Author: Duncan Pike

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…

Independent London-based wireless analytics firm Opensignal has released the latest results of its Mobile Network Experience Report comparing and ranking South Africa’s top four mobile network operators (MNO). This suite of experience benchmarks is wholly the same as Opensignal’s previous studies, the last of which we saw in September last year. For the latest report, data was collected across the country over a 90-day period starting on 1 November 2022 and ending on 29 January 2023. Opensignal’s mobile network experience tests compare the average user experience of the four major local MNOs across four broad categories; Overall experience, 5G experience,…

GPT-4, the next version of OpenAI’s autoregressive Generative Pre-trained Transformer language model has arrived. It’s a year to the day after the company launched GPT-3.5, an incremental upgrade on GPT-3 which launched in June 2020. They grow up so fast, don’t they? This new language model – which will presumably take over from previous models in applications like ChatGPT and Microsoft’s new Bing – hasn’t fundamentally changed. OpenAI described the difference as “subtle”. Let’s chat about GPT-4 Announcing GPT-4, a large multimodal model, with our best-ever results on capabilities and alignment: https://t.co/TwLFssyALF pic.twitter.com/lYWwPjZbSg — OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 14, 2023 GPT-4…

Apple recently announced the aptly named Apple Music Classical, a standalone app dedicated to… you guessed it – streaming classical music. The app and service will only be available from 28 March but you can place a ‘preorder’ in the meantime on the App Store. Although in this case, all a ‘preorder’ does is tell Apple to give you the app when it launches. The fruit company claims its new app and service offers listeners the largest classical music catalogue in the world with some 5 million tracks and “hundreds of curated playlists, thousands of exclusive albums, insightful composer biographies,…

The fact that we’re nearly a quarter through the year might be troubling to some people. “Where has the year gone?” they might say. We at Stuff, on the other hand, relish the constant tick of time because it edges us closer to cool tech launches and new video game releases. Instead of having to keep track of the latter yourself, we’ve put a list together of the biggest titles releasing in 2023’s second quarter so you can add them to your calendar. You might want to use a pencil though — the possibility of a delay always lurks in…

Curro, one of South Africa’s independent school networks, has announced its first inter-school esports tournament for young Gauteng learners. If you or someone you know is aiming for a career in esports, this could be a good place to start. The tournament, dubbed Curro Clash LAN, will take place on Friday and Saturday, 24 – 25 March at Curro Krugersdorp High School. It aims to give aspiring competitors the opportunity to hone their skills and experience a formal competitive gaming environment. Likely a first for many. The two-day-long tournament will see teams compete in a capture-the-flag game mode within Minecraft…

American audio device manufacturer Sonos has officially unveiled its latest pair of smart speakers, the Era 100 and Era 300. With these new speakers, the company is promising “a whole new chapter in sound and design innovation”. Judging from its previous products, we’re inclined to believe it. Sonos’ new Era starts now If you’re already a fan of the brand, the Era 100 might look a little familiar. That’s by design – as it is a “remastering” of the company’s popular Sonos One smart speaker. Although this time it’s a little bigger. The One has held a spot in our…