Author: Trent Meikle

Ever since Canal+ acquired MultiChoice, it’s fought an uphill battle. Struggling against DStv’s steadily declining reputation isn’t easy, especially when the product in question so heavily relies on convincing customers that, yes, installing a piece of hardware that’ll show you the same five Friends episodes is worth the high price, actually. Canal+ fighting a losing battle It makes sense, then, that MultiChoice’s DStv, under new ownership, has recently stepped up its game. It needs subscribers; otherwise, what did the company just spend R125/share on? Data from MultiChoice reveals that DStv was bleeding subscribers — around 1.2 million in total — from March…

Google’s picking up the slop If you were wondering why you couldn’t produce legions of AI slop this weekend, it’s by design. Google quietly limited access to Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro for those who don’t fork over a monthly sum, without ever telling anybody what happened. It’s easy to see why — as folks continue to abuse the tools for seemingly no gain other than a few measly internet points and maybe a couple of cents here and there. Where Gemini 3 Pro once allowed free users to create five prompts per day, the search giant now…

Huawei’s flagship Mate 80 series recently got its start in China, and it’s brought some impressive tech along for the ride. It’s clearly proudest of the Oppenheimer-level 6.9in 8,000-nit dual-layer OLED display inside the top-of-the-shelf Mate 80 Pro Max, though that’s not to say its three other siblings are slouches in that regard. Joining the Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max are the Mate 80, 80 Pro, and the Mate 80 RS Ultimate Design, as well as the new Mate X7 foldable, which makes itself the second such foldable to score an IP59 rating — after the Honor Magic V5. Don’t…

Even Uber is buying into the electric vehicle (EV) hype sweeping through South Africa. The ride-hailing company has unleashed its first-ever EV fleet onto South Africa’s roads, totalling 70 EVs, according to ITWeb. Uber expects to end the year with 350 EVs on the roads — a minute portion of the company’s 200,000-strong fleet worldwide. Uber in the EV driver’s seat The obvious benefit of ordering an ‘Uber Go Electric’, as the new product is called, is the costs saved by driving without fuel on top of introducing a cleaner, more sustainable solution on the roads — yadda yadda. To…

Arguably, the most important day to belong to a functioning bank is today, 28 November – AKA Black Friday – when prices are at their lowest. It seems First National Bank (FNB) didn’t get the memo, with users across the country reporting errors with the bank’s card payment authentication system as they attempt to drain their accounts in the hopes of snagging some cheaper stuff. FNB breaks the bank Stuff’s own Duncan Pike and Sally Hudson experienced troubles when attempting to access the FNB banking app and website. “The website goes nowhere,” said Hudson as she attempted to pay someone…

DStv is slowly coming to realise that treating your customers right might actually equal more customers and eventually, more money. Or at least, Canal+, the new owners of MultiChoice, seem like it’s coming to realise it. The pay-TV broadcaster just announced that it was adding four free pop-up channels to celebrate the holidays. That’s on top of the broadcaster ‘upsizing’ customers throughout Christmas, slashing decoder costs, and opening up DStv Premium to all decoder customers for a weekend. “… As families reunite over the festive season, DStv is coming to the party – and since we never arrive empty-handed, we’re…

After a stellar October for PS Plus Essential members, which offered subscribers access to three ‘free’ games per month (including heaters like Alan Wake 2 and Cocoon), we didn’t get our hopes up for November. The December lineup is a bit of a mixed bag, bringing subscribers five games as a gift. Christmas come early? The only issue is that the games included aren’t what we’d call respectable. Don’t get us wrong. We’ve looked for an excuse to try out Lego Horizon Adventures since it launched just over a year ago, and Neon White looks like a genuinely terrific puzzle-platformer that’ll entertain for a couple of…

After fibre network operator (FNO) Octotel revealed that it would bring South Africa’s first 10Gbps home-fibre line to the Western Cape as of tomorrow, it left us hanging with no price in sight. We never expected it to be cheap, but now ISP Vanilla has confirmed Octotel’s multi-gigabit pricing as well as our fears. Until further notice, the FNO’s coverage will only include Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, the CBD, Atlantic Seaboard, and Blouberg. That list will continue to grow as the FNO determines demand and receives feedback from the ISPs offering the service, including Afrihost, Atomic Access, Mweb, and Webafrica…

By this time next week, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) will have installed December’s official petrol and diesel prices at pumps across South Africa. However, the final decision is likely to be made this Friday, 28 November, meaning the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) latest predictions are, unfortunately, relatively close to the final product. Petrol and diesel take a dive for the holidays While the DMRE typically reaches a final verdict internally on the final Friday of each month, it typically publishes the official adjustments the following week, ahead of the official adjustment. As ever, these adjustments will…

One of the more difficult aspects of treating patients in a hospital (aside from actually treating the patients) is keeping a close eye on them. In a bid to make that bit easier for everyone involved, but especially nurses, Corsano Health today announced a partnership with Netcare Limited to bring 24-hour monitoring to all of its general wards — representing some 6,000 beds — in the form of smart, medical-grade wearables. Stay strapped, even in the hospital Corsano won’t hand over the goods all at once. First, the smart wearable will undergo an “extensive pilot” at a ‘flagship’ Netcare facility,…