24th

July 2015

What the Heck?? – Editors Comment. ’ve just seen the announcement for the new Samsung Galaxy A8 mobile... and it’s being billed as

the slimmest smartphone ever, at only 5.9mm. Well, I’m beginning to have a bit of a finger

problem with thin mobiles. My current S6 looks pretty anorexic viewed side on, so I’m wondering

how they’re going to shave its size down even more? Cell phones these days just keep getting

thinner and smarter - people, however, seem to be just the opposite. On that topic, our Apps section

this week has got some amazing new health Apps – so if you’ve ever wanted rippling abs, tight buns and

a slim waist, just check out the Apps section... more info there.

I am finding these health apps really useful, because, like most HISPIANS, my job entails me spending a

lot of time sitting down in front of a computer with very little chance to exercise, and this was starting to

get me down. I was becoming like an iPhone – I just lost energy without doing anything. So one day I

mentioned to my Doctor friend that I was getting a bit more “gravity challenged” to which he suggested I

try jogging. He said it would add years to my life. And he was right! After jogging for 2 weeks, I already

felt 10 years older. Needless to say, my jogging days are over, but now, after a bit of downloading, I’m

already 2Kg down, sleeping better and have much more energy – I love apps !

Whether you call them cellphones, mobile phones or smartphones, our

modern pocket-sized communication devices are taking over our lives

one phone call at a time. As the capabilities of our mobile devices have

increased, so has the discussion on what effect smartphones will have on

our daily lives. Like I heard this week that a new study from

Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in the USA set

out to explore whether an individual’s smartphone habits could be used

to predict whether or not they were depressed. The results, published in

the Journal of Medical Research on Wednesday, were staggering.

Measuring behavioural markers for depression through GPS and usage

sensors, researchers were able to predict with 86 percent accuracy

whether or not the individual was depressed. Led by Dr. David C. Mohr, Director of Northwestern’s

Centre for Behavioural Intervention Technologies, the study tracked behaviours that previous studies

have linked with depression, including hours spent in certain locations (e.g. work and home) and time

spent interacting with the phone. The World Health Organization estimates that 350 million people

worldwide suffer from depression. Despite these numbers, less than half receive treatment, often

because they aren’t aware that they have the condition, but the results of the study could hold a key to

both diagnosing and treating clinical depression. Phones, according to Mohr, fit into the “fabric of

people’s lives,” they could make for a simpler way to measure mental health, without the need for special

devices or superfluous paperwork. “We now have an objective measure of behaviour related to

depression. And we’re detecting it passively. Phones can provide data unobtrusively and with no effort on

the part of the user.” I’m depressed and only my phone knows it.

In closing, here’s my health tip of the week - Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a

laxative on the same night - Have a great week team. See you again soon.

I

24th

July 2015

History Repeats Itself!

he dewy chill over Leicester, England, in

March 1885 did not deter thousands of

protesters from gathering outside nearby

York Castle to protest the imprisonment of seven

activists. Organizers claimed as many as 100,000

people attended. The cause they rallied against?

Vaccination.

This movement has faded from popular memory,

obscured by the controversy of more recent anti-

vaccination efforts, which gained momentum in

the 1990s. However, the effects of the Victorian

anti-vaccination movement still echo in the

debate over the personal belief exemption, which

was banned in California only last month.

On the day the Leicester protesters gathered,

vaccination was mandatory in England. Nearly a

century before, Edward Jenner, a Scottish

physician, had invented a method of protecting

people against the raging threat of smallpox. The

treatment was called variolation, and it involved

voluntary infection with a similar disease.

Patients were given cowpox to protect them

against the much deadlier smallpox, much the

way parents long exposed their children to

chicken pox to protect them from getting sicker

from the illness later in life.

After germ theory was expanded upon and

researchers developed vaccines, the British

government, in 1840, outlawed variolation,

which still carried some risk of killing the person

it was meant to protect Safer vaccines, which

contain a weakened form of a particular disease,

replaced variolation. To encourage widespread

vaccination, the law made it compulsory for

infants during their first three months of life and

then extended the age to children up to 14 years

old in 1867, imposing fines on those who did not

comply.

Modern vaccination activists come from a

different world than those in the 19th century.

