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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Average annual concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), one of the main traffic-related air pollutants, have fallen by 18% within Warsaw’s clean transport zone since the scheme was introduced, compared with a 5% decline outside the zone.

The preliminary data from Warsaw’s Office of Air Protection and Climate Policy also show that between 2023 and 2025, the largest declines in NO2 concentrations were recorded at monitoring stations on Grochowska Street and Solidarności Avenue, some of Warsaw’s busiest traffic corridors.

However, Clean Cities Polska, an organisation campaigning for cleaner air in cities, which published the data, cautioned that the findings do not conclusively show that Warsaw’s restrictions on older vehicles are having an effect, as pollution levels are also influenced by other factors.

Poland has long had some of the worst air pollution in Europe , causing an estimated tens of thousands of premature deaths annually. Over the past decade, national and local authorities have introduced a range of measures to improve air quality, including in Warsaw, which banned older cars from its city centre.

The clean transport zone came into force in July 2024 , initially banning diesel cars more than 18 years old and petrol cars more than 27 years old from entering a designated area covering 37 km2, or around 7% of Warsaw, including the central Śródmieście district, and parts of other districts.

The restrictions will be tightened in stages until 2032, when diesel cars more than 11 years old and petrol cars more than 17 years old will no longer be permitted.

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Nina Bąk, director of Clean Cities Polska, described the results as “promising” but cautioned that they do not prove that the clean transport zone alone caused the larger decline.

Air pollution levels are also influenced by meteorological conditions, changes in traffic volumes and the gradual replacement of the vehicle fleet.

Alongside the clean transport zone, Warsaw has introduced other measures aimed at reducing transport emissions, including expanding its electric bus fleet and increasing the length of its cycling network to 874 kilometres in 2026 from 585 kilometres in 2018.

From 1 July, older cars will be banned from the centre of Warsaw in what will be Poland's first "clean transport zone".

The city has launched a website allowing drivers to check if their car is among those affected https://t.co/AhyMdK8Dci

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 19, 2024

According to Mariusz Panczyk, a researcher at the Medical University of Warsaw, the findings are an “important signal for public health”.

“If we observe a more pronounced reduction in NO2 concentrations within the clean transport zone than outside it, this provides strong grounds for reducing residents’ exposure to one of the best-documented components of traffic-related pollution,” he said, quoted in a Clean Cities Polska statement.

The organisation said long-term exposure to NO2 increases the risk of asthma, chronic respiratory diseases and respiratory infections in children, while broader traffic pollution is also linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer and cognitive problems.

Exposure is uneven across the city, with residents near busy roads, children at schools close to traffic, older people and those with chronic illnesses facing the greatest risks. Research also suggests air pollution disproportionately affects lower-income communities.

Nowy Sącz has the EU’s second-most-polluted air, with two other Polish cities also featuring among the worst ten in @EUEnvironment 's latest ranking.

Poland as a whole also has the EU's highest annual number of deaths linked to air pollution https://t.co/G5PyGkPSpj

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 5, 2024

Warsaw has also sought to reduce other types of pollution, including by introducing a ban on the burning of coal to heat households , a major source of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), which can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream and is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

A separate report by Breathe Cities, a global initiative launched in 2023 by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Clean Air Fund and C40 Cities that supports Clean Cities Polska, found earlier this year that Warsaw reduced PM2.5 concentrations by 46% between 2010 and 2024.

That was the second-largest decline among the 19 cities included in the study.

According to the European Clean Air Centre (ECAC), improvements in PM2.5 air quality between 2018 and 2022 helped prevent an estimated 6,723 premature deaths in the Masovian province where Warsaw is located, including 2,382 in the city itself.

Warsaw has reduced its level of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a particularly harmful type of air pollution, by 46% since 2010.

That was the second biggest decrease among 19 global cities included in a new international report, behind only Beijing (48%) https://t.co/8GuNOcg0l0

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 15, 2026

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Marta Zwierzchoniewska/Pexels

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Credit: Ice Universe

TL;DR

Samsung has shared a teaser of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 ahead of launch.

The teaser features Spider-Man pulling the foldable toward him with his web shooters.

The next Galaxy Unpacked is almost here, and there have been numerous leaks regarding Samsung’s upcoming foldables as we approach the launch. However, the latest news about one of the brand’s foldables doesn’t come from a leaker. This time, we’re getting something official from Samsung itself.

