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Science

Thousands of people get lost in the desert every year, but these otherworldly solar beacons could save them

They look like save checkpoints in a video game, and they kind of are.

Canva Photos

Solar-powered beacons in the Saudi Arabian desert guide lost travelers to water.

Chief among my worries as a kid was what I considered the high probability that at some point in my life I would be trapped in quicksand. It felt extremely important that I remember all the tricks and techniques for getting out — just in case! A close second would have to be getting lost in the desert and dying of dehydration. You absolutely had to watch out for those deadly mirages, where the light on the horizon bends in such a way that you're certain you can see water up ahead.

At least one of those fears was fairly well-founded. All jokes aside, the desert is an incredibly dangerous place. It turns out that thousands of people get lost and go missing in deserts across the world every year. The Sahara Desert, the largest hot desert in the world, claimed a staggering 8,000 lives alone in 2023. These aren't overly flippant explorers, for the most part. Many migrants fleeing conflict zones across the desert become lost and suffer a tragic fate while trying to navigate the 3.6 million square mile area. There are many things that make the desert deadly, but dehydration with no access to water is at the top.

A team in Saudi Arabia has been testing a new technology that could drastically reduce dehydration-related deaths in the country's Al-Nafud Desert, and it looks like something straight out of a video game.

Though the Al-Nafud desert is quite a bit smaller than the Sahara standing at about 25,000 square miles, it can still be daunting to cross. Most years, hundreds of people go missing with several dozen of them perishing in the process.

An explorer named Mohammad Fohaid Al-Sohaiman had a brilliant idea to help lost travelers find water. Having been rescued in the desert himself, even as an experienced survivalist and outdoorsman, he knew there had to be a better way.

“Many people lost their lives in the desert near water resources because they did not know that water resources were close to them,” he told Arab News.

The idea: Beacons made of laser light, shot directly into the sky near water sources such as water wells. These powerful lights could be seen from miles away and would be powered by solar panels, ensuring they never go dark.

The plan is to eventually install 100 of the beacons throughout the Saudi Arabian desert.

The program to install the life-saving beacons began in 2021. It's still getting attention and inspiring awe all over the world.

A recent viral Reddit thread highlighted the innovative laser lights, and users were impressed:

"Absolutely brilliant! The rest of the world should immediately begin to implement this system in their desert areas as well as open oceans where water, food and communication devices could be stored for boaters in distress."

"This is such an amazing idea."

Others joked to the beams look like "save points" or "checkpoints" in a video game. They're not wrong!

Some have criticized the beacons, however, claiming that the light pollution may harm the desert's natural environment and residents like nocturnal animals and insects.



The desert holds vast potential for solar power due to its massive open spaces and plentiful sunlight. In fact, solar farms are common in deserts all over the world.

However, there are a couple of limitations that stop us from covering all the world's deserts in solar panels and completely converting to solar energy.

First, people underestimate how destructive and harsh the desert environment really is. Sand is incredibly corrosive, especially when whipped around in high-powered sandstorms. Maintaining solar equipment in the desert is incredibly challenging and costly.

Second, we think of deserts as open wasteland, but that's a misnomer. They're actually incredibly biodiverse natural habitats, home to many different forms of plant, animal, bird, and insect life. The desert habitat is no less important to preserve than rainforests or oceans.

Third, while solar energy is generally considered incredibly eco-friendly, massive solar farms can actually put off quite a bit of heat. A desert-sized solar farm would emit so much heat that it could negatively contribute to global warming and have devastating effects.


In any case, the life-saving beacons are a genius idea and a fantastic use of solar technology. Once the program is fully rolled out, it could save dozens or even hundreds of lives every year.

Just imagine a similar operation conducted in the massive Sahara Desert, or even in remote stretches of the American southwest.

As one commenter stated perfectly, "Now this is the type of innovation for the future I can get behind."

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Pop Culture

Younger people are admitting baby boomers got these 17 things right

"Kids shouldn't be on phones or iPads all the time. It makes them weird."

via Christian Buehner/Unsplash

Baby boomers didn't get everything wrong.

In recent years, baby boomers have often been the target of criticism from younger generations. The most common accusations are that boomers are selfish and don’t care about leaving ample resources (whether financial or environmental) to subsequent generations. They also come under fire for not being able to acknowledge that it was easier for people of their generation to come of age when things were more affordable and life was a lot less competitive.

However, we should also understand that many of today’s problems are not the boomers’ doing, especially when it comes to the issues that stem from entitled children and technology run amok. In hindsight, there’s something to be said about the importance boomers placed on self-reliance, letting kids be kids, and having a healthy skepticism towards technology.

