Author: Brett Venter

Educating young minds is hard. That’s why teachers go to university for years before they’re allowed to shape a country’s youth. But parents all over the country have to take on that role now and have found out — this bears repeating — teaching is hard. Ubisoft hopes to make it at least a little easier. The Magic School… Computer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjlyJEEa5g Ubisoft’s got a freebie available for… well, everyone. From now until 21 May, you can get your hands on the PC version of Assassin’s Creed’s two Discovery Tour releases. This feature was released as DLC for both Assassin’s Creed…

Lockdown might still be at Level 4 but restrictions appear to be easing. Just… not the ones you really, really want to ease. As of this afternoon, online stores can sell their entire inventory once again — except, of course. alcohol and cigarettes. Being economical The change was announced today in a new set of regulations. Basically, online stores can now sell everything — not just the limited amount stock that South Africa’s physical stores were permitted to sell. The easing of online retail restrictions goes into effect immediately, though South African etailers and their attendant couriers will have to…

So you’ve got your eye on a shiny new MacBook Pro, do you? Hopefully, you’ve been saving your pocket change (and car change, and shopping change and just… saving generally) — Apple’s new Magic Keyboard-toting machines will cost you at least two-thirds of an arm. Apple’s upgraded computing hardware launches this weekend in South Africa and pricing for the 13in machines starts at R29,000. That’s enough to get you a Touch Bar, a 1.4Ghz 10th-gen Intel Core i5 and 256GB of solid-state storage. Setting the Touch Bar higher There are, of course, pricier options. Every 13in MacBook Pro launching this…

Huawei’s P30 Pro — the smartphone so good that Huawei released it twice. Sound about right? That’s just what Huawei is doing with a second release of the handset, known as the P30 Pro New Edition, heading to market soon. But why? The reasons for it should be obvious. The P30 Pro was one heck of a smartphone, but it’s got the dubious distinction of being the last Huawei smartphone released (for a while, at least) with Google’s Mobile Services installed. The phone first launched in March last year, was re-released in September (with a new colour scheme) and is…

The world isn’t a very nice place to inhabit at the moment. It’s times like this that we should think back to the good times and Activision has made that a little easier by announcing a remastered Tony Hawk bundle for launch later this year. The bundle consists of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2, suitably tweaked and upgraded for modern consoles. Oh yeah, you can get your grind on on PC (via the Epic Store), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One from 4 September this year, with all of the classic runs and gameplay modes. Only this time the…

Finally, someone’s gone and figured it out. Social media company Twitter is letting its employees work from home. Not for the duration of a lockdown or the pandemic but for good. Speaking to Buzzfeed, Twitter confirmed that it’s allowing staff to get the job done without going into the office. Twitter staff have been at home for the past two months but the change is being made permanent. A Twitter spokesperson said “We’ve been very thoughtful in how we’ve approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model. We’ll continue to…

While literally everyone is taking strain during the current pandemic, it’s an especially trying time for smaller businesses. Lacking the bank accounts of larger companies, they’re basically burning cash as they wait to get back to work. And, when employment resumes, they’re going to need all the help they can get. Help that Facebook thinks it can supply. Support group The first way Facebook’s trying to give smaller businesses a leg-up in the time of COVID-19 is by launching a new *checks notes* sticker. Yeah, that’s right, a sticker for Instagram that says Support Small Businesses. Which might come in…

Lockdown continues, which means not many of us are getting out much at all. But there’s relief on the horizon. Sadly, not a lessening of restrictions (though that would be great), but literal relief, for the country’s poorest by way of the R350pm COVID relief grant. And, provided those poor folks have access to a smartphone — as much of the country does — nobody has to go out and apply for it. 

Researchers have found several hardware vulnerabilities in Intel’s Thunderbolt port which could give malicious actors to everything on your machine. The good news is that they need five minutes with your physical hardware to do it. 

Normally we’d start something like this off by saying ‘Only in South Africa’ but… zoombombing isn’t only in South Africa. This is just the most high profile incident so far. A National Assembly meeting today, hosted on video conference platform Zoom, was zoombombed using racial slurs and images of pornography, cancelling the meeting and necessitating a change of platform. Knowing is half the battle If the MPs or their meeting organisers had bothered to read Stuff, this might not have happened. There are several ways to keep your Zoom meetings (relatively) safe from intruders, provided you take the time to…