Author: Marcé

The Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) act was recently deemed unconstitutional by the High Court on 13 January 2022. The act planned to introduce a demerit points system on motorists’ licences in the case of infringements.  Now it has been found that the online portal that logs these infringements exposed the personal data of every South African who received an infringement notice under the law. This is according to a report by MyBroadband that received information from an anonymous independent security researcher.  The researcher found that the exposed information included full names, ID numbers, residential or business addresses,…

An increased number of South African institutions are launching initiatives to help citizens go about daily life. We’re talking about things South Africans have to complete on a regular basis, like vehicle licence disk renewals. If you own a vehicle, you have to renew those disks annually. Retailer Pick n Pay has launched a system to help.  The retail group is trialling a new system that will allow motorists the ability to renew their vehicle licence disks. The system functions either in-store or online.  According to the group, customers throughout South Africa can visit a store to renew the vehicle…

The COVID-19 pandemic affected many different parts of daily life. Now we could sneak in a quick online game in our lunch break and cook nutritious meals while working from home. Meetings and conferences moved primarily online, which meant we’re missing out on the social aspect of meeting in person.  But this, in particular, had another not-so-surprising effect: a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. According to a study conducted by Cornell University, moving a professional conference online reduces its carbon footprint by up to 94%. But we have to see people at conferences “We all go to conferences. We fly,…

Finally, South Africans have more choice when it comes to television content. For many years, the pay-TV market was dominated by Multichoice’s offerings, including the well-known DStv. But its time may be short. The broadcaster will reportedly lose R3 billion in South Africa over the next 5 years The linear broadcaster is currently one of the most expensive options in South Africa, but its monopoly is fading. We’re here to tell you there are other options. In many cases, these options are cheaper.  At this point names like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+ shouldn’t sound foreign to…

Samsung may be the number one smartphone producer in the world but its fans aren’t always happy with its products.  Samsung fans in South Africa, Europe and Latin America have historically only been able to get their hands on devices sporting the company’s own SoC, called the Exynos chip. Many fans believe the Qualcomm Snapdragon counterpart, available in the US, is the more powerful SoC.  If South Africans wanted to get their hands on a Snapdragon-powered Samsung device, they would have to import it.  Samsung’s Exynos is not dead On 11 January 2022, the company was scheduled to announce its…

The entire world has reshifted its focus to promote more sustainable solutions to those we currently use. A major one is petrol-powered vehicles, which are slowly being replaced by electric-powered ones. In South Africa, EVs have been mostly unaffordable for the middle-to-lower class. Enter the Eleksa CityBug – the most affordable EV on the market in SA currently.  We reported on the launch of the CityBug back in mid-2021, but the vehicles weren’t yet licenced for local roads. Now, Eleksa’s tiny EV is ready to ship to the driveways of interested South Africans for R230,000. CityBugs crawling on SA roads The…

In 2021 Motorola managed to treat the world with a foldable reminiscent of one of the most-used phones from the ‘90s – the Razr. Nostalgia–fuelled millennials were quick to jump on the hype train, and the new foldable-display Razr was born, helping bear a new age of smartphones.  Now the brand seems set to launch a successor in the form of the Razr 3. The rumour mill has managed to churn out possible specs for the confirmed device, including chipset configurations and some display specs.  Razr is back, back again The first ‘new’ Razr launched back in 2019, and we…

We don’t often consult fortune-tellers, but when we do, the future isn’t always peachy. At least, that’s the case for Multichoice. According to a new report by television intelligence firm Digital TV Research, DStv will lose half a million subscribers and R3 billion in revenue in South Africa by 2027.  The Africa Pay TV report, published this week, details the expected future of television services in the continent over the coming years. While Multichoice’s market share will continue to grow in most of Africa, South Africa presents a different scenario. DStv’s fortune is clear South Africa will have about 9.2…

Remember the days when your full name, ID number, and final matric exam result were published in the national newspaper? Same here. Sadly, that time is done. SA’s Department of Basic Education has revealed that it won’t publish learners’ personal information publicly from this year. That’s thanks to our old pal POPIA (the Protection of Personal Information Act).  “In order to comply with the provisions of the POPIA, the usual practice of publishing the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results on public platforms (media platforms) will not occur for 2021,” the department said. Matrics playing with POPIs Students will now receive…

This week, Google accused Apple of ‘bullying’ and ‘peer pressure’ for displaying Android messages in green on the iPhone’s default messaging app, iMessage. This comes after a Wall Street Journal report that detailed that US teens prefer iMessage to other messaging services.  When using the messaging service, iPhone-to-iPhone messages occur over mobile data and are displayed in blue bubbles. When a pleb Android user sends an iPhone user a message, it’ll happen as an SMS and display in a green bubble on the iPhone.  “We’re not asking Apple to make iMessage available on Android. We’re asking Apple to support the…