With a collective gasp and puzzled looks, the world was recently introduced to Tesla’s newest vehicle. The so-called Cybertruck is an angular, stainless steel, all-electric pickup truck that quickly became polarizing.
Author: The Conversation
Our electronic devices store a plethora of sensitive information. To protect this information, device operating systems such as Apple’s iOS and Android have locking mechanisms. These require user authentication before access is granted.
In an interview, PayPal’s chief executive, Dan Schulman, recently discussed the prospects for blockchain – the encrypted, decentralised online ledger system that underpins Bitcoin and myriad other cutting-edge projects. While talking about blockchain’s potential for improving how people make payments around the world, Schulman said: We think there’s a lot of promise to blockchain technology … but it really needs to do something that the traditional rails [of the interntional payments system] can’t do. Most people think that blockchain is about efficiency, but the system today is pretty efficient. There are middlemen sometimes in between, but the rails of it are pretty efficient. So we…
East Africa attracts millions of tourists every year. Over the past 10 years, its earnings from tourism have doubled. Compared to the rest of Africa, the region is experiencing healthy economic growth. This makes it a promising investment destination.
Earlier this week, Russian farmers announced they are testing virtual reality (VR) for dairy cows. Conducted at the RusMoloko farm near Moscow, the trials supposedly use specially adapted goggles to show the animals a view of a pleasant field in summer. The idea is to make the cows happier, which in turn could make them produce more milk.
Videos showing autonomous or self-driving vehicles weaving in and out of crossroads at speed without colliding suggest this technology will solve traffic problems. You almost never see pedestrians or cyclists in these videos. The reality is that they don’t fit.
Long-distance running times are dropping – and the first sub-two hour marathon was completed recently by Kenyan athlete, Eliud Kipchoge. Some are arguing that innovations in trainer design are playing a pivotal role in these improvements. But what is the science behind these elite running shoes? Can they really make such a big difference? And can they get even better?
Researchers recently produced an algorithm that could guess whether heart patients had lived or died from their condition within a year. By looking at data from a test of the heart’s electrical activity known as an electrocardiogram or ECG, the algorithm successfully predicted patient survival in 85% of cases
When one talks about young Africans using smartphones, the dominant narrative is that these gadgets serve mostly as platforms for connection so that users can communicate and share greetings and information via text and images.
Mobile services have had an important and positive impact on developing countries where they are the main means of connecting to the internet. However, mobile services have capacity constraints. They use limited radio frequency spectrum, which means that mobile data typically has usage limits. They also have high prices per unit (per gigabyte), which results in lower use per connection.