Week in Review: Supercomputers, super toothbrushes, and (almost) no mention of Black Friday
Plus: are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? | Visa slams Amazon's ban on its credit cards | The computer that lived for only 10 minutes
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I'm very tired. I say that a lot, but my word, right now I'm at another level. This is what happens when you're the editor-in-chief of a global consumer tech website, and a large part of your audience is interested in what's happening with the Black Friday deals bonanza that's in full swing as I write this.
But this is not the newsletter for Black Friday chatter – you're just going to get what I've been able to string together from the residual dregs of my sanity after I've slept for three hours in 48. Thankfully, the world of tech hasn't completely stopped revolving, and there's enough to talk about this week… it just might be a touch shorter than usual.
Gareth Beavis, Global Editor-in-Chief
Black Friday deals now on at Tesco!
Shop a wide range of Black Friday deals now live at Tesco, using your Tesco Clubcard! Check out their selection of half price deals on small domestic appliances and make great savings on a range of console games and many more electrical goods!
It's all gotten a bit fractious between two of the world's biggest companies. Amazon recently said that it would no longer allow customers in the UK to pay using Visa credit cards, as the costs it incurred for processing payments were too high.
Visa has hit back, accusing Amazon of punishing the consumer because, Visa says, it's stuck with its pricing structure – if the fees are too low, the financial institutions get irked, but raise them too high and things like this happen.
Visa clearly wants Amazon to get on board and just shoulder the cost. Amazon says that Visa shouldn't be charging more to allow it to do things like fight fraud – it says that should be an inherent part of its business.
It's the crazy, airing-the-laundry-in-public nature of this battle that's so interesting. While it's annoying for the consumer, I suspect the issue will be quietly resolved with some sort of deal in the not-too-distant future between the two firms.
Black Friday deals now on at Tesco! Shop a wide range of Black Friday deals now live at Tesco, using your Tesco Clubcard! Check out their selection of half price deals on small domestic appliances and make great savings on a range of console games and many more electrical goods!
I'm including this story in for two reasons: it did a huge amount of traffic over the week, but also, I didn't understand how it could be true.
What was interesting was that the 'computer' in question was essentially just a load of server space purchased for a short amount of time, but, for 10 minutes of that time, so much capacity was bought that it effectively created one of the world's 10 fastest supercomputers.
All this was done to help a pharmaceutical company develop a drug – with a processing task that would ordinarily have taken two months taking just seven hours.
What have I learned? If I spent $100,000, I could have myself one of the world's most powerful supercomputers for 60 minutes – and in my book that's a good way to spend my money.
Black Friday is the elephant in the room this week, and I'm not going to talk about the reams of deals going on right now, partly for the sake of my own sanity; but Black Friday does also give TechRadar's writers the opportunity to wax lyrical about the tech they love.
This quirky piece talks about how a toothbrush can change your life – and not simply by making your teeth cleaner and making your skull less likely to be eroded by cavities (as was happening in this case); the writer, Aaron Asadi, says the sense of satisfaction he experienced when his toothbrush smiled at him for brushing correctly and for the full two minutes was "unlike anything I have felt in my adult life."
It does help, though, that the toothbrush is one of best on the market – the Oral-B iO9, if you're interested.
I saw the headline for this story on LiveScience, and I didn't even need to read it to know it was going to be my discussion point for this newsletter.
However, I was hoping it was going to be a few sentences that cleared things up one way or the other – what I got, annoyingly, was loads of learning that enriched my life and now I know more things.
It's a good read that lurches you back and forth – you think they're white with black, then black with white, and then… well, I won't spoil it. But I did learn that apparently the stripes help to stop zebras dying from fly bites – I'll leave you to discover why.
This is from the editor
I promise I'll be back on form next week – well, I'll probably still be trying to bring my brain back to life, but at the very least I'll have more stories for you to look through.
The lovely thing about this week though is that the TechRadar team has worked together in a way that just doesn't happen the rest of the year – and while there's a lot of work to get through, being part of this team is the reason I look forward to coming into work day after day.
Do please email me as ever, remembering to include 'NEWSLETTER' in the subject line. I'll see you in seven days – and there will be nary a mention of Black Friday.
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