In a new social post , Samsung shared a Galaxy Z Fold 8 teaser on X (formerly Twitter). The post specifically includes a picture featuring Spider-Man pulling a foldable phone toward him with his web shooters. It’s a continuation of Samsung’s marketing partnership with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is scheduled to come to theaters on July 31.

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It's the 16th anniversary of Star Trek Online this year, and the 60th anniversary of Star Trek itself. That's an absurdly long time for both MMOs and TV shows. For fans of the shows, though, it's bittersweet, as the two remaining ones are now rushing towards their post-cancellation conclusions. Star Trek Online, on the other hand, feels like it's entering a new era.

OK, I might be getting a wee bit ahead of myself, but things are definitely changing. Earlier this year, Cryptic Studios' former CEO, MMO heavyweight Jack Emmert , returned, taking up the CEO mantle once more. And just as critically, Cryptic and publisher Arc Games were able to extricate themselves from owner Embracer—a company that's mostly known for buying studios and killing them.

(Image credit: Cryptic) It's going to take time to really see the impact of these changes, but STO's new Undiscovered update does feel different—for numerous reasons. The ongoing storyline has been temporarily paused, one of STO's oldest arcs has been completely remade, with two Voyager veterans returning to voice their characters, and there's a big push to make sector space a bit more interesting—namely by revamping Deep Space Encounters.

Executive producer Thomas Marrone tells me that he's "really grateful to have Jack back", and that the returning CEO has been interested in Cryptic's STO team "trying new things and asking a lot of questions".

Marrone doesn't want to call it a "rut", but prior to the changes, the team found itself in a comfortable rhythm.

"We had a rhythm of here's an episode, here's a TFO [Task Force Operations are the dungeons and raids of STO], here's a couple patrols, here's an episode, here's a TFO, here's a couple patrols. And that was great, and I know people enjoyed it, because we have all the metrics. That's just what you do as a live service company, but with Jack back, we do have a mandate to try new things, and to look at, are there ways to give people something new every update. Undiscovered is one of the first examples of this."

(Image credit: Cryptic) Undiscovered's remade storyline and Deep Space Encounters still tick all the traditional STO boxes. They're extremely replayable and won't take a million hours to finish. Episodes are brisk (though not rushed) and the sector space encounters aim to be 15-minute adventures. With both comes new rewards, new and returning characters, and more voice acting. And the update launched with an event that will see players rewarded with a gigantic Bird of Prey.

It's not entirely unfamiliar, then, but as Marrone says, it's a "different flavour". And instead of adding, say, a new storyline or multiplayer diversion onto a creaky frame, the update is attempting to patch up the frame itself. "It's really geared at making the game feel alive and feel like it's worth flying around and exploring sector space in a way that I don't think we had before."

Emmert has enabled this, says Marrone. "Jack has encouraged us to think about new ways of building content for the game that isn't just the same thing over and over again."

Senior narrative designer Flo McQuibban says the team is "trying to push the boundaries" of what they can achieve both narratively and mechanically—"within the limit of what's possible with our development timeframe of our resources".

(Image credit: Cryptic) That last part is important. After Embracer acquired Cryptic, it gutted the team and put a mobile studio in charge of Cryptic's MMOs. And while the Embracer days are behind it, Cryptic's still having to run multiple MMOs without the resources that, say, Blizzard or Square Enix have available to them. So when it wants to do something new, like remake an arc, that needs to be the focus.

Game development is a zero sum game.

Thomas Marrone

So don't expect Cryptic to immediately jump right into another old arc to remake it.

"I mean, we'd love to," says Marrone. "There are so many other arcs that are really cool and have good bones. The Iconian War is another great example of something that could really use some help, at least with the cutscenes. Unfortunately, game development is a zero sum game, in that we have this much time to make this much stuff."

But that certainly doesn't mean it won't happen. STO has a legacy of tweaking old stories. Indeed, the story that was just remade had been given a glow up a few years before it was put in the vault—though it wasn't even close to the extent of the Undiscovered changes. But Cryptic has to balance out any trips back in time with producing brand new storylines and activities.

(Image credit: Arc Games) So how does STO keep going for another 16 years? McQuibban thinks maintaining a good relationship with the community is the trick.

"We're a very communicative development team," she says. "And I feel like the playerbase has a lot of empathy back towards us, and grace and patience for when we are transparent and in regular discussion with them … I think that's going to be key, and it's part of like empathy towards the players. We hear you, and we see you, and your feedback; maybe it'll take a while to fix, but we've seen it, and we've logged it, and we're gonna consider it and figure it out together."

