Author: Duncan Pike

Things have been a bit rough in Mzanzi over the past few months. Following the third COVID-19 wave hitting us hard and the civil unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, businesses and people in the affected communities have suffered. FNB is attempting to assist with relief measures by rolling out mobile ATMs to some of the affected areas starting with Dalton and Harding while other units will be at Jozini and Richmond. It will also deploy units to Vosloorus, Sebokeng, Diepkloof and Orange Farm in Gauteng. FNB mobile ATMs aren’t much, but they’re a start In a press release…

Ariana Grande is the latest to headline Fortnite's Rift Tour Image: Epic Games We finally know who will be headlining Fornite's next Rift Tour: Ariana Grande. If you missed it, Epic announced last week that it would be holding its next virtual Fortnite concert and now they've revealed the headliner. The tour will have five shows and kicks off

Windows 11 has been officially available for insiders — what Microsoft calls its unpaid beta testers (folks like us) — since 28 June and unofficially available since a little before that. Microsoft has three different channels it uses for releasing updates to its OS. Until now, the Windows 11 preview builds have all been in the dev channel, which Microsoft says “is perfect for highly technical users”. As of yesterday, Microsoft released the first Windows 11 build to the beta channel, which “is perfect for early adopters…[who] still need reliable updates”. The builds that Microsoft ‘flights’ here (by that it means ‘releases’) are generally…

If you, like the rest of the world, have been biding your time and waiting patiently for GPU prices to drop, this could be your time. AMD will be releasing the new Radeon RX 6600 XT on 11 August for a recommended price of $379 (R5,500). At that price, AMD aims to position the new entry-level card to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 3060, aiming to provide high frame rates at 1080p. But, with an MSRP that starts at $329, AMD better make good on its claims that the RX 6600 XT offers the same increase in performance over the RTX…

We’re over halfway through 2021, and it doesn’t look like the chip shortage is easing up, at least not for the rest of the year. It is also the time of the year for the big companies to give the shareholders something to chew on, or in this case, cause not to panic. In a conference call to investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook reassured them by saying “We’ll do everything we can to mitigate whatever circumstances we’re dealt.” Your guess would be as good as ours as to what that actually means. But if we were to hazard a guess, the smart…

This weekend, which according to 343 Industries starts today, Halo Infinite will get its first technical multiplayer preview. However, it’s important to note that access to the preview is by invite-only, but nothing is stopping you from applying. Whether or not you’re picked to be a part of this test is up to the people at 343 Industries. The short preview, running from today (29 July) until Sunday (1 August), will allow players to test various multiplayer aspects of the free game mode launching later this year. Halo Infinite bots are waiting to be shot In this first Halo Infinite preview, selected…

Aside from being a fun and engaging platform that allows users to connect with distant friends or host virtual gatherings and meetings, Discord has other more nefarious uses. Sophos, a UK-based security software and hardware company, released a new report that details how the app is often used to distribute, control and host different forms of malware. Discord has been steadily growing its userbase over the past few years, so much so that it was in talks regarding a $10 billion buyout with Microsoft. Those didn’t amount to anything but you can see why it’s to be expected that with all the new ‘good’…

There have been several updates to the Africrypt story that broke a few months ago, around what is quite possibly the world’s largest-ever potential cryptocurrency scam. Now, a US-based South African-born forensic investigator, Hamilton Cheong, is assisting authorities to track where all those bitcoins went. Cheong’s company, Crypto Investigation Bureau, specialises in information security and securing its clients’ crypto-assets. In this case, they are using a self-developed track-and-trace program called ‘God’s View’ to trace the movement of funds into and out of Africrypt controlled wallets. Hopefully, Cheong and his team will be able to shed some light on what exactly occurred…

When you think of processors and the manufacture thereof, you would assume that the companies that come to mind — Intel, AMD, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Qualcomm and Samsung — are all trying to do the same thing but better than the others, making them competitors. However, what many people don’t know is that, while many companies design their own chips there are only a few that actually make them. Of the companies mentioned above, only Intel and Samsung both design and manufacture their own chips. But the former has recently started expanding its foundry capabilities and will start manufacturing chips for other…

Lucasfilm thinks ‘if you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em’, and that’s just what it’s done for Shamook, one of the many deepfake content creators on the internet. What makes Shamook’s work stand out, however, is that it’s actually good. Better, one could argue, than the work of a multibillion-dollar company in some cases. The particular video that got him noticed was his improvement of the Visual Effects (VFX) that were used to de-age Mark Hamill for his cameo in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, sorry spoilers. Shamook announced in the comments of one of his videos, that he had been…