Zambia just threw 100 million kwacha at Zambia Railways Limited to fix up their busted rail system, and the EU is kicking in over 50 million euros to help repair tracks and upgrade signals on main routes. The cash is supposed to get ZRL out of barely functioning mode and turn it into something that actually works for moving cargo around the country.
The rail network has been falling apart for years, with old trains, broken signals, and tracks that look like they haven't been touched since independence. Zambia wants to use rail to move copper from the Copperbelt to ports cheaply and get crops from farming areas to market without clogging up the roads. Better rail is also supposed to connect Zambia to Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and...
Kenya just got a new electronics factory at Sarin Industrial Park near Nairobi, and a bunch of government people showed up for the opening. Principal Secretary Eng. John Tanui and Trade Cabinet Secretary Hon. Lee Kinyanjui were there with officials from investment and immigration departments, plus the Korean Ambassador H.E. Kang Hyung-Shik and K-Elec CEO Nam Kyo Yung.
The K-Elec plant uses Korean tech to put together fridges and TVs, and they're looking at beauty products next. Kinyanjui said Kenya wants more foreign money coming in to build stuff and hire people. Tanui pointed out that Kenya already cranks out over 8 million phones per year, so adding this factory makes the country look better as a manufacturing spot in East Africa...
Acer dropped a white version of its Predator Bifrost graphics card based on AMD's RX 9070 XT chip, and it's selling for around 855 bucks through their site and partner stores. The card comes with three custom fans that use a counter-spin setup and dual ball bearings to keep things quiet while moving air across a copper baseplate with heat pipes. There's also metal reinforcement on the back to stop the PCB from sagging.
Performance-wise, you're looking at boost clocks hitting 3,100 MHz with 16 gigs of GDDR6 memory running at 20 Gbps on a 256-bit bus. It's got three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs plus one HDMI 2.1a port, needs three 8-pin power connectors, and pulls up to 340 watts. The whole thing takes up 2.6 slots and weighs about 960 grams...
Scythe tossed out the Kotetsu Mark 4, which is a compact single-tower cooler that hits entry-level builds and mainstream rigs without taking up half the case. The thing uses four copper heat pipes with direct contact on the CPU and pushes air through aluminum fins with a 120mm fan that keeps noise down during regular use. Dimensions stay small to avoid clashing with RAM or motherboard heatsinks, and the mounting works on current Intel and AMD platforms like LGA1700 and AM5.
The cooler targets people who need something better than stock cooling but do not want to drop cash on massive towers or deal with complex setups. Scythe went for practical compatibility and quiet operation over raw thermal performance, which makes sense for...
Crystal Dynamics dropped word that two separate Tomb Raider games are getting worked on right now, and Amazon Games is publishing the mainline entry. The big one runs on Unreal Engine 5 as a single-player action-adventure that keeps the unified timeline going instead of rebooting Lara again, which means they are sticking with one continuous story that connects her older stuff with the Survivor trilogy.
The second project is happening with an outside studio, but details are basically nonexistent at this point. It could be a spinoff or something that plays completely differently from the main series.
Crystal Dynamics is not giving up release windows or platform info yet, but having two games in the pipeline at once suggests they want to...
Thermaltake launched the WS ARGB case series that slaps wood panels onto their frameless glass builds for people who want their rig to look less like a gaming setup and more like actual furniture. The View 170 WS ARGB starts at 69 bucks for micro-ATX and mini-ITX boards with three pre-installed RGB fans, while the View 270 Plus WS ARGB hits around 88 dollars and scales up to e-ATX motherboards with more fan mounting spots.
The View 380 XL WS ARGB sits at the top with a dual-chamber layout that hides cables and the power supply in a separate compartment. Pricing runs between 134 and 137 dollars, depending on which finish you grab, and the whole lineup keeps modular cooling options while ditching the typical all-metal aesthetic.
Keychron dropped the Q1 HE 8K with Hall effect switches that read magnetic fields instead of metal contacts, which lets you tweak actuation points and get instant key resets when you let up. The 65 percent layout keeps arrow keys around while the 8,000 Hz polling rate chases down input lag for people grinding ranked matches.
The board uses CNC aluminum construction with gasket mounting and sound-dampening layers to keep typing noise under control. Hot-swap sockets mean you can test different magnetic switches without breaking out a soldering iron, and the software handles remapping plus macro programming.
An Intel Xeon 696X engineering sample showed up in PassMark, showing 32 cores, but the benchmark software is definitely reading the chip wrong since early firmware and provisional microcode tend to confuse detection tools when new architectures land. The multi-threaded scores match what you would expect from fewer cores than the chip actually has, and single-threaded numbers are basically useless at this stage since power management and boost behavior are still getting dialed in before retail silicon ships.
This is not the first time the 696X has leaked with wonky specs, which means Intel is still validating the platform, and benchmark tools have not caught up yet. Anyone waiting on real Xeon workstation performance data needs to chill...
Nampak Zimbabwe pulled profit after tax up 57 percent to hit 7.81 million dollars for the year, despite revenue dropping from 101 million to 93 million as volumes slumped across the board. The packaging company benefited from a 66 percent drop in tax expenses and avoided the big monetary loss that hit them the previous year, which pushed earnings per share up 56 percent.
Volumes fell hardest at Mega Pak with a 9 percent decline from competition pressures, while the commercial carton business at Hunyani took a 3 percent hit. Management kept things afloat through cost-cutting and efficiency tweaks as new competitors jumped into every segment of their business.
The firm stayed debt-free and ended the year with 6.76 million in cash, up...