It can be challenging, though, "as the game gets older, technologies advance, expectations change about what's in a game," says Marrone. But it helps that "STO is blessed with a very, very high rate of retention". I've been playing STO since 2010, and somehow have managed to keep playing despite the nature of my job, meaning I'm constantly bouncing between games. And it's backed up by the concurrents, too, which are not incredibly high, but have been remarkably stable over the last decade.

(Image credit: Cryptic Studios) So while the team has this mandate to experiment, one of the other things Emmert has been encouraging is, as McQuibban mentioned, empathy. "Jack said right when he got back that he wants us to have empathy for the player," says Marrone. "So that means that we play the games ourselves, that we understand the experience of playing the game, and that we understand, hey, this isn't so great, this is really cool, we should do more of this, we should do less of this, we should fix that."

As long as the team maintains this relationship with STO's players and understands what they want, reckons Marrone, "that is, I think, going to carry us; it's the relationship that's carried us this far".

With Paramount's plans for Star Trek still up in the air, and the last two shows going into their final seasons, Star Trek Online is going to need to keep the flame burning. I'm pretty confident it's up to the task.

Best MMOs : Most massive

Best strategy games : Number crunching

Best open world games : Unlimited exploration

Best survival games : Live craft love

Best horror games : Fight or flight

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Do you remember the metaverse ? If you don’t, don’t worry. In 2026, four years into the AI revolution that’s changing the world forever, you could easily be forgiven for thinking it was a strange fever dream you had back in 2021. You might even have odd memories of seeing a blocky version of Mark Zuckerberg floating about in a Minecraft-inspired hellscape, conducting meetings with people who could walk with no legs , while the real Mark Zuckerberg was looking at the whole thing through VR goggles. At least, that’s my memory of it.

I could be suffering from the Mandela effect , but I distinctly remember something off about the legs. They fixed that in a later version, but that’s my overriding memory — no legs. Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg assuring us that this was the future. He’d spent tens of billions of dollars on it, even changing the company name from Facebook to Meta, just to let us know he was really serious about the metaverse. Even if the legs didn’t work.

The problem was, it looked laughable. While everything in the technology world to do with games and special effects was moving in the direction of hyper-realism, the metaverse was moving in the opposite direction, towards the sort of blocky graphics that small children enjoy. But even that didn’t really answer the most basic question about the metaverse. Why? What possible advantage was there for us all to meet in a VR space where clunky avatars of ourselves could interact… badly?

Then AI happened and Meta abruptly forgot about the metaverse and pivoted towards the mission of putting personal superintelligence in all our hands instead, which sounds as terrifying and dangerous as it actually is, but we are where we are. At least when Zuckerberg was obsessed with the metaverse, we could ignore him. It existed somewhere “over there”, in Meta-land, where we could let him get on with it. Now he’s right up in our business again.

Careless People , by Sarah Wynn-Williams. (Image credit: Future) The rise of a bad idea

I’ve always been fascinated by how Zuckerberg got into the metaverse and why he became so obsessed with it. The origins of the metaverse go way back. In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus, the VR company, for about $2 billion. This was where his passion for VR started. Think of it as the seed, not the full obsession.

By July 2021, Zuckerberg gave a long interview to Casey Newton at The Verge about Facebook becoming a “metaverse company” and described it as an “embodied internet”. Then, on October 28, 2021, his obsession became the company identity. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook the company was becoming Meta at Connect 2021 , saying the new company brand would focus on bringing the metaverse to life.

I can see the logic. As a business strategy, that made sense. As a product ordinary people were expected to use, it was much harder to understand. Zuckerberg did not want Meta/Facebook to be trapped inside someone else’s platform again. Facebook had won on social, but on mobile it remained dependent on Apple and Google for distribution, privacy rules, app-store policies and hardware. The metaverse looked like a chance to own the next operating system of social life: hardware, avatars, identity, payments, meetings, gaming, work, commerce — the whole stack. In his 2021 founder’s letter, he framed the metaverse as the “next chapter of the internet” and said Meta would become “metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.”

Facebook had obviously had its problems — it was scandal-ridden. It had let advertisers target vulnerable teenagers, helped fake news spread, and enabled the spread of hate speech linked to atrocities in Myanmar. Perhaps Zuckerberg was looking for a way out of Facebook, and the metaverse offered that.

