South African doctor building breakthrough apps – Real Innovation is needed for Change

A South African doctor hopes to transform the medical field by developing products and services that solve problems typically experienced by remote and underfunded state hospitals and clinics, reports Rapport.

One of these projects solves two of the most significant issues facing South Africa’s medical industry — the lack of job placements for new graduates and understaffed and underfunded state hospitals and clinics.

Dr Juandre Klopper and two friends, Dr Matt te Water Naudé and mathematician Freddie O’Donnell, developed an app that pairs hospitals seeking locums with young doctors looking for work.

But it was not only this app, there is also innovation around cheaper and more effective medical devices, as well as managing nursing care, all taking into account South Africa’s unique challenges.

With dwindling financial resources, increasing demand on medical care, things will only get worse and worse over time if real innovation (technology as well as procedural) is not applied. I’ve seen the same thing happening with public benefit charities getting smaller grants from government (where are the ever-increasing taxes going? I have no idea…) and having to innovate themselves to survive. Some charities have even raised grant funding from foreign countries.

South Africans have always been very resilient in the face of overwhelming challenges. In one way these will benefit everyone globally, but from another perspective this is extremely sad too that such adversity needs to be overcome. Yes, I know you’re thinking now: Imagine if governments themselves could be this innovative! Imagine more better services at every lower tax rates… Governments the world around today seem to be the least efficient businesses of all.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/softwar…
#Blog, #health, #southafrica, #technology

This is really turning into a bad soup opera where everyone is trying to protect the Mafia of fear or something else.

What does Israel have ovee almost every freaking county in the world that they get such special protection?

#UK #SouthAfrica #Starmer #Israel #WTAF #Mandela @palestine group @israel group

This is really turning into a bad soup opera where everyone is trying to protect the Mafia of fear or something else.

What does Israel have ovee almost every freaking county in the world that they get such special protection?

#UK #SouthAfrica #Starmer #Israel #WTAF #Mandela

Crypto payments explosion in South Africa as Zapper is now supported as a payment system

Cryptocurrency exchanges Luno and VALR have recently expanded the platforms their payment systems support, increasing the number of South African merchants where users can pay with digital assets.

Luno said its customers can now transact using crypto at 31,000 merchants nationwide thanks to a partnership with Zapper.

Thanks to its integration with Zapper, Luno said its customer base can make payments to vendors such as FlySafair, fuel stations, and educational institutions.

This will certainly make it a lot easier for those with Bitcoin to use it for daily transactions in South Africa. I’ve bought groceries with mine at Pick ‘n Pay last year, but it required a special wallet to be used. This looks a lot more versatile and mainstream.

But I’ve ditched most of my cryptocurrency as I have no clue how it gets managed when it comes to declaring capital gains to SARS. With my other investments it is fairly easy as the institution sends the reports at the end of the year. But how does one fathom this out from Bitcoin in, Bitcoin transferred, Bitcoin used, etc on a going basis? Bitcoin values vary daily, and this is not such an issue with static cash/credit.

So I’m rather waiting to see how it all pans out from a tax perspective.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/cryptoc…
#Blog, #cryptocurrency, #southafrica, #technology

South Africa’s first electric minibus taxi to hit the road in Cape Town

Christened the eKamva (kamva is the Xhosa word for future), the 15-seater battery-powered minibus is supported by a cluster of dedicated “taxi-rank adjacent” charging stations to support the taxi industry’s transition to electric mobility.

Coetzee said the DC charging hubs to support its electric taxis provide 60kW and are able to charge the eKamva to 80% capacity in an hour, with a full charge taking 75 minutes. eKamva delivers cost savings of between 40% and 70% on running costs compared traditional internal combustion engine vehicles of a similar build, he said.

According to Coetzee, much of the cost savings promised by eKamva relate to the fact that the vehicle has only eight moving parts compared to the complexity of a traditional petrol- or diesel-powered taxi. “There are no oil filters and air filters, spark plugs or oil to change, so it is much easier to maintain. There are also fewer points of [possible] failure.

I’m blown away that the usual 40% tax on EV imports will also apply to these vehicles (South Africa really needs to sort this out, as these are not “luxury vehicles”).

I just dread to think what could happen though when drivers discover the acceleration that an EV motor has. It could be great for safer overtaking, but we’ll really have to see how this pans out.

The last paragraph in the linked article s very interesting about future plans for driver safety monitoring. As far as any public transport drivers go, this is probably a good thing.

