tech news
How Lenovo is Pursuing Sustainable Supercomputers
The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Munich, Germany, contains no ordinary supercomputer. Sure, it has thousands of servers, or nodes, stacked in rows in a windowless vault with technicians working diligently on huge data crunching conundrums for research organisations; running simulations to try and better predict future natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes. But it is eerily quiet. Almost too quiet. The familiar whir of hot air being whooshed away by power-hungry computers is almost entirely absent. Where are all the fans? Almost all gone, as it turns out. The LRZ SuperMUC NG, which uses massive arrays of Lenovo’s ThinkSystem SD650 servers, requires nearly no fans at all – just those for cooling the power supply units and in the in-row-chillers on every eighth row. As a r...
How Lockdown has Highlighted the Benefits of Remote Banking
Sourced from Innovation Village. The advantages of digital transacting over other modes of banking have been highlighted by the lockdown. Although banking remotely has been gaining ground in South Africa long before the lockdown, the limitations on physical movement imposed by the lockdown have given online and mobile banking a significant boost. The current environment will most likely see more people opt for digital banking platforms. This is confirmed by a recent Nielsen syndicated study on the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behaviour in South Africa, which reports that 37% of South Africans say they are shopping and transacting more online. “Apart from being more convenient, digital banking and shopping are cheaper than traditional channels. The lockdown and its effect on the economy h...
Hydroxychloroquine Trials for COVID-19 Suspended by WHO
Sourced from Getty Images. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it is pausing clinical trials on the use of the controversial malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat patients with COVID-19. This was one of four experimental treatments being investigated by the organization and has been under intense scrutiny for some time after it was championed by tech mogul Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. “The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, during a press briefing. This “Solidarity trial” is the WHO’s global investigation into experimental treatments for COVID-19 – including hyd...
Ericsson Launches a Digital Learning Programme for Students
In response to how the global COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education and learning around the world, Ericsson has joined the UNESCO-led Global Education Coalition by launching Ericsson Educate – a digital programme delivering online learning content focused on improving digital skills for students in secondary schools and universities. Now more than ever, being digitally connected is vital to maintaining a sense of normalcy during the current circumstances. Education is one critical sector particularly affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, with around 1.2 billion students and youth around the world unable to attend traditional education institutions. This has placed a huge demand for comprehensive online education programs on governments and education institutions alike. The Ericsson...
Hackers Release New Jailbreak that Unlocks Every iPhone
Sourced from Macworld. A renowned iPhone hacking team has released a new ‘Jailbreak’ tool that unlocks every iPhone, even the most recent models running the latest iOS 13.5. For as long as Apple has kept up its walled garden approach to iPhones by only allowing apps and customization that it approves, hackers have tried to break free from what they call the “jail” – hence the term “Jailbreak.” This allows customising their phones as they see fit. Load whatever apps they want, even change things like issues with iPhone batteries. Hackers do this by finding a previously undisclosed vulnerability in iOS that break through some of the many restrictions that Apple puts in place to prevent access to the underlying software. Apple says it does this for security. But jailbreakers say breaking thro...
6 Tech Companies Make Remote Working a Permanent Option
The world has been changed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Almost all points of what we used to know are in some ways now different. These changes will no doubt last as long as the pandemic, and many will last even longer. In the world of work, the transition from offices to home has been a worldwide reality. Now, six of the world’s largest tech companies have revealed that these advents of working-from-home may be a permanent fixture. At least for the foreseeable future. These tech companies include: Facebook Mark Zuckerberg says that as many as 50% of Facebook employees could be working remotely within the next five to 10 years. Facebook’s CEO pitched the idea as both of a matter of satisfying employee desires and also in an effort to establish a “more broad-based economic prosperit...
