Author: Trent Meikle

The day has finally arrived – after a record-breaking number of days of load shedding, Eskom has confirmed load shedding’s suspension. Mark your calendars for tomorrow, 8 October at 5 AM. #POWERALERT1 Loadshedding will be suspended at 05:00 on Saturday morning owing to lower weekend demand and adequate emergency generation reserves. pic.twitter.com/DNJV0IDZqH — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) October 7, 2022 Power levels over “While the generation capacity constraints persist, the suspension of load-shedding is possible due to the anticipated lower weekend demand, as well as adequate levels of emergency generation reserves,” the power utility stated. Try and enjoy your…

Why is it that every brand feels the need to rebrand itself? And why does it never look good? Fortunately, First National Banks’ new logo isn’t the focus of this article. If it was… there wouldn’t be much to write about. It’s minimalist. That’s about it. Joining FNB’s new logo is a redesigned app and website – filled with a plethora of new features. During FNB’s launch event on Friday morning, it mentioned that it would be shifting its focus into becoming more “advice-led”, moving away from its previous “product-led” mindset. New app, new website, uglier logo, same FNB? FNB’s…

It feels as if every social media app out there has some sort of TikTok-esque video scrolling feature now. Twitter did it, Instagram did it and YouTube did it. This time around, it’s time for TikTok to do the copying – with the launch of ‘Photo Mode’. The feature, which adds the ability to post stills, complete with a set of tools that allow you to edit images, was announced on Thursday this week by the Chinese company. Instagram on the clock Photo posts will take up valuable real estate in the ‘For You’ tab, squashed between the regular…

Spotify has acquired Kinzen, a company that will serve one purpose for the streamer. Sifting through the million and one generic “friends sitting around and talking” podcasts, reporting any sort of harmful content it can find. Fortunately for Kinzen, there isn’t a human team going through all the podcasts. That would be far too boring. Kinzen uses machine learning, coupled with ‘human expertise’ to find any sort of hate speech, or other harmful content, on the platform. Spot-ifying problems on the platform This isn’t the first time Spotify and Kinzen have worked together. Back in 2020, during the US elections,…

Vodacom is turning its Midrand-based headquarters into a solar energy factory. The project plans to cover the campus in photovoltaic panels, expected to generate around 10.8 gigawatt-hours of energy every year. This is in response to Vodacom’s goal to reduce its carbon footprint by 2025. The project, once complete, will reduce the campus’s energy consumption by 21%. Saving the planet (and some money too) Vodacom expects phase one of the project to reach completion by March 2023. A power-purchase agreement is in place, which enlists the expertise of local vendors to install the panels on the headquarters’ rooftop and carports.…

Google is taking a page out of Microsoft and Amazon’s book, establishing its first African cloud infrastructure, announced during the company’s second annual Google4Africa conference yesterday. The service will begin in South Africa, with the goal to have it eventually spread across the rest of Africa. Additionally, the search giant announced it would build a series of interconnecting sites, linked to its reasonably new Equiano broadband cable. These sites will be built in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos. The point of these is to provide access to Google’s incoming data centre in South Africa. The birth of jobs (not…

Google is expanding on Gboard in Africa, adding nine African languages to the app’s voice dictation feature. Eight of these are official South African languages, with the ninth being one of Rwanda’s four languages. The news was announced at Google’s Google4Africa conference taking place on World Teacher’s Day. That’s Wednesday, 5 October 2022. How’s that for a lesson on a day we celebrate teachers across the world? Google also dedicated the Doodle to teachers on the day. We like! The eight official South African languages receiving support are; Xhosa, Swati, Sesotho, Venda, Tswana, Xitsonga, Northern Sotho, and Ndebele. Kinyarwanda…

Can you believe it’s been nearly six months since Elon Musk made the offer to completely buy out Twitter? We can. And that’s because we’ve had a non-stop torrent of news concerning Elon Musk’s pullout game. Finally, the story has come to a head – with Musk agreeing to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share (again). Please make a u-turn here Yesterday, Musk’s representatives sent a letter to Twitter confirming their boss’s intent to get the deal over the finish line. “We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by…

Andre de Ruyter, Eskom’s CEO, has said South Africans can look forward to an ease in load shedding over the coming days. He attributes the good news to the restoration of multiple generation units expected to start producing power again over the next ten days. Still, we should be limiting our expectations where we can. This is Eskom we’re talking about. The moment the first speckles of rain hit the ground we’ll be writing headlines like “Eskom confirms stage 6 load shedding due to wet coal.” Please Eskom, don’t make us do that. Stage 4 load shedding until further notice…

August brought us news that Meta was working on adding three new privacy changes. Well, two months later, WhatsApp is finally ready to release ‘view once’ screenshot blocking into the world. Why this wasn’t added at the time of view once’s inception, we couldn’t tell you. Better late than never, right? For your eyes (once) only Some users have already received the update (v2.22.22.3 or later). The rest of us will need to wait a few more days for the rollout to finish entirely. Despite not having the feature ourselves, we do know a little more about how it will…