While anti-vaxers today are largely upper middle

class, the crowd opposing vaccination in the 19th

century was largely composed of lower- and

working-class British citizens, who felt that they

were the particular targets, as a class group, for

vaccination and for prosecution under the

compulsory laws.

Can you get credit? new app has been developed to help

people access their credit profiles on

their Android smartphones. In a

statement by Akani

Solutions, who developed

the Akani Mobile Credit

Report app, former credit

ombudsman Mannie van

Schalk said the app was

an effective negotiation

tool for getting better

interest rates when

applying for credit.

“Knowledge is power… knowing your status

meant that you can take control of your financial

health and start making more conscious

decisions with your money”.

Akani CEO said users would know immediately

when an account is opened in their name or

when a credit provider says you have missed

payments”. So it’s a good security tool as well.

T

A

24th

July 2015

Paperless school rejuvenated.

f you didn’t see the pun in that headline,

then I need less coffee as I write. I saw

recently that the e-Learning project, which

was stopped because of tablet theft, has

been rebooted now that security measures have

been beefed up.

A number of thefts left the smart schools

paperless education project in tatters, with tablets

and laptops having to be recalled from township

schools in Gauteng. Having launched in January,

the project was halted in May following a

number of thefts and school robberies, which

saw more than 3,000 tablets stolen out of 88,000

distributed.

“This prompted the MEC to temporarily retrieve

them for the installation of additional security

features,” the department said.

The first recipients of the new tablets and laptops

were seven schools in Tembisa, East of

Johannesburg. Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza

Lesufi said that all matric classrooms will get

interactive blackboards, while each matric

learner in a no-fee-paying township school will

receive a tablet.

Teachers and each subject adviser, meanwhile,

would receive a laptop by July 21, following the

new security measures put in place.

“Security is being beefed up in the schools, and

prior to issuing the tablets for circulation,

installation of tracking devices in all the tablets,

is currently underway,” the MEC said.

Lesufi aims to have all high schools in the

province paperless by 2019.

Smart Management.

hen hiring, promoting, even just

putting together your team, you

should look for the most intelligent

people in the room, right? .. Well, not so fast.

Intelligence is one of those characteristics where

there is a minimum level needed to be in the

game. Once past that, too much intelligence can

be a drawback or worse. Intelligence is like

underwear - It is important that you have it, but

not necessary that you show it off.

The Enron management team, for example, were

known as “the smartest guys in the room.”

Consider how well that turned out. The former

US energy trading company tapped its top talent

to run some of its most-profitable divisions,

almost without supervision. The managers,

despite their intelligence, were an arrogant,

insecure bunch who took wild chances and lost

billions of dollars. The company was dissolved

in 2001.

Certainly, the job for which you’re hiring makes

a difference. You do want big-time intelligence

for researchers, analysts, and coders, but you can

lock those

folks in a

room and let

them do their

thing because

they work on

their own. But

do you really

need to find the smartest managers? The problem

with really intelligent people is that they often

think they know more than everyone else. Maybe

they do. But that doesn’t help them when they’re

trying to get others to buy into whatever they’re

I W

24th

July 2015

selling When you know the right answer, you

often can’t believe that everyone else doesn’t

just see the same thing, and fall into line.

Unfortunately, organisations don’t work that

way. Especially when working with peers when

you don’t have direct authority over them, the

only way to get momentum toward your

preferred outcome is to sell them on the idea.

Imposing your “superior” solution just doesn’t

work.

The irony is that

sometimes the most

talented person can

make for one of the

most ineffective

managers. You can

see this in sports,

for example, where retired superstars often find

it difficult to coach or manage successfully

because they are now supervising lesser mortals

that weren’t blessed with the same degree of

innate talent.

I remember talking to managers from Singapore-

based Creative Technology, Inc after the iPod

had just been introduced by Apple. Creative had

a technologically superior MP3 player, but

customers preferred the iPod, to the utter dismay

of the Creative managers. They just couldn’t

understand how customers were so irrational!

But it turns out that the best technology doesn’t

always win, just like the smartest people don’t

always succeed.

The most important thing in life is not to know

everything, it is to have Google Search on your

smartphone.

Apps you simply must have. on't have an hour for a daily workout?

You might not need it, just try the 7

minute quick fit workout, it even has a

Video Tutorial to help you do it right!

This App features the most appropriate exercises

for normal people just like you and me, best of

all, you can do it

anytime anywhere, it

only takes 7 minutes.

