Author: Duncan Pike

Microsoft has now made its DirectStorage API available to everyone. This new(ish) tech means that games, especially those that use high-res textures or sprawling open-world environments, will load much faster. The process involves taking some of the file compression and decompression tasks that the CPU usually has to deal with, and giving them to the GPU. The GPU is much better suited to handle those kinds of things anyway. That’s why bitcoin miners like them so much. DirectStorage make games go brrrr now? It’ll be some time before we see it used in games to improve load times. The SDK was…

How to watch NASA’s Spacewalk on Tuesday We normally wouldn’t consider a stream of someone doing manual labour a worthwhile use of your time. But when that stream is from NASA and the manual labour is fitting new solar panel arrays to the ISS, we’re willing to reconsider.That’s exactly what’s happening on Tuesday, 15 March 2022. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari will be conducting the EVA (ExtraVehicular Activity) as part of an ongoing upgrade to the ISS’s power system. They’re just installing struts and brackets for future solar panels, but again, it’s in space. This won’t be Barron’s…

Absa bank customers can now accept card payments using only their smartphones with the bank’s new Mobile Pay app. You don’t need a point-of-sale (POS) terminal or any other additional hardware. Just an NFC-enabled smartphone and a customer with a tap-to-pay bank card. Absa on tap It’s fairly easy to get. Your smartphone needs to be running Android 6.0 or higher, according to the listing on the Google Play Store. Chances are, if your phone came out in 2016 or later, you should be good. Your phone also needs to support Near Field Communication (NFC). That part is important. It’s…

Xiaomi hasn’t officially announced the 12 Ultra yet but you can’t keep secrets in the tech industry. A few battery specs have leaked thanks to famed leaker ‘Digital Chat Station’ on China’s microblogging platform, Weibo. Current rumour suggests that the Xiaomi 12 Ultra will feature a 4,900mAh battery. That isn’t particularly large as far as flagship phones go these days. But when you pair it with 120W fast charging, battery worries start to dissolve away. Winning battery combo? Has Xiaomi found the winning formula? It first introduced 120W charging to its lineup with the Mi 10 Ultra back in 2020.…

The rumours leading up to Apple’s first event of 2022 mentioned that we may see a new chip. Everyone assumed that would mean an M2 chip. But wait, says Apple. We’re not done with the first one yet. Its new M1 Ultra is an absolutely beastly piece of silicon. At its event in October last year, Apple announced its M1 Pro and Max chips. The chips offered increased performance for Apple’s newly announced MacBooks. Well, the folks in Cupertino wanted more. So they tried strapping two M1 Max chips together. Nothing blew up, so now we have the M1 Ultra.…

Apple has just confirmed those rumours that were floating around the web the past few weeks. At its first event of 2022, dubbed ‘Peek Performance’, Apple has officially announced its iPhone SE (2022). Following the success of the previous generation released in 2020, the iPhone SE is for those looking for a smaller device, a more wallet-friendly iPhone, or those looking to explore the Apple ecosystem for the first time. Introducing the very similar iPhone SE 2022’s SE is shipping with the A15 Bionic SoC, first seen in the iPhone 13 launched last year. That means a 6-core CPU and…

In case you missed it, Stuff attended BMW’s recent national media launch of the refreshed 2 Series Coupé. We ended the event behind the wheel of the company’s 220d and M240i models. Our initial thoughts on the 220i, the petrol-drinking cousin of the 220d, are here. The long and short of it is that the 220i is – for the most part – a fun car to drive. It just didn’t quite live up to what we expected. While we were in the driving seat, we couldn’t help but feel it was holding back on us. Taking a spin in…

Today is the big day, if you’re an Apple stan. Tonight at 20:00 SAST, Tim Cook will stand on his stage, in his field, or in front of his fancy building. Or maybe he’ll be inside the fancy building if he’s feeling bold. He’ll tell us about Apple’s newest products and then we’re going to go out and buy them – when they’re available. There have been mentions floating around online about what uncle Tim will unveil since before the date was even confirmed. We covered those here. But the folks at Apple weren’t going to let us rest easy,…

You know those virtual ‘friends’ you have at home? That one you call ‘Alexa’. Well, like those other friends who enjoy tik, it may not be a good idea to allow them into your home. Academic researchers at Royal Holloway University in London and Italy’s University of Catania have found a working exploit that allows pranksters (or people up to no good) to commandeer your Amazon device and use it to issue commands to itself. Researchers have called this exploit “AvA” for Alexa versus Alexa, because it’s pitting the device against itself.  This attack isn’t even very sophisticated. It uses…

A wordle that speaks to you If you’ve gone through our round-up of Wordle clones – there are way more than you think – and you still have time on your hands then you’re in luck. This one is different enough from the other clones but still retains the bits that make Wordle so fun. ‘Heardle’ is Wordle but with songs instead of words. So maybe ‘Songdle’ might’ve been more appropriate but Heardle works too, we guess.In Heardle, users also have six attempts to guess the song of the day. But here they aren’t given clues based on the letters…