Items of Interest

The Rise Of USSD Apps In Africa

Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is a protocol of the GSM standard form 1997, mostly used to allow simple queries to be sent and received to and from the mobile network, like requesting your account balance. The advent of mobile internet and smartphones have largely decimated the use of USSD in developed markets. However in Africa, where there is only 18% internet penetration, there is over 80% penetration of GSM mobile phones. As a result, developers have started using USSD as a widespread delivery mechanism for apps from banking to fertility tracking.

The History of Super Mario Bros Level 4-2

Speedrunning is the act of playing of a video game with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Super Mario is a popular franchised in which speedrunners attempt to out-play each other, with the latest world record set just 22 days ago on May 25th 2018. This video describes in detail the history of Super Mario Bros Level 4-2, a notoriously difficult level to speedrun through apparently.

Empathic People Process Music Differently

Researchers at Southern Methodist University and UCLA studied the brain activity of people while listening to music. Using a survey, the study participants were categorised based on their empathic qualities. The study found that empathic people process music with the involvement of social cognitive circuitry in the brain, like a pleasurable proxy for a human encounter. These areas of the brain were not activated by participants that rated low in empathy.

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