Author: Toby Shapshak

Facebook’s decision to rebrand its Instagram and WhatsApp apps as part of the Facebook empire, seems ironically well-timed as the data privacy sins of the parent were revealed to be as common at the photo-sharing app. Last week it emerged that Instagram allowed its users’ personal data to be violated by an outside company which harvested large amounts of info it wasn’t supposed to have. Facebook quickly pointed out it was an unauthorised use of that data, but there’s no getting away from it: the world’s largest social network is just not as interested in its users’ privacy as its…

Telkom, which has battled copper cable theft for decades, has started transitioning its landline users to it mobile network. Instead of my 91-year-old mother’s phone using wires to connect to the network, it now uses Telkom’s mobile network. It’s been a game changer.

If you thought last week’s ransomware attack on City Power sounded like a movie script, it’s because that kind of scary possibility has been fictional fodder for years. Films have long proposed the idea of hackers taking over a computer network for their own nefarious ends.

During hearings into Facebook’s new Libra cryptocurrency, she grilled David Marcus, the head of its Calibra wallet, which is how its users will interact with Libra. “So, we are discussing a currency controlled by an undemocratically selected coalition of largely massive corporations. Do you believe currency is a public good?”

Fifty years ago this week humanity landed on the moon. The moon landing was a pivotal moment in human history that has shaped our self-consciousness about humanity and our place in the universe.

I think it’s a good thing that President Cyril Ramaphosa is dreaming of a high-tech future. We need someone to dream big about the way our country will operate, not in some distant sci-fi future, but in the next few years. We need to start embracing the technologies that can make us a better place to live, find work for our youngsters in the new growth industries, and make us more attractive to investors.

Africa’s burgeoning reputation as a source of programming talent got a major boost last month when Microsoft launched its Africa Development Centre (ADC) that will invest $100-milliion over the next five years.

And then sanity prevailed. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump effectively lifted the ban on US firms dealing with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. This follows a turbulent six weeks where the threat of not being able to buy from US firms sent the telecoms industry and its supply chain into chaos.

The HoloLens is a powerful example of this, as multiple demonstrations of its capabilities showed. The original model was launched four years ago and was used by NASA for its Mars Rover mission. Because of the eight-minute delay in communications from earth to the red planet, controllers needed to map, plan and execute the path the rover would take, former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told me last year.

The first thing that Stoffel van Wyk appreciated about his new Dyson hairdryer is how quiet it is. These days, he says: “I can have a discussion with my client over the sound of the hairdryer.” Van Wyk has been a hairdresser for 25 years. “I’ve lost a bit of my hearing because of the constant droning of hairdryers. This is far less intrusive,” he says from his Sandton salon, Urban Sass. The creator of the Dyson Supersonic Hairdryer, Sir James Dyson, is arguably the UK’s greatest modern-day inventor, having worked for decades to reinvent household objects such as the…