Author: Marcé

It may be time to dig out your British TV box sets and sell them off quickly because the next streaming service to enter South Africa will render them fairly useless. BritBox, the streaming service created by the BBC and ITV is launching in South Africa on 6 August. This will be the service’s fifth territory after the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia. It’s proper BritBox, yeah? While the platform brings ‘1,000s of hours’ of British favourites, it’s also been offering its own original content. That means this is the largest collection of British programming you’ll essentially find…

If you’ve ever bought a product or paid for a service from a small vendor or business, you may have encountered the small portable card machines that connect to the merchant’s phone. Those are made by Yoco, a South African company that offers a full payment solution to SMEs in SA, and with about $83 million in hand, it plans to expand beyond our borders.  It secured $83 million (around R1.2 billion) in its Series C funding. While it initially offered physical card facilities, Yoco also launched its digital payment portal recently, making its offering pretty comprehensive. The company’s certain…

State-owned ports and freight rail company Transnet’s websites have been down for a week. This followed reports that a cyber-attack had affected Transnet Port Terminals (TPT). The state agency downplayed its seriousness, initially calling it a ‘disruption on its IT network’. Now we know it’s a full-blown security threat, thanks to a force majeure notice sent to its customers this week.  According to Moneyweb, which has access to a copy of the confidential letter, it states that the recent hack was “an act of cyber-attack, security intrusion and sabotage.” The notice has since been confirmed by industry sources and was…

Apple may be working on its smartest display ever. It’ll also be its second standalone display, ever, following the existing Pro Display XDR. A new rumour details what could be that one’s follow-up, featuring Apple’s lightning-fast A13 Bionic chip and the company’s Neural Engine. Why would a display need a neural engine? Your guess is as good as ours at the time of writing. If you’re equipped with a Mac-branded machine from the past year, you’re already well-equipped with the M1 chip. The company’s iPhone 11 smartphones run on the A13 Bionic, which means the screen may feature some smarts…

Up until now, the only thing you could really buy with bitcoin is more crypto, NFTs and some products/services from US-based retail platforms/stores. Now we may be able to add another one to that list — Amazon.  Finding coin in the Amazon One of the most noteworthy online retail platforms in the world (barring a few countries, including South Africa), may soon accept the virtual currency called bitcoin on purchases made through its system. This is according to one anonymous ‘insider’ who claims the retailer is building the capability into its platform as an “integral part” of the company’s future. …

Last week, we reported how Pegasus, the spyware developed by the NSO Group was found to allow remote access to a group of journalists’ smartphone data. It was even found that South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s name and number was found on a database of suspected spyware targets. Now, WhatsApp’s chief Will Cathcart detailed that the recent investigation’s findings coincide with a major attack on the app in 2019.  WhatsApp’s sympathies via GIPHY According to Cathcart, the data captured in the investigation by major media houses detailed similar information to what WhatsApp found during its major attack two years ago.…

South Africa’s very own state-owned (partially, at least) telecommunications company, Telkom, will see a change in leadership soon. Its current CEO, Sipho Maseko has announced that he will step down from the position after nine years.  “The process to appoint a successor is well under way and a group CEO-designate will be announced in the not-too-distant future. Sipho would, for the remainder of his tenure, ensure the incoming group CEO-designate’s orderly transition into the role,” the company stated, according to TechCentral.  Telkom’s captain steps down Hailed as the man who helped turn Telkom’s reputation around, Maseko joined the company in…

“Isn’t… the point of GIFs not to have sound?” – Brett Venter, Stuff editor.  via GIPHY (yup) The internet’s unofficial main distributor of GIFs, Giphy, has announced that it is teaming up with Spotify to bring some sound into the mix. The pair plans to “give GIFs a soundtrack,” according to Engadget, and we only have one question: Why? Spotify’s pushing buttons According to the report, Giphy users will be able to search for an artist (musician, we reckon) on its platform and click on a ‘listen on Spotify’ button which will redirect to their page. Of course, this is…

When you spend R12,000 on something, you would expect to find at least something small for mahala in the bag, right? While that doesn’t happen with the PlayStation 5, Apple’s been generous enough to gift every PS5 owner (in supported countries, of which South Africa is one) six months of Apple TV+ for free.  That’s… longer than the three-month trial period Apple device buyers get, so feel special! If you own a PS5 console, that is. Unfortunately, the special offer doesn’t apply to any other consoles (PS4, PS3 or any competitors).  The offer applies both to newcomers to the streaming…

You know which features are the best features? The ones no one asks for and become widely used. We reckon this will be one of those: Twitter is testing a ‘downvote’ button on tweet comments which will allow users to downvote comments they dislike.  The feature will work in a similar manner to Reddit’s downvote mechanism, which helps show users the best content first, pushing bad content down into the depths of ‘I didn’t scroll that far’. According to some users, the downvote button started showing up in the iOS Twitter app.  Twitter is kinda Reddit backwards It’s part of…