Author: Brett Venter

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is underway. If you’re watching anyway and are keen to contribute to science at the same time, researchers at Bielefeld University are looking for you. Well, they’re looking for you if you own a specific wearable tracker. The researchers are “investigating how fans of different national teams physically respond to match events during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.” It’s not the first study of its type. Previous attempts found links between football fans’ heart rates and stress levels. So Bielefeld University is running the play again. World Cup scientist Initially, the research study was confined…

Japanese company Sharp is a tough brand to buy in South Africa. The new Karada Mate Watch wearable could be worth going out of your way for, though. The device makes one particularly impressive claim — that it can track your calories without needing its user to input details. That’s a big deal. Calorie tracking isn’t unusual for wearables, but it typically involves user input. The Karada Mate Watch reckons it does away with much of that by natively registering how much you’ve eaten. That’s… pretty ambitious for Sharp’s first-ever smartwatch. Karada, Mate. Watch. This is due to a new…

The Apple lineup is already considered premium almost across the board. Just like medical aid and insurance, that premium is about to go up. Company head Tim Cook, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, confirmed what we’re expecting from… every tech brand this year. It’s not like companies need a reason to raise prices, but the stated reason for this particular one is artificial intelligence. Specifically, the global semiconductor shortage that the tech has prompted. It’s not like the Fruit Company isn’t alone on this — Huawei recently took a similar step. Poisoned Apple? According to Cook, “price increases are…

Google has released a new feature, possibly for the explicit purpose of reminding folks that Google Earth is a thing that exists. The satellite-mapped representation of our planet now includes a (very) basic flight simulator. If you’ve always wanted to zip over your home but are too cheap to buy something mapped by GeoEye, this is a free alternative. Google Earth has crashed Very free, as it turns out. The web browser interface is extremely simple, sticking a horizon marker and some floaty controls into the Google Earth window. It’s easy enough to access — just load up your chosen…

Motorola isn’t a name we see often in relation to South Africa in 2026, so the Moto Edge 70 was… somewhat of a surprise. The brand has changed hands a few times over the years, from its dumbphone origins (when it was everywhere in SA) to, eventually, Lenovo. Its absence, based on our time with the Edge 70, really should be corrected. Hard. This is because, for the price, you’re getting a surprisingly capable smartphone. There are some concessions, which are to be expected from a sub-R10,000 handset, but fewer than anybody might reasonably expect. Plus, Motorola has managed to…

We tend to file oddball portable computers under the cyberdeck category. The CG Deck, from a company called Mogozen, is just the latest addition. That’s our placement, though, as the small team behind the project isn’t explicit that this little Linux machine should join their ranks. Still, the hardware looks the part. Hit the CG Deck  The hardware isn’t as faceted as we’d like, but few portable computers will function as a gaming console or a Linux server. The CG Deck features a swappable interface, so you can yank out the small QWERTY keyboard and drop in a set of…

The tale of Pemba, the Unitree G1 humanoid robot, is, surprisingly, not one the Chinese company is telling. Earlier this month, the modified G1 successfully (for a given value of ‘successfully’) climbed Chimborazo, a 6,200-metre mountain peak in Ecuador. The project now has its sights on Mount Everest. The Unitree G1 has already proved quite physically capable, but this effort will stretch the machine’s capabilities. Actually, the last climb has already done that. Though the G1 made it to the summit, it was carried part of the way. It turns out the bot doesn’t like inclines steeper than 30°, meaning…

NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft has blown past its next milestone just a short while after it went supersonic for the first time. Travelling at supersonic speeds isn’t that unusual. Doing so without creating a sonic boom — which makes these speeds a problem over populated areas — is. Over the weekend (on Friday, 12 June in the US), the X-59 reached a new top speed and ceiling. According to the agency, these were “the conditions required for the aircraft to make future flights critical to its mission.” Masking the X-59 The experimental craft reached a speed of Mach 1.4 (1,487km/h),…

Chinese robot makers have most of the human world in their sights. Yes, Unitree is doing all sorts of interesting things (mostly with marketing), but a company called GigaAI is reportedly sending its ‘bots into homes in China. The assistant in question is called the SeeLight S1, according to reports. We tried to track down more accurate information about it, but ran into two problems. First, there are several companies called GigaAI, and most of them aren’t this specific Chinese outfit. Second, the Beijing-based company only lists the (extremely similar-looking) Maker H01 on its website. Robot home invasion The report,…

Oppo occasionally repeats itself, and if we’d been given the company’s standard Reno 15 instead of the Reno 15 Pro, it probably would have happened again. As it happens, we had the more premium version of the company’s upper-midrange device in for review. It’s got a lot going for it. Since it’s also dropped in price from its R24,000 introduction, those upsides now look a bit more attractive. It’s still a tough call on whether to drop R21,000 on one of Oppo’s devices, but the Reno 15 Pro is going to make a serious attempt at convincing you. The build…