Does Facebook Oculus VR acquisition doom real reality?

Future history books will note that March 25, 2014, was a bad day for human legs. It was a bad day for the outdoors, a bad day for bicycles and an utterly abysmal day for cafes, bars and other places where people meet in person.

It was the day Facebook — the social media giant that has already digitized a good part of our social interaction — acquired Oculus VR, which sounds like a malevolent, world-destroying Transformer but is actually considerably more frightening.

The "VR" in the company's name stands for "virtual reality." Oculus has been busy working on a gaming device called the Oculus Rift headset, which, according to a blog post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, puts the user in "a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away."

Boko Haram: 500 killed, 100 killed, so what?

Priests pray for corpse of Boko Haram victims before burial

Does it really matter how many die daily from Boko Haram attacks? Who cares who the targets are? Who is interested in the body count? What difference does it make if 500 die today or 100 the next day?
Have the gruesome details of victims being burnt, slaughtered, or buried alive made any impact on us? Are we even able to count how many have been killed?
Nigeria has descended to the dreaded lethargy prolonged exposure to gory lawlessness creates. There was a time when loss of a few lives drew those magnificent comments about the sanctity of lives and measures that must ensure that we never went through the fatal paths again.

South Africa software industry to ‘balloon’ in 2014

South Africa’s software industry will balloon this year as spending is forecast to increase 10.5% to $518m, according to the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) market analysis report.

The South Africa Enterprise Application Software Market 2013–2017 Forecast predicts that overall enterprise applications software spending in the country will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 11.6% across the five-year forecast period to total $787.19m in 2017.

South Africans not sold on in-car tech

A survey by Accenture indicates high interest in next-generation in-car technologies among drivers in emerging economies, which could help shape future demand for sales and provide the automotive industry with a sustained revenue stream.

However, across five major emerging markets, South Africans were the least likely car buyers to let their decision be influenced by in-car technology.

Accenture surveyed over 14 000 drivers in 12 countries, including South Africa, on their current use of in-vehicle technologies and expectations for future use.

Microsoft new CEO, Satya Nadella, shares vision for the company

Satya Nadella, an Indian national, was yesterday announced as the new CEO of tech giant, Microsoft.  Nadella has worked with Microsoft since 1992 and comes from a rich professional background in cloud computing.
Nadella joins the growing list of Indian-born executives heading major global corporations. They already include PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Deutsche Bank co-CEO Anshu Jain.

Bloomberg launches $10m Africa media initiative

Michael Bloomberg

The immediate past mayor of New York, and founder of the Bloomberg Media group, Michael Bloomberg, is committing $10m towards building the capacity of African journalists.  The initiative is aimed at advancing
transparency, accountability and governance on the continent.
The Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa, a three-year pan-African programme to build media capacity, convene international leaders and improve access to information on the continent, will initially focus on Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, financial news agency Bloomberg said on Monday.
"Timely and accurate reporting of business and financial matters play a critical role in advancing efficient markets and is a key driver in supporting economic and social growth," the agency said in a statement. "Strengthening business and economic news coverage, expanding training programmes for journalists and providing greater access to reliable data about Africa are frequently cited as important enablers to the continent's continued development."

Your Yahoo account may have been compromised

If you use yahoo email, you may consider changing your password.
Latest information from Yahoo indicate that some of its customers' email accounts were compromised in a recent cyber-attack.
According to time.com, Yahoo has the world’s second-largest email service after Google, the Associated Press reports, with 273 million users worldwide and 81 million in the United States. The company said affected users have been prompted to reset their passwords by email notification or text message.

Ed Snowden nominated for Nobel Prize

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden spent the last year revealing some of the government's most tightly held secrets, kicking off a massive debate about the proper role of America's intelligence services. Now, a pair of Norwegian politicians have nominated the NSA leaker for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In their nomination letter, Baard Vegar Solhjell and Snorre Valen, who hail from the Socialist Left party, said Snowden's revelations "contributed to a more stable and peaceful world order."
Nominations — which are generally secret but sometimes announced by those submitting the paperwork — must be filed by Feb. 1.

