Author: Trent Meikle

The City of Joburg wants out of load shedding. Well, them and everyone else in South Africa. This doesn’t make Joburg special. The difference is, Joburg wants to do something about it. Later this week, the City of Joburg will publish its first Requests for Proposal (RFPs) to try and secure 500MW of renewable power for Joburg. “We realized that if we were to insulate businesses from this, we need to procure up to 500MW of renewable energy over a period of 18 to 36 months. We are ready to start seeing the back of rolling blackouts so that the…

Despite our best efforts to be funny, we didn’t actually think Twitter’s ‘Official’ label would be making a return. Especially not less than 24 hours after it was binned. Since then, we’ve learned that when you’re dealing with Elon Musk, anything is possible. But here we are – the ‘official’ checkmark is back, for some accounts. You can kind of see where Musk is coming from. Since Twitter Blue’s revamp, there hasn’t been a simple way of distinguishing paid-for users and users that deserve the verification tick. The reintroduction of the ‘official’ label changes that. If only there was a…

Multichoice, the company behind DStv, has published its interim results. To our surprise, revenue is up 7% – bringing it up to R28.65 billion for the six-month period ending 30 September. Operating profits are up too, to the tune of R6.2 billion (6%). Despite those numbers trending up, Multichoice noted a decline of R248 million – due to losses of R0.6 per share. Overall, however, the group’s core headline earnings increased by 2% to R2 billion. It cites lower losses in the rest of Africa for the increase in the grand scheme of things. Investing big in the World Cup…

You may have forgotten about the World Cup, due to its untimely placement in November instead of its usual June/July slot. Google is here to remind you while adding new features to Search to celebrate the World Cup. If you’re one of those forgetful football fans then this is your official reminder that there are Just ten days until kickoff. Head over to Google, search “World Cup” and yoU’ll find a section at the top keeping track of upcoMing matches, all in your local time. You can follow specific teams, opt-in to receive notifications, and keep track of stats like…

Less than 24 hours after its release, Twitter’s ‘Official’ label is gone. The platform has reverted to its old (but also new) form of verification: one tick that appears on all verified accounts. This goes for actual, notable accounts and those that felt spending $8/m (R145/m) on a social media app was worth it. Spoiler: it wasn’t As with every change made to Twitter recently, we have Elon Musk to thank (or blame) for it. The eccentric billionaire tweeted out a reply saying: “I just killed it,” referring to the then-new ‘official’ label. He then cited the addition and subsequent…

Eskom needs to move away from coal, desperately and as soon as possible. It’s trying its hardest. Well, ‘hardest’ might be an overstatement. But it’s trying. There are currently around twenty projects in the works aimed at making South Africa greener, with plans to bring back a 1.5GW hydropower plant project that was shelved more than a decade ago. The proposal to revive the project was included in South Africa’s ‘Just Energy Transition Investment Plan’. A deal which South Africa signed last week that’ll bring $8.5 billion in to fund the move away from our coal dependency. The project covers…

Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the better games of the previous decade. Yes, Arkham Asylum is more than a decade old. It brought players a great story, fun gameplay, and very decent graphics for 2009. It spawned a series of sequels and spinoffs – some were better than the original, and some… well… One of those spinoffs is Gotham Knights. This game, for the most part, went under the radar for most gamers. Probably because Arkham fans had left the series at the back of their minds after the series ended with the third and final installment, Batman: Arkham…

It’s been two weeks since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. Since then, not much has actually changed. Besides, of course, the fact that verified ticks will be bought for $8/m and half of Twitter’s staff has left the building. And that’s where the problem lies. Once everyone is verified, no one is. Twitter has thought up a genius solution to counter this problem — “official” checkmarks. Which… solve the same problems that the original Twitter verification tick used to solve. According to Esther Crawford, head of Twitter Blue, public figures, companies, and governments will receive an “official” checkmark…

If we had to pick one company we wouldn’t want to turn our childhood memories into live-action films, it would be Netflix. And yet, somehow Netflix still manages to lay its hands on IPs that would be in far better hands with, say, HBO. Just look at Henry Cavill’s ‘The Witcher’ series. Then watch the trailer for HBO’s The Last of Us series to see what these adaptations could look like. Hopefully, it can pull this one off. By ‘this one’ we’re referring to the newly announced live-action Gears of War movie, followed by an ‘adult animated series’. The film…

Imagine, just for a second, that you could pay R5 every day for uncapped 100Mbps fibre. That’s just R150 a month. The people of the Kayamandi township don’t need to imagine this following the launch of the Kayamandi Fibre Project. The former head of iBurst and Mxit Alan Knott-Craig is responsible for the project’s creation. Knott-Craig used his experience with Project Isizwe, a project that offers low-cost Wi-Fi in low-income areas, to move to the next level; fibre integration in townships. The project enlisted the help of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, EasyEquities, Asla, Nokia, Hexatronic and Cambium Networks to pull off…