Category: Sci & Tech

Fear and panic continue to grip the world following the wildfire spread of the deadly nCOVID-19.

The number of people killed worldwide by the coronavirus has exceeded 3,000, as China reported 42 more deaths.

More than 90% of the total deaths are in Hubei, the Chinese province where the virus emerged late last year.

But there have also been deaths in 10 other countries, including more than 50 in Iran and more than 30 in Italy.

Worldwide, there have been almost 90,000 confirmed cases, with the numbers outside China growing faster than inside China.

Several suspicious cases have been reported in Kenya and so far they’ve all turned out negative. Recent case of 239 passengers who traveled to Kenya from China, the epicenter of the virus has further thrown people into intense panic.

While the government insists they’re well prepared to tackle the virus should it be reported, facts in ground paints a different picture given how ill equipped the system is. Professionals in the health sector have called this out saying the country is not prepared to handle the explosion.

Dr. Ouma Oluga, the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) Sec General has said that few health care workers have been trained on coronavirus preparedness at the Kenyatta National Hospital.

He dived into the debate and answered to the critical questions and crucial answers that the public needed to know:

Q. All manner of claims are being made as to what can stop the virus. Is it true that temperatures in the tropics are not conducive for the virus?

A. There is a case in Nigeria and soke cases in Egypt. These falls within the tropics.

The virus survives in the human body. Science will tell us more about its relation with climate and environment.

Q. Is Kenya really prepared with this corona virus? What is the fate of those students stuck in china while we are allowing chinese to enter in Kenya?

A. We should prepare. So far I do not think that we are really prepared.

The Government needs to constantly and consistently reassure as well as inform Kenyans on what they need to do.

Q. We hear the term self-quarantine. What does that mean and can it work?

A.

Self-Quarantine is not measurable and it is difficult to enforce.

Even though many countries may recommend it, it only succeeds in systems where tracing of person at low risk is perfect.

It is only recommended among highly informed and perhaps homogeneous groups. Not very easy.

Q. What is KEMRI doing? Are you aware of any research ongoing on a potential vaccine, or even treatment?

A. We can only research on what we do.

KEMRI can help us with documenting experiences, education and learning from countries that already have coronavirus.

They can also use this opportunity to develop testing capabilities so that we do not have to send samples to South Africa.

Q. Why did Kenya have to take tests to South Africa for confirmatory?Does it mean we don’t trust our capability?

A. The Coronavirus is a new. That is why it is called novel Coronavirus disease 2019 aka nCOVID 1.

So development of capacity depended on how quickly information was shared and how the available technology can support testing. We did not have capacity.

Q. What are the measures would you advise one to take individually to prepare for #COVID19?

A. Hygiene measures.

Wash hands for at least 20 seconds using soap and water regularly.

Practice cough and sneeze hygiene.

Stay away from persons who are sick unless you are the care giver in which case use protective gears.

And use hotline numbers when you think you need help.

Q. We are beginning to get into the usual flu season. How can one distingush between the regular sniffles and the corona virus?

A. It will be difficult to distinguish the two based on symptoms alone.

Only clue is travel or contact history.

Then we use the lab to confirm.

We should not panic. We should simply prepare at an individual and community level.

Q. What would preparedness for a possible outbreak of the pandemic mean in practical, measurable terms?

A. Preparedness for the pandemic.

1. Education

2. Separate Isolation facilities for quarantine of low risk persons and isolation of affected persons.

3. Tracing of caregivers, persons in contact with affected & travellers from epicentre.

3. Protective measures for health workers

Q. So compared to the CFR of Ebola Zaire strain that went over the roof, why the hype about this COVID-19? What is it that the public is not being told?

A. It is still possible that if Coronavirus got itself to Africa, we can have case fatality rates of 50%.

Remember Ebola had very low fatality in the USA compared to Zaire and Congo.

It all depends on the resilience and responsiveness of the healthcare system.

