Author: Brett Venter

[Update 8/7/21, 8:30AM] Greenidge’s CEO advisory firm got hold of us overnight armed with average water temperature figures for Seneca Lake, pointing out that the facility restarted operations in 2017 and saying that “…there has been no impact on the lake.” The firm’s representative also claimed that the woman originally interviewed by NBC has claimed on social media that the news outlet reported incorrectly. We’re unable to confirm that Abi Buddington, the woman concerned, has made that statement. She does seem to be awfully concerned with climate change in general, though. We have changed the headline to reflect the fact…

Tencent is a Chinese company that you might be most familiar with with regards to WeChat or PUBG, but it’s also got something called Midnight Patrol heading to the Chinese market. Sadly, this isn’t a game… or anything else you should get too excited about. Tencent Gaming has a new software for the Chinese gaming market. In case you weren’t aware, it’s not an ideal time to be a gamer and a minor in China, because if you are, you’re limited on how long you play video games between 22h00 and 08h00 in the morning. Underage gamers have long been…

It’s not just American and European astronauts who get to walk in space. Over the weekend, two Chinese taikonauts conducted the country’s a) first spacewalk at its new Tiangong space station and b) the first tandem spacewalk attempted by the country. Obviously, the mission outside of Tiangong was a success, or the first paragraph would have had a very different emphasis. Taikonauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo left Tianngong’s main Tainhe module on 4 July to work on the module’s robotic arm. Mission commander Nie Haisheng remained inside while this was taking place. Taking risks as a taikonaut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnKo831Om_0 A…

Facebook, together with an internet company called Liquid Intelligent Technologies (you might have known them as Liquid Telecoms, once upon a time), is laying some 2,000km of fibre across the African continent. The project, which is designed to (eventually) extend the 2Africa undersea cable (that Facebook is also partly responsible for), will stretch from the central area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the eastern border of Rwanda. Facebook… really wants new users We’re sure you’ve got a ruler or a measuring tape somewhere, and you’ve also looked at a map before. 2,000km isn’t a short distance but…

Gene editing as a technology isn’t new, but it was only with the advent of CRISPR (which sounds like a brand of toaster) that it became anywhere close to mainstream. But now it’s done about the most hipster thing ever — the gene-editing technology has gone to space. To the International Space Station (ISS), in fact. CRISPR than the crease in your genes The first experiments using the gene-editing technology have taken place on the ISS, with astronaut Christina Koch helping scientists to damage DNA in a way that makes its repairs easier to observe. The experiment focuses on something…

A whole bunch of apps have been removed from the Google Play Store because… well, they were stealing user’s Facebook passwords. The nine apps, the most downloaded of which saw more than 5 million people at risk, used quite an unusual tactic to secure those passwords — they asked for them. Before you go thinking that this is the users’ fault, it’s not. The apps in question offers users the chance to disable ads if they logged in with their Facebook accounts. The login page for Facebook was genuine, but then… Playing with the Play Store Then, the apps got…

It’s amazing what you can create with Lego. Yes, there are all sorts of wonderful sets you can buy but fans also just get creative with it. Sometimes you get a full Top Gun trailer made from Lego, other times you get functioning scientific equipment. That’s the newest innovation we’ve seen using the iconic Danish brick toy — a working high-resolution microscope, built entirely using Lego — okay, and some smartphone components. The toy-maker doesn’t offer up many high-resolution lenses as part of its kits, after all. Lego your ideas of expensive gear Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen and…

So you’re keen to try out this new NFTs thing, but you don’t have several million dollars for one? Twitter, apparently, has you covered. If you’re one of the 140 lucky folks who will get their hands on one of the 140 non-fungible tokens that the micro-blogging service is giving away. Yes, this is an actual thing, and yes, it’s awfully easy to be in the running for one of them — but, like all online giveaways, it going to come down to luck. All a-Twitter about NFTs https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1410227743636217856? Twitter posted (on its own service, of course — what, you…

Russia is the latest country to take steps to limit how social media companies operate in places that aren’t their home ground. A new law signed by president Vladimir Putin this week mandates that social media giants need to establish a local presence in Russia in order to keep doing business the way that they’re used to. The new law says that “A foreign entity, carrying out activities on the internet in Russia, is obliged to create a branch, open an office or establish a Russian legal entity.” Though this law, according to politician Alexander Khinshtein, only applies to companies…

Netflix, for me, used to be a place to discover new and exciting content or, since they’ve got quite the back catalogue, a way to catch up on movies and series that I missed the first time around. Now, it’s a place where I scroll around aimlessly for a while before, more often than not, watching something I’ve already watched before. And the problem isn’t with me… okay, it’s a little with me… the issue comes in with how the streaming service monitors every single move I make. The reason for this, besides informing them what combination of genres, scripts…