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Talking about trying out new things, Zimbabwean director Ben Mahakais launching his next drama series over WhatsApp.
That wasn’t a typo. Yes, WhatsApp. It’s an interactive drama series that’ll containemojis, texts, stickers, voices, and photos.
In today’s edition:
- Why half the internet was down on Tuesday Morning
- Nigerian Lawmakers invite Minister of Information on Twitter Ban
- What happens to your crypto when you die?
About half of the internet was down yesterday morning
Yesterday, on Tuesday morning, multiple social media, government and news websites across the globe experienced outages.
The long list of sites affected includes Social network Reddit and Twitter; news websites like Financial Times, New York Times, Bloomberg, the BBC and The Guardian. Other sites like Amazon, PayPal, Spotify and Twitch were also affected.
What causes this?
The massive outage appears to have been caused by an outage at Fastly, a US-based cloud computing service provider that powers a content delivery network (CDN) .
What’s a CDN?
In simple terms, A CDN is a service that allows popular websites to keep copies of their pages closer to their customers. It increases the speed at which websites load.
Got it, can this happen again?
It’s possible it’ll happen again as there are few major providers like Akamai and Cloudflare but these outages are usually short-lived.
Zoom out: “This incident is a reminder that the infrastructure that supports much of the internet is operated by a relatively small number of companies. When one of them has a problem, it can lead to widespread global outages that affect billions of people.” As per The Conversation.
Read more: Fastly global internet outage: why did so many sites go down — and what is a CDN, anyway?
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Nigerian Lawmakers invite Minister of Information on Twitter Ban
Today makes it the fifth day since the Nigerians have been denied access to social network Twitter. Since the announcement of the suspension of Twitter on Friday, the controversial decision has stoked national conversations and attracted international criticism over the last few days.
Looks like there’s some progress
Nigeria’s House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution to investigate the legality of the suspension of Twitter in the country.
The investigation by lawmakers represents the first major move by the legislative body on the suspension of Twitter and comes after widespread criticism from Nigerians over the silence and inaction of the National Assembly since the ban was imposed.
How are Nigerians ?
Nigerians continue to use Twitter, however, thanks to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that have helped bypass the ban. In response, the Nigerian Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has ordered the immediate prosecution of people still making use of the microblogging platform. The country’s broadcast regulator has ordered television and radio stations to suspend their use of Twitter.
Big Picture: The Nigerian government is made of three arms – Executive, Judiciary and the Legislative – meant to put each other in check. It’ll take more than an invitation to make the executive arm reverse it’s position on this ban, but at least it’s a move in the right direction.
Future Africa has invested $3 million in 13 African startups in 2021, doubling its fund deployments for 2020. It’s invested in companies like Termii, Ongair, Lami and Stitch and is on the way to invest $10 million this year.
Read its announcement here.
What happens to your crypto when you die?
If once is a fluke and twice is a coincidence, then three times is a trend.
In 2018, $250m worth of cryptocurrency became missing/inaccessible after Gerald Cotten, the CEO of the crypto exchange Quadriga, unexpectedly died at age 30.
The search for Mathew Mellon’s crypto wallet is still on, three years after his death. In 2018, the businessman who’d turned a $2m investment in the cryptocurrency Ripple into a reported $500m+, died without telling anyone where his private keys were stored.
Every day people around the world die and an increasing amount of them own cryptocurrencies.
So what happens to their crypto when they die?
Crypto isn’t like other Assets
Unlike regular assets, which are registered under a legal name and subject to oversight, digital assets like Bitcoin and NFTs don’t have a central regulatory authority as per the Hustle.
Crypto investors maintain their own assets using digital wallets that are only accessible via a password or a private key — a 256-bit long string of alphanumeric characters that is only known to the account holder.
How are people planning?
One way is by informing friends and family of where to find and access a detailed list of their crypto assets. This method could be flawed but it works.
Another approach is to use crypto inheritance platforms like TrustVerse, Clocr and Casa who are providing a better alternative at a cost.
Zoom out: Whichever option you choose, except you want to die with your bitcoin, it’s best to start thinking about this.
Read more: What happens to your bitcoin when you die?
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– Brad Smith, President of Microsoft
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– Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market
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The Business of creating content
How do you successfully create and monetize content?
This Friday, June 11th at 11 am, Fisayo Fosudo – a content creator/YouTuber will be discussing with Edwin Madu -Senior Editor at Techcabal on what it takes to create great content and make money off it.
Fisayo will be sharing tips he’s learned from creating content on his YouTube channel, building an audience, and getting paid for his efforts.
If you’ve got big dreams about your content creation career, you don’t want to miss this one.
Note: By clicking on the registration link for this event, you’ve indicated interest in the event and will get an invite to attend. To opt out, please ignore the invite
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