What I still didn’t understand was why he didn’t see what the rest of us saw — that it looked terrible and offered no real benefit to users. Then I read Sarah Wynn-Williams’ tell-all book about Facebook, Careless People , and it all started to make sense.

To say the book made my jaw hit the floor on several occasions would be an understatement. It’s an absolute page-turner, and your reactions grow from mild amusement to shock, then disbelief, then absolute outrage the further through the book you get. I’m aware of the criticisms of Wynn-Williams: that it is a book written by a disgruntled employee, and that she dodges a lot of personal responsibility for her part in the various misdeeds of the company. However, in another perfect example of the Streisand effect , the fact that Meta obtained a legal order in the United States to prevent her from saying anything negative about the company — at all — made me want to pick it up, and I’m glad I did.

Because now I get it — Zuckerberg seems to have spent years in an environment where too few people were willing to tell him when his ideas weren’t good. According to Wynn-Williams, he was surrounded by sycophants. When he had bad ideas, like the ill-fated Internet.org, he wouldn’t let them go and persisted with them, even when they were obviously going to fail. The people around him enabled him because he was simply too powerful. They even let him win at the board games he liked to play with them at his house or on his jet, and — crucially — he didn’t notice that they were letting him win. I can imagine that in that environment, nobody inside Meta would want to tell Zuckerberg that his metaverse was the equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes, especially if they wouldn’t even risk beating him at Settlers of Catan .

Wynn-Williams only mentions the metaverse in her epilogue. It happened after she was brutally fired from Facebook. Perhaps selfishly, I wish she’d been there for the metaverse period, because I would love to read firsthand accounts of how and why Zuckerberg persisted with such an obviously bad idea.

An avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., rides a hydrofoil during the virtual Facebook Connect event. (Image credit: Getty Images / Bloomberg) The fall of the metaverse

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Zuckerberg. The metaverse graphics did get better over time and Apple ventured slightly into the same territory with its Apple Vision Pro , even after the metaverse had turned into a smoldering wasteland. The fact is, people don’t enjoy wearing VR goggles for extended periods of time, and for normal people, VR lacks that one killer app. There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do in a VR space that you can’t do elsewhere much more easily.

The metaverse didn’t really die with a bang, but with a whimper. It faded through layoffs, spending cuts and the AI pivot. If I had to put a date on it, I’d say early 2023 was when Meta’s narrative moved on. In February and March 2023, Zuckerberg started talking about Meta’s “year of efficiency” and announced huge layoffs and cost-cutting. OpenAI had launched ChatGPT in November 2022, and by early 2023, generative AI had swallowed the oxygen that ideas like the metaverse need to survive. Every tech company was talking about AI now, not virtual offices and avatar legs.

The metaverse was over. We all forgot about it and moved on.

I’m glad I read Wynn-Williams’ book, because now I can understand how Facebook let the metaverse happen. And if there’s one thing I learned from reading it, it’s that money and power can bring you a lot of things, but common sense requires neither.

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If you know anything about retro gaming, then the Lego Sega Genesis Console will be instantly recognizable as one of the most iconic 16-bit home video game consoles ever released, which is impressively recreated in this set along with two controllers and a cartridge. Unlike the full size Lego Game Boy (72046) , the Genesis is reproduced at about 60% scale, making it much more manageable as a display piece and meaning the two can stand side by side as some of best Lego sets for retro gamers.

Lego Sega Genesis Console features

Price

$39.99 / £34.99

Ages

12+

Pieces

480

Time to build

2 - 3hrs

Minifigures

0

Dimensions

H: 1.5in (4cm) / W: 6in (16cm) / D: 9.5in (24cm)

Item number

40926

Iconic console

Budget-friendly price

Plenty of detail

Straight off the bat it's clear that the designers have committed to the retro feel of this set, as the Lego Sega Genesis Console box has been printed to look worn around the edges from 30+ years of use. I mention this as I actually thought mine had been damaged in transit at first, and I only realized it was intentional as I purchased a second set for a gift and saw they were identical!

Price is a key factor to note here, as you can pick up the Sega Genesis for just $39.99 / £34.99, which compares favorably with the recently released Lego Game Boy that retails for $59.99 / £54.99 despite containing fewer pieces, and while there's no lenticular screen or pressable buttons here the console still has some tricks up its sleeve.

