Author: Marcé

As the country’s plunged into its latest round of load shedding, Amazon Web Services’ servers based in the Northern Cape begin receiving renewable power from its new solar plant. The plant was recently completed and has a capacity of 10MW.  Don’t get too excited yet, though. The shiny new renewable energy plant was constructed to generate up to 28,000MWh of power per year for the US-based company’s local server farms. In addition, it’s in line with South Africa’s 2030 renewable energy goals, according to the company. The amount of power it’s generating could easily power up to 8,000 South African…

UPDATE: Eskom has announced Stage 4 load shedding will commence from 14:00 on 5 November and end at 5:00am on 6 November. Well, that didn’t last long. Eskom, the state-owned power utility has announced that it’s implementing Stage 2 load shedding today, Friday 5 November 2021 from 11:00 am.  “Regretfully, Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented starting at 11:00. A unit at Lethabo and Majuba were delayed in returning to service. A unit at Tutuka tripped,” the utility announced via a tweet.  It isn’t clear from the Twitter thread (it’s adapting its communication methods, clearly), how much generation capacity…

Telkom has announced an internet service that may appeal to the majority of South Africans — prepaid fibre packages. In contrast to most fibre contracts that run for lengthy periods, these will allocate internet usage over a certain amount of days according to the package. Kind of like buying mobile data, but it’s not mobile. Right.  The prepaid data packages are uncapped, meaning users can use as much as they’d like, and is set at 25Mbps upload and 25Mbps download. That’s decent. Just to put that in perspective, Afrihost charges almost R600 p/m for a 25Mbps up and 25Mpbs down…

Stuff says –  4/5 There’s one thing Huawei always gets right: and that’s wearable design and aesthetic. Of all the smartwatches available on the market, the Huawei Watch 3 is one of the best-looking. It’s also the company’s first wearable to natively run its own HarmonyOS in lieu of Android/Google WearOS.And you know what? We were pleasantly surprised by its snappy performance, health tracking capabilities and activity tracking functionality. New operating systems always bring about higher levels of doubt — but HarmonyOS feels sleek, well-designed and mature for its age. Of course, you may run into niggles here and…

While the top percentile of South Africa’s earners wait patiently for more electric vehicle (EV) options to make their way to the country, they can still admire newcomers in the US from afar. Ford, the company behind one of the most well-known bakkies in the country, has revealed its newest EV concept: the F-100 Eluminator. Its style is reminiscent of a simpler time, bringing the original 1978 Ford F-100 body shape and colourways along with the nostalgia you’d expect. It’s under the hood that you’ll find something a little less… greasy. Ford’s e-crate tech Previous Next Just because it’s ‘cleaner’,…

Remember that possible load shedding Eskom was teasing us with earlier today? Well, it’s been confirmed, and South Africa’s state-owned power utility just announced that it’s implementing Stage 2 load shedding from 19:00 on 2 November to 5:00 on 3 November 2021. Hello, my old friend load shedding “This afternoon a generation unit at Kusile power station tripped, adding to the constraints. A unit each at Matimba and Arnot power stations failed to return to service as previously anticipated,” the statement from 15:00 reads.  “Total breakdowns currently amount to 17,933MW,” — that’s 2,000MW more generation capacity lost than Eskom reported…

About a week ago the world reported that rental company, Hertz, had signed a deal to buy 100,000 Tesla Model 3s to bolster its EV fleet of vehicles. Turns out the deal’s not sealed yet, according to a recent tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.  There are a few things that make this story interesting: 1) the unconfirmed sale of 100,000 Tesla vehicles pushed the company’s market cap up into the $1 trillion bracket, 2) Hertz was almost bankrupt just a few months ago, and 3) Hertz already rolled out a marketing campaign advertising its Tesla fleet featuring Tom Brady. …

South Africans were mostly privileged enough not to experience planned blackouts over the weekend leading up to municipal and local elections on 1 November 2021. That bliss was short-lived, as Eskom, the state-owned power utility, issued a statement detailing that the grid is under pressure and load shedding could occur at any point this week.  “Loadshedding may be implemented at short notice should any further breakdowns occur; Eskom requests the public to reduce the usage of electricity as the power system is severely constrained,” the utility tweeted on 2 November.  https://twitter.com/Eskom_SA/status/1455441324165959687 The public requests Eskom increase generation capacity The statement…

MacBooks rarely ever receive the redesign treatment — Apple’s just one of those brands that like things the way they are. If it works, it works, right? This year, however, the MacBook Pro will look a little different, complete with more ports, new Apple Silicon and a… notch? In 2019, the company revealed its very own chips based on ARM architecture named the M1 SoC (system-on-chip). This year, it’s bringing more power to those chips, and these beefier chips are named the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The redesigned Pro devices will sport these new chips.  And South Africans can…

How much of a waste is load shedding? About 57. That’s how many days South Africans have had to endure load shedding in 2021 so far. Following the disastrous year that was 2020 (thanks, COVID), people in the country haven’t seen much in terms of reprieve. Load shedding is especially harmful to employees and gig workers who make money by working from home.  It’s clear that the utility is failing South Africans more each year. In 2019, the utility shed a total of 533 hours. In 2020, it shed a total of 846 hours — almost 300 more than the…