technology

How much would you pay to be verified and get a blue check mark on Twitter?

The Seal of the President of the United States came about after an executive order issued by then US president Dwight D. Eisenhower becoming effective 4 July 1960 which reads:

The Coat of Arms of the President of the United States shall be of the following design:

I’m doing a bit of light reading this afternoon. (Well, it’s actually a hefty volume that weighs about 4 kilograms.) HVDC Power Transmission Lines Book is an Eskom publication from November 2021 and a copy has landed on my desk, courtesy of one of the principal authors.

If you’re wondering why on earth I would be interested in High Voltage Direct Current transmission; and — more importantly —why you should care, let me give you some bullet points.

Seven years ago last night, I got on a plane from Johannesburg to London. I landed the morning of 1 April,  launched this amazing product I had co-designed with the BBC, did this panel discussion as well as two TV appearances, and flew back that night.

The idea of a news bulletin targeting an educated young audience with a short attention span seems like a crazy idea today. But BBC Minute (or #TWISS — The World in Sixty Seconds as my then team dubbed it) has thrived.

The news earlier today that Vinny Lingham was backing an interesting new startup triggered an entire thought process rabbit hole. Let me take you down through it.

It's exactly a month today since I wrote these words about Russia's hypersonic missile capability:

"Russia's 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missiles are known to be able to take out targets up to a 1 000 km away traveling at Mach 8. A US warship launching Tomahawks against Russian targets would be on the receiving end of missiles traveling at almost 160km per minute.

... online meetings have become a thing for even obscure corners of the world.

Multichoice has come under flack lately from keyboard warriors after Russia Today fell off the company's DSTV offering.

“Sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union [EU] have led to the global distributor of the channel ceasing to provide the broadcast feed to all suppliers, including MultiChoice,” Multichoice was quoted as saying.

Hmmm, I thought, so why not simply downlink the Russia Today signal directly via satellite?

It turns out Russia Today uplinks to two satellites.

Some years ago, I drove from Johannesburg to Lüderitz on the Namibian coast for a friend’s wedding.

As I approached the town, the dysfunctional railway line which once linked Keetmanshoop to Bahnhof Lüderitz (as the Germans who built it in 1906 called it), frequently vanished under shifting desert sands. In the town, the station itself was derelict.

Construction of the railway line by the Germans took 9 months. Let me quote a well-documented historical account :

Here's a stat that Unicef trots out almost every year: Every two minutes, a child under five dies of malaria.