Violent viral videos spark social media storm around Kempton Park school

From the largest biodiversity database in the world that maps over 1.7-million species in participating countries, to the company that promises to deliver your parcel to exactly where you are in real time, geo-location technologies are already being put through their paces in South Africa. In particular, a host of industries -- although definitely not any wildlife -- stand to benefit from the location data created by connected devices. Its range of applications include everything from hyper-convenient parcel delivery services to helping marketers reach on-the-go consumers in the era of mobile. Here’s how. Mapping your audiences Location data is one of many important...

Welcome to MiniMeme, the podcast brought to you by Burn Media’s junior staff as they tackle the topics that tickle their fancy. This week Julia Breakey and Daniel Mpala talk artificial intelligence, its pros and cons, and what Elon Musk wants to do to our brains. Will robots effectively become slaves? Will they see us their God? Will they want to kill us? Mark Zuckerberg says no, Musk says yes, and we say: Let us know if you agree, disagree, or want to punch us in the face here or over on Twitter. Music by BenSound. Recommended reading: AI Open Letter -- Future of Life Institute Through Neuralink,...

It's not every day that actual weather jargon trends on South Africa's social media networks, but this is seemingly no ordinary week. Talk of a "cold front" is currently (and ironically) hot on tonight's Twitter agenda, thanks to winter's rather late but forceful appearance. With the South African Weather Service and the nation's meteorologists issuing alerts that include bitterly cold temperatures, snow in places and driving rain in others, some took to the internet to find solace and warmth laughing at others' snark and reactions. The hashtag #coldfront, although used across the country for much of the day, began trending around...

While Cape Town received a healthy dose of rain on Tuesday and this morning, it isn't the only weather phenomenon occurring in South Africa this week. Thanks to the cold front that's currently sweeping across the nation, snow, hot winds and bountiful rainfall is in the forecast for many districts for today and the rest of the week. Here are four tweets that explain exactly what weather you can expect this week in South Africa. Mega snowfalls Check out the #snowfall expected tomorrow 17 August 2017. Heavy snowfall expected in places in the Eastern Cape and KZN. pic.twitter.com/S9LHzhT6Dp — SA Weather Service (@SAWeatherServic) August...

Uptime is crucial. Most online businesses don't keep office hours, so when you need a dedicated server for that important project, you can't afford to wait for business hours. Hetzner understands this need and we now supply standard builds of our powerful range of Self-Managed servers within an hour of the order being placed, 24/7/365. Custom orders take slightly longer. Automated provisioning Our automated provisioning process enables us to offer the power and security of a bare-metal server, provisioned with high performance server specs and installed with the OS of your choice (including Windows Server) delivered in under 60 minutes. To achieve this,...

Former US President Barack Obama's recent response to Charlottesville has become the most-liked tweet in history, Twitter today announced. Quoting former South African President Nelson Mandela, Obama's tweet has accrued over 2.9-million likes to date, and continues to grow at the time of writing. "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017 "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to...

Facebook has announced a minor redesign of its News Feed that tackles the comment section, readability and those darn square profile pictures. Over the coming weeks, the company will be rolling out a few updates so that the Feed is more "conversational". The biggest of these is a revamped comments section that replaces the trusty block comments with bubbles that resemble the DM look Apple made popular with iMessage. This section -- and the rest of the Feed -- will be pulling a Twitter and replacing the square images with sleeker circles. Facebook says that these combined updates make it "easier to...

According to global analytics firm Gartner and its latest global expenditure forecast, companies are no longer taking information security for granted. The firm notes that worldwide coin dropped on information security products is set to increase by 7% year-on-year in 2017. That's an overall spend of US$86.4-billion. Driving this increase are "continued data breaches and growing demands for application security testing as part of DevOps", Gartner notes in a press release. "Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing (IAST), will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021," it adds. Notably, spend is set to increase yet...

US President Donald Trump allegedly retweeted a tweet deeming him a "fascist" before deleting it swiftly from his account. Twitter user Mike Holden was replying to a Fox News article on the potential pardon of Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is a former sheriff who violated an order to stop racially profiling Latinos, and Holden clearly disagreed with what could be Trump's first pardon as president. He's a fascist, so not unusual. — Mike Holden (@MikeHolden42) August 15, 2017 Dissent for the current president is not unusual on Twitter -- but what is unusual is a retweet from a high profile user who predominantly uses...

Update, 4.18pm: Grace Mugabe has reportedly fled to Harare after failing to appear in court. Grace Mugabe's motorcade has been spotted coming back from the airport in Harare. No ways was she going to hang around to clean up her mess — Simon Allison (@simonallison) August 15, 2017 Original article: A 20-year-old South African model has opened a case of assault against Zimbabwean first lady after she allegedly beat her with an extension cord in Sandton on Sunday, and Twitter is calling for justice. Gabriella Engels told News24 she was with Mugabe's two sons Robert and Chatunga in a hotel room when a bodyguard asked her to step...

After a stellar run of three years, Norwegian internet company Opera has announced that its data saving app, Opera Max, is officially dead. The announcement comes after a reassessment of Opera's focus areas, with browsers becoming its integral subject. "The product had a substantially different value proposition than our browser products, and represented a different focus for Opera. We, therefore, focus on our browsers and other upcoming services," it noted in a brief press release. Opera Max will no longer be updated The app itself allowed traffic to be funneled through Opera's servers, compressed, and returned to users in a thriftier package. Overtime...

Girls Trip has held on tight to the top spot it won last week, refusing to kneel to competition like Baby Driver (in second) and newcomer Son of Bigfoot. The animated film about a half-human half-Bigfoot son (don't think about it too hard) debuted in third as the first kids movie to open in three weeks (which is like five years in kids' time). But how did the other films crack on this weekend? (11 to 13 August) The introduction of the Bigfoot-hybrid meant that Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (review) was pushed down one spot into fourth. The war epic is currently Nolan's sixth highest grosser as director, behind his Batman works, Inception and Interstellar. Son of...

If you're in Cape Town and were caught in the rain this morning, don't worry, your socks will dry. More importantly, the current precipitation is adding to the positive news of this week's dam levels (pdf). For the first time this winter, dam levels have breached the combined 30% full mark, standing at 31.1% full. That's an increase of 1.7% over the previous week. In 2016, this level stood at 56.1%. Notably, Steenbras Upper dam is now 91.6% full, up by 4.2%. The Berg River Dam is the other top performer, now standing at 48.9% full, up by 4.1%. Dams in other regions...

Ah, the bittersweet feeling of watching trailers never destined for South African theatres. It's like being on Twitter when a cyclone hits Joburg, or the US holds an election -- you just have to enjoy your popcorn from the sidelines. But, hey, the heart wants what it wants and my heart wants trailers. So trailers it shall get. mother! The teaser for Darren Aronofsky's mother! was released last week, but it didn't take long for the official trailer to follow. It reveals a screaming Jennifer Lawrence, a shady Javier Bardem, bleeding light bulbs, potentially angry mobs and only a tiny bit of plot. It has everything, including a South African...

The latest in a long list of celebrities to grace Cape Town is American comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler. The 42-year-old's Instagram timeline has this week been adorned by pictures of the sights and sounds of the Mother City. While she hasn't mentioned exactly why she's in the city -- it isn't quite tourist season yet, after all -- it does seem as though she's enjoying herself. Got moving today when I needed to remind myself that you do no good sitting around and getting angrier. I fucking hate hiking. I don't anymore. #lionshead #capetown A post shared by Chelsea Handler...