Author: Duncan Pike

It feels like it wAs only the day before yesterday when Eskom pushed South Africa to Stage 5 load shedding after a turbulent Easter weekend. If you thought things couldn’t get any worse… where have you been for the last few years? Following yet another unforeseen breakdown of a generating unit at Medupi power station, the state-owned power utility has sent the country into Stage 6 load shedding “until further notice”. Eskom doing Eskom things We guess that means the already-worrying schedule for the rest of the week (that EskoM published only yesterday) is already outdated. A day of Stage…

If you use WhatsApp, there’s a good chance you use it (or can’t but would like to) on more than one device. But WhatsApp has always been limited to a single ‘main’ account on one smartphone tied to your mobile number, regardless of the combination of devices. Until now… kinda. The eagle-eyed folks at WABetaInfo reported that the messaging platform’s new companion mode has received a wider rollout to beta testers, after first being available to a select few. The Google Play Beta Program has even opened up (at least it was at the time of writing) so if you’re…

There hasn’t been a shake-up in the premium wireless active noise-cancelling headphone scene in a rather long time. Anyone that knows at least a little about the industry could probably list the companies and their products that sit atop most critics and reviewers ‘best of’ lists. If you’re trying to do that now and said Sony, Bose, Apple, and Sennheiser, you’d be spot on. But that hasn’t stopped other companies from trying to compete for a spot among the best. Shure is one of those companies with its Aonic range of products. We’ve spent some time with Shure’s over-ear Aonic…

After a tumultuous Easter weekend load-shedding schedule, that ranged from no shedding to Stage 3, Eskom recently announced the return of Stage 5 load shedding, much to the country’s delight. According to its most recent Power Alert, the current Stage 3 shedding will continue until 17:00 on Tuesday, 11 April. Thereafter, we’ll have to endure Stage 5 shedding through Tuesday night until 05:00 on Wednesday morning when we’ll switch back to Stage 3 until 16:00, followed by some more Stage 5. The load shedding itch that Eskom can’t scratch Feedback from Evening Peak 10/04/2023 (18:38) Eskom Availabilty: 25 920 MW…

We haven’t even reached the halfway point of 2023 yet and Samsung has already announced and launched its next round of devices. Following its Unpacked event in February where it launched its Galaxy S23 devices– and possibly the best smartphone of the year with the Galaxy S23 Ultra – the South Korean smartphone manufacturer has now brought its Galaxy Adevices to South Africa’s shelves. This time ‘round, the trio of mid-rangers includes the Galaxy A54, Galaxy A34, and Galaxy A14. If you’re familiar with Samsung’s stable, you’ll notice the absence of an A74 device which used to be the company’s…

Stuff had the chance to check out Sonos’ latest batch of smart speakers, the Era 100 and Era 300, with our own ears during their local launch. The smaller of the pair, the Era 100, is positioned to replace the Sonos One Gen 2. While the latter was released in 2019 and sold for R5,500, the Era 100 and its slightly larger R6,500 price tag are sort of expected. The Era 300 most closely resembles the Play:3 which was discontinued back in 2018. The pair have considerably different purposes. Back then, the Play:3 sold for $300, so the Era 300’s…

There’s no denying that Lamborghinis are among the world’s most recognisable automobiles. This holds true whether you’re talking about the Countach from the ‘70s or any of the Italian automaker’s hypercars since then. The new Revuelto is no different, at least on the outside. It’s a completely different story when you peek beneath the bonnet. That this is the company’s first plug-in hybrid hypercar is sure to rustle the jimmies of die-hard fans. Or induce some head-scratching at the very least. Lamborghini’s best reason to go green It would be a little naive to think Lamborghini would somehow regard itself…

Music streaming giant Spotify has announced another new feature that still isn’t Spotify HiFi or even remotely related to lossless music streaming. So we have to ask, does anyone actually care? Statistically, there’s probably at least one person out there that will so we shall also attempt to. For their sake. The new Niche Mixes ‘feature’ is geared towards two main groups of listeners – the people that can’t exist without their Airpods in their ears and the lazies that like listening to curated playlists but don’t want to go through the effort of creating any themselves. Spotify has a…

Twitter is set to receive yet more changes in what the platform’s owner Elon Musk calls “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.” To us? It looks like someone is feeling the pinch. The incoming changes involve removing the ‘old’ blue verified check marks, conditions for a user’s tweets appearing in the ‘For You’ recommendation feed, and voting in polls on the platform. The push for more Twitter Blue subs The first change we mentioned, was announced on 24 March. You may remember, after taking ownership of the company last year, Musk started tinkering. The…

Still don’t have one of the three current-gen gaming consoles? You’re probably not alone. When the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles launched in November 2020, the improvements over the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X|S made them rather popular. The state of the world at the time certainly didn’t make getting your hands on one any easier. If you still have a PS5- or Xbox Series X-shaped gap on your shelf and were hesitant to pull the trigger, this is the sign you’ve been waiting for. How much is that console in the window? Starting tomorrow, 29…