Marty de Beer

Thistle

Is that a Springbok jersey?

Cape Town just approved 2 new data centres so big, they’d cover 14 rugby fields. And Capetonians are not happy… The data centres measure 120 000m2 of development, planned for the King Air Industria site near Cape Town International Airport. Here's what we know so far: • The Cape Town Municipal Planning Tribunal approved the land use application from King David Country Club, the landowner • The plan rezones 3 erven into one General Industry zone and removes an old limit that kept floor space under 300 000m2 • A small land swap with the City (involving a substation) is part of the deal • US company Equinix is set to build the facilities • Estimated needs: up to 174 megawatts of electricity and 4.4 billion litres of water a year for cooling The application didn't spell out exactly how much water or power the centres will use, or what their greenhouse gas emissions will look like. For a city that came within a hair of Day Zero water droughts and a country that's lived through years of blackouts/loadshedding, you can understand why citizens are concerned. Some see it as essential digital infrastructure and investment for Cape Town. Others argue that approving a project this size without answers on water and energy demand is putting the cart before the horse, especially with scarce resources already under pressure. Groups opposing the approval say the public deserves those numbers before a project like this gets the go-ahead, not after. From what I have learned, there are currently 4 large data centres proposed for Cape Town. If approved, they will consume 34% of our electricity. There is also a 400 megawatt facility planned for Durban, proposed to be the largest in SA. This will consume 25% of Durban's electricity. Many countries are declining to build data centres, with the USA lobbying against building them. Switzerland is building their alternative to big tech AI called Euria. It runs on renewable energy, and the heat that the servers generate is recycled into 6000 homes in Geneva. What do you think about the newly approved data centres for Cape Town? Let me know in the comments. Image: the site where the data centres are to be built. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

This is the new UK Business Secretary. His name is Jonathan Reynolds. He has never worked in business. Oh, and he pretended to be a qualified solicitor on several occasions when he wasn’t.’

Proof That BMW Drivers Secretly Want a Mercedes?⁣🤣😂 What you're looking at started life as a 1998 BMW Z3 2.8 with a manual gearbox. However, its owner, clearly a passionate petrolhead, has gone to incredible lengths to give it a full body conversion to look like a classic 1956 Mercedes-Benz SL Roadster.⁣ ⁣ The commitment to the cause is impressive. Finished in Pearl White, the conversion even includes Mercedes-Benz stickers placed directly over the original BMW badges on the standard Z3 wheels and steering wheel.⁣

Volkswagen Motorsport once developed a one-off 200 kW prototype based on the Citi Golf using a turbocharged five-cylinder engine, but it never entered production. The prototype remains part of Volkswagen’s collection.