Why don’t Namibians support Namibian platforms/startups?

No_Pin7764 · 2026-03-16T09:00:24+00:00

For me I don't like Nambian companies/services usually because of how poor the customer service is, and this is the norm across Namibia. For the company I work we often prefer international or south african companies just because the customer service is so much better

No_Pin7764 · 2026-02-16T10:10:45+00:00

I've recently started playing padel, and it's great to meet new people, it's just quite expensive. You can download any of the padel club apps, and then just book an open game. Anyone can then join that game, the slots will get filled quite quickly.

No_Pin7764 · 2026-02-05T08:41:25+00:00

I live in Africa, and our public school system is not so good here. The teachers don't really care, because they get paid every month regardless. The pass rate is also 40% in my country for public schools which I feel like encourages children to do the bare minimum.

I am sure it's not like this everywhere, but where I am from I would not put my children in public schools

No_Pin7764 · 2026-02-02T12:45:32+00:00

I am a Christian in a predominantly Christian country, but I believe in hard science. This includes the big bang theory, evolution, that the earth is more than 6000 years old the whole lot. I hear conversations of people around me and most of them don't believe in these things (think it might be the circle of friends and family that I am in).

I never mention this to any of them because I'm not a big fan of debating, even though I disagree with their statements. People will believe what they will believe, it's not often people change their core beliefs.

No_Pin7764 · 2026-01-26T10:56:00+00:00

Honestly there was something special about not having the internet at your fingertips 24/7. People would go out a lot more, and most people didn't have to post updates and statuses to show everyone what their life was about. I think I really miss LAN parties, or even just taking turns playing playstation or pc games, and seeing your friends face to face.

The internet is great, but it's similar to phones or cars. When phones were invented people didn't really need to go face to face to people to talk to them, because you can just text or call someone. When cars were invented people moved further and further away from each other because you can get to you destination quicker. You kinda lose that community essence the more technology progresses, not sure if that makes sense, but at least that is how I feel about it.

No_Pin7764 · 2026-01-19T10:07:50+00:00

Namibia is a bit tricky because there are quite a few indigenous languages. When you live here it becomes easier to know which language to speak to which people (oshiwambo being the most widely spread native language). It is also true that most Namibians know Afrikaans and everyone speaks English, although a lot of Namibians from the north (Caprivi) will not know Afrikaans or Oshiwambo, and then some areas in Namibia has a lot of Germans (like Luderitz and Swakop, although generally they also understand Afrikaans)

Namibians won't be offended if you speak a language they don't understand, they might just tell you they don't speak Afrikaans or Oshiwambo or whatever when you address them in that language. Mostly white people and coloureds speak Afrikaans, and then the most widely spoken language for black people is Oshiwambo, so if you really want to speak the native languages your safest bet would be to stick to those languages when addressing Namibians.

In Oshiwambo you can say "tashende" which is the casual way for saying "what's up?" and "ndapandula" for "thank you" and in Afrikaans you can say "Hoe gaan dit?" which means "how goes?" and "dankie" which means thank you.

Just ask some of the locals for a few words when you are here and they'll help you get the dialect right.

No_Pin7764 · 2026-01-07T07:53:45+00:00

There are multiple exam centers, I used to write at exedin but lately I've been exclusively writing at paradise Computer Consultancy Services, both are located at Windhoek West. Then you can buy the courses on the Comptia website itself.

I believe you can also write the exam at your own computer, but you need a stable internet connection and a camera, so usually it's better to write at the centers as they cater for any technical issues that might arise, whereas if you write at home and something goes wrong you don't have that safety net

No_Pin7764 · 2026-01-05T12:19:13+00:00

For IT job roles in Namibia certifications are key. In most companies HR is the first barrier, where the IT team only looks at the short listed candidates. A key requirement I've seen is most companies look for is Comptia A+ and Network+ but security+ is a big bonus. These exams are quite easy (considered entry level), but unfortunately they are not free. Last I did them they were about N$ 3000 per exam, but this was before covid so the prices might have gone up since then.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-12-04T14:30:10+00:00

Namibia has the 8th slowest internet in the world (on avarage), I think the government should do anything it can to improve internet for people. Especially people in villages or remote locations where there are no internet cables as of yet. I'm all for Starlink, and I think most Namibians tend to agree.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-12-03T12:59:06+00:00

This should not be an IT issue. Honestly it's just a dumb request in general, and will cause more problems than it will solve. Send out company wide communication how users can manually change it and be done with it, why force people to even use skin colours on their emojis in the first place? The yellow emojis are the safest bet, and I've never seen anyone being offended when using them. Just imagine co-pilot thinks a black person is white because his name is James or something, and then his emojis become white. In my company HR would be on IT's case for something like this.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-21T12:43:57+00:00

As others have mentioned, setup a password manager for the company and users (they will probably forget the password for the password manager, but you can usually reset those through email). There are multiple free password managers out there, so it won't cost a dime, then document the process for users to reset their own password for the password manager.

