South African teenagers build solar-powered train
Amid South Africa’s power cuts, a group of students built the country’s first fully solar-powered train. The power outages have caused disruptions affecting poor and working-class commuters relying on trains. A group of 20 South African students from Soshanguve Technical School recently showcased a fully solar-powered train at a...
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Google finally shuts down game streaming service Stadia
The cloud-based gaming dream is finally dead for Google, as it announces a shutdown of all Stadia services and features. The platform will officially retire in January 2023. Remember when Stadia was touted as the next step for video games? Google’s experimental tread into gaming showed promise. Using cloud-based streaming,...
YouTube reports Gen Z want curated content over viral videos
It seems the days of dancing foxes, Gangnam Style, and other viral content are over. New studies suggest that Gen Z prefer to see specific, tailored content for them, rather than popular videos intended for all audiences. If you’re an older Gen Zer like myself, you may remember a...
Perseverance Mars rover discovers abundance of organic molecules
NASA says its Perseverance rover is finding organic molecules on ‘every target’ that it observes, providing further evidence to suggest that Mars was once teeming with life. New data from NASA’s rover, Perseverance, has reinforced suggestions that life may have existed on Mars billions of years ago. A press conference was...
Hibernating bears may hold the secret to curing diabetes
By feeding honey water to bears, researchers have discovered the potential genetic key to their insulin control. This advance could lead to a remedial treatment for a disease that affects almost ten per cent of the world’s adult population. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why humans aren’t able to...
Is Twitter’s new ‘editing’ feature a good thing?
A new, highly anticipated ‘edit’ tool is being internally tested for Twitter. The update would let users amend tweets up to 30 minutes after posting. Could this open the door for even more misinformation problems? Most of us have probably had to delete a tweet before. Whether it was due...
Scientists say the ozone may be fully healed within 50 years
Before climate change dominated headlines globally, our deteriorating ozone was the prime ecological concern. Decades later, scientists now claim a full recovery could be on the cards before the century’s end. There’s belief bubbling that in the foreseeable future we may actually save ourselves… from ourselves. Amid the constant, demoralising talk of how climate change is threatening the planet, here’s a report to galvanise yourselves and avoid existential dread on a...
Virtual rapper FN Meka dropped from Capitol Records
FN Meka is an AI rapper that was signed to Capitol Records two weeks ago. After racist lyrics and depictions of police brutality were discovered the bot was quickly dropped. Are computer-generated artists set to become an industry staple? You may remember we wrote about AI voice technology that can mimic famous artists such as Eminem, Nirvana, and Kanye West early last year. As deep fake robotics continue to...
NASA’s planetary defence mission was a success
Testing humanity’s ability to prevent the kind of disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs, NASA intentionally crashed its DART probe into an asteroid. The threat of a devastating asteroid may seem fanciful, but scientists understandably want to prepare for a dinosaur-esque situation. It’s for this reason that, last November, NASA launched DART (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test), a vending-machine-sized spacecraft with one target: Dimorphos. Almost a year on and the $325m...
Kenya introduces coding to school curriculum
Kenya is the first African country to introduce coding as a subject in both primary and secondary schools curricula. The new initiative focuses on redefining education through tech employment. Kenya plans to empower Gen Zers and future generation through tech-focused employment programs. East Africa’s economic powerhouse is already a spot for giant tech companies such as Visa, Microsoft, and Google who all have physical centres in Nairobi. Kenya’s young population...