Why Getting Students Online Poses a Major Challenge
The COVID-19 lockdown has forced many schools, colleges and educational institutions to rapidly switch to online learning. Although there are many advanced online learning platforms available, the one critical factor that still remains is reliable connectivity to online learning platforms. The reality is that only a small percentage of homes in South Africa are covered by uncapped fibre connectivity. This is where mobile data connectivity is the only option. There has been ongoing lobbying of mobile networks led by various educational organisations such as the National Association of Social Change Entities in Education as well as the DG Murray Trust. The current reality, however, is that learning institutions are forced to provide data connectivity to learners. Last week, the U...
Uganda Starts Mass Production of its First Smartphone
Sourced from Gadgets Africa. Uganda will begin manufacturing its first smartphones through SIMI – a brand of smartphone makers that are said to have the average customer specifically in mind. The phones currently focus on one major aspect, battery life. The ‘regular’ non-smartphones can last up to at least two weeks and can charge via Solar power too. The smartphones have a battery capacity of at least two days. Currently, SIMI has the capacity to make 2000 phones a day. SIMI has already flagged off an 18,000 phone consignment that Uganda is exporting to Morocco sometime soon. The company also wants to involve university students in the development of apps and software for the handsets. Together with the production of the smartphones comes new regulations in the country, where phone import...
MTN Ranked as the Most Admired African Brand
MTN has again been ranked as the ‘Most Admired African Brand’ based on spontaneous consumer responses in Brand Africa 100: Africa’s Best Brands 2020 survey. The survey, which was released on Monday, shows that MTN is also the only African brand in the rankings of the ‘Most Admired Brands in Africa’. Covering 27 countries, representing around 80% of the population and the GDP of Africa, the group is now also considered one of the continent’s most admired media brands. MTN Mobile Money – through which MTN provides more than 35 million Africans access to financial services – remains one of Africa’s most admired finance brands. The Group also maintained its top position in the telecoms provider category. “We are thrilled to receive these accolades as the continent celebrates Africa Day,” says ...
The Major Benefits of All-flash Storage
Fred Saayman, Huawei BU Executive at Pinnacle Since flash storage debuted into the mainstream storage arena, its uptake has been skyrocketing in data centres across the globe, and shows no signs of slowing down. This isn’t surprising as more and more storage and speed is needed in the age of big data, and all-flash arrays are the ideal solution, particularly as the cost isn’t nearly as high as it was a decade ago. This is according to Fred Saayman, Huawei Business Unit: Executive, at Pinnacle ICT, SA’s leading local ICT distributor. “All-flash storage has many benefits over hybrid solutions. Perhaps the most compelling is its latency, as all-flash arrays usually see sub 1ms latencies on a mixed workload, and peak latency above 5 ms is highly unusual. If you compare this with SANs, for...
Africa Data Centres Joins NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre Program
Sourced from Shutterstock Africa Data Centres announced it has joined the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre program, allowing organisations across the African continent to connect with AI-ready facilities for seamless, rapid and cost-effective AI deployments. Africa Data Centres is the first and only network of interconnected, carrier- and vendor-neutral data centres on the African continent. Being a part of the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre program will allow companies across a wide range of vertical markets to adopt NVIDIA DGX systems for AI and data analytics hosted locally at Africa Data Centres, along with a range of other managed hosting and colocation services that support business-critical data, applications and back-end systems. “Africa Data Centres is an ideal partner for NVIDIA’s DGX-...
UK Cybersecurity Review May Mean the End for Huawei 5G Deal
Sourced from Getty Images. The UK’s National Cybersecurity Agency is expected to conclude that US sanctions against Huawei will make it impossible to use the Chinese company’s technology as planned for implementation of 5G throughout the country. Announced on Sunday, this emergency review is designed to pave the way for the country’s government to push for the total elimination of Huawei equipment in British phone networks by 2023, while also having the political consequence in dispersing a Conservative backbench revolt. The Guardian reports that this move will amount to a hasty reversal of the policy announced by ministers in January to limit Huawei to 35% of the British 5G network supply. The move likewise may irritate China, and add hundreds of millions in costs to UK-based BT and other...