In the end, each generation contributes to the tapestry of society in its unique way, whether good or bad, even baby boomers. This became evident after a Reddit user named Youssef4573 asked the AskReddit subforum: ‘What is something you can say ‘I'm with the boomers on this one’ about?” Over 4,700 people responded to the prompt, and the most prevalent problems mentioned by the younger generations were overreliance on technology, the modern world’s lack of human touch, and how Gen Xers and millennials have raised their children.

Here are 17 things that younger people are “with the boomers” about.

1. Public filming

"Just because I’m in public doesn’t mean I want to be filmed. Yeah, I know legally you can, but common courtesy people." — Jayne_of_Canton

2. Customer service

"I want to talk to a person in customer service, not a machine." — lumpy_space_queenie

"And also a person that actually works at the company I bought the product from, not a teenager at an outsourced call center with a script to follow and who answers calls for 15 different companies on the same day." — Loive.

3. Turn up the dialog

"For the love of all that is holy, can we fix the audio in movies so that the music and sound FX aren’t drowning out the dialogue?" — Caloso

"And the action sequences don’t burst your eardrums or the dialogue is whispers." — Whynottry-again

4. Bring back buttons

"No, I don't need everything in my car to be electronic. Some stuff needs buttons." — LamborghiniHEAT

"This was the big thing for me in my last car - trying to adjust volume or change songs while driving is way more dangerous when it’s all touch screen. Thankfully my current car has physical knobs for everything." — GeekdomCentral

5. App overload

"Every store/service does not need an app." — BigDigger324

"I was standing at a car rental counter at an airport (boomer here) to rent a car. My daughter’s car broke down on the way to pick me up. While standing at the counter, with a customer service rep right there and not busy, I had to log in to their site, create an account, and reserve a car. It seemed ridiculous and it took a long time, filling in my license information and all that. This was last September." — Cleanslate

6. Bring back DIY

"Learning DIY skills is crucial. I had basically zero DIY skills when I bought my house because I had lived in apartments for so long and I've had to learn a lot. YouTube tutorials are absolutely clutch." — JingleJongleBongle

7. Turn off the speakerphone

"I hated this when I worked at Walmart. So many of my coworkers would talk on speaker or watch TikTok at full volume. It's just trashy imo, nobody wants to hear your media." — WhiteGuy1x

"I work at an emergency medical office and holy sh*t the amount of people that sit in a quiet, peaceful lobby and just have the LOUDEST conversations on their phone…. Speaker or otherwise. Not to mention the people that still watch sh*t without headphones. Like do you not see the plethora of other people around you that you’re disturbing?" — Cinderpuppins

8. Ban QR code menus

"I think menus should be tangible." — Limp-Management9684

"QR codes kill the vibe. We’re all on our phones constantly throughout the day and then when you go to spend some quality time with someone, it’s another excuse to whip out the phone and stare at it. There’s an intimacy to a physical menu. You’re looking at what the other person is reading, you’re each pointing to parts of the menu. You’re noticing the lighting of the restaurant. QR codes feel chintzy and kill the ambiance completely." — VapeDerp420

9. Stop subscriptions

"When I was your age, you only had to pay for a video game once to own it." — CattonCruthby

10. Free the children

"A kid in 2024 should have the same freedom to exist unsupervised and move about their community independently as a boomer did growing up." — PixelatedFish

"The world is safer than it's ever been and people are more scared than ever. I blame true crime and local news." ⲻ Unhappyhippo142

11. Kids need to touch grass

"Kids shouldn't be on phones or iPads all the time. It makes them weird." — Ubstantial_Part_952

"The same could be said about most adults." — DrunkOctopus

12. Stop being so sensitive

"People in our generation are far, far too sensitive. Don't get it twisted; empathy is, by and large, a good thing and it takes some serious doing for me to say it's gone too far. But collectively, we've become people willing to throw every last bit of energy fighting against every slight and making sure our pet cause gets top billing to the point of fighting amongst each other even if we're in almost complete agreement otherwise. Emotional energy - like any other kind of energy - is very much a finite resource. Whereas boomers could at least generally agree to disagree and get on with things (obvious cross-wielding exceptions doth apply). Culturally, we've lost sight of the adage of 'winning the battle, losing the war.'" — almighty_smiley

13. Stop delivery

"Food delivery services are a complete ripoff; if you use them regularly, you’re terrible with money. Get off my lawn." — VapeDerp420

