Last week, the global digital behemoth that is Facebook announced that they’ll be rolling out the OpenCellular system worldwide. OpenCellular is said to be an inexpensive, weather-resistant and fully customisable platform that will be able to serve as a wireless access point for connecting devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi.
While this move by Facebook is no doubt just a footnote in the company’s playbook for achieving complete digital dominance, one wonders if this could signal the beginning of the end for the likes of Kenya’s BRCK— a home-grown system designed to do exactly what OpenCellular promises to do, perhaps less reliably.
One wonders if there is any chance that a minnow like BRCK can stand up to the fire and might of a beast like Facebook? It seems unlikely that BRCK has captured enough of the affordable WiFi deployment market to develop a legitimate first-mover advantage, and it’s equally unlikely that anyone over at Facebook is losing any sleep worrying about their plans being disrupted by smaller players.
Also in this week’s show, we share a snippet from a conversation Andile Masuku had with Gareth Cliff— the controversial South African Radio DJ, Idols South Africa judge, and Co-founder & President of Africa’s largest podcast producer, CliffCentral.com. Listen in to hear Gareth’s candid take on why he quit one of South Africa’s most lucrative radio gigs to found a platform that now boasts over 40 podcast titles and garners over 140,000 downloads per week.
Music Credits:
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Today I’ve got Andrew Torrez to talk about the Christian Mingle settlement and hi quite awful interaction with David Smalley. After that I offer some commentary on the shootings and related events. The next 2 shows are the promised amazing lesson on the 2nd Amendment, with Andrew. Patrons can listen to that entire recording on … Continue reading AS257: Andrew Torrez on Christian Mingle →
Show Notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep18.md PHPUgly - Episode 18 recorded July 7th, 2016 Topics A blog post called The Autistic Programmer Do PHP and IoT Have a Future Together? Pipes (||) vs OR The joys of Timezones in code. How is the best way to handle them? Laracon.us now offering a live streaming package Laravel Package Mailthief A peak at VueJS 2.0 and what to expect The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com
Forgotten Superheroes of Science: Bryce Bayer; News Items: A Psychiatrist Falls for Exorcism, fMRI Validity, Juno at Jupiter, First Autonomous Car Fatality; Who's That Noisy; What's the Word: Paroxysmal; Your Questions and E-mails: Jet Fuel; Science or Fiction
It?s often said that we should all be aiming to get eight hours of sleep a night. But could it actually lead you to an early grave? Research shows that sleeping for longer, or shorter, than average is associated with an increased risk of disease and mortality. But what?s causing the health problems, and should you really give up the lie-in? Ruth Alexander looks at the latest sleep science with Dr Gregg Jacobs from UMASS Medical Center, US; Professor Franco Cappuccio from Warwick University, UK; Professor Jim Horne of Loughborough University, UK; and Professor Shawn Youngstedt of Arizona State University, US.