Getting Your Workplace ready for COVID – 19.
Guidelines from @WHO @AnneKiguta @K24Tv

https://t.co/Mav5LrqyWj

— Dr. Ouma Oluga, OGW (@fnoluga) March 1, 2020

In search of love during the valentine season, Kenyans looking for love in dating sites are getting malwares instead. Increased internet traffic to dating sites in the country has opened a new avenue for cyber attacks cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has revealed. Kenyans are among the African users falling prey to malware disguised as dating apps.

Cyber criminals are using popular dating services names such as Tinder, Bumble or Zoosk to spread mobile malware, steal personal data then later bombard the users with unwanted pop up advertisements or even spend their money on expensive paid subscriptions.

We are at the age of social media, a 2020 Digital Trends report recently revealed that out of every 11 minutes spent on a mobile phone, 10 minutes are spent in an app and Tiktok a new short skits social media app boasted of a super impressive 800 million monthly active users, ranking it 6th among the most popular apps in the world.

Tiktok has taken the Kenyan smartphone aura by storm, becoming the fastest growing destination for short-form mobile video. But during these tough times for Kenyans, how can people monetize the time they spend on the app? you probably guessed it, This inevitably involves influencer marketing.

You have a TikTok profile, next step is creating content which people will welcome and like continuously. You shouldn’t just make a TikTok account entirely focused on increasing followers as fast as possible, although this is the goal, your content should bring you the numbers.  On any social media app, once you amass a good amount of following the next thing is to monetize your content.

So you have a popping Tiktok, you’re getting thousands of views, now what? If you’re lucky enough, you will get approached by brands to showcase their products on your videos. Usually brands offer money to influencers for their promotion, influencer marketing. Brands are always looking for a way to get people aware of their products and once you identify brands you want to work with, you can as well approach them.

“Approach brands that may benefit from you as an influencer and offer them sponsorship post at cheaper price. In the first phases, try increasing your portfolio of sponsorship clients to make you a trustworthy influencer.” A Quora user states.

Both online and offline shops can also benefit from Tiktok, owners with a decent amount of following can advertise their products and with new features from within the app that lets users add links in their bio and posts, which can direct their followers to shopping sites or any other destination, this is a plausible idea.

Making videos to earn money is becoming a reality, Don’t get me wrong, for example Kenya’s top 100 YouTube list is dominated by channels of well-established companies, but there are a few names of channels belonging to individuals that have sprung out recently. If you would’ve told someone you want a career in making videos a decade ago you’d have had to get a mental check done, but in this new digital era, anything is a career.

Verisign, the private company which administers the .com domain, will be allowed to increase prices by more than 70 pc over the next decade, Internet registration outfit ICANN has announced. This means the price of the domain names may go up for the first time in eight years.

The regulated price of .com registration has been frozen at sh790.10 ($7.85) since 2012. Consumers don’t normally see the price and may have paid more or less depending on the registrar but this is the price domain registrars ended up paying per registration.

The proposed agreement is expected to result in the price rising up to nearly Sh1358 ($13.50) per domain over the next 10 years.

Verisign, which has a contract to oversee .com domain will be free to raise the price by up to 7 pc every year over most of the next decade with the only exception being during 2024 and 2025 when the firm will be be required to pause price increases.

ICANN has also agreed to remove price restrictions on .org domain names despite a major outcry, .org domains, are normally used by non-profit organizations.

Just as non-profits will be required to pay more for .org domains, businesses or individuals looking to register new .com domains going forward will also feel the weight. The move has sparked a lot of debate and criticism all over the world.

In the end, it may be registrars that feel the biggest impact, followed by developers, and in Kenya that may mean taking bread off another struggling freelancer’s table. It gets worse.

A few months ago, Kenya Insights run a story on Huawei Technologies Co., the worlds largest telecommunications company had publicly been selling legal security tools that African governments use for digital surveillance and censorship. Reports from the United states government now claim thatthe company is now posing as more risk by being able to tap into its mobile equipment via backdoors.

