Author: The Conversation

Website cookies are online surveillance tools, and the commercial and government entities that use them would prefer people not read those notifications too closely. People who do read the notifications carefully will find that they have the option to say no to some or all cookies. The problem is, without careful attention those notifications become an annoyance and a subtle reminder that your online activity can be tracked. As a researcher who studies online surveillance, I’ve found that failing to read the notifications thoroughly can lead to negative emotions and affect what people do online. How cookies work Browser cookies…

Andrew Kerr, University of Cape Town Millions of South Africans rely on minibus taxis to get around. Without these vehicles, people wouldn’t be able to get to work, school or simply visit friends and family. Data from Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force surveys suggest that there are around 250,000 minibus taxi drivers in the country; there are likely about the same number of minibus taxis. Statistics South Africa’s 2020 National Household Travel Survey, meanwhile, indicates that 60% of households report taxis as their main mode of transport and the 2014/5 Living Conditions Survey showed that 79% of households reported…

When one of our students told us they were going to drop out of college in August 2021, it wasn’t the first time we’d heard of someone ending their studies prematurely. What was new, though, was the reason. The student had become a victim of a cryptocurrency scam and had lost all their money – including a bank loan – leaving them not just broke, but in debt. The experience was financially and psychologically traumatic, to say the least. This student, unfortunately, is not alone. Currently there are hundreds of millions of cryptocurrency owners, with estimates predicting further rapid growth.…

Now that Rajesh and Atul Gupta have been arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there is a great deal of speculation as to when the brothers may ultimately set foot on South African soil to face charges of money laundering and other financial crimes. The brothers are the alleged kingpins behind state capture in South Africa – the massive corruption and repurposing of state organs for private gain during the ruinous reign of their friend, former president Jacob Zuma. They fled South Africa for Dubai in April 2016. The judicial commission into state capture and corruption – Zondo Commission…

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, recently made an offer to buy the social media network Twitter for $44 billion. In a statement Musk declared Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. His reference to the ‘town square’ immediately recalls two familiar concepts. Firstly, it is a reference to the ancient Greek town square or Agora of 2,500 years ago where issues of the day were debated. It is on this ancient town square where…

Legal cannabis consumption rose in the US and Europe during the COVID pandemic, with some people turning to marijuana to help them cope with lockdowns and broken routines. Meanwhile, fewer people today view the drug as harmful compared to previous decades. These factors may have contributed to a trend towards cannabis-related tourism, with destinations developing new holiday products to tempt customers, and rising travel bookings to destinations where cannabis is legal. But there are risks for both destinations and tourists in embracing this trend. Work by MMGY Travel Intelligence found 29% of leisure travellers are interested in cannabis-related tourism. A…

READER QUESTION: I am 59 years old, and in reasonably good health. Is it possible that I will live long enough to put my brain into a computer? Richard Dixon. We often imagine that human consciousness is as simple as input and output of electrical signals within a network of processing units – therefore comparable to a computer. Reality, however, is much more complicated. For starters, we don’t actually know how much information the human brain can hold. Two years ago, a team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, US, mapped the 3D structure of all the…

Narrative frames are fundamental to unifying ideologies. They frame what is possible and impossible, which ideas can be accepted and which must be rejected. In her book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics, storyteller and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola examines the framing of the Fourth Industrial Revolution narrative in this light. She argues that it is being used by global elites to deflect from the drivers of inequality and enable ongoing processes of expropriation, exploitation and exclusion. During a recent policy dialogue on the Future of Work(ers) she commented: The real seduction of this idea is that it’s apolitical. We can talk…

Apple has joined the thriving “buy now, pay later” industry, with a customised service called Apple Pay Later. The service was announced earlier this week at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference, and will initially be launched in the United States later this year. Pay Later will be built into the Apple Wallet and eligible for use on any purchase made through Apple Pay. Customers will be able to split the cost of a purchase into four equal payments, with zero interest and fees, spread over a period of four months. To qualify, however, Apple will first do a soft credit…

Economists are growing increasingly concerned about South Africa’s economy. This is because the country’s three major macroeconomic problems – lacklustre economic growth, growing inflation and very high unemployment – have been exacerbated by a series of major disruptions. These include the COVID pandemic that started as a health crisis but escalated quickly to an economic crisis. Millions of people lost their jobs as economic activity came to a halt under lockdown. In the middle of the pandemic violence that lasted for eight days erupted in Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng. Further pressure has been piled on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…