BILL GATES DRINKS WATER DISTILLED FROM HUMAN FAECES
The Microsoft founder said the water “tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle”. Bill Gates has drunk a glass of water made from human faeces; to showcase technology he said could provide clean water in the developing world. The Microsoft founder said he wanted to begin sending processing plants around the world after tests later this year.
The project was welcomed by WaterAid, which said that it could particularly help in urban areas. According to the charity, some 748 million people worldwide lack clean drinking water.
In a video posted on his blog, Mr Gates watched as the human waste was fed into the processor, before drinking the end product from a glass. The project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
SONY PICTURES HACKERS ‘GOT SLOPPY’, FBI SAYS
The US is confident that North Korea was behind the Sony Pictures cyber-attack last year because the hackers “got sloppy”, the FBI has said.
The bureau’s director James Comey said the group posted material from servers used exclusively by the North Koreans.
November’s attack on the company saw the leak of sensitive documents, and film The Interview briefly shelved. Cyber security experts have been sceptical about the FBI’s assertion North Korea was to blame.
After Sony’s decision to temporarily cancel the film’s release was described by US President Barack Obama as “a mistake”, Sony later released the film in independent cinemas and also distributed it online.
THE CHARGER THAT BOOSTS BATTERY IN SECONDS
A smartphone can be recharged from being nearly out-of-juice to full capacity in less time than it takes to boil a kettle.
This time round the phone involved is no bigger than normal, and the charging dock is pretty slim-line as well. There’s a couple of trade-offs involved, but being able to recharge devices about 100 times faster than at present has the potential to revolutionise the way we use mobile phones, tablets, laptops and wearable tech.
MEET THE WORLD’S FIRST 1,000 MPH CAR
-FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET!

What has a jet engine, a rocket booster and travels on a set of aluminum wheels? It’s the Bloodhound Super-Sonic Car (SSC) and it has plans to hit the world land speed record at 1,000 mph.
Made of titanium, carbon fiber and, like superman, is designed to go faster than a speeding bullet, the Bloodhound SSC has been painstakingly put together and tested over the better part of six years.
In 2016, the UK-based team plan to take the 42-foot (8.9m) vehicle to Hakskeen Pan, a dry lake bed in South Africa, for a crack at the record breaking attempt.
Basically this car goes faster than a speeding bullet, so anything that hits this is like being shot at from a gun.”
The Bloodhound Project takes the land speed record a step further in a car that is part jet fighter, part Formula 1 racer and part space rocket.
The jet engines on their own will take us to 600mph or thereabouts, but to get a land speed record, at about 350 miles an hour they need to turn on a rocket engine to take it all the way through to a 1000mph said lead designer Mark Chapman. “The rocket is the key — that’s the difference between 750 mph and 1,000 mph.”
SONY LAUNCHES THINNEST SMART TV EVER
Sony took the wraps off four new lines of Bravia 4K LCD televisions at CES 2015. The company also announced what it calls the “thinnest TV” till date, which sports a thickness of just 4.9mm at the thinnest point.
Notably, all the new Sony Bravia TVs launched on Monday are smart TV offerings and include the new 4K Processor X1, which the company touts “further advances the clarity, colour accuracy and contrast”. All the newly-introduced Bravia TVs also run Google’s Android TV platform.
Out of the four, the new X9000C Series 4K LCD televisions, which include a 55-inch and 65-inch models, sport a thickness of just 4.9mm. The company credits the new “revolutionary floating style” for the slim profile and claims that the TV is “virtually frameless and mounts flush to your wall.” Unfortunately, the Japanese electronics giant has not revealed price of any new Bravia models.