Author: Brett Venter

It’s a good time to be the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The ongoing chip shortage means that the company, one of the world’s largest chip-makers, has all the business it can handle. Literally. The company’s order books are full. This was borne out by the company’s most recent financial results. The company posted a 16.4% rise in quarterly profits at the end of 2021, setting a record for the company. This isn’t surprising, given that companies around the world are slurping up semiconductors as fast as they can be made. Everyone, to TSMC: ‘Another one’ TSMC posted quarterly revenues…

We cover a lot of space news here on Stuff but it’s very rare that there’s a South African connection. Obviously, that’s not the case this time around. The South African government, in the shape of Higher Education, Science and Innovation Minister Dr Blade Nzimande, has announced the launch of several satellites today. Specifically, SA is launching the first three of a nine-constellation array known as the Maritime Domain Awareness Satellite (MDASat) constellation. And that launch, weather permitting takes place later today. South African outsourcing We’re not launching the three cubesats ourselves though. Oh, good grief no. If SA had…

You might remember, towards the end of the hellscape that was 2021, the Balmuda Phone. This smartphone is made by a Japanese company that traditionally focuses on more conventional gadgetry. It had an interesting set of features, but there was one that wasn’t mentioned when it was first revealed. That’d be the ability to absolutely wreck Balmuda’s stock price. To be fair, the phone’s creators probably didn’t know that function was included either. Balmuda blows… up? Reuters has a report on the company’s stock prices, which initially suggest when the Balmuda Phone was first announced in May 2021. But subsequent…

Bugatti makes some of the most insanely desirable vehicles on the planet. After all, if you’re going to die on contact with a concrete pillar, you might as well spend masses of money on it. But the company’s also got an eye for the weird and wonderful. Otherwise, why would the company make cars for kids or pools tables you can use on your megayacht in a storm? It’s with that in mind that we introduce you to Bugatti’s latest creation: A fully electronic… scooter. Created in partnership with a company called Bytech, it’s probably the only way most of…

Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive has announced that it’s set to acquire game developer Zynga. You might be familiar with the name. Zynga is behind those Farmville Facebook requests from the time before the social network was an obvious data-predator. But it’s what Take-Two intends to pay for the developer that’s remarkable. The company that handles Grand Theft Auto-maker Rockstar Games, among others, reckons Zynga is worth $12.7 billion. In local terms, that’s about R205 billion. That’s enough to build a second Kusile power station, with some R40 billion left over for “performance bonuses”. But why? That’s the question, isn’t…

The global semiconductor shortage is having all sorts of interesting effects. Companies like Sony have stopped taking some orders. Auto-makers are releasing vehicles that are lacking certain features. And now Canon’s printer arm is telling its users how to circumvent its toner cartridge DRM. You know how some printers work, right? They just don’t seem to function correctly unless you plop in a branded plastic box filled with a very expensive substance. That’s because there’s a little chip built into the cartridge that tells the printer that this is the genuine article. Well, Canon can’t find enough of those chips,…

It was only a matter of time before another company got into the folding smartphone game. Honor has revealed the Honor Magic V, its brand-new folding flagship. It’s destined for China only at the moment, which may be a good thing. For Honor, that is. The design looks… a little familiar. And not just because most phones — even brand-new folding ones — tend to look like what came before. The few images that exist show a spine and camera bump that Samsung might have designed. It uses what Honor calls an “advanced waterdrop hinge”, but they don’t go into…

Facebook (which we now all know as Meta) doesn’t always have the best ideas. It’s misused large quantities of user information. It’s enabled all sorts of negative behaviour… pretty much around the world. And it frequently makes tone-deaf decisions. This, happily, isn’t one of them. The social media giant has announced something it calls its Privacy Center. Currently limited to a set number of American desktop users, it’s a one-stop shop for understanding how the company uses personal data. It makes a nice change. That’s not very Meta At its heart, the Privacy Center is an educational tool. Meta hopes…

NASA had a better weekend than most. The James Webb space telescope, following several lengthy delays, launched into space in December last year. And, over the weekend, the telescope’s final deployment successfully took place. The James Webb space telescope finished opening up its 21-foot-wide, gold-plated primary mirror over the weekend. Previous operations saw the ‘scope’s sun shield deployed, in order to protect the very sensitive optical hardware. But there’s much more to do still. Caught in NASA’s Webb Though NASA’s managed to get its shiny new telescope opened up, it’s still due for alignment. The James Webb’s primary mirror is…

Last week we saw that Telkom filed a legal challenge to suspend the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (ICASA) spectrum auction later this year. Mobile service provider MTN has filed its own papers, opposing Telkom’s bid for an interdict. MTN is hoping to avoid a repeat of last year — the long-delayed spectrum auction was delayed yet again, until 2022. Telkom’s challenge would likely set the auction even further back. And MTN wants to expand its 5G infrastructure, damnit. MTN’s mission MTN CEO Charles Molapisi said, “Spectrum is not just an industry issue, this is an issue for all…