63
Light is faster than... light!?
(skullsinthestars.com)
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
I remember the days when laptops used to have infrared ports, so that you could connect to the infrared port on your mobile phone for tethered internet. And it was atrocious - always dropping out, even when you'd moved either item. Bluetooth tethering / USB cable tethering is just so much more robust.
I realise that our tech has moved on a lot in the last twenty-or-so years, but I'm struggling to see the use cases that this 'new tech' (as described by PC Gamer) would enable. Mobile data and wifi are both fast and reliable, and wired connections are very fast and much more reliable. A 224 GB/s link speed is absurdly faster than most consumer hardware can read or write to disk; if you were hoping to reduce 'gaming latency' by holding your phone or laptop at just the right angle, then the benefit would be overshadowed by other delays in the general internet. Providing a 'secure link' at this speed ('quicker and safer than wifi') would only make sense if you've two mainframes in the same room, but for some reason you don't want to make your data centre look untidy by running fibre optic connections between them.
If you wanted to avoid having to hold your phone at just the right angle, you could try to direct the light, maybe using a flexible fiber of glass or plastic and point it directly at the receiver! Bet that could go fast!