Author: Brett Venter

It’s been a very long road for the James Webb space telescope. Following several delays, the mission to get it up into space finally succeeded. Even then it was still possible for things to go wrong, but that list of potential hazards just got shorter. NASA has confirmed that James Web has settled into its orbit at L2, the second Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. This follows its final 297-second course correction burn that placed the object into its desired orbit. Nice burn, James Webb The almost five-minute-long burn added just 5.8km/h to Webb’s overall speed. This was…

Everyone knows about the ongoing semiconductor shortage. You’re probably less familiar with the also-ongoing global lithium shortage. Yes, demand from Chinese battery makers, and the auto industry’s current push into more electrified vehicles, mean there isn’t enough lithium to go around. And we’re not talking about the bipolar medication. And that shortage is due to stick around, thanks to some wonderful environmentalists in Serbia. The Jadar lithium project in Serbia, run by Rio Tinto, has just been canned due to pressure from environmentalist groups. Serbian politicians are miffed for money reasons — because that’s how politicians work. The global industry…

Google Labs is a relatively new division within the company, intended to explore the feasibility of new products. In addition to things like a set of augmented reality goggles (which they’d better call Googgles), Labs is also working on blockchain tech. At least, that’s the word according to a report from Bloomberg. This follows recent reports that Google is interested in getting into the crypto space. This project could be the company’s way in the door. Google Labs on the block The new division is supposedly run by Shivakumar Venkataraman, a veteran of the company’s advertising side of things. The…

Google has had its eye on the augmented reality (AR) space for a very long time. Its first effort, Google Glass, flopped. The execution wasn’t exactly ideal, giving rise to the “Glassholes” epithet, but perhaps its second try — Project Iris — will be better. Project Iris is the codename for Google’s latest foray into AR, according to a report from The Verge. Its existence isn’t a complete surprise. The search giant acquired North, a company specialising in smart glasses, in 2020. A new version of its smart headwear was always a possibility. Pondering Project Iris The report cites two…

Everyone and their uncle is talking about NFTs. But what isn’t really discussed is what to do with that Bored Ape once you’ve spent R3 million on it. Twitter’s got an idea — the service has rolled out the ability to set any of the NFTs you own as a profile picture. And, to draw attention to the fact that your profile pic is worth millions, these pictures display in a hexagon. Instead of, you know, a circle. This isn’t the first time the company’s done something around NFTs. Last year, it gave away a total of 140 NFTs. Twitter…

There was a heady time between 2006 and 2012 when Google’s G Suite was completely free to use. On a particular tier, of course. G Suite allows users to use Google’s range of apps along with a custom email domain, instead of the conventional ‘gmail.com’. That freedom, however, is coming to an end. G Suite started out as Google Apps, a name that was retired in 2012. That’s when G Suite took over, and when a whole batch of users was grandfathered into the free version of the app. Then, in 2020, G Suite became Google Workspace. Now, in 2022, Google…

What do you get when you combine a full-frame camera with cinema-grade video recording? Canon reckons the answer looks a lot like its newly-announced EOS R5C. Which, as you can tell by the name, looks an awful lot like the Canon EOS R5. From the front. Peek around at the camera’s rear and it’s a different story. There’s considerably more body there than you’d expect. There’s a reason for the extra padding too. These facts are Canon Canon’s slapped a new active cooling system inside the EOS R5C. We’re choosing to believe that the ‘C’ stands for ‘cooling’, and there’s…

The header image you see above consists of more than R1.3 billion ($85 million) in NFTs. You should know what an NFT is by now. Unless you dedicated the second half of 2021 to tequila studies in Mexico and just got back, of course. But are these images art? That’s the argument the folks over at Wikipedia are having at the moment, and it’s stressing NFT fans out. And it’s stressing them out because the value in an NFT lies, at least in part, on its desirability as a form of art. Wikipedia’s not the arbiter of what is and…

When it comes to electric vehicles, the most important thing is battery tech. EVs wouldn’t exist with batteries. What is needed now, mostly, is faster charging and increased capacity. Everyone’s working on both, but it’s just possible that capacity is about to get a shot in the arm. Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a new type of battery. It uses a new bio-membrane derived from Kevlar to create new lithium-sulphur (Li-S) EV batteries with a vastly increased capacity. And, as we all know, capacity equals range. Building better batteries So what’s the big deal with…

2022 is just going to hit different. We can’t say we saw this coming but… Microsoft Gaming just bought Activision Blizzard. As in all of it. Announcing the surprise deal in a tweet and a post on the Xbox website, Microsoft has confirmed that all of your ActiBlizz faves are about to live in a new home. Is that even legal, Microsoft Gaming? There’s some interesting language when it comes to the announcement. Company CEO Phil Spencer said in his post, “Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete,…