This workout

application is based

on HICT (high

intensity circuit

training). You don't

need go to the gym,

simply try the 7 minute quick fit workout and

abs workout, and make yourself healthier.

The 7 minute workout consists of 12 exercises to

be done for 30 seconds, with 10 seconds break

between each exercise. All you need just a chair

and a wall.

ant the ultimate workout that you can

do at home or when it suits you?

Then try the 30 Day Fitness

Challenge. This App features a collection of

simple 30 day exercise challenges, where you do

a set number of exercises each day with rest days

thrown in!

The workouts

increase in intensity

slowly and day 30

will test anyone. The

app is suitable for

both men and

women of any age

and any fitness level.

Start off at the beginner level and work your way

slowly up to advanced!

D

W

24th

July 2015

Online “Doctors” Are Often Wrong (Phew).e’re in an era where it’s no longer reasonable to pretend that patients aren’t Googling their

symptoms. So, assuming patients are going to Google, and that the Internet is a vast sea

containing both accurate and wildly unhelpful health information, the question is how to steer

people toward the former and away from the latter. As a slightly more official alternative to going to

Yahoo! Answers, typing in “What is this rash?” and waiting for the geniuses on those forums to dispense

their wisdom, many organizations have developed “symptom checkers.” You plug in your symptoms,

and an algorithm spits back possible diagnoses, and/or whether you should seek treatment or deal with the

issue yourself. But Annie sent me an interesting link which says that, according to a new study, these

symptom checkers vary widely in accuracy. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston’s

Children’s Hospital inputted 45 “patient vignettes” into 23 different symptom checkers.

On average, they included the correct diagnosis in the first three results 51 percent of the time, and

included it in the first 20 results 58 percent of the time. Understandably, the sites did better at identifying

common conditions than uncommon ones.

Of the symptom checkers that gave triage advice they did so “appropriately,” 57 percent of the time.

Triage advice was more likely to be correct for more urgent conditions or uncommon conditions.

“Although there was a range of

performance across symptom checkers,

overall they had deficits in both diagnosis

and triage accuracy,” the study reads. It’s

also possible that the study over-estimated

how accurate these sites are, because the

patient vignettes it used included clinical

terms that a layperson might not necessarily

know or recognize his symptoms as.

One of the other issues the researchers saw

was that the sites weren’t very good, on the

whole, at recommending self-care when it

was appropriate, which could lead to people

going to the ER or doctor’s office for something that would go away on its own, or that could be treated

over the counter.

“If symptom checkers are seen as a replacement for seeing a physician, they are likely an inferior

alternative,” the study reads. “It is believed that physicians have a diagnostic accuracy rate of 85 [to] 90

percent.

Most people are hopefully savvy enough not to take a WebMD result as a diagnosis. They’re probably

just trying to figure out how seriously to take their condition. In that case, it might be less important that

symptom checkers spit out the right diagnosis, and more important that they tell the searcher whether the

symptoms may warrant a trip to the hospital or doctor or whether they can be self treated..

W

24th

July 2015

The “All-Network” SIM

pple and Samsung are working with

mobile network operators to develop an

embedded SIM system which will allow

you to change mobile providers without buying a

new SIM card.

According to The Verge, the “e-SIM” will

remain inside the phone and allow users to

switch between mobile operators – not lock them

to a single carrier as the current SIM card system

does.

The report states that the new standard is

expected to be ready in 2016, and follows

Apple’s launch of the Apple SIM which comes

with its LTE iPads.

The removal of the SIM card and SIM card tray

from phones may also allows Samsung and

Apple to make their smartphones thinner. WTH?

The Financial Times reported that the “majority

of operators” are in favour of the e-SIM,

including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone,

Telefonica, and Orange. Watch this space, this is

going to lead to some very interesting ads!!

For more speed, move house. okla’s Net Index website shows that

Midrand, Bryanston, and Ferndale

have the highest average mobile

broadband speeds.

The Net Index website uses data from millions of

recent test results from Speedtest.net to calculate

the average broadband speeds.

According to the website, South Africa has an

average mobile download speed of 10.7Mbps,

and an average mobile upload speed of 3.6Mbps.

These speeds are in line with global standards,

where the

average mobile

download speed

is 12.3Mbps

and the average

upload speed is

4.9Mbps.