14. Parking meters

"So rather than throwing a few coins in your meter, you have to now get your license plate #, get your meter number, go to the meter station, stand in line with everyone waiting to pay their meter, then you're set. It's an unnecessary amount of extra steps. I don't carry cash much anymore, but I can hide a small amount of coin in my car to quickly pay a meter." — Luke5119

15. Kids should know their place

"Not letting your children rule the roost. When did it become acceptable to let your kids back-talk to you, slap you, climb all over shi*t in public places? As we've raised ours, I've witnessed so many parents around us just let these behaviors slide. It's kind of sad when I'm the one saying things like, "Did I just hear you just say that to your mom?!?!?!?! That is not ok. You go and apologize right now!!". Then I get this stunned "deer in headlights" look back that tells me they aren't used to someone calling them out on their behavior." — Cobblestone-Villain

16. Pride in ownership

"Seems that a lot of boomers have pride of ownership and enjoy maintaining what they have." — Awkward_Bench123

17. Don't follow leaders

"My dad (a solid boomer) has been saying that ALL politicians are crooks since he became disenchanted with politics around the Nixon era. He was starry-eyed before that, trying to make social change, yada yada. He still votes, but holds his nose. Can’t say I disagree with him." — Thin_white_duchess


This article originally appeared last year.

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Humor

A Gen Zer bought their boyfriend a Walkman for Valentine's Day but realized they had no idea how it works

Being retro is apparently complicated now.

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash
a cassette player with headphones attached to it


Everything old is new again. Record stores are often swarming with 20-somethings digging through 45s and VHS tapes. I recently saw one adorably hold up a Betamax tape of Porky's II , asking their friend, "What in the flying F is this?" (The truth is, I saw Porky's II The Next Day in theaters and can't really answer that myself.)


brown wooden vinyl rack Photo by Brittany Bendabout on Unsplash

No one is immune to the moment when their "I feel old" feeling hits. One young millennial woman on Reddit shares her harrowing tale of hearing a 24-year-old work colleague not understand why the "retro" Walkman he bought his boyfriend for Valentine's Day didn’t come with a charger. (To be clear, it turns out that Redditor is referring to a Discman, but swears they called those Walkmans too.)

Technology Walkman GIFGiphy

"He shows me the Walkman and he’s so confused because it didn’t come with a charger. I’m like… they’re battery-powered. He was like, 'What??? I didn’t see where to put the batteries!' He opened it and saw where the batteries go. He thought the headphone jack was where the charger goes."

The two are only six years apart, which our poster acknowledges. "I don’t actually think I’m old. I know 30 isn’t old. It was just my first moment where I understood what older generations felt when younger generations find things from their childhood 'ancient.'"

Many of the commenters have an optimistic view, believing at least the Zoomers are trying! One states, "This is kind of rad. Imagine having access to all of the world's recorded music at your fingertips, and instead, going, 'Nah, I’m going to listen to these 10 songs that someone I care about chose just for me.' I know playlists exist, but it’s not the same. It was one thing for our generation to do this when it’s all we had, but it’s cool to me that the next generation is choosing to do this!"

photo of black and brown cassette tape Photo by Namroud Gorguis on Unsplash

A most likely Boomer admits that it's the music that makes them feel old. "My 'I'm old' moment was when my Gen Z colleague said, 'I love listening to oldies' and was referencing late '90s and early 2000s music instead of music from the '50s-'70s."

A Gen X-er enters the chat. "My 'old moment' occurred over the holidays. My 20-year-old cousin challenged me in Street Fighter 6. Being that I’m from the '80s and cut my teeth on Street Fighter 2, it was like riding a bike. I promptly whupped him. His response? 'All you old-timers are good at these games.' Ooof. I guess his generation is used to Fortnite and Roblox and wasn’t raised on a good old-fashioned 2-dimensional fighting game."

street fighter vs GIFGiphy

Another Reddit user had a good laugh when they saw a tweet about a floppy disk. "I saw a tweet about how a Zoomer saw an older guy with a floppy disk and asked why he had the 'Save' symbol 3D printed."

Floppy Disk GIFGiphy

As for the 24-year-old and his boyfriend? They wanted the Walkman in the first place because "they just love the Y2K era and aesthetic." He reportedly announced, "He will also get him a digital camera (ya know) for the aesthetic."

gen z
Family

When should parents stop tracking kids? 7 ways to balance safety with autonomy and privacy.

Location sharing apps have led to uncharted territory for parents.

Photo credit: Canva

Parents can always know where their kids are these days. When should that stop?

