Author: Brett Venter

Word has come down from on high — South Africa goes to Stage 6 load shedding as of 12:00 today. Early this morning, the country went back to Stage 4 thanks to additional breakdowns overnight. Seems that it’s not about to get any better. Stage 6. Really?  Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented from 12:00 until further notice. This is due to a high number of breakdowns since midnight, as well as the requirement to strictly preserve the remaining emergency generation reserves. Eskom will publish a full statement in due course. — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) December 7, 2022…

DStv has at least one avenue where it doesn’t have to worry about entertainment rival Netflix. Live sport isn’t likely to make an appearance on the platform any time soon, according to comments made by co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Sarandos, speaking at the UBS Global TMT conference, said, “We’ve not seen a profit path to renting big sports today.” No love for live sport The hesitancy makes sense. As DStv well knows, sports can be a serious drawcard but buying the rights to them is incredibly expensive. That’s why most of the sporting action tends to remain locked behind a DStv…

Last year Apple’s Project Titan, a rumoured self-driving car, received a serious shot in the arm when Hyundai spilled some beans it really shouldn’t have. The Korean automaker later had to walk back its comments, but the project rumoured since at least 2015, leapt to prominence among more than just hardcore tech watchers. Unfortunately, everybody, from serious tech heads to Apple’s target customers will have to wait a little longer until they see the fruits of Project Titan. At least, that’s according to the folks who have spoken with Bloomberg. A reveal of the vehicle has been pushed back to…

Stuff has spent time with several Tecno smartphones in recent years. The Africa-centric Chinese brand offers up decent hardware to users but its software has historically left much to be desired. That, happily, may be about to change. Google and Tecno have announced a new three-year partnership that should see the smartphone brand wielding some better software in short order. Time for some new Tecno A key part of the partnership is the introduction of “an optimized user experience” for the company’s smartphone. That’s largely Google’s responsibility. Since the company is the de facto authority on Android (since Google owns…

Microsoft, not so long ago, bought a little company called Activision. Shortly after, Sony was up in arms because it thought it might lose Call of Duty on the PlayStation platform. It’s an obvious thing to be stressed about. One of the largest gaming franchises on the planet being owned by your arch-rival is bound to cause a little executive sweat. Microsoft has reportedly made Sony a second offer about keeping the twitch-shooter gaming juggernaut on the PlayStation. The initial offer, according to Sony, wasn’t adequate. Hopefully, this one is a little better. The price of the Call of Duty…

Huawei appears to have reached the wackier stage of product ideas. The company’s new Watch Buds device is an upcoming wearable device that is also a set of wireless earbuds. Because that makes perfect sense. It must make sense to someone at Huawei because the Watch Buds appear to be a real thing. The Chinese company has officially teased them on the Weibo social network, marking them for release in China. Whether we’ll see them elsewhere, and whether we’ll want to, remains to be seen. Watch Buds blossom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfx8Uj_qKnU As the name suggests, the Watch Buds are a Huawei Watch…

South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope array has already amassed quite a string of feats. It has provided new information about the universe, banded together to see more, and even picked up an absolutely spectacular shockwave in space. But now it’s time for something different. The radio telescope will embark on something altogether new. MeerKAT is about to start hunting for alien life. It’ll do this with a brand new Breakthrough Listen compute cluster. This is “…the most powerful digital instrumentation ever deployed in the search for technosignatures”. MeerKAT on a mission The Breakthrough Listen program isn’t just confined to South…

In September this year ride-sharing app Uber launched a pilot program in South Africa. Users in Pretoria and Johannesburg got the ability to record their trips via the app itself. In the event that something went wrong (or just unpleasantly), that recording could be uploaded to Uber for review and action. Now, South Africans in general have access to the feature. Audio Recording has rolled out to the country as a whole, letting anyone using the service record their trips in the best paranoid fashion. That includes drivers as well as passengers. Drivers have to pick up some sketchy customers…

It’s hard to explain just how important the 1989 Batman movie was to the current crop of superhero films. It took a comic book character, treated him (mostly) seriously, and paved the way for Marvel and DC’s prevalence in movie theatres. It also introduces non-nerds to the sheer awesome of the Batmobile. And now you can own one. Just like the now-unavailable Lego version of the same vehicle, laying hands on this particular Batmobile will be a mission. Not because they’re not in stores anymore. It’s because there’s just one available and it’s priced at a mighty R26 million ($1.5…

Last week the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) was looking to push through a new draft policy for the agency. In it, the SFPD sought permission to legally use robots to kill suspects. This week, the department attained that permission. That doesn’t mean assassination-by-robot will become the SFPD’s preferred method of interacting with criminals. And suspected criminals. We hope. But it does open the door to robots being used to blow up particularly pesky perps. You know, just in case that’s a thing that’s needed. Slow down, San Francisco Last night, San Francisco’s board of supervisors approved the draft policy…