Meta’s answer to Twitter: A new social media platform, Threads, to “share ideas and trends with text.” The upcoming app, which is already on the Apple App store and will roll out for iOS users this week, will allow Instagram users to transfer their username and followers to Threads, the Financial Times reported yesterday. It is unclear when the app will be available for Android users.

Stop us if this sounds familiar: Threads is being positioned as an app that is rather similar in concept to Twitter, whose users are being subjected to content moderation and other adjustments that aren’t sitting well with the social platform’s large base since it was purchased by Elon Musk late last year, the FT notes. Over the past few days alone, Twitter rolled out unexpected changes like limits on the number of tweets people can view.

Ancient hydraulic water engineering systems dating back three millennia were found in Northern Sudan, indicating that these systems were created in the ancient Nubian empire before China, which was previously thought to have the oldest known hydraulics system, according to a study published in the Geoarchaeologyjournal cited in Science Alert. A team of researchers from Australia and the UK used satellite images, drones, diaries of a group of travelers from the 19th century, and a 200-year-old map to determine that some 1.3k stone walls — or “groynes” — stretched along 1k km in the area between the first Cataract in southern Egypt, and the fourth Cataract in Sudan. The Nile river groynes are now proven to be older than gyrones found on the Yellow River in China, which dates back to 2,500 years old.

Why are these structures essential? These multi-purpose water systems are used to control the water flow for better land irrigation, grab more fertile silt, curb seasonal floods drawbacks, reduce erosion of river banks, and prepare river channels for navigation, in addition to establishing ideal fishing ponds. The “momental river groynes” created a bond between the Nubians and old Egyptians across the Nile, north and south, as it opened a channel for transporting people, armies, and resources. “This incredibly long-lived hydraulic technology played a crucial role in enabling communities to grow food and thrive in the challenging landscapes of Nubia for over 3k years,” University of Western Australia archaeologist Matthew Dalton said.

Hydraulic systems have stood the test of time: These systems are still applied by local people in different areas as the Nile’swater flow in this region is inconsistent — due to climate change over the past three millennia.

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