See techcentral.co.za/south-africa…
#Blog, #environment, #EV, #southafrica, #taxis, #technology

Car guards going cashless in South Africa can often double their income

Digital payment solution Street Wallet is helping car guards across South Africa to increase and sometimes even double their daily income in an increasingly cashless society, the Sunday Times reports.

Street Wallet offers customers multiple ways of paying, including Scan to Pay using a quick response (QR) code, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, SnapScan, and Zapper.

Andre Ilunga, a car guard in the Camps Bay area in Cape Town, told the Times that everything has changed for him since he started using the app.

Because most people did not tip him due to a lack of cash, he now makes nearly double what he would typically have made in a day.

So true, I often don’t have cash, or have a negligible amount as it costs money to draw cash, and I must make a special stop somewhere to get cash. Just about everything today accepts a card or online payment. I probably only draw some cash about three times a year, and that usually goes for card guards over a period of time.

Even domestic workers today, and garden services, accept EFT or other payments. We’ve had more than one domestic worker in our suburb get robbed of their cash at month end. It’s not really safe to carry cash, and cash is actually pretty filthy to handle (hygienically-wise). I suppose some will comment that is why cash gets laundered

The app being mentioned in the article does not require the car guard to even have a bank account — they get a digital voucher that can be exchanged for cash at a bank (one hopes that they can receive their funds electronically too though as an option).

But what is of extreme concern, are some stats given in the linked article about how few people actually have access to the Internet from their homes, and in rural areas it is almost non-existent. This is a major stumbling block to a digital economy.

At R85 per gigabyte, mobile data prices in 2022 were three times as high as in North Africa and double the price in Western Europe, according to the report.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/banking…
#Blog, #cashless, #digitaleconomy, #southafrica, #technology

Inside Joburg’s new lithium battery recycling plant which uses food-safe chemicals

Once collected, the batteries undergo shredding, which exposes the valuable metal-containing black mass at their core. From there, the black mass enters a proprietary hydrometallurgical process, where a blend of food-safe chemicals is used to leach out metals such as lithium, manganese, nickel and cobalt.

Unlike traditional methods that rely on pyrometallurgy and high temperatures, Cwenga Lib’s facility operates at room temperature, making it safer for operators and more feasible in the South African context.

There is going to be a growing demand for this type of recycling in future. Not only from an environmentally friendly disposal perspective, but also for recovery of these metals for re-use.

Yes, whilst the SA government is bent on extending gas extraction and the use of coal, the private sector is investing in the future business around further enhancing environmentally friendly and sustainable energy production.

See techcentral.co.za/joburg-lithi…
#Blog, #environment, #recycling, #southafrica, #technology

Secret crypto code that helped end apartheid has been cracked and open-sourced

Operation Vula was a mission to infiltrate key leaders such as Mac Maharaj and Charles Nqakula into South Africa while ensuring good lines of communication between them and the ANC’s headquarters-in-exile in Lusaka, Zambia.

“Even in those days, 25 years before Edward Snowden, there was talk about ‘backdoors’ in encryption software,” Jenkin previously told MyBroadband.

Encrypted messages were transmitted into a signal that could be played over a regular telephone call and recorded. This allowed operatives to easily receive messages via public telephones.

The recorded message could then be played back into a computer via a modem and decrypted.

Interesting history and because this was before the availability of the Internet everywhere, more legacy mode transmissions were required.

Why the code has remained hidden for so long, was that it was stored in an encrypted zip file, and if you forget your password, you can’t open it (a valuable lesson for anyone wanting to be super-secret, is don’t forget your password, 10 years later).

And although there is a known vulnerability with the ZipCrypto scheme used, it was not as simple as just running bkcrack.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/softwar…
#Blog, #apartheid, #encryption, #privacy, #southafrica, #technology

Many many years ago, #Sweden would have been on the front of driving such actions.

Today, the country has turned into a puppet of NATO any bootlicker of US and Israel.

#Chile #CC #ICJ #SouthAfrica #Israel #Genocide #Palestine

Thomas Baines (1820-1875, English)

Wagon Crossing a Drift - Natal

Wagen überquert eine Furt - Natal
Gemälde, Öl auf Leinwand, 51 x 65 cm, 1874, South African National Gallery, Cape Town

#ThomasBaines #rinder #natal #südafrika #landschaft #southafrica #kunst #art #paintings #gemälde #peinture #säugetiere #mammals #tiere #animals #cattle #landscape

File:Thomas Baines - Wagon Crossing a Drift - Natal - Google Art Project.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Photography by Santu Mofokeng.

