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For some cloud storage tasks, Dropbox is clearly the way to go. But you may want to consider some less high-profile storage services that offer most of the same features, in a more streamlined platform and at a better price. Here are four of the best cloud storage alternatives that you can get for a great deal:
One of the most user-friendly cloud storage services around, pCloud Premium Plus Cloud Storage has earned its reputation as being simple, efficient, and powerful. This one-year subscription lets you store 2TB of photos, videos, music, documents, and more on secure servers. pCloud is also known for its transfer speed (meaning you won't have to wait for hours when you want to access a large batch of data), and you'll be able to sync your files across multiple devices automatically. You'll even have full access to any online media via a built-in HD video and audio player.
The iDrive storage service is being embraced by young entrepreneurs and tech titans thanks to its simplicity and streamlined interface. iDrive is consistently rated right along Dropbox as one of the most versatile and secure storage solutions on the market, and this limited-offer lifetime subscription lets you back up an unlimited amount of data on up to five devices. That means you'll never have to renew your subscription or worry about paying a cent more for extra storage space. Everything you upload to the cloud is protected with 256-bit AES encryption, and you'll be able to easily share files with coworkers or friends via your social media accounts.
Known primarily for its state-of-the-art security, the Degoo Premium cloud service is beloved by data-heavy users who want top-notch security without the high costs. This lifetime plan nets you a whopping 3TB of storage space (that's more than Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive combined) on ultra-secure servers, and lets you send files quickly and easily via email or a separate link. You'll be able to keep your backups automatically up to date thanks to file change detection, and your subscription applies to all of your devices for life.
Zoolz Cloud Storage offers a uniquely customizable storage experience at an incredibly low price. This lifetime subscription comes with 1TB of instant vault storage (for files that you need to access more frequently) and an additional 1TB of cold storage (for files that you rarely visit). This means that you'll have easy access to your go-to data with an integrated Smart Selection tool, and access to your less-visited files in roughly three hours. Zoolz also offers a slew of advanced features like bandwidth throttling, icon overlay, file retention, and more.
It has become the most popular, most sought-after, and most studied GM engine of the 21st century. Yet we can trace the GM V8 LS family – Gen III and IV – with a nearly straight line right back to the origins of the 265 small-block Chevy that made its debut in 1955.
Finally! A Performance Cylinder Head for Ford Six-Cylinders
Six Power: The first look at Vintage Inlines' new aluminum six-cylinder head
Mustang Monthly
How To Engine
Dave Stribling
April 6, 2018
Since the first Mustangs and Falcons were purchased secondhand, gearheads have been pondering whether to build up the straight-six workhorse economy engines or swap out the six in favor of a V-8. The complexity of the conversion to V-8 power, while much easier in the '60s cars, was still a little much for some, and the performance upgrade parts for the six-cylinder were sporadic at best. Plus, there's something to be said for being different and building a smooth-running six-banger.
While there is a six-cylinder performance group today, their part selection has been a blend of old 1960s tech and parts that appear and disappear on a regular basis. One of the reasons for this is very simple: the straight-six was simply not designed for real performance. It was designed to be an economy workhorse that provides reliable day-in and day-out effort getting the small vehicles to and from their destination. They are proportionally heavier than their higher-revving V-8 cousins, with stout blocks and bottom ends that are bulky because Ford didn't need to shave tenths off at the track. The biggest downfall of the six-cylinder was the head itself. With its cast-in uneven port length cylinder head and center exhaust outlet, it was clearly designed for ease of manufacture and not for any kind of performance use. Until now.
Vintage Inlines from Detroit, Michigan, has finally made available an aluminum cylinder head for the inline-six that will really open up these engines to the performance world that was not there before. The story about how this cylinder head came about is fairly long. Mike Winterboer was the owner of Classic Inlines, a company that specialized in six-cylinder performance. He had worked in developing an aluminum head down in Australia, with the intent of bringing it to the States. Mr. Winterboer passed away in 2015. He did finish the project, but it is unknown how many were available or sold. With his passing, a large force behind the six-cylinder performance movement faded.
Enter Matt Cox and Vintage Inlines. Matt is a long-time six-banger enthusiast and was able to acquire some of the inventory and items from Classic and keep the flame going. Although the tech was acquired, getting foundries to work with you can sometimes be a challenge. There are all the issues with working on something new and working it to make it a viable product. Matt was able to contract with the original foundry, and even though there were a few "relearning" issues, they were able to produce the cores. We have all seen press releases about a new product that turns out to be a fishing expedition and doesn't really exist. Vintage Inlines has stuck to it and has succeeded, and the stack of heads on a cart during our visit was proof that this is for real and a huge leap forward for the inline enthusiast.