How safe are you as a Kenyan using the companies smartphones? it is no secret that Huawei is working with Safaricom with the latest venture being the Fuliza overdraft service. The two companies recently received the Most Innovative Service Award at AfricaCom 2019 for the mobile financial service.

“Fuliza is empowered by the Huawei Mobile Money Finance Overdraft Platform which allows design, development and deployment of innovate finance products. This platform was created to enable credit overdraft facilities in multiple payment scenarios in a highly secure and stable way.”

Safaricom also worked with the Chinese giant telcom Huawei in providing infrastructure support for the Sh14.9 billion security tender in a controversial move given that Huawei was disqualified in a similar tender two years before after it was found to lack the capacity to execute the project. The project has since faced a lot of criticism  after it emerged the multi-billion surveillance system installed  along highways and buildings cannot store images and data for more than a month.

Only the US has so far put in regulations against the Chinese technology giant even with proof  the company has been offering illegal services to the highest bidder.

Cheap is great, free will cost you. Czech cybersecurity firm Avast Software s.r.o which owns popular free products such as Avast Antivirus and its subsidiary AVG is reportedly selling your web browsing data via a subsidiary called Jumpshot. This means that users who thought they were using freeware have in real sense been paying with their data.

Investigations were initiated jointly by Vice’s Motherboard and PCMag after Adblock Plus creator Wladimir Palant reported in October, 2019 that the Avast Online Security Extension as well as the AVG Secure Browser spy on users, harvesting their information.

Palant claimed that user information—which included a unique user ID, the page you visited, whether you’d visited that page before, and other information— was being provided to third parties, and suggested that Jumpshot could be a possible destination. (Avast acquired Jumpshot in 2013, and a statement on the company’s website says that it “provides insights into consumers’ online journeys by measuring every search, click and buy across 1,600 categories from more than 150 sites, including Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Walmart.”).

Jumpshot subsidiary has relationships with firms like Google, Pepsi, Microsoft, and Home Depot. PCMag and Motherboard managed to gain access to internal documents and a sample of data from Jumpshot, and they found Avast is tracking user clicks down to the second. Here’s an example of Jumpshot’s data format.

Device ID: abc123x Date: 2019/12/01 Hour Minute Second: 12:03:05 Domain: Amazon.com Product: Apple iPad Pro 10.5 – 2017 Model – 256GB, Rose Gold Behavior: Add to Cart

In above example, details of someone making a purchase on Amazon.com, including the exact time they hit add to cart including the specific product has been provided.

Previously, Avast had claimed that the data sold has been “de-identified” and hence can’t be used to personally identify users, the investigation found that the anonymized data can be linked to individual users by matching user actions. “The data is fully de-identified and aggregated and cannot be used to personally identify or target you,” Avast told users who would then opt-in to data collection program.

There is an old saying: When you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product. such is the case here, beware of the amount of freeware you install.

In 2019, WhatsApp introduced a lot of useful features. The Facebook-owned company added the call waiting function, new privacy features and even a Fingerprint unlock feature that gave Android users a more secure alternative to passwords. In 2020, the world’s most popular messaging service will now start posting adverts to the Status section.

Over the years, WhatsApp has remained an ad-free messenger app, but Facebook continues to explore ways to monetize the messaging platform, with over 1.5 billion users, monetising this loyal user base by showing them commercials is the first move Facebook revealed.

Coming Soon to @WhatsApp…

– WhatsApp Status (Stories) to get Ads in 2020

– WhatsApp for Businesses to get richer messaging format options

– WhatsApp product catalog to be integrated with existing Facebook Business Manager catalog

h/t + ? @Olivier_Ptv
at #FMS19 pic.twitter.com/Z5LsbADNbP

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) May 21, 2019

The news have sparked backlash as users threaten to switch to other ad-free messaging apps like Telegram in 2020.

‘Nice. I’m sure half the users will switch over to Telegram,’ one person wrote.

Another Twitter user added: ‘Alright, well, goodbye WhatsApp.