The top mobile

suburb in SA is

Midrand, with

an average download speed of 20.78Mbps,

followed by Bryanston with 15.32Mbps and

Ferndale with 14.25Mbps.

Vodacom had the highest average download

speed at 13.91Mbps, followed by Telkom with

9.48Mbps, MTN with 8.78Mbps, and Cell C

with 4.71Mbps.

Kill the Flash!!

t is a while since I last mentioned Adobe

Flash and why everyone must stop using it.

Since then, the leaks from the hackers of the

mass surveillance company HackingTeam have

revealed three very serious bugs (called zero-day

bugs) in Flash that they were exploiting to take

over victims’ machines.

It is likely that more Flash vulnerabilities will be

revealed as security researcher’s work through

the documents the hackers removed from the

HackingTeam.

The leaked exploits have already appeared in

hacking toolkits and are presumably already

being used on the general public.

A

O

I

24th

July 2015

Since these bugs have come to light, both

Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome

have blocked various versions of Flash from

running on their browsers. Other companies are

removing Flash from installs on new computers.

The reality is,

there really is no

reason for Flash to

still exist or be

supported by

modern browsers.

Steve

Jobs made this

point in 2010.

Another factor is

that Flash use is tightly coupled with how

annoying and intrusive ads are displayed on

websites.

Removing Flash may be an inconvenience for

accessing a small amount of functionality, but

users actively removing and blocking ads has

become much more common. If you do want to

remove Flash, and as a security measure, it is

really advisable to at least limit its use, there are

a number of different ways to disable it

temporarily or permanently. An added benefit of

removing Flash is that you won’t have constant

messages asking to update it as daily security

flaws are discovered and fixed by Adobe.

New Low Cost Smartphone.

innacle Africa has launched its Proline

XM-502 dual-SIM LTE smartphone in

South Africa for the retail price of

R1,699.

The phone will go on sale from 7 August, and

offers “new levels of performance at an

affordable price”.

“We partnered with MediaTek to launch the first

commercially available smartphone based on

their new 64-bit LTE platform, delivering

performance that has never been seen before in a

sub R 2,000 smartphone,” said the company.

The phones features a 5-inch QHD (960 x 540)

display, 1GHz 64-bit quad-core Cortex-A53

processor, and 2,000mAh battery.

The HISPIAN had a quick look at a pre-launch

example and we absolutely loved the 13Mp rear

camera, the LTE network speeds and the 32GB

SD card slot. The phone comes with Android

Lollipop right out of the box as well. This phone

is well worth a second look if you are in the

market for a smartphone on a limited budget.

Editor’s LOL of the Week.

f you did get it, then, like me, you probably

had a good LOL. If you didn’t get it, then

Google “Paintings by van Gogh” for your

LOL.

P

I

24th

July 2015

A cure for Alzheimer’s?

orldwide, nearly 44 million people have Alzheimer’s or a related dementia and only 1-in-4

people with Alzheimer’s disease have been diagnosed. The WHO estimates the global cost of

Alzheimer’s and dementia to be $605 billion, which is equivalent to 1% of the entire world’s

gross domestic product.

Now, the first drug that can halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease if caught early is expected to be

unveiled this week. Trials have been ongoing into a new treatment called Solanezumab which appears to

stop the degenerative disease in its tracks.

The results were announced by drugs company Eli Lilly at the Alzheimer’s Association International

Conference on Wednesday morning and are positive enough to make it the first drug proven to be

effective for treating dementia.

Solanezumab is an antibody which works by binding to the amyloid plaques which cause Alzheimer’s

disease and clearing them from the brain.

Initial trials failed to show any benefit, but

when researchers went back over the

data they found that it seemed to work in

people with mild symptoms and

launched a new study.

Eric Karran, director of research

at Alzheimer's Research UK, said it

would be interesting to find out if the

treatment worked in the long term.

"Current treatments only help with

symptoms. They enable nerve cells to

communicate with each other more

effectively, but don't stop the underlying

disease from getting worse," he said.

"Eventually the effect of these treatments wears off as the damage to the brain overwhelms the modest

benefit afforded by the drugs."

Eli Lilly researchers presented results at a recent conference where they said: "Results from 28 weeks'

treatment suggest patients who received Solanezumab had a cognitive benefit not recovered by patients

who began Solanezumab later." In a final sentence, they added: "This is thought consistent with a

treatment effect that changes the underlying pathology of Alzheimer's disease."

