Column
YouTube is the cesspool of the internet as recent scandals around bigoted videos – and their recommendations – have shown
I’d never heard of Carlos Maza until this month, when the Vox video producer made a supercuts video of all the homophobic and racist ranting by a popular YouTuber called Steven Crowder. The right-wing pundit has 3.8m subscribers to his YouTube channel has attacked Maza repeatedly, called him an “anchor baby, a lispy queer, [and] a Mexican”.
US antitrust officials have woken up to Big Tech’s monopolies and numerous competition investigations are coming
But the big news on Monday was that the Department of Justice was investigating Google and Apple; while the and Federal Trade Commission (FTCO is looking into Facebook and Amazon. All of accused of anticompetitive tactics for promoting their own services over that of rivals.
Life without Google is virtually impossible in this mobile smartphone era
The first problem I encountered, as I gave up Google for a week, was that I couldn't get my email. As the possibility of living without Android and Google services emerged as the US government banned American firms from dealing with Huawei, I tried to live without the world's biggest mobile operating system (OS). The short answer: it’s virtually impossible to live without Google in this smartphone...[Read More]
If Huawei makes its own mobile OS, the knock-on effects for smartphones could be drastic
When the news broke that the US government was blacklisting Huawei in the last two weeks, it seemed like another incremental escalation in the China trade war that could blow over.
Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg’s “privacy-focused vision” a WhatsApp vulnerability reveals how hard this new direction is for Facebook
That didn’t take long. Facebook's new plan to be more secure lasted just two months since Zuckerberg's pronouncement in early March about this shift after 2018's annus horribilis.
Calling for Facebook’s breakup, co-founder argues Zuckerberg’s “…power is unprecedented and un-American”
The Facebook CEO "controls three core communications platforms… that billions of people use every day" namely Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and has control of 60% of the voting stock. "I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them."
Facebook used F8 conference to announce changes, shift towards private messaging
This will be published after South Africa's election, which we certainly hope has only been manipulated by the usual political forces and not online trolls using Facebook, as happened in the Great Brexit Scandal and the US presidential elections of 2016
Finding that “SA prices are high”, “lack transparency” latest salvo in war on costly data
The Competition Commission last week confirmed what all South Africans have been telling each other for years: the cost of cellular data is too high. Releasing a provisional report from its data services market inquiry, which has been dragging on since August 2017, the commission’s finding no doubt contributed to the fall of Vodacom and MTN shares. They said the convoluted pricing structured...[Read More]
From an early mobile social network, to high-end cameras, Nokia innovated in its prime
In 2004 at a Nokia event in Helsinki a nerdy engineer showed off a fancy new concept that he hoped would be a big hit. Calling it an “automatic multimedia diary” it was a way to upload pictures, thoughts and other titbits from a mobile phone to an online site. Using the then popular concept of blogging, he called it a Lifeblog. “Lifeblog is a PC and mobile phone software combinat...[Read More]
The new eSIM card is a boon to consumers and a possible threat to mobile networks
But a new upgrade to the SIM card means life can even simpler. Called an electronic SIM or eSIM, it is a way of linking your phone, using software, to a SIM (usually in a server rack at the service provider). The new iPhone Xs, which I am using, has an eSIM built in.
Leaked unencrypted passwords and the Christchurch massacre show Facebook’s problems aren’t going away
The good news is Facebook has shut down white supremacists and hate speech. The bad news was that it happened after the live streaming of the horror Christchurch massacre in March. The even worse news is that Facebook's notoriously lax policies around data privacy were confirmed when it was revealed that hundreds of millions of its users' passwords were stored in an unencrypted plain text format.
Apple remarkably announced new devices as a warm up to a hype-filled launch of new services
This week Apple announced its much-anticipated news service, as well as a streaming service to rival Netflix, a games arcade and a credit card. Instead of the usual hype around physical product launches, Apple casually announced a new iMac, two new iPads and new AirPods as a warm up to Monday's hype-filled launch of these new services. That alone is remarkable.