Every generation of parents has had to navigate questions previous parents never even had to think about, especially in the technological age. It began with television—How much TV time is too much?—then moved to video games, the internet, smartphones, and so on. And one of the newest conundrums parents have to figure out is when—or if—to stop tracking their children's location.

Thanks to GPS and location sharing apps, parents now have the ability to know where their child (or at least their child's phone) is at any given moment, and lots of parents are taking advantage of it. A recent study by iSharing found that 80% of parents tracked their children in 2024, up from 16% in 2016. Location tracking can provide some peace of mind for parents and kids alike, but at what point is it too much?

It may make sense to always know where your middle schooler or high schooler is, but there are big debates about whether college students need to have their location known at every moment. Some find location tracking into the young adult years to be an invasion of privacy. Others have had experiences where having location sharing enabled was a life-saving tool. Is there a right answer?

When it's framed as a tool for trust rather than control, location tracking can be good for parent-child relationships. Here are 7 tips the experts at iSharing compiled from their study of how to responsibly use location tracking while balancing safety and autonomy:

Tip 1: Understand How Common Tracking Is Among Parents

Tracking tools are now a widely adopted parenting aid, with 54% of parents frequently monitoring their children’s location. This significant increase reflects evolving safety concerns and growing accessibility to technology. Parents who understand why tracking has become so prevalent—such as managing multiple children or addressing safety in public spaces—can implement these tools more thoughtfully.

Where Are You Im Waiting GIFGiphy

Tip 2: Start with Clear Boundaries and Communication

When implementing location tracking, have an open discussion with your child. Experts recommend that parents clearly define when and why tracking will be used, such as during travel or emergencies. Transparency helps children understand that the goal is safety, not constant monitoring. For instance, families can agree to deactivate tracking during school hours or social outings, creating a sense of autonomy. When introducing location tracking, frame it as a tool for mutual safety. Be prepared to answer their questions, such as explaining why tracking is necessary for specific situations, not constant oversight, and reassuring them about privacy by setting boundaries like deactivating tracking during certain times.

Tip 3: Use Tracking to Teach Life Skills

Framing location tracking as a teaching tool can empower children. For example, parents can teach navigation skills by helping children choose the safest routes, discuss emergency readiness by identifying safe locations and practicing response plans, and introduce digital literacy concepts, such as understanding app permissions and managing online privacy. This approach helps children view tracking as a growth-oriented resource rather than a restriction.

Location Gps GIF by AboutMedia Internetmarketing GmbHGiphy

Tip 4: Choose Reliable Apps Thoughtfully

Parents often struggle with tracking without infringing on their child's privacy. It's essential to set limits on the data collected and explain its use. When selecting a tracking app, look for features like secure encryption, geofencing, and clear data-sharing policies. Apps offering additional tools, such as personalized location reports or alerts for unsafe driving behaviors, can help parents ensure their child’s safety beyond just location tracking. Features like these help teens understand their weaknesses, such as harsh braking or speeding, and take steps to improve safely.

Tip 5: Educate Children About Location Sharing Risks

Teach children the risks of oversharing their location, whether on social media or through unverified apps. Use age-appropriate examples to explain how location data can be misused, such as by strangers or cybercriminals. Encourage them to share their location only with trusted individuals. This awareness is especially critical as 30% of adult social media users have at least one account set to share their location in posts automatically.

Tip 6: Gamify Location Tracking for Engagement

Gamification can transform location tracking into an engaging experience for children and teens. For example, parents can create family missions where children navigate to specific safe locations, award digital badges for safe practices such as consistent check-ins or adhering to agreed boundaries, or use friendly competitions to encourage responsible behavior, such as discovering the safest routes or maintaining safe driving habits. By integrating playful elements, tracking can promote safety while keeping it enjoyable for children.

Warning T-Rex GIF by Meta DigitalGiphy

Tip 7: Adapt Tracking Practices to the Child's Age

Tracking practices should evolve as children grow older to balance safety with their need for independence. Research shows that 50% of teens report their parents monitoring their location, while nearly half of college students have experienced or currently experience digital tracking by a parent or caregiver. However, college students who are tracked often perceive their parents as overly controlling, which can strain the parent-child relationship and hinder the development of independence. Adjusting tracking practices over time helps foster trust and supports a child’s growing independence.

“Technology should serve as a bridge, not a barrier, to trust and connection within families," says a representative of iSharing. "When parents approach tools like location tracking with transparency and mutual respect, they not only enhance safety but also model the importance of balance between independence and accountability. The goal is to integrate these tools in ways that align with values of trust, respect, and open communication, ensuring they complement rather than complicate family dynamics.”

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