Author: Brett Venter

South African insurance provider QSure was struck by a major data breach earlier this month, one that led to banking information and other sensitive data being compromised. The company hasn’t said how many records were scooped during the intrusion. Hope they have insurance for this Company COO Ian du Toit, speaking to TechCentral, said “On 9 June 2021, QSure became aware that it had been subject to illegal and unauthorised access to its IT infrastructure, and immediately isolated its IT network and shut down its systems.” Du Toit added, “QSure immediately appointed three industry-leading and independent cyber-forensic and security technology…

When you really think about it, Facebook doesn’t have any original ideas, except when it comes to taking things other people have already done and using them to collect personal information. Facebook is just corporate MySpace ( so without the sparkly bits) and every seemingly original idea the service has had was either paid for (Instagram, WhatsApp, the Oculus system) or stolen borrowed from its competitors. A new Bulletin from Facebook Bulletin is one of the latter. Like pretty much everything Snapchat (or Clubhouse, or TikTok, or anyone) does, Facebook’s taken someone else’s idea and created its own version of…

Whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, the 2021 Olympics will take place in Japan this year starting from the end of July. And even though you’re not attending (if you’re in South Africa, you’re not attending as a spectator — our COVID spike isn’t nearly over), you can still show your support… and give Apple a little more money at the same time. Watch-ing the Olympics Apple’s releasing an Olympics-focused series of bands for the Apple Watch, called the Apple Watch International Collection. There are 22 bands in total and, amazingly, South Africa is one of the…

Man, Samsung really likes to have all of the attention to itself. Despite a stripped-back Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, the company’s presentation was entirely devoted to One UI Watch, Samsung’s new wearables operating system. Not hardware, not phones, just the OS — and a promise that we’ll see it in action on something at the company’s next Unpacked event. Which will probably take place in July this year, now. One UI Watch what I can do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSZvIqYDSM You can watch the entire event, in the event that you missed it the first time around, or you can just…

Vodacom has had VodaPay, a payments system backed by Chinese-owned Alipay, in the works for some time now. From the beginning the company has referred to the application as a ‘super app’. Now, finally, Vodacom is launching the app into the wild where we can get a closer look at it. VodaPay wants to be your VodaBankingInstitution The app, when we first heard about it, didn’t have a massive amount of detail. Now, though, you can explore it for yourself. It’s designed to allow anyone (using the app, obviously) to make or take payments (we’ll get to that in a…

This year’s main Mobile World Congress event might be subdued (and rather late) but there’s still news coming out. The Snapdragon 888 mobile processor, which was supposed to be the most powerful chip in smartphones for the year 2021, has just been supplanted. Meet the Snapdragon 888+. Wait, did Samsung develop the Snapdragon 888 Plus? Announced at MWC, Qualcomm’s newest processor is an update of the standard 888. This isn’t the first time the company has updated a flagship processor but it does throw a bit of a wrench in the works for those who were expecting the most powerful…

In perhaps the purest illustration of exactly how capitalism works, Facebook has become the latest company to hit a $1 trillion valuation. That’s according to Yahoo Finance, which lists the company’s market cap at $1,008 trillion. This is the first time Facebook has crossed the fabled barrier, and you can expect it to make the trip back and forth a few times before it becomes large enough that only a catastrophe will drop its value any lower. Facebook joins the big-time The social network has joined several other tech companies, including Google’s Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, which have all…

Samsung may have a closer look at its new smartwatches coming to MWC this year but there’s also a chance that we’ll see the Galaxy Buds 2 turn up as well. It’s a small chance, considering Samsung loves to launch its new headphones alongside new smartphone hardware, but it’s a chance. Check out the Galaxy Buds 2 Whenever the reveal does happen, we’ve already got a fairly accurate idea of what they’ll look like. Website 91Mobiles got its hands on what it says are official renders of Samsung’s newest in-ears, and the images show hardware that looks quite similar to…

It’s not just space agencies exploring the space beyond our skies — private companies have a hand in it too. Both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have seen their missions take a step or two forward, in some very different ways. SpaceX has set a tentative date for the first orbital test of its Starship rocket (which will probably end with it exploding on contact with the Hawaiian ocean), while Virgin Galactic officially has permission to take passengers to the edge of space. SpaceX is going up The private spacefaring company making all the headlines at the moment is “…shooting for…

It’s a very good time to be a taikonaut. China’s space program has gone from a standing start to a gallop, with the Zhurong Mars rover performing admirably for the country’s first Mars exploration robot. First, it made it to the ground in one piece, then it took photographs of itself. And now there’s video (and audio) of the rover’s decent onto the red planet. Say ‘Zhurong’ to Mars https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1409020026619891712? The folks at NASA might be able to get away with a live-stream but they’ve had practice. China’s rover actually captured video of the descent to Mars, including a spectacular…