Step aside SSD, DNA wants to eat your lunch (slowly)
When you hear the words ‘DNA data storage’, there’s a good chance you imagine something sci-fi, from George Lucas’ or James Cameron’s head perhaps. Well, a company named Biomemory has taken the ‘fiction’ bit out of the equation. The result? DNA memory cards that anyone can purchase. Well, anyone who’s got the necessary $1,100 (R21,000) per kilobyte of storage.
Yup, you read ‘per kilobyte’ correctly. But you aren’t spending R20,000 or so for a 1KB DNA memory card just for bragging rights. No, it’s got some actual benefits, even if it can only store one, very important email. According to Biomemory, those include a 150-year lifespan that’ll far exceed the needs of any mammal, unless the medical field takes a few technological leaps forward soon.
It’s less about the 1KB memory cards — which you can sign up on a waiting list for — and more about the technology that makes it possible and what it could mean for our future. Biomemory has grandiose visions for something it calls Biomemory Prime — a storage solution that’s capable of storing 100 petabytes of data in data centres — that it hopes to have up and running by 2026. We don’t see that happening, considering the fact it currently takes hours, even days to read and write that 1KB of data.
If that hasn’t dissuaded you, there’s a spot on Biomemory’s website that’ll let you encode plain text into DNA language. Gotta have something to stick on the memory card, right?
The Mercedes G-Class is pregnant and it’s… electric?
CES might have wrapped up a little under two weeks ago, but that doesn’t mean the flow of news has. This time, we’re hearing from Mercedes-Benz’s Markus Schaefer, the company’s technical chief, confirming that the “baby” three-door G-Class it announced some months back will be entirely powered by an electric powertrain, putting any rumours of an ICE (internal combustion engine) alternative to rest.
Besides being electric, which isn’t unknown territory for Mercedes, the baby G-Class will differ slightly from its electric siblings. According to Schaefer, the new model won’t be built on the brand’s Mercedes Modular Architecture (MMA) platform. Instead, it’ll be making use of something different — though it doesn’t have a name yet — and meld components from the company’s larger off-roaders.
That’s… a big deal. Better yet, the company reckons the tiny Jimny-esque German automobile could be its most capable off-roader yet, beating out the more prominent ICE model sold today. Whether it’ll manage to conquer Mercedes’ electric version of the five-door G-Class, the EQG, remains to be seen. But with the baby’s delay to 2026, it might just have enough time to squeeze in more features to convince you three doors are better than five.
Final Fantasy XVI could be coming to Xbox
Remember when ‘exclusive’ meant exclusive? While Stuff and Pepperidge Farm remember, it appears as though the gaming industry’s giants haven’t. Only last week we heard that Microsoft’s Hi-Fi Rush might be making a jump to the Switch, and now there’s talk of Final Fantasy XVI coming to Xbox.
It’s no secret that the latest entry into the Chocobo-riddled world of Final Fantasy XVI was coming to PC with a port eventually. It was news when Shpeshal Nick, host of the Xbox Era podcast, mentioned that it would be getting an Xbox port as well as a PC one. Nick preferred to keep his source — the same source who has previously provided accurate Square Enix release information — quiet.
It’s worth adding a pinch of salt until Xbox or Square Enix confirm the port with their own mouths, but there’s no harm in being quietly confident that a port will see the light of day eventually. XVI is the only mainline title of the series (disregarding VII’s remake trilogy PlayStation exclusivity) not to be released across the console spectrum, and Square Enix is likely feeling the sting in its purse strings.
Nick didn’t mention when the port would be released, only vaguely noting that the port could be released before 2024’s end.
Palworld (Pokémon with guns) had a busy weekend
Palworld, the survival monster collector that launched on Xbox and PC this weekend (and strikes a daring similarity to that of Nintendo’s cutesy Pokémon franchise) is a hit. We’ll be honest, we thought Palworld wouldn’t last a day longer than it took for people to get over the Nintendo resemblance. How wrong we were.
In the short time since its early access launch, it’s sold over 4 million copies and has already become Steam’s fifth most-played game in history, according to a report from PCGamer. Great sales figures won’t calm the vocal minority, however, as Palworld spent the weekend undergoing a torrent of accusations that its cutesy gun-wielding characters were just a smidge too similar to Nintendo’s non-gun-wielding ones.
Many reckon that Palworld’s developers, Pocketpair, took those iconic Pokémon designs, ran them through some sort of AI blender, and stuffed them into their game. Pocketpair has since denounced that accusation, attributing its 100 own designs to that of a graduate student who did almost all of the work.
But we’re not fussed about all that. We’re more worried about when we’ll get a turn to play on the PS5. If, you know, it ever releases. According to Pocketpair’s FAQ, there are no plans carved in stone for a PS5 release just yet, but it’s being considered in the game’s development.