I didn't either but it's still interesting.

A Sydney student's homework has gone beyond his wildest expectations.

It's not clear whether he got an 'A' but researchers at Amazon AWS, Yale and Duke University were studying it as well.

He's found a way to reduce errors in quantum computers.

It's one of those problems that stops progress.

Quantum computing works exponentially faster than the computing power we have today.

Now, while that gets faster results, it also amplifies error rates substantially.

Errors in digital transistors are extremely rare

But qubits, the switches in quantum computing, are far more sensitive to 'noise' or external interference. 

And that's where things have been stuck for some time now.

A Science undergrad in his second year at Sydney University turned in his solution as a homework assignment.

He didn't make excuses. The dog did not eat his homework or any one of the tired reasons professors have to put up with.

The code he's written modifies existing code written a couple of decades ago and solves for errors - helping move the field a step closer to quantum computing at scale.

Must be the only time a homework assignment was so consequential for the world!

What if the past could power the future?

It required computing to make electric motors absurdly efficient.

Turntide is a wonderful name for a company hoping to turn the tide on how energy costs can be dramatically lowered.

The technology was invented decades ago and then used only in situations where the motors had to last for decades - inside nuclear plants for example.

The primary problem was the instability and how hard it was to control.

In today's regular motors, the ones that run our fridges or air-conditioners, more than half the power is wasted.

Imagine if the efficiency could be increased by 60%.

If all the motors in use around the world could be replaced, our energy use could be halved.

Piyush Desai, an Indian scientist worked to create the 'reluctance' motor. The switch required to create the current has to be turned on and off more than 20,000 times a minute for it to work.

And until computing power could be harnessed to make it happen, it found applications only in outsize projects which operated in remote locations.

But that's changed now.

Turntide hopes to replace existing stationary motors that eat up half the world's electricity.

A lot of power equations could change across the world.

A 12-year-old was the original gaming 'streamer'

He was called Zot, the Avenger

And he had a grand audience of 50 kids tuning into watch him play games.

The public internet was still taking shape.

But the format that would power Twitch.tv was being imagined.

Zot's real name is JJ Styles.

Back in the early 90s, his mother worked at a community TV center in Tucson, Arizona.

Zot learned to operate the camera, light up the set and edit footage when he was just 10 years old.

Then, he and a friend decided to host a show of them playing games. It was shot on VHS tapes, edited and evolved as a format.

Live streaming was done from a cafe across the studio and they created 37 episodes

It was broadcast on community TV. But the concept of two anchors trash talking and playing games was born and it would be one of the biggest draws of live streaming almost 2 decades later.

Back then, it was just a 12-year-old showing off his game playing skills to a small group of enthusiastic friends.

Scrawls and scribbles define the graphics and titles.

But it created the foundations of what would become a billion-dollar pastime.

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