Head Design The Vintage Inlines head is based on the Australian 250-2V head, which came with a detachable intake manifold, the single most important improvement to the cast-iron originals. The intake ports were raised in the head to provide better flow to the larger valvetrain. Weight savings is nearly 50 percent, with the stock head checking in at 46 pounds and the Vintage head at a svelte 26 pounds. Care was taken to allow for stock components like valve covers and rocker arms, and even the stock exhaust manifold to bolt up to the head. The only thing that was changed was the water temp sender, and that the head uses ARP head studs to attach the head to the block.
Intake With the detachable intake design, you now have a means of running a much more balanced intake arrangement. The original ran along a single pipe and dumped into each port. Right angles are bad for flow, and the center cylinders flowed much easier than the ones on the end, which took a much longer path. In the '60s Offenhouser designed a 3x1 barrel carburetor setup that is still available today (Vintage Inlines part number OFF-200-3X1) that attempted to curb the problems of end cylinder starvation, and it does work somewhat. Adapters for two- and four-barrel carburetors are also available, but they don't get around the inherent problems of the flaws in the cast-in intake.
Vintage Inlines sells a spider-style, bolt-on intake designed for a standard four-barrel carburetor to mate specifically with the alloy head with a much smoother sweeping runner design to even out the flow to the outer cylinders. They have also installed fuel injection bosses on the tops of the raised intake port, making sequential fuel injection a reality. The stock Australian mounting points mean specialty goodies from Australia, like Weber carburetion, are also possible, and stack injection is a very easy fabrication.
Combustion Chamber The stock head has an open chamber design that varied between 52 cc to 62 cc in size. Coupled with dished pistons it didn't make much compression. The new heads are a closed-chamber design with chamber size of 55 cc. Coupled with a flat-top piston this will make a compression ratio in the range of 9.3-9.4 to 1.0. Perfect for today's watered-down fluid we call "gasoline." Vintage leaves plenty of material available for unshrouding of the valves and increasing the chamber size if desired.
Stock intake valves ranged from 1.680 to 1.750, and the exhaust remained constant at 1.380. Vintage has boosted the intake up to 1.800 with an optional 1.840, and the exhaust is increased to 1.500. Stock 289 heads came with 1.780 and 1.450, and 351W came with 1.840 and 1.540, a healthy upgrade to the original six-cylinder arrangement.
Exhaust Ports Another big detriment to the stock heads was the exhaust ports. The center two exhaust ports came together in a Siamese configuration, probably for no other reason than to make it cheaper to manufacture. This big space not only allowed for pressure differences between the center ports and outer four ports, it allowed for additional heat to be retained in the area right under the carburetor, heating up the fuel and causing some warping problems with the head. Aftermarket spacers were devised to solve the problem with the stock heads, but the aluminum head has been cast to eliminate this problem entirely. Ports are healthy and still have enough material to port-match to your headers. As noted before, the awful stock exhaust manifold single outlet will actually bolt up to the cylinder head, if you found yourself having to do that.
Valvetrain Since the six-cylinder was an economy engine, it was fitted with single-coil valvesprings and those not-for-performance two-piece retainers. The new heads come with a choice of a single spring with a damper or a dual spring, depending on your application, and Clay Smith one-piece spring retainers. The bigger valves are Port Flow stainless and the heads are fitted with steel valve guides. The head is designed to be compatible with the stock rocker arm shaft and rocker arms, but can be fitted with full roller rockers should the need call for them.
Production The heads are now being cast on the West Coast and are being shipped to Automotive Machine, in Fraser Michigan, for all the machine work needed to prep them for sale. Just like any other aluminum head, an engine builder can massage these heads for even more performance, with the exception of the area around the valvesprings. This has been optimized for full use of the newer springs. As mentioned before, all your stock or aftermarket goodies like headers, valve covers, and chrome goodies will come right off your old engine and bolt to this one.
As far as performance, the ball has just started rolling on the new heads and they are being delivered. It is not unheard of to make 500 horsepower with all that typical inline torque, and there is a car currently running in the mid-10s with this head and turbocharging—so real performance and even more potential future performance is in your hands. Before you start looking at that list of items to swap a V-8 into your Mustang, take a good look at the new Vintage Inlines aluminum cylinder head for your sturdy six. It gives you all the benefits of the V-8 and inline-six combined.
It has been a 10-year journey, but the aluminum head for the 200 and 250 inline six-cylinder engines is finally here. Vintage Inlines is making the performance upgrade a reality to all the six-cylinder performance junkies, and we should now get a wave of new products to enhance this gem even further.
The head is based on the Australian 250-2V head that has a removable intake manifold. The ports are raised on the aluminum version to increase velocity.
With the removable intake, the new Vintage head eliminates all the issues associated with the horrible design from the factory (right). Small runners and right angles are gone.
Vintage Inlines has a free-flowing intake manifold that bolts to the new head with a standard four-barrel carburetor base. Adapters to run two-barrel carburetors and Weber carburetors are also available. With this setup you can also run fuel injection with a carb-style throttle body.
