Author: Marcé

“You can take our lights. You can take all our frozen food, but don’t you dare take our WiFi from us.” — ancient South African proverb. Load shedding is here to stay, boys and girls. Which means we need to start planning for the future. Like how we’re going to manage to watch Stranger Things S4 in April or how we’ll manage to scroll through Instagram mindlessly tomorrow night by candlelight.  What if we told you there is a way to keep your WiFi on during load shedding? It’s not a completely foolproof idea, as most of it depends on…

Open-source software has evolved to be integrated into every part of our lives. Even if we don’t necessarily know it. Proprietary software will likely become almost redundant as we move into cloud-accessible open-source options. Toby Shapshak speaks to Red Hat’s Lee Miles to delve into more accessible software. “When development is distributed, the risk of failure goes down.” Red Hat provides open-source solutions and software options to businesses and individuals. It focuses on high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies — but the portfolio is growing as the software industry ‘opens’ up. The top areas where open-source software is being…

Although South Africans have no chill most of the time, it is apparent that we like the ‘Netflix’ part. According to FNB, its customers spent close $500 million in subscription and gift card purchases from Netflix, Showmax and Spotify. 

After weeks of intermittent connection problems, South Africa’s link to Europe has been restored. As from the early hours of Wednesday morning, 19 February, all of SA’s internet connections should be up and running.  The extensive restoration process took a total of 34 days, once the breaks were found. Yes, there were multiple breaks — something almost unheard of in undersea internet cables.  This simultaneous cable break occurred in two of the Atlantic Ocean based submarine cable systems: the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (Sat-3/Wasc) and the West African Cable System (Wacs). The most recent fix was conducted by…

Before you continue fawning over Samsung’s shiny new S20-range and the flippity flip phone, we’ve got an important PSA: Budget is beautiful too!

One app to rule ‘em all, eh Microsoft? The software company has been working on an all-encapsulating mobile app that includes access to all of its Office apps — Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Following months of beta testing, it has released the app for Android users. 

The March 2020 issue of Stuff Magazine is on shelves today, which means that you all have another instalment of ‘What tech do I need this month?” And this month is a biggie. 

Betelgeuse, our fave red supergiant star has been acting increasingly strange If you haven’t been following Betelgeuse’s recent strange history, here’s the lowdown. So, Betelgeuse is a gigantic red supergiant star -- it’s the 10th brightest star in the sky, or it was at least. Over the past few months it has dimmed so dramatically

Facebook CEO and lizard overlord Mark Zuckerburg decided on deploying a web of internet-beaming satellites in space way back in 2014. In the meantime, SpaceX has successfully sent almost 300 satellites up for its Starlink service. So… who’s winning the race? Beaming internet from space isn’t a new idea, the problem has always been execution. ‘Cos you know, sending things into space is an absolute mission. It takes up a lot of fuel and resources, so not everyone has that luxury. Except if you own and run a successful space agency.  Dreaming of the skies Starlink, a branch company from…

Can the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s ‘Space Zoom’ actually zoom into space? We only had access to the handset for a limited time, so couldn’t wait for optimal space viewing conditions. But next time!  We tested the newly announced flagship’s 100x zoom capabilities on one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious towers, and here’s what we found. Samsung