Sega Genesis Console build

(Image credit: Iain Wilson) A surprisingly colorful interior build

Hidden Sonic the Hedgehog portrait is a nice touch

Some unusual mistakes in the original instructions

Considering the visible exterior of the Lego Sega Genesis Console is predominantly black, there’s a pleasingly wide array of colored pieces included when you start opening bags. Naturally these end up being buried within the structure, but they definitely help with matching up bricks while making the base initially look like a Mondrian painting!

There are a couple of strange errors in the instructions, such as a black and a gray piece seeming to swap positions when the view reverses, and two steps are shown in the wrong order which caused brief confusion. However, at the time of writing this review the build instructions have been removed from the website/app, and the piece count has also been changed from 479 to 480, so it's not clear yet if the instructions are just being tidied up or if a minor change to the build is being introduced.

(Image credit: Iain Wilson) As mentioned before, a lot of the colorful bricks introduced will eventually disappear into the structure, but not all of them - the final group comes together to form a portrait of everyone's favorite spiny mammalian hero, Sonic the Hedgehog! This sits hidden beneath the rounded cartridge dock, but is easily revealed by lifting the top off the build and is a great Easter egg to reveal when showing the Sega Genesis Console to friends.

Sega Genesis Console design

(Image credit: Iain Wilson) Accurate recreation

Plenty of details to spot

Can display as a Genesis or Mega Drive

There's a great attention to detail with this set, providing an impressively accurate scaled-down recreation of the console and controllers, as you can see here in the side by side comparison with my original Mega Drive! Everything from the side ridges, sliders, and buttons to the various sockets and ports is where it should be, the curved edges look great, and the little cartridge even matches the original Sonic The Hedgehog 2 cart accurately.

Naturally, these small controllers cannot match the level of detail seen with the Lego Sega Genesis Controller set, but that was only available as a 'gift with purchase' for a limited time and you're destined for the second-hand market if you want to pick it up now. Still, there is a charm to the controllers in this set, with their angled set of three buttons meaning they can be immediately identified, and there are 'working' sockets to plug them securely into the front of the console.

(Image credit: Iain Wilson) For those not in the know, this console was marketed as the Genesis in the United States and the Mega Drive in Europe, with some clear differences in their designs to stand them apart. Additional pieces are included so you can switch your set between the versions and get their accurate appearance, though the instructions for this could be clearer as they just show two images side by side – highlighting the pieces to change would have been easier than playing spot the difference.

Finally, I do need to touch on the one big issue I had with this set – the decals. While I understand the need for these rather than supplying printed bricks to keep the cost down, I found the process of applying the 14 included stickers incredibly stressful. Getting these decals lined up correctly can be difficult at the best of times, but applying predominantly black stickers to black curved pieces accurately is a bit of a nightmare for those who strive for perfection. While I did the best I could, I wasn't 100% happy with their final placement which was a little disappointing.

Should you buy Sega Genesis Console?

(Image credit: Iain Wilson) While there aren't many officially licensed Lego games console sets available, the Sega Genesis stands on its own merit as a great retro build with just a few small frustrations, though they shouldn't stop you from picking it up. The very reasonable price means it's an easy addition to any collection, or a great budget gift that will always be well received.

Ratings

Criteria

Notes

Score

Build experience

A quick build that captures the overall appearance of the console and controllers impressively.

4.5/5

Accessibility

Nothing difficult in the construction, but trying to apply small and often black bordered stickers onto black curved pieces accurately was a real pain.

3/5

Instruction quality

A few unusual mistakes and unclear steps, though they weren't build-breaking and should get fixed.

3.5/5

Extra features

Some great little details to spot, and a hidden Sonic portrait tucked inside is a nice touch.

4/5

Buy it if...

✅ You're a retro gamer

If you're a fan of retro gaming (or buying for one) then the iconic Sega Genesis console will be a great addition to any collection.

✅ You're on a budget

Available for under 40 bucks, this is a great value set whether you're buying it as a gift or a treat for yourself.

Don't buy it if...

❌ You want a more substantial build

The Sega Genesis Console is a small set that will only take a couple of hours in total to complete.

❌ You hate applying stickers

If applying small black decals onto small black curved pieces is likely to infuriate, this may not be the right set for you.

How we tested Lego Sega Genesis Console #40926

This review was made using a set purchased by the reviewer.

I built the Lego Sega Genesis Console (40926) set in a couple of short sessions, coming to around 2 and a half hours for my total build time. While you could easily do the whole thing in one go, the pieces are divided into four bags to provide some clear break points if needed.

For more, check out our guide to how we test products .

For more recommendations on cool collectibles, why not check out our guide to the best toys ?