Author: Trent Meikle

South African rugby fans have found an unexpected hero in Zizi Kodwa, the country’s Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture. Until as late as yesterday afternoon – a day before the 2023 Rugby World Cup kickoff – it was understood that MultiChoice and the South African Broadcasting Corporation wouldn’t come to an agreement for the tournament’s sub-licensing rights. Kodwa’s saving grace That’s all changed after Kodwa’s comments on Wednesday imploring the two entities to play nice. MultiChoice has confirmed that the SABC will be allowed to broadcast some of the World Cup matches after the South African broadcaster accepted a…

Load shedding Stage 5 is back, back again #LoadsheddingUpdate Thursday, 07 September 2023 Due to improved generation capacity and emergency reserves, Stage 5 loadshedding will be implemented tomorrow from 05:00 until 16:00. Eskom will publish another update on Friday afternoon. We plead with members of the public to… — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 7, 2023 Stage 6? Remember that? How could you not? The country has suffered through it since Tuesday. Fortunately, Eskom has announced that load shedding has been reduced to Stage 5 since 05:00 this morning. Don’t get your hopes up just yet. Stage 5 is…

We’re going to take a wild guess here and say you like money. Or more specifically, having it. We know you like Doritos. Combine those two things with gaming, and you’ve got yourself the Doritos Crunch Cup (though you won’t find many actual Doritos here), which is officially returning for round three at this year’s Comic Con Africa. Having successfully lured more than 400 participants to the Crunch Cup in 2022, Doritos is hoping to shatter that number, after expanding the free-to-play tournament to Cape Town’s inaugural Comic Con in 2022. Doritos hasn’t mentioned what sort of prize money players…

Apple might soon rely on its own 5G modems We’re less than a week away from Apple’s Wonderlust event where the fruit company will launch its latest line-up of iPhones and smartwatches. Thanks to copious rumours surrounding the iPhone 15, we’ve got a basic idea of what we’ll be seeing both inside the phones and out – none of which feature Apple’s rumoured 5G modem. According to popular Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via GSMArena), Apple’s been working on its own in-house 5G modem for a while now. When Kuo speaks, it’s generally worth listening to. He reckons Apple’s custom-built 5G…

We’ve got some bad news, rugby fans. Despite months of attempting to come to some sort of understanding, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and SuperSport were unable to land on an agreement for this year’s Rugby World Cup sub-licensing rights. If that’s all gibberish to you, it means SABC won’t be broadcasting the 2023 Rugby World Cup on any of its channels, leaving SuperSport as the tournament’s sole provider in South Africa. That means you’ll need a rather pricey DStv subscription to gain access to channel 201. That might extend to Showmax, MultiChoice’s home-grown streaming service that has hosted…

YouTube is getting into gaming, seriously  YouTube is dipping its hands into every pie it can reach. It’s got YouTube Music, television (in the US), eSports livestreams, and now it’s extending into games of its own. It’s called the “Playables” initiative, and it was initially reported earlier this year by The Wall Street Journal (and Stuff), described as “a product for playing online games.” Back then, it was reserved for Google’s employees as part of an early test, and details were scarce. All we did know was that Stack Bounce was one of the games in the early test, a game that’s already…

The IAA Mobility Motor Show is the car show that keeps on giving, especially if you’re a fan of electric vehicles. We’ve already seen Mercedes’ latest electric efforts with the concept CLA, BMW is electrifying its Mini range, and now it’s Volkswagen’s turn at the wheel. The brand has promised an electric future for its iconic GTI line-up, with the new ID. GTI concept making an appearance at this year’s IAA event. A GTI for the future The ID. GTI isn’t a real car – yet. Sure, VW’s gone through the effort of making a physical version to present at…

Stage 6 returns indefinitely #POWERALERT1 Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented from 05:00 on Tuesday until further notice pic.twitter.com/S9rxax7fXD — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 4, 2023 Eskom, the state-owned power utility South Africans love to hate, has announced the return to Stage 6 load shedding. That’s indefinitely, too – in case your day wasn’t already bad enough. The reason? The usual excuse of urgent maintenance, in this case, on two additional generating units at Lethabo and Matla power stations. That’s on top of the generating units taken offline at Kriel and Medupi’s power stations on Sunday, which set…

It’s been a rough August for many South African wallets. There’s the obvious – with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy slapping us with a fuel price increase in August’s early days. The gaming sector too – especially PlayStation – hit the country with even larger hikes. More than once. September isn’t changing that trend, with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy announcing one of the largest petrol and diesel price hikes we’ve seen in months. We’re not surprised, either. The Central Energy Fund (CEF) has been predicting the coming petrol and diesel price hike for weeks now. Based…

What’s X done this time? X, née Twitter is under fire. Again. This time, it has nothing to do with the platform’s removal of a feature, but rather with the internet’s favourite keyword: AI. Bloomberg recently found that Elon Musk’s $44 billion venture had quietly updated the app’s privacy policy to include language that would allow it to collect users’ biometric information in the name of “safety, security, and identification purposes.” It then took things a step further, with the new policy also collecting user’s educational and employment history. Except… that’s no longer the case. According to X’s most recent…