BoJo is right to run with Huawei 5G
Thursday, 12 March 2020
5th generation mobile network (5G) logo
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson staved off his first rebellion in parliament this week.
technology
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home is over, for now
Friday, 6 March 2020
SETI@Home screensaver circa 1999
Some 21 years ago, when I was managing editor of the Cape Times, I had acquired as my desktop computer at work an Apple Power Macintosh G3 with its matching Sony Trinitron monitor.
It was both beauty and beast by the standards of the day; blue and white polycarbonate clocking in at 300 MHz. More importantly, it could effortlessly play the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer which was the first movie trailer to debut on the Internet.
'I can't believe it's not butter!' redux
Saturday, 29 February 2020
Black soldier flies mating
The Black Soldier Fly, Hermetia illucens, was once only found in South America, but today is quite ubiqutous. The United States Spain, Portugal, southern France, Italy, Croatia, Malta, the Canary Islands, Switzerland, the Black Sea coast of Russia... Yes, and right here in Southern Africa.
Adult females can lay more that 600 eggs at a time. The larvae that emerge can grow to 2,5 cm. That's about an inch if you don't speak metric.
Corona versus Ebola: some stats
Sunday, 23 February 2020
The Democratic Republic of Congo announced their tenth outbreak of Ebola in 40 years on 1 August 2018. The number of cases has exceeded 3 000, making it the country's largest-ever Ebola outbreak. It is the second-largest Ebola outbreak after one which hit West Africa from 2014-2016.
Key stats from then to date via Doctors WIthout Borders:
- 3423 total cases
- 3304 confirmed cases
- 2244 deaths
Contrast this with Covid-19, as the Corona virus is more formally known.
Every so often, the Internet gives us something truly wonderful
Saturday, 22 February 2020
Fancy listening to Folk Music of Afghanistan from 1971? Or Afro-Cuban Jazz from 1966?
The Internet Archive has begun digitizing long out-of-print vinyl and making it freely available.
As I write these words, I am listening to "Profiles" by Gary McFarland (1966). It was post bop contemporary jazz at the time. Now, it's a half century old.
Free speech versus the right to bear arms?
Friday, 21 February 2020
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents government passing laws prohibiting freedom of speech.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the individual right to keep and bear arms.
But what if they are in fact the same thing?
Cody Wilson is a self-styled American crypto-anarchist, free-market anarchist, and gun-rights activist. In 2012, he founded Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "wiki weapons", suitable for 3D printing and digital manufacture.
Reading into India's GDP growth
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
Quite a bit of buzz today around the fact that India has overtaken the UK as the world's fifth largest economy.
India's GDP has clocked $2,94 trillion. The UK sits at $2,83 trillion followed by France at $2,71 trillion.
There's been a lot of grumbling from India's opposition Congress party who've pointed out that manufacturing has declined in its overall contribution to GDP (in spite of Prime Minister Modi's much-hyped "Make in India" campaign).
The William Nicol interchange looks good, but it sucks
Wednesday, 12 February 2020
When the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project trotted out the new interchange at the intersection of the N1 and William Nicol, there were many oohs and aahs around how beautiful it was.
Actually, it's stupid. It is responsible for creating what is possibly the single biggest logjam on the road from Cape Town to Beit Bridge.
Here's the problem: Any intersection with traffic lights can only allow cars to pass through as lomg as the light is green.
(Minibus taxis have their own rules. We're not talking about them.)