Obama: The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact

A big science take from President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address yesterday is an affirmation that climate change is a fact not some cooked up fiction as some climate deniers have often claimed.

"The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did," Obama told a joint session of Congress.

Thanks Obama for rising boldly when it matters most.  I don't agree with many of your policies, but this is a remarkable scientific step that ought to be lauded.

Since the unusual cold weather that hit much of America's west and east coast, popular critics like Donald Trumph has pointed to the record cold weather as evidence that the globe isn't warming.

Video source: politico.com

Hi-tech help to stop human-lion conflict in Kenya

Kenyan wildlife authorities are fitting livestock-raiding lions with a collar that alerts rangers when the predators venture out of Nairobi National Park.

Livestock farmers, especially Maasai herdsmen, track and kill lions to avenge the loss of animals, threatening the existence of 35 to 40 lions at the park on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.

Spokesman Paul Muya of the Kenya Wildlife Service, said Monday rangers will be able to move to areas where the lion have encroached using coordinates sent by the collars and return the animals to the park. The collars send GPS coordinates by text messages to a rangers' cell phones.

Suicide: The warning signs most people miss

Two top bankers - Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan bank executive and 58-year-old former Deutsche Bank senior manager, Bill Broeksmit, killed themselves today in separate suicide incidence in London.
If you are like me, you are probably wondering - what could have made these men take their lives?  They look apparently successful in their careers and should rank among top earners in their field. After reading the story of these bankers, I tried searching for answers to that question and here are some thought by Jed Diamond (an expert on the topic) I ran into. Enjoy reading:

Wearable tech allows you to feel the book while you read

Reading a nice book could be very exciting; feeling a nice book could be even more exciting.
A team at MIT Media Lab is working to make this happen; i.e - help you feel the emotions of the characters you are reading.
Dubbed 'Sensory Fiction' the technology is a wearable book that enables you physically feel the characters' feelings in a work of fiction.
As the reading progresses, the book produces physical sensations to mimic the characters' emotions of joy, sadness, fear, and a host of others.  If the protagonist is scared, for example, air pressure bags in the wearable vest will constrict to make the reader’s chest feel tighter.
The technology is still being developed. ‘While the project explores new ways of reading with digital augmentations, this is not a product idea but rather an exploration in the context of science fiction stories,’ said researcher Felix Heibeck.

Check how much time you've 'wasted' on Facebook

Time magazine has come up with something very interesting.  Now you can check how much time you spend on Facebook.  The app uses the term 'waste'. Some may not agree that the time they spend on Facebook is a waste.  That's a debate for another day.  However, the Time app "runs through the timestamps on every post in your feed until it reaches the earliest one, which it uses as the estimated date that you created your profile."
If you belong to this virtual country that boasts of about 1.1 billion citizens, you might just be curious to know how much of your life time you've consciously or unconsciously invested into it.  I'm curious to do same.
Want to use the Time Calculator?  Check it out HERE

Why Google Glass sex apps leave the web feeling dirty

As if Google Glass wearers didn't love themselves enough already, news broke this week of a forthcoming app for Glass that lets owners of the wearable tech watch themselves having sex (or doing non-sex tasks) from alternative angles.
The Sex with Google Glass app relays imagery from other perspectives to Google Glass, letting sex-doing pairs of owners of the posh specs watch themselves as if they were the stars of their own reality TV show. Or, if they're using it in the bedroom, it could give the wearer a terrifying look at the grim faces and expressions a partner sees while they're fiddling and grinding away.

Boko Haram's threat to the world

Rescuers remove the body of a victim of the 2011 bombing
of UN office in Abuja by Boko Haram

Residents of the northeastern Nigerian city of Alau report that 19 people were brutally murdered and hundreds of homes torched there on Sunday. Last week, a car bomb tore through a heavily populated market in nearby Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, severely injuring or killing at least 20 people.