Imperial College has discovered how to turn off an enzyme which is driving many incurable diseases

including Alzheimer’s and cancer. Scientists at Ulster and Lancaster Universities found that diabetes

drugs Liraglutide and Lixisenatide prevent amyloid plaques forming in mice. And a number of

organisations now claim to have developed tests which can pick up the earliest signs of dementia 10 years

before the first symptoms appear.

But Eli Lilly reports the first phase three trial in patients to show beneficial results and this marks a

breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer's.

W

24th

July 2015

Slap it on this Summer. ummer is nearly here and we will all be

hitting the poolside or the beach working

on our tans. We all know too much time

in the sun can cause skin cancer, but do you

know what's actually causing your sunburn?

The radiation in sunlight's ultraviolet spectrum

can cause damage to the DNA in your skin cells,

This UV radiation is divided into three different

types:

UVA has less energy and is usually the UV

radiation type responsible for tans.

UVB is in the middle, and can cause enough

damage to lead to sunburn.

UVC has a shorter wavelength but this one

doesn't have much of an impact on the skin -- it's

absorbed by the atmosphere.

When the skin starts detecting UVA radiation,

receptors produce special skin cells called

melanocytes which produce extra melanin and

darken skin colour. UVB radiation, on the other

hand, damages a cell's DNA

While this information may have you rethinking

your beach plans, sunburns are preventable if

proper precautions are taken. The Skin Cancer

Foundation recommends applying sunscreen

with SPF of 15 or higher, staying in shade as

often as possible and covering up with sunscreen

and hats to prevent skin cancer These tips

certainly apply to sunburns as well.

Pay as you go? Here’s the best

new analysis from Tarifica has found

that Telkom offers more high-value

prepaid cellular plans for consumers

than other operators in SA.

Like its contract package analysis, the prepaid

index uses the Tarifica Score: an algorithm that

weighs different features of a mobile plan.

These are weighed against the total cost of a plan

to determine its consumer value relative to other

offers in a country Tarifica provided the

following summary of operator performance:

Cell C’s plans performed well in the light user

profile, based on having the cheapest per-minute

calling rate in South Africa and effective

bundling.

MTN performed best in the moderate and heavy

user profiles capturing four Top Value Plans, has

a relatively competitive per-minute calling rate,

and generous data promotion.

Telkom captured three Top Value Plan positions

in the light user profile, seven in the moderate

user profile, and five in the heavy user profile.

Its success was based on having the second-

cheapest per-minute calling rate and

aggressively-priced SMS and data bundles.

Vodacom did not have any Top Value Plans due

to its relatively high per-minute and per-SMS

rates, although it did score significantly better in

the moderate and heavy user profiles than in the

light user profile.

S A

24th

July 2015

Top 5 reasons to be a

proud South African

espite recent reports of a spike in South

Africans applying to emigrate, recent

research points to a country with proud

citizens planning to stay put.

Research compiled by AC Nielsen for Brand

South Africa entitled: A Brand Of Optimism,

reveals that only 1% of 2,524 respondents

indicated that they are planning to leave the

country with no intention of returning.

“Only 74% of respondents indicate that they will

‘continue to live & work in SA regardless

of social, economic and political situations,” the

report said.

Six in 10 (61%) respondents ‘are extremely

proud to be South African’, with 35% being

somewhat proud, according to the report’s

author, Dr. Petrus de Kock.

The top 5 drivers for pride in the country

include:

1. The beautiful landscape (56%)

2. The cultural diversity (49%)

3. The people in general (49%)

4. Achievements of our democracy (41%)

5. Our national sports teams (48%)

“It is also

interesting to

note that 56%

of respondents

to the survey

indicate that

citizens should focus on solutions, rather

than only the problems confronting the

country,” de Kock said.

Three quarters (76%) of respondents believe that

this is a country where it is possible for your

dreams to come true.

The RoboDoc will see you now

reg recently sent me a very interesting

piece of reading about the first robot

that’s being tried in court for killing a

human being. Well this set me off to do some

research on robots and obviously, some

fascinating stuff came to light. It led to Robots

vs. Humans, how human are robots and even to

the content that’s in today’s Editor’s feature

article about making computers human.