Also available is a manifold that adapts three side-draft Weber carburetors to the head for maximum port equalization.
The four-barrel manifold is cast with bosses for running fuel injection, nitrous, methanol, or whatever you want to port to the intake.
The head is also cast with bosses for injectors, so sequential injection is a real option for these heads.
Combustion chamber comparison shows the closed-chamber design (top) versus the original open-chamber head (bottom). There is plenty of material around the visibly larger valves for further shaping.
Combustion chambers check in at 55 cc and include stainless steel 1.800-intake and 1.500-inch exhaust valves. That's bigger than stock 289 V-8 valve sizes.
Steel valve guides are used in the production heads and the ports have plenty of material for porting.
The stock head on the bottom shows the Siamese center exhaust ports that really caused issues on the exhaust side. The aluminum head eliminates this problem by casting the ports separately.
Matt states the exhaust ports are fine for most applications, but there is plenty of material to port-match to your headers. Stock manifolds will also work.
We have had many different six-cylinder header designs, and all of them work as advertised. The aluminum head will accept any headers that will fit the stock heads, like these stainless steel 3 into 1x2–style headers from Vintage (PN FSP-200-DOH).
Valve seat areas are maximized to handle the bigger springs. Clay Smith retainers are used exclusively.
Automotive Machine in Fraser, Michigan, has been handling the final prep on the batches of heads that come in. They have experience in both small runs and high performance engines; the exact combination needed to get these to market. These heads have been long awaited, and once they hit the street in numbers you can bet more performance goodies will show up on the market.
I read an article yesterday that has me extremely excited about the implications. The article is called "Hacking the Nervous System" by Gaia Vince (http://mosaicscience.com/story/hacking-nervous-system). In the article, the author describes the experience of a woman who suffered from severe, debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and her eventual treatment with a device which minimized inflammation by simply stimulating the vagus nerve. What this means, is that by activating the vagus nerve which works through the parasympathetic nervous system, we can greatly influence inflammation and the immune system. The role of the brain on body inflammation can be profound. If you suffer from digestive complaints, high blood pressure, depression or any inflammatory condition, please read on. Let me explain the possible implications step by step.
What is the vagus nerve?
First of all, the vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body which originates in the brain as cranial nerve ten, travels down the from go the neck and then passes around the digestive system, liver, spleen, pancreas, heart and lungs. This nerve is a major player in the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the 'rest and digest' part (opposite to the sympathetic nervous system which is 'fight of flight').
Vagal tone
The tone of the vagus nerve is key to activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Vagal tone is measured by tracking your heart-rate alongside your breathing rate. Your heart-rate speeds up a little when your breathe in, and slows down a little when you breathe out. The bigger the difference between your inhalation heart-rate and your exhalation heart-rate, the higher your vagal tone. Higher vagal tone means that your body can relax faster after stress.
What is high vagal tone associated with?
High vagal tone improves the function of many body systems, causing better blood sugar regulation, reduced risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure, improved digestion via better production of stomach basic and digestive enzymes, and reduced migraines. Higher vagal tone is also associated with better mood, less anxiety and more stress resilience. One of the most interesting roles of the vagus nerve is that it essentially reads the gut microbiome and initiates a response to modulate inflammation based on whether or not it detects pathogenic versus non-pathogenic organisms. In this way, the gut microbiome can have an affect on your mood, stress levels and overall inflammation.
What is low vagal tone associated with?
Low vagal tone is associated with cardiovascular conditions and strokes, depression, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment, and much higher rates of inflammatory conditions. Inflammatory conditions include all autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, endometriosis, autoimmune thyroid conditions, lupus and more).
How do we increase vagal tone?
In the article above, vagal tone was increased through a device that stimulated the vagus nerve. The good news is that you have access to this on your own, but it does require regular practice. To some degree, you are genetically predisposed to varying levels of vagal tone, but this still doesn't mean that you can't change it. Here are some ways to tone the vagus nerve:
1. Slow, rhythmic, diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing from your diaphragm, rather than shallowly from the top of the lungs stimulates and tones the vagus nerve.
2. Humming. Since the vagus nerve is connected to the vocal cords, humming mechanically stimulates it. You can hum a song, or even better repeat the sound 'OM'.
3. Speaking. Similarly speaking is helpful for vagal tone, due to the connection to the vocal cords.
4. Washing your face with cold water. The mechanism her is not known, but cold water on your face stimulates the vagus nerve.
5. Meditation, especially loving kindness meditation which promotes feelings of goodwill towards yourself and others. A 2010 study by Barbara Fredrickson and Bethany Kik found that increasing positive emotions led to increased social closeness, and an improvement in vagal tone.
