Blog
Buying guides, explainers and tech news — alongside our video reviews.
Why the UAE Is Pouring Billions Into Desert Data Centers — and the Cooling Problem Nobody's Fully Solved
The UAE is backing gigawatt-scale AI data centre projects like Stargate UAE with billions in investment, but building them in a water-scarce desert climate forces operators toward costly liquid and immersion cooling. Here's what's actually confirmed versus still under construction.
CAPTCHA Was Built to Keep Robots Out. Now AI Solves It Better Than You Do.
CAPTCHA started as a Carnegie Mellon experiment and quietly became Google's largest crowdsourced labor pool before pivoting into invisible behavioral tracking. Now a 2023 UC Irvine study shows bots solving these tests with 99.8% accuracy versus 50-84% for humans, raising the question of what actually replaces it.
Matter Was Supposed to Fix the Smart Home Mess. Four Years Later, Here's What Actually Changed
Matter launched in 2022 promising one universal standard for smart home devices, ending the Alexa-vs-HomeKit-vs-Google-Home compatibility maze. Four years and six spec updates later, over 7,100 products are certified — but ecosystem fragmentation persists, and the Gulf's smart-home boom shows the standard still hasn't cracked premium villa automation.
The 24-Hour Deadline That Nearly Killed BlackBerry in the Gulf — and Why the Region Kept It Alive the Longest
In 2010, the UAE gave BlackBerry days to hand over access to its encrypted traffic or face a shutdown of BBM, email and browsing. The standoff was resolved just before the deadline — and the Gulf went on to become one of BlackBerry's most loyal markets, long after the rest of the world had moved on.
Bluetooth Is Named After a Viking King. Here's the Full, Slightly Absurd Story
Bluetooth's frequency-hopping radio was built by Ericsson engineers in the 1990s to replace phone cables, but its name and logo come from a 10th-century Viking king found in a novel an Intel engineer happened to be reading. Here's how a placeholder codename became the wireless standard behind four billion devices a year.
The Quiet Rise of Yahsat: How an Abu Dhabi Satellite Startup Became a $5 Billion Space Giant
In 2007, Abu Dhabi had no satellites of its own. Nearly two decades later, the company it built — Yahsat, now merged into Space42 — operates a mobile, broadband and Earth-observation satellite fleet underpinned by an $5.1 billion UAE government contract running through 2043.
The Comeback Nobody Predicted: How Garmin Out-Survived the Phone That Was Supposed to Kill It
When the smartphone made free turn-by-turn navigation standard, Garmin's core GPS-device business looked finished. Instead, the Kansas company retreated to the niches a phone still can't cover — endurance sport, marine, aviation and the outdoors — and is now posting record revenue.
The Ten-Day Rebellion: How Linus Torvalds Built Git After Losing Access to BitKeeper
In April 2005, a licensing dispute cut the Linux kernel team off from the version control tool it depended on. Linus Torvalds responded by writing a replacement from scratch in about ten days — and that tool, Git, now underpins nearly all modern software development.
Why Every Tech Giant Suddenly Wants a Humanoid Robot
Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Agility Robotics, and a wave of Chinese manufacturers are pouring billions into humanoid robots, but real industrial deployments remain narrow and concentrated at a handful of sites. Here is what is actually working today, what is still hype, and how the UAE is embracing the humanoid moment.
The Factory Fix That Became the Code on Every Dubai Metro Gate: A QR Code History
The QR code wasn't built for smartphones — it was invented in 1994 by a Denso engineer trying to stop factory workers from scanning the same box six times. Here's how a patent its creators chose never to enforce turned into the free global standard now running Dubai's Metro QR tickets, taxi payments, and parking.
The World's First AI Minister: How a 2017 UAE Appointment Became a Governance Blueprint
In 2017 the UAE created the world's first government ministry dedicated to artificial intelligence, backing it with a 2031 national strategy and a dedicated AI university. Nearly a decade on, other governments -- from Canada to Albania -- are only now experimenting with their own versions of the idea.
Goodbye, SIM Tray: Why eSIM-Only Phones Are Finally Here
Apple's iPhone Air is the first phone sold worldwide without a physical SIM slot at all, capping a 15-year journey from an obscure IoT standard to the mainstream. Here's how eSIM actually works, how we got here, and why the UAE's two biggest carriers are already set up for it.
