Author: Trent Meikle

If you, like many, wrote off South Africa’s chances in AFCON 2024 when the hosts, Ivory Coast, kicked things off on 13 January, we bet you feel like a silly billy now. Bafana Bafana has officially progressed through the tournament and into the quarter-finals with a convincing win over Morocco in the late hours of Tuesday. It was the efforts of South Africa’s Evidence Makgopa and his 57th-minute goal against Moroccan goalie Bono (not that one) and a free-kick goal from Teboho Mokoena that put the final nail in the coffin in a match that was never really ever going…

You’ve all seen them before — concept stores that pop up all over the place, doing their best to challenge the public’s perception and drag the brand kicking and screaming into a digital future. That’s the idea, anyway. KFC Africa is looking to do something similar, having just opened its doors to what the chicken seller calls a “groundbreaking KFC concept store” found in Joburg’s Play Braamfontein precinct at 73 Juta Street. Specifically, KFC reckons its first-of-its-kind concept store is a vision of what a futuristic KFC store should look like. “It will pioneer new concepts in real-time and innovate…

Welcome to Judgement Day It has begun. Elon Musk is blurring the line between heart-beating, warm-blooded humans and wiry, cold-blooded robots. The billionaire has his hands in a myriad of pies; from electric cars to private space travel, buying Twitter (we’re still getting over that one), and his most out-there project: robotic brain chip implants. Following years of tests, Neuralink has graduated from animals and implanted the first chip into a human’s head. Musk confirmed as much through a post on X.com, before noting that the patient who underwent the surgery was recovering well and that initial results “show promising…

Now that the question has done another lap around the Sun, it’s time for it to be asked once again: is it worth sticking with last year’s Galaxy S23 or biting the bullet and getting Samsung’s AI-touting S24? It’s not a decision you can make lightly, especially when the difference could mean the difference between affording rent for the month or playing Marvel Snap without all the lag. If someone’s already footing that bill, then you might feel you deserve the upgrade. And you won’t be disappointed. The S24 is the better device on paper, but in terms of being strapped…

Oh, so now X cares about content moderation If something felt off during your daily morning search for ‘Taylor Swift’ on X, you’re not alone. That’s entirely by design, as X has begun blocking searches of the insanely popular pop star thanks to the recent influx of AI-generated imagery that puts her under a not-so-flattering light. We won’t dig into any specifics of the images, but we imagine you can guess why X, or Taylor Swift, doesn’t want those images floating around the web. Searching ‘Taylor Swift’ or ‘Taylor Swift AI’ or something similar will net you a “Something went…

Skull and Bones is around the corner (but we’ll believe it when we see it) Skull and Bones — Ubisoft’s swash-buckling pirate sim that began as an expansion to Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag — is finally coming out. We think. Ubisoft hasn’t reneged on what we thought was a tentative 16 February release date, and it doesn’t look like it will before then. Sure, we’ve got good reason to be so distrusting, having seen the tail-end of plenty of forgotten release dates, but after Ubisoft’s announcement of an open beta, our fears have more or less been doused. The beta will officially…

If you, like us, thought last week’s petrol and diesel price predictions were already a little bleak, you won’t like what is in store for you today. After an extraordinary run for the country’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy — the official deciders of the prices at the pumps — which saw price decreases for fuel across the board for three months straight. That’s… likely to come to an end. That’s what the Central Energy Fund (CEF) had to say, at least. And when the CEF speaks, we tend to listen — because it’s the closest thing to being…

Microsoft is now worth $3 trillion For the first time in 48 years Bill Gates’ piggy bank, Microsoft, has officially hit a $3 trillion market cap. That’s three more zeroes than a billion — which, incidentally, has nine (nine!) zeroes attached to its end. We’ll just let that sink in for a moment. It might be a first for Microsoft, but it’s not a first for history, with that honour going to Apple more than two years ago. Honestly, we’re not surprised. Have you seen the price of an iPhone 15 Pro Max recently? But what caused the nearly historic…

Netflix is only becoming more powerful Tired of Netflix consistently cancelling your favourite series, putting out mediocre movies or, worse yet, releasing a Squid Games reality show? Well, that’s too bad. Netflix spent 2023’s Q4 doing all that and more and found that it didn’t feel the sting of a subscriber loss. In fact, it reported around 13.1-million new faces in that time — a record for the company’s fourth-quarter stats. That obviously means a jump in revenue too, with the streamer performing above Wall Street’s projections. That brings the live-action-loving-adaptors up to 260.28-million subscribers overall, clinging to the lead it’s…

Update — 24/01/24: MTN South Africa and Showmax have responded to our queries and cleared up any confusion surrounding MTN and Showmax’s promotional data deals: Previously, the Premier League LivePass subscription mentioned that customers would have “enough data to watch all Premier League games on a mobile device on Showmax’s default data setting.” MTN has confirmed that, by default, Showmax sets a user’s data setting to ‘Basic’ (or 360p resolution). This leaves customers with “enough” data to watch 8 out of 10 Premier League matches at any given weekend. Sure, that isn’t “all Premier League games” but MTN’s FUP maximums…