Heya and welcome to Five Things Tech!
The tech sector is mostly AI and datacenters right now, at least that’s what it feels like when you read too much about the industry. I tried to find Five Things Tech that are a bit different and look to other aspects of the tech industry.
Would you like to use Twitter again? I’m old enough to remember a Twitter without bots and right-wing trolls. Also, learn about charging the grid with your EV, the first biological computing rack in operation, the cybersecurity thread quantum computing will pose and a wild discussion about computer science without computers.
Five Things Tech for you - read them now!
New Twitter launches, says Musk’s X gave up the name
“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird’s cofounders, told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”
As Ars reported in December 2025, Coates and his coterie believe that when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and quickly changed the company’s name to X, the Twitter identity and intellectual property were abandoned.
Musk’s decision, they claim, created the opening for Operation Bluebird to claim Twitter’s trademarks.
I wish them the best of luck and much success with the new Twitter, but I actually do think that the old Twitter is dead and I have moved on. I am not sure that it will be able to reclaim the space Twitter had when it started 20 years ago.
Why plugging in all those EVs could actually save the power grid
This would, in turn, reduce the costs that utilities typically pass on to customers through rate hikes. The trick, the report notes, is determining a compensation structure. Paying EV owners to provide backup power would incentivize participation, but paying too much would start to drive up costs, possibly exceeding what it would take to build more battery facilities. While only a fraction of California’s EV owners would need to opt in to make an impact, the more vehicles a utility can call on, the less energy it will have to draw from each. In any case, owners wouldn’t wake up to a drained battery: They could specify when they typically need their car fully charged. Even people without EVs would benefit, as rates shouldn’t rise if utilities can avoid building extra infrastructure. “We need to make sure that we set these incentives at levels in which everybody wins,” Skala said.
This is something that is really hard to comprehend - instead of driving to a gas station to get your tank filled up, EV owners charge their car at home through solar energy, then drive to work, park their car there, connect it to the grid and get paid for charging the grid. And obviously they will keep enough battery power to make it back home…
Singapore Switches On Biological Computing Rack With Living Human Neurons
Each CL1 combines living human neurons with silicon hardware and a microelectrode interface. The neurons grow across a chip that sends and receives electrical impulses, while Cortical Labs’ software creates a digital environment through which neural activity can interact with software.
The biological component also requires life support. NUS technicians feed the cultures every three days, while the CL1 regulates their environment. Cortical Labs says the neurons can remain viable for up to six months.
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a mad scientist’s bad experiment from some 70s science-fiction movie? It’s fascinating, but also a bit weird, methinks.
Why Quantum Computing Is a Threat to Cybersecurity
You may have heard it before—when quantum computing gets here, it’s going to upend cybersecurity.
That’s because this emerging class of superpowerful computers will be able to solve many complex math problems more efficiently than standard computers, making it easier to crack the encryption codes that currently protect our data.
What threat does this technology pose, and when is it coming? And how can you protect yourself?
It currently feels as if AI and Quantum are in a race to figure out which technology can do the most harm when it falls into the wrong hands.
Does Computer Science Need Computers?
The pioneering computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, winner of the 1972 A.M. Turing Award and inventor of one of the most iconic algorithms in all of computing, was nothing if not opinionated. Certain programming languages drew his ire, for example: He once dubbed Fortran “the infantile disorder” and stated that “the use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.” In justifying his disdain for using computers in his own work, he wrote, “Medical researchers are not required to suffer from the diseases they investigate.”
Oh, this is an interesting debate. Maybe a bit abstract and theoretical, but interesting nonetheless, at least for all those math geeks out there.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
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— Nico