Just switch to @telegram or @signalapp already 🙂

— Adrian Kwiatkowski | Retrospection EP out now! ✨ (@adriank1410) May 23, 2019

Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former Yahoo employees who founded the app in 2009 and sold it to Facebook both left the company after the new management expressed the direction they want to embark on with the app is more business minded which directly contradicts one of their long-standing promises about the company.

In 2012, WhatsApp vowed it would never introduce advertising on the app or gather vast amounts of data on its users.

‘Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product,’ it wrote in a blog post. ‘Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.’

So what does this mean for user data and privacy?

‘At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out.’ Whatsapp wrote.

Maybe it is time to ditch the app!

Technology giant Apple is Reopening its bug bounty program to the latest publicly available versions of  iOS , iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS, The company is promising researchers who find and clearly report issues to Apple Product Security a lucrative payout, depending on the bug discovered. The instructions are strict where a full chain exploit will have to be submitted with the report.

The revamped bounty program was announced back in a Black Hat conference in August and is now open. The programme has payouts ranging from Sh 10 million ($100,000) to Sh 150 million ($1.5 million) on its different bounty categories such as bugs in iCloud, device attacks via physical access, network access with user interaction among others.

This new addition in Apple security could be a response to the myriad problems with the buggy iOS 13. iOS 13 software update was rolled out last month and with it came new cool features such as picture editing, menstrual tracking and improved privacy features, it also brought along a myriad of  bugs.

Google  and  Facebook  have also opened up bounty rewards for researchers and hackers to put their security practices under the microscope over the past year. Microsoft, Yahoo, Chrysler and United Airlines have also had bug bounties.

Cybersecurity researchers are reporting that more than 267 million Facebook users had their personal data exposed by an online database that collected their names, Facebook IDs, and phone numbers leaving them vulnerable to hackers, texting scams, and phishing schemes.

The private information was shared to a popular online forum frequented by hackers, which was discovered by cybersecurity firm Comparitech in collaboration with security researcher Bob Diachenko. The database was available online without a password to anyone who accessed it for about two weeks, according to Bob.

While researchers are yet to establish how the database was created, they believe the operation could be run out of a criminal network in Vietnam. Diachenko said records belonging to 267,140,436 people were exposed.

The analyst says the data was potentially compromised through an API that gives developers access to back-end data, such as friend lists, groups, and photos.

Facebook has come under fire in recent years because of what some perceive to be lax security protocols. the most famous being the incident with related to Cambridge Analytica- The company that mined Kenyan voters’ data to help President Uhuru Kenyatta win disputed elections.

“Facebook, Twitter, Google and other technology companies that facilitate or amplify work by outfits such as Cambridge Analytica are complicit in poisoning democracies around the world.” Celebrated journalist Larry Madowo on “How Cambridge Analytica poisoned Kenya’s democracy“

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK), has approved the planned merger of Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya, The firms still have to wait for approval from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) but this go ahead deal that could challenge market leader Safaricom’s dominance in the country’s telecoms industry was set up on Safaricom’s terms.

On September 3rd, Safaricom acting CEO Michael Joseph demanded the pair to clear a debt of Ksh.1.3 billion for the provision of various services which accrue back, distinctively, to the two operators.

It is therefore not a surprise that while greenlighting the merger, the conditions set in place will notably favour safaricom. The merged entity, to be named Airtel-Telkom will be restricted from entering any other sale transactions in the next five years. “However, in the event of any indication of a failing firm within the period, the Communications Authority shall conduct a forensic audit at the cost of the merged entity,” the CAK notice states.

This condition will seek to block any other telco merge with Airtel-Telkom thus seeing Safaricom retain its market leader position.

Telkom will also have to surrender one of its spectrums to the government when it expires, that is its 900 megahertz (MHz) and 1800MHz in Safaricom’s favour. Safaricom had sought to see the rebalancing of frequency allocations in a manner consistent with market share as the market leader denoted the higher allocation of spectrum to Telkom-Airtel against their lesser share of mobile subscriptions, a move which Telkom said was set out to frustrate the process as a means to sabotage the proposed deal.

