high

High-speed railways are common in Europe and Asia, but they're more scarce than the metric system in the U.S. California, though, aims to change that with a bullet train linking LA and San Francisco in less than three hours.

State lawmakers on Friday approved construction of the first phase of the line, which has been the subject of years of debate. California's finances are in poor shape, and the LA-San Francisco railway is expected to cost some $68 billion.

According to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, a trip from San Francisco to LA would take two hours … Read more

A global financial fraud scheme that uses an active and passive automated transfer system to siphon money from high balance accounts in financial institutions has been discovered by McAfee and Guardian Analytics.

According to a joint report released overnight, the online fraud, dubbed "Operation High Roller," attacks banking systems worldwide and has impacted thousands of financial institutions including credit unions, large global banks and regional banks. The criminals have attempted to transfer between 60 million euros (US$75.1 million) and 2 billion euros (US$2.5 billion) to mule business accounts belonging to the "organized crime&… Read more

It used to be that people went to restaurants so they could disconnect from their smartphones. But increasingly, eateries are introducing table-top technology that lets you order, pay the check, play games, and scan news headlines.

Chevy's Fresh Mex restaurants, for example, have installed "Ziosks" at about a dozen locations. Ziosks are interactive computer screens where diners can see pictures of entrees, order items, and pay the bill, all sans waiter.

There is a gee-whiz factor about these gadgety dinner guests, but during a recent lunch rush at a San Francisco-based Chevy's, many customers were reluctant … Read more

I've reviewed my share of portable headphone amplifiers, but ALO's new Rx-MK3B just might be the best on a number of counts. First, the amp is compact, just about the same size as an iPhone, but twice as thick. ALO invested two years of engineering and development time in the Rx-3B, and makes it in the U.S.

The Cypher Labs AlgoRhythm Solo is a portable digital-to-analog converter designed only for use with iPhones, iPads, and iPods, but it won't work with computers (it's not a USB DAC). There are precious few portable DACs that can … Read more

I had a long fascination with high-end audio before I owned any of the good stuff. I suppose the same allure applies to exotic cars; millions read reviews of cars they never drive, and watch Food Network shows about food they'll never taste. Folks are interested in excellence, but compared to $200,000 cars or celebrity chefs' handiwork high-end audio is more accessible and practical. Two products covered in today's blog -- used high-end Grado headphones and the Oracle Delphi turntable -- sometimes sell for less than $1,000 on eBay. That's still expensive, but more within … Read more

I wrote about Zoom's nifty $99 H1 pocket recorder last year, and really loved its sound, so I was curious to see how the H2n recorder measured up. It's a bit shorter, just 4.5 inches high, but fatter and a little heavier. The H2n's body is shiny black plastic, but it feels more solidly built than the H1.

It has four recording modes: Mid-Side (MS) stereo, 90 degree X/Y stereo, two-channel, and four-channel surround modes. The H2n can record MP3 files (48 to 320 Kbps) or WAV files (44.1-kHz/16-bit to 96-kHz/24-bit). The &… Read more

I've written about the Audeze LCD-2 headphones in this blog before, but now I'm going to cover the LCD-3 model, Audeze's best headphones. At first glance the two don't look all that different, but the LCD-3s sport real zebrawood earcups and have thicker and softer real lambskin leather cushions to coddle your ears. This is a fairly heavy (550-gram) set of headphones, but they're comfortable to wear for hours at a time. Details of why the LCD-2s and LCD-3s sound different aren't forthcoming from Audeze, other than the drivers, which use similar technology, are … Read more

At the end of May, Onkyo will start selling Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel music downloads, first in Japan, and by the fall of this year worldwide. That's either a brave or foolhardy move.

Multichannel music formats -- starting with quadraphonic LPs and tapes in the early 1970s, DTS encoded surround CDs in the 1990s, and DVD Audio and SACD in the early 2000s -- have all suffered from a lack of consumer demand. Very, very few surround releases were initially recorded in surround; most rock and jazz titles are remixed from older stereo recordings. The Blu-ray format has now … Read more

Most people are familiar with NASA's quintessential photograph of Earth -- semi-transparent white clouds sweeping over beige and green swaths of land surrounded by dark blue water.

While that picture's mesmerizing, a photo has emerged showing the planet in even more color and detail, and according to some, it could be among the highest-resolution single pictures ever taken of Earth. It was shot by Russian scientists aboard their weather satellite, the Elektro-L (to download the photo and see a zoomable image, click here). … Read more