At that point the fluid-dynamics equivalent of a titanic arm-wrestling match will get under way, with the surface vessels' pumps trying to push the mud down the well while the rising oil tries to push it out.

ECONOMIST: The Gulf oil spill

Now think of Internet electronic commerce as the e-mail equivalent of traditional commerce's surface post.

ECONOMIST: Eventually, bigger means different

As the name implies, it's all based around pressure: a light touch performs the usual commands, while squishing the thumb's wider surface area against the screen allows the equivalent of a multi-touch gesture, such as a pinch to zoom.

ENGADGET: University of Calgary's Fat Thumb trick allows one-handed phone use, jugglers are thankful (video)

The severity of the laboratory test was equivalent to an oblique collision with the rocky surface of the Earth - a comet coming in at an angle of less than 25 degrees from the horizon, rather than head on (perpendicular to the Earth's surface).

BBC: Comets could have seeded life on Earth

It sheds the newer Cortex-A15 architecture of the Tegra 4 for a spruced-up 2.3GHz Cortex-A9 with the i500 LTE modem built directly into the chip die -- a move that cuts the surface area in half and simplifies the hardware, even as it supposedly outruns equivalent competition.

ENGADGET