#SantuMofokeng #SouthAfrica #portrait #photo #art

Review: South Africa’s Clicks branded Double Edge Razor Blades for R13 for 5 Blades

I just spotted these blades a week ago at Clicks in South Africa, and thought I’d better buy them to try out, seeing we have a really dismal selection of blades in retail stores in South Africa. At R12.99 (US$0.72) for the pack of 5 blades, I was not going to lose a lot of money at all.

The packaging states they are Platinum-Chrome Stainless Steel blades, and German Technology. Unfortunately, not only is there no mention at all of who manufactured them, even the blades are completely blank (I’ve never seen that before). So no indication at all who the original manufacturer is.

Rear of packaging
Blade is blank of any branding

The Shave

I was very surprised at how good the shave was, so much so, I decided to use the blade for the whole week before making any comments about it. I Normally shave with the Astra blades and my Edwin Jagger DE89 head. If I am a bit reckless and shave really quickly with the Astra’s I will get the odd nick on the chin or lip area.

Well, my first impression with these Clicks blades was they were noticeably a notch smoother to shave with. They still cut well (no additional passes need), but super smooth. I upped my speed a bit too, and the same experience without any nicks or cuts. They performed consistently for the week, and I’m pretty sure I could go another week on the same blade.

I just need to state here though that any shave is a combination of razor head, blade and skin type, so your own mileage may vary. I can only compare using my own razor. No doubt a more aggressive razor, or a milder one like the Merkur 34C, may produce different results.

For example, when I first tried double-edge razor shaving, I bought Lion blades (pictured below) with the cheap Lion razor. It was a horrible experience! They tugged, and the razor was too aggressive, etc.

I’m very impressed with them, and actually prefer them over the Astra blades I’ve been using for the last 4 years (I bought about 300 Astra blades in bulk because I had to import them).

The Price

Clicks blades at R12.99 vs Lion at R25.99 and Super-Max at R13.99

Obviously, there is no comparison between this price, and what would be paid for Gillette Fusion cartridge blades… We can compare this to the Astra DE blades which sell online in South Africa for R17.99 (normally about R25 though).

R12.99 works out to R2.60 per week of use (US$0.14 per week). The Astra’s would cost about R3.60 per week. These blades could actually stretch to 2 weeks of use, and that brings the cost down to R1.30 per week. At this price, I’ll quite happily support Clicks locally.

Bonus: Environmentally Friendly

As with most double-edged blades, the packaging (paper and plastic) is fully recyclable, as are the stainless steel blades (which I collect in a money tin after use).
#Blog, #razorblades, #southafrica, #traditionalwetshaving, #wetshaving

South Africa’s Gauteng e-Panic button app tested — with impressive results

MyBroadband tested the Gauteng provincial government’s e-Panic button and was impressed with its user experience and overall performance.

Upon its launch alongside a physical panic button fob in May 2024, the province described it as an innovative technological solution designed to enhance the safety of Gauteng residents.

“It allows users to instantly alert emergency services and law enforcement at the touch of a button, ensuring rapid response in times of distress,” it explained.

While it plans to distribute 100,000 physical buttons to the public in the coming months, most of the province’s 16 million+ population can immediately access the panic button through a smartphone.

The Gauteng e-Panic button app is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

The Android version was downloaded over 50,000 times and scored an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 from 117 reviews by the time of publication.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/securit…
#Blog, #SOS, #southafrica, #technology

South Africa’s Home Affairs needs a visible Dashboard for Uptime Monitoring of Service and Network Uptimes

There’s an old adage that says ‘What you cannot measure, you cannot manage’ which is actually not fully true, because many things have to be managed that do not have any hard metrics to go by. But the principle of having some signals and metrics does indeed greatly assist with determining whether a service is improving or declining. For the Department of Home Affairs, this would include a metric to indicate the mainframe service is fully operational, and then a metric for each and every remote DHA office’s connectivity status. From a technology perspective, if those lights were all green, it should be 100% operational. If the mainframe system is not green, then everything is unavailable countrywide. If some site offices show red lights, it means they have no connectivity at those DHA offices.

This should not be very complicated, as there are many free and open source tools that do this type of job very well. For such example is Uptime Kuma which I use to monitor and alert me of issues with my own hosted services (pictured below). Home Assistant and Grafana can also be used to provide additional analytics and alerting if necessary to e-mail addresses, mobile phones, Telegram Groups, etc. There are probably other uptime monitors that can do an even better job.