Airtel and Telkom are expected to retain at least 349 staff from the current pool of 674 with Telkom being ordered to keep a minimum 114 members of its staff.

The firm, which is expected to be firmly in place next year, will also have to pay market rates to use the State-owned National Optic Fibre Backbone Infrastructure (Nofbi), which is among the facets of the Telkom business that will not be transferred to the merged operator.

Combined Airtel-Telkom will have a market share of 32.7 pc, a third of the market,  Safaricom will have 63.5 pc, this is going by a survey by the CA as of June this year.

More details and leaks about the new iPhone smartphones set to be released next year are here with us. according to Apple analyst Ming Chi-Kuo who has had a very good leaks record, the giant smartphone company will be releasing five new smartphones in 2020.

Apple unveiled three iPhone’s in 2019 as per the multi-million dollar tech giant’s tradition, the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and and iPhone 11 Pro Max, In a similar trend as can be seen with the camera’s the number will only continue to grow.

Tipping the company to push out more iPhones than ever over the next 12 months, Kuo in a research note obtained by 9to5Mac says there will be four iPhone 12 variants released in the second half of the year 2020, following an iPhone SE 2 which will be released in the first half.

The SE 2 will be expected to have a design similar to the 4.7-inch iPhone 8 with updated internal specs, that is newer A13 chipset and 3GB of RAM, the phone will also feature one rear camera, and won’t support 5G. It will aso come complete with a Touch ID home button.

The four iPhone 12 models will include a 5.4-inch phone with two rear cameras, a 6.1-inch phone with two rear cameras, a 6.1-inch phone with three rear cameras, and a 6.7-inch phone with three rear cameras. The phones will also feature OLED screens and support 5G. In terms of design, the phones will use a flatter metal frame to resemble the iPhone 4.

Apple’s 2020 flagship is also rumoured expected to include a more sophisticated three-dimensional camera, The camera system will have new technology never seen before. Read more about the camera here.

Kuo also noted that Apple’s 2021 flagship iPhone will not have the Lightning port (don’t get excited yet), Apple will still not replace the proprietary port with USB-C; rather, it will rely on an entirely wireless experience for charging and syncing. Apple has received major backlash over the years over the failure to adapt to the new USB type C as their Lightning is the most malfunctioned charger perhaps to bring them major profits from resells. Taking too twitter, people expressed their thoughts on the no ports iPhone;

Us: You gonna keep that lightning port forever?

Apple: Don't make me

Us: Maybe it's time to move on

Apple: You don't know what you're doing

Us: Seriously USB-C is the future

Apple: I'll do it

Us: Wait what

Apple: https://t.co/NSwwvKGe0M

— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) December 5, 2019

“Apple apparently hates the idea of an open interconnect on the iPhone so much that it would rather give you NOTHING than give you USB-C” Dieter Bohn writes.

Users on popular social media platform Twitter earlier today experienced significant reduction in their follower counts after the platform performed a purge.

Users have also reported being locked out of their accounts and or being suspended. It is unclear whether the purge is related to Twitters earlier announcement to delete inactive accounts or an attempt to rid the platform off bots.

This week, twitter introduced new terms an conditions that if not followed would lead to account termination “Hello, To continue using Twitter, you’ll need to agree to the current Terms, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Use. This not only lets you make the best decisions about the information that you share with us, it also allows you to keep using your Twitter account. But first, you need to log in and follow the on-screen prompts before Dec. 11, 2019, otherwise your account will be removed from Twitter,” said Twitter.

Twitter had earlier announced that They would delete accounts which had been inactive for more than six months, Twitter then announced they had decided to halt the process due to customer feedback. Users wanted to be able to memorialize old accounts of friends, partners, family members, celebrities, and other influential Twitter users who’ve died.