Borno is no stranger to carnage. Nigerians ironically dub the state the "Home of Peace." Recent events in the region have received little media coverage, and most observers deem it par for the course when the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram claims credit.

Since 2009, when these organized assaults began, the Nigerian federal government has attempted to respond with proficiency. Abuja has variously offered amnesty to Boko fighters; retaliated with (sometimes overly assertive) force; and, when left with no other choice, installed martial law on an emergency basis.

As the world globalizes, jihadist factions such as Boko Haram align in-kind and gain both the intelligence and the capacity to strike in increasingly urban centers and beyond national borders. We must make no mistake: This destabilizing network is a global problem, larger in scope and indeed in mission than the international community may presume. It is not just going to go away.

Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017, say Princeton researchers

Facebook has spread like an infectious disease but we are slowly becoming immune to its attractions, and the platform will be largely abandoned by 2017, say researchers at Princeton University.

The forecast of Facebook's impending doom was made by comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. Scientists argue that, like bubonic plague, Facebook will eventually die out.

The social network, which celebrates its 10th birthday on 4 February, has survived longer than rivals such as Myspace and Bebo, but the Princeton forecast says it will lose 80% of its peak user base within the next three years.

Pope Francis: Internet is a "gift from God"

Pope Francis

The Internet is a "gift from God" that facilitates communication, Pope Francis said in a statement released Thursday, but he warns that the obsessive desire to stay connected can actually isolate people from their friends and family.

Francis made the observations in a message about Catholic Church communications, meditating on the marvels and perils of the digital era and what that means for the faithful going out into the world and interacting with people of different faiths and backgrounds.

In comments that will likely rile the more conservative wing of the church, Francis suggested that in engaging in that dialogue, Catholics shouldn't be arrogant in insisting that they alone possess the truth.

Home birth as risky as not putting on child's seat belt, researchers warn

While not calling for an outright ban on home births, two experts are urging parents who “wish to return to the past” by choosing to skip the hospital labor room to consider the potential harm to the baby.

“Having a home birth may be like not putting your child’s car seat belt on,” the researchers write in a paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Medical Ethics

“Most children will be unharmed. Some trips are very safe. And wearing a seat belt will not remove all risk of injury or death… But on balance it is much safer with a seat belt.”

Regent University joins the MOOCs wagon

Almost two years after Harvard University and MIT ventured into online education partnership called edX, more universities continue to embrace free online learning initiatives.  Does this mean the death of paid learning?  Certainly not.  Paid education will continue to be with us.  But online learning is helping democratize learning in a way that we've never seen before.
The latest school to join the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) wagon is Regent University, the Virginia-based Christian university.    Regent has launched a program known as Luxvera, which means light and truth.  The Christian online classes will feature lectures and teaching material provided by Regent and the American Center for Law and Justice.
How will these universities continue to earn and sustain while giving out their lectures free online?  That's certainly where innovation comes in.  Just like the mainstream media world - i.e newspapers, magazines, radio and television - the education sector across the world is being massively disrupted.  How often do you go to a physical library these days for research?  Many people now research via google, youtube and other online platforms.  This is our reality today and the old school days are gone for ever.

Diabetes at a crisis point in Africa

Obesity is a major cause of diabetes

Diabetes is at a crisis point in Africa, but because of the lack of proper medical statistics, policy makers and health managers don't really accord it the urgent attention it needs.
A study published in the World Diabetes Atlas says that more than 80 percent of people living with diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa do not know that they suffer from the disease. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 15 million of the 371 million people living with diabetes in the world.

Can you imagine, the damage?  80% of sufferers ain't even aware they have the disease.

The World Diabetes Atlas study adds that the greatest number of people with diabetes are between the ages of 40 and 59.