But one of the very interesting things that I

uncovered was that the area where Robots are

making the most impact is, in fact, Healthcare.

Robots aren't new to healthcare. Remember the

da Vinci Surgical System, the surgical assistant

the FDA approved back in 2000? Since then, the

system has conducted more than 20,000

surgeries and has paved the way for robotic

advancements in healthcare. In fact, vendors

have introduced a number of new robots to better

provide care to remote patients, help with

various physical therapies and similar to the da

Vinci system -- help perform surgery. For

example, Magnetic Microbots are a group of tiny

robots used in various operations, such as

removing plaque from a patient's arteries or

helping with ocular conditions and disease

screenings.

D

G

24th

July 2015

Other robotic advancements are used to better

the day-to-day lives of patients, helping them

eat, or helping a patient regain the ability to

walk. "In the next few years, thousands of

'service robots' are expected to enter the

healthcare sector picture R2-D2 from Star

Wars carrying a tray of medications or a load of

laundry down hospital corridors," according to a

recent article from The Wall Street Journal.

"Fewer than 1,000 of these blue-collar robots

currently roam about hospitals, but those

numbers are expected to grow quickly."

And that's no surprise considering the mounting

financial difficulties the healthcare industry

faces. Robots like the Aethon TUG can complete

the work of three full-time employees, yet it

"costs less than one full-time employee,"

according to the company. The TUG acts as a

distribution system to move through hospital

corridors, elevators and departments to make

either scheduled or on-demand deliveries.

Swisslog's RoboCourier, a similar delivery

system, helps eliminate human work and

completes tasks with the push of a button.

"This new robotic breed is boasting features

increasingly found in smartphones,

gaming.consoles and other consumer

electronics, from advanced sensors and motion

detectors to powerful microprocessors and voice

activation. The service robots are self-aware,

intelligent and able to navigate changing

environments, even chaotic hospital settings,"

according to the WSJ.

Outside the hospital setting, caregivers use

robots to enhance telemedicine and care for

those restricted to their homes. The Vasteras

Giraff, for instance, is a two-way call system

similar to Skype and is used by doctors to

communicate with the elderly. A PC, camera and

monitor control the robot.

Robots even are already performing well in

surgery ... until Eskom does its load shedding

thing..Then it's just a coat rack leaning over you

as you bleed to death. I can just imagine a robot

doctor saying to a robot nurse “Are those real or

have you been upgraded in Silicon Valley?”

LOL-Magic Mushrooms.

ptly nicknamed “eternal light,” the

fungus, called

Mycena

luxaeterna was found

in the dark depths of

Brazilian rain forests

and is just one species

among dozens of other

radiant glowing fungi

detailed in a

2014 Mycologia study.

“The ground was so

brightly illuminated, that looking down was like

looking at the sky”, lead study author Dennis

Desjardin told National Geographic. Desjardin

said he suspects the glow attracts nocturnal

creatures, which then help disperse the

mushroom’s spores so that they can propagate.

He must be a fun guy.

A

24th

July 2015

Editors Feature -What Is a “Computer” Anymore?

eople used to be computers. That is, for hundreds of years, computing was the work of humans,

and very often women. Then, in the mid-20th century, machines began to take on the bulk of

computing work, and the definition of “computer” changed.

A computer was no longer just a human reckoner. Just the way a calculator was no longer a person who,

as Webster’s 1828 dictionary had defined it, “estimates or considers the force and effect of causes, with a

view to form a correct estimate of the effects.” In the past 70 or so years, a computer went from being a

room-sized monstrosity that ran on pulleys and bulbs to a four-ounce touchscreen that’s as ordinary as it

is miraculous.

Now, leading computer scientists

and technologists say the definition

of “computer” is again changing.

The topic came up repeatedly at a

brain-inspired computing panel

held at the U.S. Capitol last week.

The panellists—neuroscientists,

computer scientists, engineers, and

academics—agreed: We have

reached a profound moment of

convergence and acceleration in

computing technology, one that will reverberate in the way we talk about computers, and specifically with

regard to the word “computer,” from now on.

“It’s like the move from simple adding machines to automated computing,” said James Brase, the deputy

associate director for data science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Because we’re making

an architectural change, not just a technology change. The new kinds of capabilities it won’t be a linear

scale, this will be a major leap.”