6. Balancing the gut microbiome. The presence of healthy bacteria in the gut creates a positive feedback loop through the vagus nerve, increasing its tone.
The implications of such simple and basic practices on your overall health, and in particular on inflammation are far-reaching. If you suffer from an inflammatory condition, digestive upset, high blood pressure or depression, a closer look at vagal tone is highly recommended. We've known for years that breathing exercises and meditation are helpful for our health, but it is so fascinating to learn the mechanism by which they work. I hope this short article has inspired you to begin a meditation practice, as it has for me, and also to look for other means to manage the body's inflammatory response.
References: Forsythe P, Bienenstock J, Kunze WA.Vagal pathways for microbiome-brain-gut axis communication. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2014;817:115-33. Kok, B, Fredrickson, B, Coffey, K, et al. How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health: Perceived Positive Social Connections Account for the Upward Spiral Between Positive Emotions and Vagal Tone. Psychological Science 2013 24: 1123 Source: darouwellness.com
Last year, Microsoft assured us that the death of the Windows phone didn't mean the death of Windows on your phone. Today, the company teased a future where Android users will have the same cool phone-to-PC experience iOS users with a Mac currently enjoy. The Windows phone may be dead, but Windows really might be coming to whatever phone you're holding right now.
Microsoft is trying to accomplish this in two ways. The first is by bringing Timeline to the mobile phone. Timeline, in case you missed it when it was announced at Build last year or when it finally came to Windows 10 last month, is a feature that remembers every window you've opened on your Windows machine over the last few days. Currently it just supports Microsoft apps like Edge, Word, Powerpoint, and Photos, but today Microsoft encouraged the gathering of developers at Build to implement the Timeline capability into their own apps.
The capability comes via something called Microsoft Graph, which is essentially the backend for Timeline. It's the process that actually remembers all your open tabs and apps. When you hear an app uses Graph, it means it will work in Timeline just like a Microsoft app would.
Screenshot: Andrew Liszewski (Microsoft)
Timeline will come to phones two ways—via the Microsoft Launcher on Android and the Edge browser on iOS. Click on a Word doc in Timeline in your phone and it will open in the app on your phone. If more apps supported Graph, you can see how appealing that could be. You could theoretically open a Photoshop project from you PC on your iPad without converting files or messing with transferring the files.
Timeline on iOS and Android is expected to be live later this year.
Also available later this year, and hopefully available to Windows Insiders (members of the Microsoft Beta program for Windows 10) later this week, is the Your Phone app. The Windows 10 app will let you view pictures, notifications, and texts from your phone on your Windows machine. But best of all you can actually text back!
Screenshot: Andrew Liszewski (Microsoft)
The texting feature appears to be available only on Android—and that's okay. iOS users on the Mac have Messages, a great application that lets you text anyone on your phone from your Mac. This would give the same functionality to Android users on Windows.
If you're a Windows lover still yearning for your Windows phone, the company seems to have given you an answer—get an Android phone. Or get an iPhone and have a little less support.
In addition to the new features for phones, Microsoft also teased a new feature for a future Windows update: Sets. Sets appears to be an expansion of Timeline that lets you essentially create bundles of windows in your Timeline. Like a set of the blogs you intend to finish reading or a set that's an Excel project and Edge tabs full of related info.
If that sounds a little nebulous, it's because Sets seems to be a product still in its infancy. In fact, Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, couldn't even give a solid timeline for when Sets would be available. Instead he simply said, "When we think it's great."
That's not a new trend for Microsoft. The launch of Timeline itself was heavily delayed as well, including one last minute delay just last month, and the interactivity with phones that was teased at Build last year and is only now being considered for release. The company seems determined to get the releases right rather than to get them out fast. A sentiment recently embraced by its competitor, Apple, as well.
Which is probably a good thing. I'd rather have my phone and computer work well together, than have a cool and buggy concept messing with my daily workflow.
The Hottest Collectible Cars And Trucks You Can Buy For Under $10,000
Jim Gorzelany
Photo credit: Willys-Jeep CJ2A
Though the vintage car market is in a cooling off period, especially at the high end of the range after a big run -up that saw prices of classic Ferraris and American muscle cars reaching record levels, the market for under-$40,000 collectibles is becoming red-hot, with the greatest interest being among coveted rides from the 1970's through the '90's. Specifically, older pickup trucks and SUVs – which would have been all but absent from vintage car auctions a decade or two ago – are gaining the most traction among collectors these days, mirroring their runaway popularity in today's new-vehicle marketplace.
But you don't need even that a big of a bankroll to get into the game. Collectible car insurer Hagerty recently posted the following list of 10 vintage models that can be found selling in average condition for well under $10,000, and are expected to appreciate in value down the road. All of them are bona fide American iron, with most on the list being the aforementioned big pickups and SUVs, though these come from an era when such models were built and sold more for rugged and purposeful uses than as lifestyle choices.
