The main problem with both wind and solar energy is not their cost (which is falling satisfactorily with every passing year) but their intermittency. Supplying power to the grid when the air is calm or the sun below the horizon means storing a surplus when the day is blustery and the sun is up. And, at the moment, this is expensive. Cheap and
Author: Editor
Craig Wilson’s opinion piece (“How Icasa has failed us”), in which he reflects on Icasa’s decision to refuse TopTV’s application for authorisation to broadcast three additional channels that will carry adult content is so extreme in its attack on Icasa that it warrants a response. The underlying thrust of Wilson’s argument
An international consortium planning to build the world’s most powerful radio telescope is still debating whether SA or Australia should host the US$2bn project, an official said Friday. Scientists hope the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA, will shed new light
A universe in crisis, galaxies in flames, and warfare on an interplanetary scale — and that’s just the fanboy fallout about the way that Bioware brings its space opera Mass Effect 3 to an end. The game itself goes to even darker places and plays for higher stakes
When he isn’t talking at technology conferences and seminars, or travelling to them, 49-year-old Steve Song lives and works in Durbanville near Cape Town. He’s perhaps best known for his map of the various submarine cables that have landed in Africa in recent years, and for his passionate advocacy of the use of television white-spaces
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has lost its home-field advantage in Canada to Apple for the first time ever, another sign that the company is almost hopelessly broken when it comes to smartphone innovation. The long-time co-CEOs of RIM, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, resigned from the company in January after 20 years and were replaced
A decade ago, Rob Sussman and Lance Fanaroff started IT group Integr8. Now they’re back with a new venture, ZunguZ, a payment system that allows anyone on Facebook to pay anyone else, directly from within the social network. They’re hoping it’ll give shopping a social element and, if they’re fast, it could become the first serious
Absa subsidiary AllPay has accused the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), of an irregular tender process wherein the company’s score was “inexplicably” lowered so that its competitor would win the R10bn contract. This was contained in a supplementary founding affidavit filed by AllPay earlier this month. The Absa division responsible for paying out social grants filed
Computer passwords need to be memorable and secure. Most people’s are the first but not the second. Researchers are trying to make it easier for them to be both. Passwords are ubiquitous in computer security. All too often, they are also ineffective. A good password has to be both easy to remember and hard to guess, but in practice
Twitter is showing a continued commitment to its popular desktop and Web property TweetDeck with the release of an updated version that brings the “New-New Twitter” experience to Windows, Mac, and Chrome desktops. The new 1.3 version brings with it a bevy of new features that will keep Twitter-holics glued to even more columns for even