Author: Duncan Pike

McLaren South Africa unveiled its first series-production plug-in hybrid supercar, the McLaren Artura, on Saturday, 12 November, at an intimate launch event in the Daytona showroom at Melrose Arch. This isn’t the first hybrid from the British car maker. The P1 and Speedtail preceded it. But those were specialist vehicles with a limited production run. The Artura marks McLaren’s first proper step towards the brand’s electrified future. The start of a new beginning This first step starts with a completely new platform, dubbed McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture (MCLA). The twin-turbo V8 engine of old is replaced by a smaller 3.0-litre…

After an extended in-person hiatus, the rAge Expo will make its return to a physical Johannesburg event this year from 9-11 December. Unfortunately, it won’t be returning to the Coca-Cola Dome, that’s full of cars now. Instead, the festivities will take place at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand. Putting Africa on the map Part of the festivities this year include the live finals for the Intel Africa Masters Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. This will be the largest esports tournament on the African continent… so far. Teams from Egypt, Nigeria, North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), and South Africa are…

Local wireless internet service provider Rain and GPU maker Nvidia are teaming up to finally bring South Africans access to Geforce Now. The partnership and subsequent agreement were announced today, Thursday 3 November but the service will only kick off in Q1 2023 with a limited beta program. Gaming on cloud Nvidia If you’ve had your head in the sand, Geforce Now is Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. Much like how Netflix allows you to watch movies you don’t have, Geforce Now lets you play games you don’t have on a PC you don’t own. It doesn’t even have to be…

Ever wanted to buy bread at Pick n Pay, but forgot your real money at home? Pick n Pay is now accepting Bitcoin as payment in 39 of its stores. It plans to expand the service to all stores in the country “in the coming months”, it said in a statement. Crypto to the masses Pick n Pay started the project as a small pilot in 2017 in the canteen of its head office in Cape Town. That obviously proved successful. It then expanded to ten Western Cape stores over the last five months. Now, the retailer has included a…

One would think a country with a limping power grid would be opening up new power stations – not closing them down. On Monday Eskom announced it was shutting down the last remaining generation unit at the coal-powered Komati power station. “Unit 9 was commissioned in March 1966, the last of nine units that were built. Other units were shut down over the years as they reached the end of their operating life, a legislated requirement,” the power utility said in a statement. Is that load shedding we smell? If the next thought through your mind was ‘here comes more…

If you’re looking for a new smartwatch and you’re on Android, your options are plentiful. Are you the adventurous outdoorsy type? Or are you more interested in workout tracking and checking your calendar? There are options for both crowds and everyone in between at varying price points. Many of Samsung’s past offerings have featured at or near the top of our Top Ten Smartwatches. The Watch 4 Classic currently holds the top spot. But where does the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro fit in? Has Samsung done enough to displace its previous champ? That’s what we’re here to answer. At face…

Solar power is charging up across SA as Heineken South Africa officially launched the country’s largest freestanding solar plant powering a brewery on Wednesday, 26 October. It’s a good move for the Earth (and Heineken’s bottom line). The 190,000 square-metre plant features 14,000 photovoltaic (PV) panels with a total generation capacity of over 6.5MW. It will account for 30% of the Sedibeng brewery’s power draw and is expected to produce 17,000MWh in a year. It makes the beer taste brighter (probably) It will contribute a large chunk towards Heineken’s goal of brewing sustainably and reaching net zero carbon emissions by…

In a move no one saw coming, Eskom will continue to implement load shedding for the rest of the week and over the weekend, jumping between different stages at different times of the day. So far, the highest stage we’ll reach is stage 4 with an incremental reduction over the weekend. But, as is usually the case with these updates, the situation is fluid. If you’re filling in your planner, use a pencil. Taken by surprise At 05h30 on Thursday morning, Eskom supplied the country with the latest update on its power situation. At least for the present. As usual,…

In May this year, Microsoft made a host of announcements at its Build developer conference. One of those was a dedicated Arm-powered hardware solution for developers sporting a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) for AI capabilities. Or ‘Project Volterra’ for short. Yesterday, Microsoft took the wraps off Project Volterra. Behold, the slightly disappointingly-named ‘Windows Dev Kit 2023’. Devs only, no gamers allowed This new bit of kit features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip with 512GB of NVMe storage and 32GB of RAM for a palatable $600 (R11,000). Before the PC Master Race starts clamouring to get their sweaty…

Earlier this week, Apple quietly unwrapped its newish entry-level iPad and a slightly updated iPad Pro along with a new, cheaper Apple TV streaming set-top box. There was no big stage, pre-recorded video, live stream, or Tim Cook in this announcement. Just a few press releases on its website. Entry-level bar raised with new iPad Apple’s entry-level iPad received the most upgrades in this refresh. Those include a few notable internal upgrades, a modern redesign (the first in five years), and a price increase. This brings the entry-level iPad up to its 10th generation, in line with the rest of…