Author: Duncan Pike

It’s been six years since the Valve Index launched and set the standard for high-end VR gaming. New leaks have emerged recently that suggest we could see a successor, codenamed ‘Deckard’,  appear at some point later this year with an even larger price tag, upgraded (in some ways) controllers and, presumably, better hardware. The Valve Index, unlike most of its contemporaries, requires a tether to a PC before it can do anything. The still-to-be-confirmed Deckard, however, will be a wireless standalone headset, if the findings of Valve-focused data miner @gabefollower on Twitter/X are to be believed. Someone at Valve likes…

If you’re still holding your breath for a local launch of Starlink’s low Earth orbit satellite constellation for space-based internet, maybe it’s time you breathed out and started holding your breath for Project Kuiper instead. It’s been a while since there was any meaningful local news regarding Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite internet initiative – until now. A recent ITWeb report claims that Jeff Bezos’ competition to Elon Musk’s Starlink is one step closer to launching in South Africa through its partnership with Vodafone in Europe, and Vodacom locally. Project Kuiper beams internet from space Back in September 2023, Kuiper Systems…

Are you still using SMS-based two-factor authentication for your Gmail account? Firstly, why? And secondly, you’ll want to change that soon(ish) as Gmail is about to end support for the least secure of all the multi-factor authentication methods. The American email company seeks to “reduce the impact of rampant, global SMS abuse,” said Gmail spokesperson Ross Richendrfer speaking to Davey Winder for a new Forbes report. No more MFA SMS Instead of pushing for the wider and faster adoption of passkeys, Gmail is said to soon replace SMS authentication codes with a QR code you’ll need to scan with your…

Most PC gamers who build their own rig tend to put all their effort (and money) towards the internal components. That makes sense. Those are usually the most expensive things you’ll have to buy. PC gaming accessories are often left for last with whatever budget remains. But if you’re blessed with rich parents, a lucrative job, or know your way around the inside of a bank vault, you aren’t concerned with trivial things like price tags. You’ve probably already got an RTX 5090 on the way and now you’re looking for the very best PC gaming accessories. The easiest way…

It isn’t difficult to find a good speaker these days. There are plenty of options that range from speakers you can fit in your pocket, to larger devices that require a plug socket. But if you’re looking for something that could fill a small stadium with your choice of music, there aren’t nearly as many choices. That’s where Sony’s ULT Tower 10 comes in. It’s the biggest, most powerful speaker in the company’s ULT Power series and offers a few extra features to enhance your parties or travelling music gigs. At least, that’s how Sony sells it. This is a…

As this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) draws near, Honor has issued invites to the press for a keynote presentation it will hold on Sunday, 2 March in Barcelona, Spain – the day before MWC is set to begin in earnest. Instead of, or at least in addition to, launching its latest devices globally as it did last year with the Magic 6 Pro, Honor seems to be taking a slightly different approach to MWC this year. Honor’s AI-infused plans going forward First on the agenda for Honor’s 2025 plan is to introduce the world to its ‘Alpha Plan’. The…

Samsung announced this week that two more health features are now available on its Galaxy Watch range in South Africa via the Samsung Health Monitor app – irregular heart rhythm and sleep apnea detection. The free software update, which went live on 13 January 2025, should already be available to South Africans who own a Galaxy Watch Ultra, Watch 7, Watch 6 Classic, and Watch FE at first. Samsung says the features will make their way to older devices “in the near future.” Samsung joins the heart health party If you’re not familiar with irregular heart rhythms, also known as…

Have you ever been so good at something that no amount of further training will garner better results? That’s known as the ‘ceiling effect’ and could soon be a thing of the past – specifically for pianists and only if this robotic exoskeletal hand becomes more than a science experiment. Giving pianists a robotic exoskeletal hand A team of roboticists at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. and the NeuroPiano Institute in Kyoto, Japan published a study last month in Science Robotics after they fitted a robotic exoskeletal hand to the finger-bearing flesh pads of 118 trained pianists. “For trained individuals…

Acer announced the launch of two new Predator gaming laptops last Friday at the prestigious IEM Katowice Counter-Strike 2 tournament in Poland. Acer, being a headline sponsor of the event, unveiled the pair of high-specced machines to an arena of eager esports fans. Both the Predator Helios Neo 16 AI and 18 AI laptops come with the latest chips from Intel and Nvidia, up to a Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU. Additionally, both laptops support up to 64GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity internally, while offering a host of…

If you’re the type who likes to travel light, whether that be on holiday or to the office, you’re probably aware that if you’re taking a laptop with you it is likely to be the heaviest thing in your bag. That seems to be Asus’ entire focus with the new Zenbook A14. At 980g it is one of the lightest laptops we’ve reviewed, coming in under the 1kg weight of the Zenbook S 13 from 2023 while being nearly 50% thicker and a whole inch larger. Is that enough to justify its R30,000 price? Well, no, not on its own.…