However, Twitter Support clarified that they had an inactive account policy that needed to be implemented. “This impacts accounts in the EU only, for now. We’ve always had an inactive account policy but we haven’t enforced it consistently. We’re starting with the EU in part due to local privacy regulations (eg, GDPR).”

Here’s a couple of tweets of Netizens reacting to the purge;

https://twitter.com/BelAkinyii/status/1201859222176174083?s=19

Lost approx 100 followers in an hour. According to insights, these accounts are fully suspended or deleted by twitter. Is anyone else facing similar issues?

— Tanisha (@Connect2Tanisha) December 3, 2019

Has anyone noticed the Twitter purge? I just lost +200 followers in a minute.

I had noticed that my following and engagement had been dropping and assumed it was because recent ranty stuff, but apparently, others are seeing similar.

Bots and dead accounts?

— Peter McCormack ?‍☠️???? (@PeterMcCormack) December 3, 2019

https://twitter.com/british_son/status/1201833541815939072?s=19

Any Samsung smart TVs from 2010 and 2011 will no longer be able to support Netflix as of  December 1. The streaming service which has been the go-to service for many people when it comes to timely and easily approachable entertainment,  has said the move is as a result of “technical limitations”.

“We have notified all impacted members with more information about alternative devices we support so they can keep enjoying Netflix uninterrupted,” the company said in a statement recently.

Samsung in a statement said: “Samsung was recently notified by Netflix that as of 1 December, the Netflix app will no longer be supported on selected 2010 and 2011 Smart TV models…For consumers with these models, there are still many other devices supported by Netflix that can be connected to a Smart TV in order to access the app.”

As long as you have one of the supported devices, like a game console, streaming media player, or set-top box, you’ll still be able to watch Netflix on your samsung TV.

The drastic changes do not stop there though, Netflix has also dropped support for seven older streaming sticks from Roku as of this month. These are the Roku 2050X, Roku 2100X, Roku 2000C, Roku HD Player, Roku SD Player, Roku XR Player, and Roku XD Player.

If you have any of these devices as your source of home entertainment and really value Netflix entertainment, you might want to rethink your choices.

Additionally, Older Vizio smart TVs will also lose Netflix. To see if your device is supported by Netflix, you can find the full list of supported devices here.

Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam popularly known as just Akon has been quietly building his own “futuristic” city in Senegal named after himself. The Senegalese-American artist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and actor has done just about everything from launching his own cryptocurrency to providing scaled solar power solutions throughout 18 countries to date in Africa.

The musician announced on June last year that he was working on building a hundred percent crypto-based city. Talking on Nick Cannon’s radio show Power 106 Los Angeles, the songwriter announced that constructions has started.

The Hip-Hop businessman explained that building “Akon City.” has been underway since March. The city will have its own air terminal for residents and tourists to fly in and out of. To build the city’s economy Akon plans to use his own cryptocurrency called AKoin. Akon plans for the city to be “renewable” with a focus on solar energy. “It’s Akon City. It’s all renewable, the Akon-tainment solar city. A real physical place, it’s going to have a real airport.” The record producer said in the interview.

The modern city will be based on 2,000 acres of land that were allegedly awarded to him by Macky Sall, the president of Senegal. The new city will take 10 years to build. “It’s a 10-year building block so we’re doing it in stages. We started construction in March and stage two is going to be 2025,”

The legendary US singer, who is of Senegalese root, Akon, has stayed discreet in affirming whether he is a billionaire or not and after Cannon hinted that it would take a billionaire to build an entire city, Akon criticised the term “I always felt like if you have to label yourself a billionaire, I don’t think billionaires even label themselves billionaires. You know, you have no idea. But the crazy part about it though, when I hear stuff like that it makes me sad.” He said, “When I travel, I see so many things that happen – so many people that need assistance and so many things that just need to be resolved – and if you can have a billion dollars sitting in the bank while you have all these people suffering and struggling? Man, it’s just crazy.”

“It’s like a waste of a billion dollars sitting there, literally,” Akon says.