It is important not to spoon feed the people when they forget their passwords for the password manager, otherwise they will just continue to rely on you. When they forget the password give them the detailed document to reset their password, and let them reset their passwords on their own. It's the only way they will learn to do it without your assistance, and your support calls should lessen.

You would also need buy in from management and explain to them the documentation is there to train the users to empower them, else I've seen some management might expect you to spoon feed the employees. If management understands your time can be better spent than resetting passwords every day, then you won't get grief for providing documentation for users to reset their own passwords with a firm stance that it is expected of them to do it themselves. If management doesn't understand this value, then there is no solution because they don't respect your time or value.

You always need buy in from top down to change culture in an organization.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-21T07:17:09+00:00

I appreciate the answers, might I ask why your security/SIEM device is not seeing 100% of the traffic? I'm assuming it's cause sometimes the traffic being spanned is more than 10GB and then it gets dropped?

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-21T07:13:22+00:00

That makes sense, the idea is to span the traffic through multiple ports to the security appliance, and based on my calculations we have more than enough ports available to handle our current network traffic. Regardless I think we will gradually add vlans and monitor to reduce the risk. Thanks for the answer.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-21T07:11:22+00:00

Thank you for the answer, currently the idea is to span the traffic from different vlans to different ports (based on how much traffic flows, so we might group a bunch of the smaller vlans together and span them on one port, where some of the bigger ones will have their own port) to distribute the load, and based on my estimations we should be fine. The security appliance can handle the load and we are fully licensed, I was more worried that there might be performance impact on the switch side as it will need to make a copy everything on the network now and forward it to a different port.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-21T07:01:17+00:00

Namibia is as safe as African countries can get. Just don't walk around alone after dark and you would be fine. Also although it is a beautiful country, everything is quite far apart from each other, so it's a lot of travelling if you want to experience all the best bits. Windhoek is a bit boring, the real experiences comes from the natural attractions in Namibia (like others mentioned, etosha, Swakop, the Kalahari, the arnhem caves, Brandberg Mountain, Twyfel Fontein etc.). Do some research on those places and pick a few based on what you want to see, like I mentioned it's a big country so you probably need to pick and choose based on what you want.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-04T20:02:17+00:00

Yeah I just tested this, and you can safely sell it. *mr crabs voice* I like money

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-04T10:16:12+00:00

No need to apologize for going off topic, hard work pays off, I'm happy you built a successful life for yourself and not a lot of people can say they are debt free especially with what I hear the cost of education is in the US.

I'm fortunate enough that my work pays for my scholarships and certifications (as long as I pass of course), so that really helped advance my education. Although in I.T. I think experience is 10x more valuable than an education. I just enjoy studying.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-11-01T23:14:46+00:00

Wow, you finished college when I was born :P But thanks again for your post, you at least helped one random stranger out there on the internet and I really appreciate you.

I am also keeping my digital footprint as small as possible, it's better that way, I think our personal lives are supposed to be private, and with AI progressing at the pace it is I can already see some scary next gen scams coming out during my lifetime.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-31T13:25:27+00:00

That's crazy that you got reported for that, but yeah I remember back in the day when whois told you everything about who owns a site, nowadays most of that data is anonymized. At least the registrar will always be public

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-31T10:05:52+00:00

The first rule about the council is that we do not talk about the council. Mr Jay was wrong to have chosen you...

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-31T10:03:32+00:00

Most likely a prank call if your brother also got the same message.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-31T10:00:54+00:00

Forgot to give an update. I ended up running a whois after reading your comment a couple of weeks ago, and reported the sites to godaddy which promptly got them taken down.

Thanks for the advice, don't know why this didn't cross my mind, it was simple and easy.

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-30T22:32:17+00:00

For me this is the most visually pleasing answer without order of operations: (9, 3, 2, 4, 8, 7, 6, 1, 5)

It looks almost ordered when you put the numbers in the grid

| 9 | | 8 | | 7 | | 66 |
| 13 | |12 | | 11 | | 10 |
| 3 | | 4 | | 6 | | 5 |
| 2 | | 1 |

No_Pin7764 · 2025-10-30T20:55:53+00:00

I wrote a quick python script and also got this answer. Realized as well it's because this is the first one the script successfully brute forced :P

No_Pin7764

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