Author: Duncan Pike

Twitter is set to receive yet more changes in what the platform’s owner Elon Musk calls “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.” To us? It looks like someone is feeling the pinch. The incoming changes involve removing the ‘old’ blue verified check marks, conditions for a user’s tweets appearing in the ‘For You’ recommendation feed, and voting in polls on the platform. The push for more Twitter Blue subs The first change we mentioned, was announced on 24 March. You may remember, after taking ownership of the company last year, Musk started tinkering. The…

Still don’t have one of the three current-gen gaming consoles? You’re probably not alone. When the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles launched in November 2020, the improvements over the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X|S made them rather popular. The state of the world at the time certainly didn’t make getting your hands on one any easier. If you still have a PS5- or Xbox Series X-shaped gap on your shelf and were hesitant to pull the trigger, this is the sign you’ve been waiting for. How much is that console in the window? Starting tomorrow, 29…

If you’re familiar with the John Wick film series you’ll know almost every other aspect takes a back seat in favour of action and bloodshed. That was clear when the first movie debuted in 2014 and reinforced in 2017 and 2019 when chapters two and three came out. Expect nothing less from John Wick: Chapter 4. As you might’ve guessed from the title, this is the fourth instalment in the series, so you’ll want to have watched the three previous films at least once before seeing this one. For the purpose of this review, we’re going to assume that you…

Valve Corporation has finally made Counter-Strike 2 official after years of speculation and, more recently, new trademark filings, data-mined hints, and a report from veteran esports journalist Richard Lewis after speaking with anonymous sources with knowledge of the game’s development. While a concrete release date wasn’t mentioned, some lucky players will already have the opportunity to try it out in a limited test. The rest of us will have to wait until ‘summer’ (calm down, that’s winter for us South Africans) when the full game is expected to release. And like CS:GO now, it will be free-to-play. CS2 is finally…

IFTTT, the user-friendly automation platform, is the latest to catch AI fever. The platform has announced three new AI services for its paying subscribers that will generate content for social media posts or blogs and summarise content from other posts or blogs. The new AI services, aptly named AI Social Creator, AI Content Creator, and AI Summarizer, can integrate with a user’s automation so even less human effort and creativity are needed. The only thing you do need is a R100/m IFTTT Pro+ subscription. IFTTT automates automation with AI In case you’re new, IFTTT is an initialism from the phrase…

Google has begun a gradual public rollout of its generative AI “collaborator” Bard, the company’s ChapGPT rival. There was the Arms Race, then we had the Space Race, and now we’re in a race for artificial intelligence development, with notable big tech-industry companies playing their hands, trying to get ahead of the latest tech trend. Regular folks in the US and UK can now join the waiting list to try out Google’s platform after the company recently opened up the program to more people. Bard was first announced a day earlier than scheduled, on 7 February, so Google could beat…

When Returnal launched in 2021, shortly after the PlayStation 5 debuted, it had a lot to live up to as one of the early releases made specifically for the new generation of consoles. Although it was the first AAA title for Sony-owned developer Housemarque, it managed to do just that. It received favourable reviews, picked up several notable year-end accolades, made the shortlist for Stuff’s 2021 Game of the Year award, and hit the Stuff Top Ten Games page where it still sits. Now, two years later, Returnal has made the jump to PC. And just like the PlayStation Studios…

We hope you enjoyed your electricity-filled Sunday, for your load is about to be shed. Yesterday, Eskom announced the load-shedding plan for the first few days of this week. Compared to what we’ve had this year so far, it might even seem like a good thing. Every South African will agree (except maybe Eskom chairperson Mpho Makwana) that the only load-shedding news worth celebrating is Eskom announcing its end. That’s definitely not what’s happening here. As we write this, Eskom has already made a change to this week’s schedule so we’d recommend the usual salt with any Eskom announcements. How…

Energy company EcoFlow has just unveiled three new portable power stations in South Africa – the Delta 2, River 2, and River 2 Max. We probably don’t need to tell you a backup power solution has become a necessity in our electricity-starved country. So deepening the pool of locally available devices aimed at alleviating some load shedding stress might sound like something worth celebrating. Meet EcoFlow’s new arrivals EcoFlow, still a relatively new company founded in Shenzhen China and headquartered in San Francisco US, showed off the new Delta 2 portable power station and two devices from the River 2…

Amazon and its subsidiary Kuiper Systems have unveiled the first official images of its Project Kuiper terminals for its low-Earth orbit-based satellite internet system. Kuiper Systems was founded in 2019, right around the time Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first Starlink satellite into orbit. Coincidence? Probably not. Does it matter? Also no. Amazon makes smart tables now? If you couldn’t immediately tell from the images, these are not tables but renders of its Project Kuiper terminals. Renders of engineering models at that, so the final things might look different. But even from the renders, the resemblance to Starlink’s terminals is…