tech news
Acer Introduces Chromebook Spin 514
Acer officially unveiled its first Chromebook with new AMD Ryzen 3000 C-Series Mobile Processors and AMD Radeon graphics—the new Acer Chromebook Spin 514. “The pairing of AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors with a durable design makes the new Acer Chromebook Spin 514 an excellent choice for users that need to get work done at home,” says James Lin, GM of Notebooks, IT Products Business at Acer. “Users will be blown away by the new level of responsiveness and performance provided by the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 with AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors. Plus, the Ryzen 7 3700C Processor offers the best graphics available in an AMD-powered Chromebook, so our customers can take advantage of the growing range of apps and extensions to tackle even more challenging projects.” The Chromebook Spin 514 includes sta...
LG Launches its 2021 TV Lineup
LG has introduced its “most impressive and premium” TV lineup yet, featuring OLED, QNED Mini LED and NanoCell TVs. The flagship TV lineup has been upgraded inside and out with technology and features such as a new OLED panel, a new advanced LCD panel structure that combines Quantum NanoCell color technology with mini LED backlighting for improved colour accuracy and greater contrast, and upgraded AI processor and a redesigned webOS. LG’s latest intelligent processor, the α (Alpha) 9 Gen 4 AI, revamps the performance on the newest LG OLED TV models in the Z1, G1 and C1 series, LG QNED Mini LED TV models QNED99 and QNED95 and LG NanoCell TV models NANO99 and NANO95. The processor leverages deep learning to enhance upscaling, making content of any quality look picture-perfect on the large, se...
Cellulant CEO to Resign
Co-founder of Cellulant, Ken Njoroge has revealed that he is stepping down from his role as CEO in 2021. In an official blog post, he says “after 18 years of running Cellulant, I have decided that 2021 will be my last year as CEO. Such transitions are not easy in any way and require a great deal of growth, thought and patience”. Njoroge goes on to say that he will transition from his role as the CEO by the end of June, and spend the rest of the year supporting all the teams and the new leader in the transition. “As a founder, I am still passionate about our vision and will continue to work tirelessly to be a strong advocate for our customers and our talented management team.” The Kenyan-based payments company was first established in 2003. “When we began Cellulant, it was not the Lion...
South Africa’s Best and Worst Mobile Networks Revealed
MTN has been named South Africa’s best mobile network by the 2020 Mobile Network Quality Report. The report is based on 1.2 million speed tests which were performed by 41,000 MyBroadband Speed Test App users across South Africa between 1 January and 31 December 2020. The research shows that South Africa had an average download speed of 29.33Mbps and an average upload speed of 11.24Mbps last year. MTN had the highest average download speed at 52.84Mbps, followed by Vodacom on 29.39Mbps, Telkom on 21.58Mbps, Cell C on 17.46Mbps, and Rain on 11.90Mbps. During 2020 the average network speed of South Africa’s mobile operators increased significantly despite higher data usage. This was made possible by temporary spectrum which was issued to Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, and Rain by the Independent Commu...
Donald Trump Permanently Suspended From Twitter
Donald Trump no longer has access to his beloved Twitter. As of Friday at 6:20 p.m. ET, his account has been permanently suspended. “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said in a statement. “Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other thi...
DDoS ‘Tax’ Adds to an Organisation’s Attack Burden, says NETSCOUT
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Did you ever think about the ‘tax’ you pay as an organisation in the event of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack? In a nutshell, DDoS attacks by threat actors don’t only have a negative effect on businesses and their customers – they also take up quantities of internet bandwidth without paying for it. This means that the cost of this traffic falls on the shoulders of every business that does pay for the internet service. This is according to the NETSCOUT ‘2020 1H Threat Intelligence Report’, in which NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics, introduces its DDoS Attack Coefficient. The figure summarises the amount of DDoS traffic going through regional netw...
iOCO Offers Africa-Focused SD-WAN Solution to IT Landscape
Brett van Rensburg, Sales Director for iOCO’s Compute Division After a year-long due diligence process, EOH, a JSE-listed technology services firm, through its IT services company, iOCO, has chosen to extend its partnership with Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, in order to offer its software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) solution to the southern African market. As explained by Fortinet, an SD-WAN solution connects users to any application wherever it resides, from the data centre to the cloud. SD-WAN intelligently determines which path best meets the ideal performance needs for a specific application. It then routes the traffic through to the best WAN path, whereas traditional WAN architectures only have the ability t...
Samsung Introduces World’s First QLED Chromebook
Samsung has officially unveiled its new Galaxy Chromebook 2 – marking the first-ever QLED display on a Chromebook. “Many kids grew up using Chromebooks in school, and as they enter the workforce and their needs evolve, they’re looking for premium, powerful hardware that can elevate that intuitive Google experience,” says Shoneel Kolhatkar, Head of New Computing at Samsung Electronics America. “We designed the Galaxy Chromebook 2 with these users in mind, taking the popular features from Galaxy Chromebook—incredible visuals, great specs, and gorgeous design and colour—and bringing them to a wider base of customers.” Powered by an Intel processor, along with ultra-fast Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) capabilities, the Galaxy Chromebook 2 is expected to allow users to multitask with ease. It also runs on Goog...
Facebook Bans US President Trump ‘Indefinitely’
Image sourced from Al Jazeera Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerburg has revealed that US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be banned “indefinitely”. In a post, Zuckerburg says “we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.” This comes after Facebook made the decision to stop Trump from posting for 24 hours, following a pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol. “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” reveals Zuckerburg. /* custom css */ .tdi...
Facebook Bans Trump Through the End of His Presidency
Congress officially certified Joe Biden as the next US President yesterday, which means Donald Trump’s reign is about to come to an end — and social media sites are finally ready to wave goodbye. After temporarily banning Trump’s account because he encouraged his supporters to take the Capitol under siege, Facebook is now extending its block through the end of his presidency on January 20th. Starting immediately, Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts will be blocked for the two weeks that remain before his term in the office ends. As such, he will not be allowed to post or share any new content on either of the platforms. This is a continuation of the temporary block that Facebook put in place on January 6th after Trump posted messages encouraging his supporters to storm th...
Why Access to Technology is Critical for Farmers in Africa
The African continent is home to an estimated 65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land, an abundance of fresh water and about 300 days of sunshine each year, according to the World Economic Forum. However, the reality is that the agriculture industry is mostly made up of the older African generation — who often discourage their children from working with the land. So despite seemingly ideal farming conditions, African nations spend close to $65 billion importing food — a number that is expected to grow exponentially within the next decade. The African Development Bank (ABD) believes that this is unsustainable and unaffordable — noting that the secret to the continent’s economic viability and growth is to equip farmers, as well as the next-generation, with training, advice an...
Facebook and Instagram Ban US President Trump for 24 Hours
Sourced from Politico. Facebook has made the decision to stop US President Donald Trump from posting for 24 hours. This comes after the social media giant removed two posts that were reportedly in support of a pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol. “We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time,” reads a statement from Facebook. We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time. — Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) January 7, 2021 Not long after, Facebook-owned Instagram also confirmed that it would be blocki...
