Author: Trent Meikle

Samsung has just unveiled its Galaxy A55 and Galaxy A35, drawing some attention away from the altogether flashier (and only two months old) AI-bolstered Galaxy S24 lineup. The A-series duo is just as — if not more — important than the S24 series because it demonstrates “Samsung’s ongoing commitment to making the best of mobile innovations available to everyone.” In other words; this is the South Korean’s mid-ranger portfolio, garnering a few thousand less than even the most basic S24 out there. But we’ll get into all the pricing later. South Africa doesn’t yet have official pricing, but we’ve got…

X may be coming to a TV near you soon Elon Musk still hasn’t given up on the idea of turning X into an ‘everything app’, recently adding phone and video calls into what was once Twitter. Now the app is apparently expanding to… TVs. Yup. According to a Fortune report (via Bloomberg) over the weekend, the eccentric billionaire wants people tuning in to, uh, Tucker Carlson, we guess, on Samsung and Amazon TVs as early as next week. Fortune doesn’t name its sources, only citing an unnamed employee within the company, but this is Musk we’re talking about. Of course he’s…

Sunday, 10 March, is MAR10 Day. You know the one. Mario Mario (yes, that is his name), the Brooklyn-based plumber who can’t seem to land a date. It’s not his birthday or anything — that’ll be 11 October — but it is Mario Day. MAR10. You get it. And South Africa is joining in on the fun this weekend. The fun involved includes a decent store-wide sale on Switch consoles, games, and accessories — both online and in-store (check out what we thought of that) — and a competition that’ll see someone pick up a Switch bundle worth R10,000. So… a…

Despite what headlines may say, South Africa’s petrol price for next month won’t deliver a fresh batch of pain when April arrives. Sure, that appeared to be the consensus from South Africa’s Central Energy Fund (CEF) a couple of days ago, but according to a fresh batch of predictions from the energy company, far saner increases are on the horizon. Don’t set those hopes up too high just yet. The country won’t exactly be getting off scot-free by the time April rolls around, but the figures down below are a far cry from the R1.14/l increase that’s been bandied about…

In case you needed reminding, South Africa’s unemployment rate isn’t so hot. Among the country’s youth, 44% are in dire need of a job. That’s why the University of Limpopo has put together a ‘Digital Innovation Lab’, and why Microsoft and Vodacom are partnering up. You know, to “address the urgent need for relevant skills in the modern job market.” How? By providing free access to Microsoft’s Mzansi Digital Learning platform — a free resource that’s being taken advantage of today. As for where Vodacom comes into this — it’ll be hosting Mzansi Digital Learning on the network’s new NXT…

Through a collaboration with Samsung, the University of Limpopo has launched what it calls a ‘Digital Innovation Lab’ (DIL) — where the whole idea is to help build up the province’s skills in software development and ultimately enhance “the prospects of employment or entrepreneurship in the region.” Limpopo’s stepping up The lab, officially unveiled yesterday at the University by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma — the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities and the University’s Chancellor — features a curriculum catering towards coding, programming fundamentals and “digital social innovation.” According to an abstract from a…

The time is ripe for a new era of Microsoft’s Surface devices. South Africa might have been late to the party where the Surface Pro 9 was concerned in 2023, but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the world. Globally, Microsoft skipped entering double-digits for the Surface Pro line-up last year — but that’s set to change later this month according to a new report from Windows Central.  If Central’s (unnamed) sources are correct, the OS King is hooking the world up with a new, kitted-out Surface Pro 10 later this month, joined by a new Surface Laptop 6. Both…

Is it just us, or has Google Search been slacking lately? Its usefulness is waning and we think it may have something to do with this AI-ridden era of the internet. “…Spammy, low-quality content,” as Google calls it, is plugging up Search and taking the spotlight off the ‘useful’ results. Google wants to do something about it. The search giant just announced “key changes” to “improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results.” Room for refining One of the ways it’ll be doing so is by “refining some of [its] core ranking systems” to get a better…

Remember that time Kusile Power Station failed so terribly that much of its generation capacity was out for months? We sure do. Because it was never fixed. Eskom managed to right its wrongs somewhat in June 2023 when it sought permission from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment to bypass the country’s Minimum Emission Standards (MES) policy. Now, however, Eskom has published an update to the Kusile repairs, noting that its temporary measure — allowing it to “operate units 1, 2, and 3 [at Kusile] without utilising the Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) plant,” until 31 March 2025 has so…

Oculus is dead. Long live Meta. Blah blah blah. The Facebook owner is finally killing off the Oculus branding, and it wants you to migrate that account to its own account system before the end of the month. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of your account and everything tied to it, so you’d best get moving. Now would be great. Oculus’ demise isn’t news. At least, it isn’t new news. Facebook, as it was known then, has been attempting to rid itself of the Oculus branding since 2020 by attempting to convert customers to Facebook accounts.…