The architectural change he’s talking about has to do with efforts

to build a computer that can act and, crucially, learn, the way a

human brain does. Which means focusing on capabilities like

pattern recognition and juiced-up processing power and building

machines that can perceive their surroundings by using sensors, as

well as distil meaning from deep oceans of data. “We are at a time

where what a computer means will be redefined. These words

change. A ‘computer,’ to my grandchildren, will be definitely

different,

“There’s a way in which the whole process of science and technology will change,” said Peter

Littlewood, the director of Argonne National Laboratory. “There is not going to be a single model for

computing. We’ve had the linear, the serial one. Now we’re developing the neuromorphic methods that

are designed around pattern recognition ... There will be a change, not just architecturally, but also in the

way we integrate data that we are not doing now."

P

24th

July 2015

The dramatic change in computing that Littlewood describes has to do with modelling next-generation

machines on the networked mechanisms of the human brain, an approach that, as the M.I.T. neuroscience

professor James DiCarlo cautioned, has some major limitations. The first of which is that we don’t

actually know, in anywhere near a complete sense, how the brain works. This means that we can’t yet

build a machine model of the human brain. “The brain is a computer, an information processing device

that we don’t yet know how to build,” DiCarlo said. What type of device is it? That is the question. We’re

not ready to build machines that can perfectly emulate the brain because we don’t know how it works.”

And yet scientists know enough about the brain, that it relies

on a tangle of billions of interconnected neurons, that it is

energy efficient, that its data-processing sophistication is in

many ways unmatched by technology, to know that talking

about the brain as a computer is more than just a useful

metaphor. The fields of neuroscience and computer science

are already feeding off of one another.

“The challenges of mapping the brain are comparable to the

challenges of mapping the universe,” Littlewood said.

“We’re now on the verge of being able to map the brain at a scale where you can see a synapse. And if

you map the brain down to the scale of synapse and you take all of that data, that’s about a zettabyte of

data. A zettabyte is about the annual information traffic over the worldwide Internet. It is a very big

number. It is not an astronomical number, but it

is a number that in the next decade, we will

need to be able to deal with."

As the computers of the near future help

humans adapt to larger piles of data, they’ll also

learn by observing human behaviour. “So far,

we have learned to adapt to computers,” said

Dharmendra Modha, the founder of IBM's

Cognitive Computing group. “We use

keyboards. We use our thumb to type into the

smartphone. But given the advent of the brain-

inspired computing and how it’s going to

integrate into modern computing infrastructure, computers will begin to adapt more and more to human

beings.”

That’s a key point and one that contains a pleasant irony: As the definition of “computer” changes, it may

soon evoke the older, more human definition of computing. Because while the computers of the future

will still be machines, they’ll be more human-like than ever before.

“That’s our goal: To make a computer much more like a human being, in the sense that it integrates data

and can make decisions,” Littlewood said “So the future definition of computer may be like the original.

It may be like a person after all.”

24th

July 2015

Data Crunching.

More and More of our data is hosted in “the

cloud” – This actually means that its sitting on a

hard drive in a server somewhere “out there”.

But what happens to these hard drives when they

become redundant or crash?

Before:

Some of the world’s most sensitive

information is stored in data centres. This data

includes banking information, credit card details,

passwords, and medical records. This

information is stored on server hard drives,

which in time will become redundant and be

replaced. This raises the question: What happens

to these hosting server hard drives after the

servers are thrown out?

Good news is that South Africa’s hosting

providers are all following strict processes to

ensure that the hard drives are destroyed.

Hetzner said the process of disposing of

redundant hard drives is important due to data

security and environmental concerns.

Once a hard drive has been identified for

disposal by Hetzner, the following happens:

1. Assuming the hard drive is still functioning,

it is electronically wiped clean at Hetzner’s

premises.

2. They are collected by an ISO-accredited e-

waste removal service.

3. They are physically destroyed to ensure that

any failure in the electronic wiping process

does not result in compromised customer

data.

4. The component materials are then either

recycled or disposed of in an

environmentally-conscious manner.

5. A report of disposed hard drives, identified

by serial numbers, is returned to Hetzner.

“Over the last couple of years we have recycled

approximately 4 tons of obsolete hardware,” said

Athena Turner, marketing and communications

manager at Hetzner.

After:

So your data is safe, and you can use the cloud

with complete security, knowing that our server

supplier Hetzner is taking care of you.