meat Is Responsible for One in Ten Early Deaths

Deep down, we all know that red meat isn't the healthiest thing to eat—but that doesn't stop us tearing into a bloody steak all too often. Sadly, new research suggests that red meat is behind one in ten early deaths, so it might actually be time to make a real effort to cut back.

According to the study, carried out by the Harvard School of Public Health, regularly eating red meat massively increases your risk of heart disease and cancer. The results come from studying more than 120,000 people over 28 years.

What kinds of risk are we talking about? Well, the paper, published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests that each extra daily serving of processed red meat—equivalent to a single hot dog or two strips of bacon—raises mortality rates by 20 per cent. The effect is smaller for unprocessed red meat like steak—though the researchers don't know exactly why—which increases mortality rates by 13 per cent. Professor Frank Hu, one of the researchers, told the Guardian:

"This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death. On the other hand, choosing more healthful sources of protein in place of red meat can confer significant health benefits by reducing chronic disease morbidity [illness] and mortality."

If you're worried by the findings—and if you eat a lot of beef, lamb and pork you probably should be—there's an easy solution. First, limit your intake of red meat. The World Cancer Research Fund suggests, for example, that you eat a maximum of 1lb of it a week. Instead, switch to fish or chicken; this new research also suggests that replacing red meat with either of those leads to a longer life. Happy eating. More here and here.