Author: Brett Venter

The South African government is planning on spending the country’s money again. This time, though, it actually sounds like a good idea. SA’s government is investigating installing solar power at various State hospitals around the country. Since hospitals deal with residents who need electricity to live, this sounds like a fantastic plan. A plan that is being hammered out by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Health, but still just a plan. Solar-powered medicine The announcement was made during a different announcement revealing that another five hospitals in the country have been exempted from…

South African shopping giant Shoprite is pushing hard into sustainability. Most recently, it lobbed a fat wad of (other people’s) cash at improving its reliance on renewable energy. The most recent fruit from the company is a new battery-powered truck. It’s not an electric panel van like Woolworths is experimenting with. Nor is it a fleet of electric Mr. Bean cars, like the hippies over at Faithful to Nature are testing. Shoprite’s new prototype delivery vehicle is a full-sized Scania Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). Shoprite, meet BEV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ_XZh2oMd4 Shoprite’s newest fleet addition is powered by a combination of nine batteries…

Back when it first launched, the Fitbit Sense didn’t make a lot of sense. It had a massive price and its keynote feature, dermal sensors for stress testing, was quickly available on the Fitbit Charge 5 (which launched at half the price). The Fitbit Sense 2 manages to improve on its predecessor in a few ways. One of these, oddly enough, includes yanking out a few software features. Specifically, third-party app support isn’t a thing here. If you simply must have Spotify controls on your wrist (a frequent Fitbit favourite), this isn’t the wearable for you. But as a fitness-focused…

Eskom has a plan for the country’s power situation. Not so much how to fix it, but how severe it will be for the near future. Stage 1 and 2 load shedding are on the cards until Tuesday morning. After that, the state power utility plans to keep South Africa on Stage 2 load shedding during the evenings until further notice. So at least (some of) the traffic lights will be working as you head to work this week. Take to the Stage 2 #PowerAlert1 Loadshedding will be suspended at midnight, then resume with Stage 1 at 05:00 – 16:00…

They make robots for everything these days. Cars can drive themselves, and humanoid and canine robots exist. What’s next? Golf robots, of course. Researchers at Paderborn University in Germany have come up with Golfi, the least imaginatively named putting robot in existence. We don’t mean ‘putting’ in the sense of ‘putting that thing over there’. We mean ‘putting that golf ball into that very small hole’. Totally different pronunciation. Golfi goes golfing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKJV6QrNbtE The little golf robot does most of its work via part of a Microsoft Kinect camera unit. Specifically, the 3D camera used to peer into rooms to…

If there was one significant improvement Stuff would make to the Jaguar I-Pace, it would be to fully amour it up. Just kidding. At a little over 2,100kg, Jaguar’s EV is already a tank. But someone out there was looking for a little extra protection and they turned to Armormax, a South African company, for help. The result is the world’s first armoured Jaguar I-Pace. And since the EV was a beast to begin with, the company making the upgrades managed to do their work without substantially increasing the car’s weight. Just 200kg of additions were stuffed inside the vehicle.…

If you’ve been paying attention to alarmist outcries in recent years, you might have encountered the term ‘killer robots’. These are machines used specifically to kill humans. And not like guns or knives (a knife is just a very simple machine). Rather, they’re able to track and assassinate targets without human intervention. Loads of folks are understandably upset about the possibility. But it was thought that these robotic antagonists would be more likely to turn up on a battlefield than in a neighbourhood. But there’s always that one guy. In this case, the wombat taking things too far is the…

Checkers might offer one of the country’s foremost delivery apps but there’s at least one time of year that it attempts to get you in stores. This weekend’s Black Friday sale, whether South Africans are at the standard, Hyper, or dedicated baby stores, is all about being there in person. And that’s because the grocery store’s deals require that you physically touch them in order to purchase them. It makes a sort of sense. Sending those folks with the barcode scanners around to harvest massive sales won’t leave much for anyone else to buy. Plus, stores crammed full of people…

It should come as no surprise that Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, is looking for more ways to make money. The company experienced its first layoffs (ever) recently, shedding 13% of its workforce in a stroke. The chaps on the WhatsApp and Messenger teams, as well as the metaverse group, are relatively safe because Zuckerberg reckons that’s where the money is. VR hardware is the company’s only remaining hardware and now a relatively untapped resource is about to be tapped. That may raise cash for the social network, but users are almost certainly getting the short end of…

The brand new Audi S8 TFSI quattro became available in South Africa today. For most, that’s just a thing that happened. For others — those with loads of cash or a really excellent car allowance — it’s a call to hit the dealership as soon as possible. How can you tell which list you’re on? Well, if you’ve got nigh-on R2.8 million just lying around doing nothing, then the Audi S8 might well be the vehicle for you. Your home probably already has solar power, so a stunning V8 sedan in the driveway is the next way to drive the…