Author: Trent Meikle

The Western Cape, speaking at the recent State of the Province Address (SOPA 2023), reiterated its plans to become more independent, pulling further away from Eskom’s national grid, in the hopes of providing more power to its residents. The province’s premier, Alan Winde, said that the Western Cape was one of the few bright spots in the country’s future – at least where the electricity sector is concerned. The province’s main and eventual goals point towards energy security, supplying more power to the essentials – water, connectivity, and education — to better assist businesses to maintain their standards of operations.…

With Samsung’s latest range of flagships hitting shelves soon, it’s time to make a difficult (for some) decision: hang onto your old S22+, or bite the bullet and spend big on the S23+? It’s not a decision to be taken lightly, especially when there’s R24,000 on the line. Just think of how many PlayStation 5s you could buy instead (two!). But that’s why we’re here. To help settle the decision. Not the R24,000 bit. That’s between you and your budget. You’ve probably already made a subconscious choice but this might sway you in one direction or the other. Sitting pretty…

Robots are (mostly) brilliant. And they’re only going to get better. We’ve already gotten ones that can play the drums, tee off at the course and one that’s eyeing up humanity’s jobs (looking at you, Boston Dynamic’s Atlas). Then you get those whose only discernible purpose is to frighten the population. Meet SPIDAR – The University of Tokyo’s flying, crawling, terrifying robotic spider. SPIDAR isn’t a typo, is supposed to be a clever acronym for ‘SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot’. Good luck saying that three times quickly. If you’ve partaken in our What Stuff is…

Mario has always been a major facet in the zeitgeist – whether it was the early games or the movie that’s releasing later this year (or that one from the 90s). And it’s showing no sign of disappearing from pop culture any time soon. Mario will be a staple forever. At least, that’s what the creators of MarioGPT were going for. A platform that makes use of artificial intelligence to build an infinite number of levels for you to conquer. Until Nintendo gets a whiff, that is. The researchers behind the project currently belong to the IT University of Copenhagen.…

If you’ve noticed that Twitter’s feed has somehow gotten worse – specifically from Monday morning, we’re sorry to say that you’re a victim of poor management. Plenty of people – regardless of whether or not they follow the owner of the big blue bird – have noticed an increased number of Musk’s tweets showing up in their ‘For You’ feeds. Usually, that’s to be expected from an account that’s collected 128 million followers. But… something is different. Something is wrong.  ‘More. More!’ ∼ Elon Musk, probably And it’s all because Musk’s fragile ego can’t handle his tweets not being the talk…

The world’s largest emitter of sulphur dioxide (AKA Eskom) is searching for approval to release more of the pollutant. We know. This sounds like part of a much larger scheme to kill off a couple of customers and save electricity in the long run, but we swear it’s not. The power provider is trying to bypass environmental laws in order to get three of Kusile’s six units up and running a year faster than expected, thus lessening the effect of load shedding. Eskomplicated First, though, it needs the approval of South Africa’s environmental department. Should the utility get the go-ahead,…

Following the news of DStv’s annual price hike making headlines this morning, MultiChoice has announced that it’s trying to broadcast the upcoming Rugby World Cup (8 September – 28 October) in 4K UHD. The broadcaster feels that it set a precedent after broadcasting the FIFA World Cup in the higher definition. Usually, DStv caps its broadcasts to 1080i, a resolution that’ll hardly be noticed on a brand-new 4K TV. But it’ll be worth it for the odd occasion (like this one) that DStv manages to offer its subscribers some extra pixels. MultiChoice of Madness Speaking with TechCentral, MultiChoice COO Simon…

MultiChoice Group – the owners behind DStv – has announced its annual subscription price hike, set to hit the country’s bank accounts on 1 April 2023. And no, as much as we’d like this to be a poorly timed April Fool’s joke, has MultiChoice ever kidded anyone about money? Subscribers on DStv’s satellite packages will experience an increase by an average of 4.3% – an increase that MultiChoice says is “far lower than the projected consumer price inflation (CPI) for 2023.” Those on the company’s streaming package will not feel an increase. Vague sentiments and price increases “The pressure that…

Has anyone checked up on Oppo recently? The company is on a global prowl for new brand ambassadors (read: influencer) that’ll help test out its phones. The pool of paid labour must be running dry. In this case, the company is specifically looking for testers for the incoming Oppo Find N2 Flip. The brand is searching for anyone (seriously, the programme is open to anyone that meets the criteria) to join the ranks of Oppo’s Product Ambassadors to test out the phone (and maybe a few others down the line). The Oppo Find N2 Flip already hit Chinese shelves in…

Yup, it’s already that time of the week. Time to face the latest bout of the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) petrol price predictions. Last week, the CEF delivered the unfortunate news that both petrol and diesel drivers would likely experience an increase in prices come Wednesday, 1 March. According to the CEF’s latest data – captured on 10 February – the country is still facing an increase, though not quite as hectic as last week’s prediction. We miss you, eBucks R2/l petrol rewards As always, we warn readers that while these numbers might be official — they’re from the CEF…