From a Four-Letter Trademark to a $1.3 Billion Valuation: The Real Story Behind Nothing
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei launched a phone company named 'Nothing' in 2021 with no products and a lot of famous investors. Five years, four phones and a $200 million funding round later, it's worth $1.3 billion -- and the UAE has been one of its earliest launch markets.
Why the UAE Is Killing the One-Time Password
The UAE's central bank is pushing banks to phase out SMS and email OTPs after a wave of SIM-swap and social-engineering fraud, and passkeys are emerging as the replacement. Here's how the cryptography behind passkeys actually works, what the global adoption numbers show, and why the UAE is shaping up as a real-world test of passwordless banking.
The Tiny Chip That Shrank Your Charger: Inside the GaN Takeover of UAE Gadget Shelves
Gallium nitride (GaN) chips have quietly replaced silicon inside the chargers sold across Dubai's electronics stores, shrinking laptop bricks into matchbox-sized adapters. Here's the physics behind the shift, who built it, and what to actually look for when buying one.
The Invisible Wires Under the Gulf: How Submarine Cables Made the UAE a Global Data Hub
Roughly 20 undersea fibre-optic cable systems land in the UAE, making it a key crossroads for the world's internet traffic. Here's how that infrastructure works, why e& and du keep adding more of it, and what happens when Red Sea cable cuts send Gulf latency spiking.
The UAE's $36 Million Wake-Up Call: Why Deepfake Fraud Is Outrunning Deepfake Detection
A Dubai Police operation that unraveled a $36 million AI-powered scam has put deepfake fraud at the center of UAE cybersecurity policy. Here's why spotting fakes is losing to proving what's real, and what that shift means for anyone in the UAE picking up a suspicious call or video.
Q-Day Isn't Here Yet. The UAE Is Rewriting Its Encryption Rules Anyway
In late 2025 the UAE approved a National Encryption Policy forcing government entities to plan a migration to post-quantum cryptography, years before any quantum computer capable of breaking today's encryption is expected to exist. Here's why 'harvest now, decrypt later' makes that urgency rational, and what the UAE's Cybersecurity Council is actually requiring.
RISC-V Explained: The Free Chip Blueprint Quietly Taking On Arm — and Why Abu Dhabi Got in Early
RISC-V is an open, royalty-free chip instruction set that is pulling in giants like Qualcomm and Western Digital as an alternative to Arm and x86. Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute has been building RISC-V silicon since 2021, fitting the UAE's broader design-first approach to chip sovereignty.
Inside "Eye": The AI System Quietly Deciding Who Gets to Work in the UAE
MoHRE's AI-powered 'Eye' system, launched at GITEX Global 2025, is now checking passports, Emirates IDs, and certificates for UAE work permit applications with minimal human review. Here's how it works, and what's at stake when a model decides who gets to work.
The UAE Is One of the Few Places on Earth Where Your Next iPhone Won't Have a SIM Slot
Apple quietly made eSIM mandatory on the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air in just 12 markets worldwide — and the UAE is one of them. Here's the surprisingly long history behind eSIM technology, and why Gulf carriers were ready for the switch before almost anyone else.
The 25-Year-Old Display Nobody Wanted Is Suddenly Everywhere
Electronic paper spent fifteen years as a niche confined to e-readers. Now it's showing up in grocery store price tags, glare-free 'digital paper' tablets, and distraction-light devices built to fight screen fatigue. Here's how the tech actually works and why it's finding new life.
The Toyota Factory Puzzle That Became the World's Payment Code
The QR code was invented in 1994 by a Denso Wave engineer to solve a Toyota supply-chain headache, not to replace your wallet. Here's the real history of how it went global — and why the UAE Central Bank's Aani instant-payments platform is now betting on the same 30-year-old format for merchant payments.
Your Next Phone Might Not Need a Cell Tower — and the UAE Wants In on the Network That Replaces One
Apple, Starlink, and AST SpaceMobile are racing to make ordinary smartphones talk directly to satellites, closing the dead-zone gap without new hardware. The UAE's e& has just signed on with Space42's Equatys venture to bring the same capability to deserts, mountains, and offshore waters.