Uptime Kuma Dashboard – Services can be grouped and tagged also

The SA Cabinet actually has (used to have) a policy around using primarily free and open source software where they can. So no tender is required to procure free and open source software. From the skills side, something like this generally requires no coding, and just some configuration. I’m very sure SITA still has the internal skills to be able to do this themselves. It is easier than designing a Drupal website. The biggest challenge is to just decide what are the best metrics to actually measure, e.g. ping time to every remote site. But even a start would be something better than what we don’t see right now.

It is vitally important that the accountable Minister is able to have this dashboard and alerting available in order to see the improvement from any actions taken. Likewise, the Department also could/should be using this to measure the service levels from SITA and the 3rd party service providers. I know from experience that much of those metrics only get reported on after month end, and usually by the service providers themselves, not by any live dashboard that the Department has.

But it is also significant for citizens, who consume this service daily, and often have to stand in long queues for hours on end, only to hear later “the system is down” or “the network is down”, to also be able to at least see this dashboard in its live state. There is no reason to keep such a live status secret from the public. Citizens should be aware before they visit the DHA offices, or whilst standing in the queue, that the system is down, so that they can decide whether to come back another day, or postpone their visit. It is scary to think how much economic productivity time is wasted by so many citizens around the country, standing in these queues, when the system or lines are down.

A good 10+ years ago the SA government had an approved eGOV Framework which promised an e-Services portal, built on open source software, and which would have APIs (application programming interfaces) available for 3rd parties to use. The Open Data philosophy was intended to improve transparency and accountability by government, and also to provide a source of data that private entrepreneurs could use to build businesses or sell value-added services on top of government’s open data (see image below). Some services today, such as Municipal Money, are built of top of data scraped from National Treasury and audit reports. These 3rd party services provide not only an important watchdog role, but also help citizens and businesses to make data-driven decisions themselves.

South African Governmnet’s e-Services Open Data policy

Taking the above into account, there is no reason why citizens should not be able to see such a real-time dashboard of availability of DHA services. Coming back to the old adage about ‘What you cannot measure, you cannot manage’, I’d certainly hope at least that the new Minister for DHA has access already to such a dashboard. If not, maybe the above ideas can help to ensure one is put in place pretty quickly. The more visibility and transparency around these services, will probably be better for all, and maybe even focus efforts on where the real issues are.

SITA’s DBA’s, network engineers, and mainframe operators/programmers should be able to advise which of the following monitor types (depicted below) can be effectively used to monitor the services. I know there is monitoring of each one of these services, but they are usually reported on retroactively, and they do not appear as a unified view of a single government service (Network engineers monitor their services separately from DBAs, who monitor separately from mainframe operators, etc). The whole aspect of monitoring needs to be adapted to show a client/citizen centric view, preferably with a single index score that can be measured for improvement and availability.

Uptime Kuma’s monitor types
#Blog, #opensource, #quality, #southafrica, #technology

The South African hacker who revolutionised cybersecurity around the world with his Canary honeypot tools

South African hacker Haroon Meer founded Thinkst Applied Research, which revolutionised network intrusion detection with its Canary honeypot tools.

On 31 May 2015, they officially launched Canary, after working on it for about a year.

“We think it’s insane that organisations that spent millions of dollars on cybersecurity took months or years to realise that they were breached,” Meer wrote at the time.

What set Canary apart was that the software was open-sourced, allowing anyone to build their own device if they wanted to.

I did not actually know that Canary honeypot originated from a South African company, nor that it was opensourced (see Github thinkst / opencanary). I see it even has a Docker installation.

See mybroadband.co.za/news/securit…
#Blog, #opensource, #security, #southafrica, #technology

📸 Lindokuhle Sobekwa.

#man #lying #floorlamp #chill
#SouthAfrica #bw #street #photo #art

Manyaku Mashilo

🇿🇦 https://www.manyakumashilo.com/about

#ManyakuMashilo #SouthAfrica #mixedmedia #photo #painting #collage #art

About - Manyaku Mashilo

Manyaku Mashilo was born in 1991, Limpopo, South Africa. She is a self taught multidisciplinary artist working with paper and mixed media.

🇿🇦 Photography by Shiraaz Mohamed.

#ShiraazMohamed #johannesburg #SouthAfrica #photo #art

🇿🇦 Photography by Constance Stuart Larrabee.

#ConstanceStuartLarrabee #ndebele #SouthAfrica #bw #photo #art

#Latuff #Palestine #SouthAfrica #apartheid