Author: Brett Venter

The social network formerly known as Facebook has had its first leak — a Meta smartwatch that has yet to be announced was discovered inside one of the company’s apps. And it’s not just a reference inside the code either. Images of the wearable device were unearthed, showing the notched screen and the teeny little camera that’s supposed to live inside the display. Social media smartwatches The image was discovered in the companion app for the Facebook Stories smart glasses, which were made in partnership with Ray-Ban. The discovery was made by a developer called Steve Moser before being shared,…

Last year at about this time, Samsung bucked the ongoing trend of tech companies doing badly by posting a record quarter. The company posted, in Q3 2020, record revenue of just under 67 trillion Korean won. In South African terms, that’s about R850 billion, or enough to pay off Eskom’s current debt twice and still have enough change left over to buy the government minister of your choice. Well, guess what? The South Korean company’s done it again. It hasn’t replicated 2020’s feat, though. It has exceeded it. The company has posted a new quarterly record for revenue by making…

About mid-way through last year — so approximately six years ago, in COVID-time — Olympus announced that the camera brand would be going away. At the time, it didn’t seem as final as all that. The company’s sale to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) made it clear that the hardware would continue in one form or another. And, now, we finally know what form that will be. Last sight of Mount Olympus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqIsKqf03F4&feature=emb_logo Olympus returns to the market under a familiar name. Cameras bearing some familiar hardware are headed to market under the name OM System, which is close enough to…

Remember when all you wanted was a new Huawei smartphone with Google Mobile Services baked in? We do too. The Honor 50 might as well be that smartphone, and it’s heading to South Africa soon. Honor may be split from its parent company, a side-effect of the troubled relationship between Huawei and Donald Trump, but the designs and hardware might as well just be Huawei by another name. It’s not like they went out and bought all new facilities and hired new staff, after all. Hyped for the Honor 50 The company’s latest handset, the 50, launched earlier this year…

Standard Bank’s online portals have, for the third time this year, crashed around month-end. Users who attempted to log into the company’s banking services via its mobile app were greeted this morning with a notification that the company’s services were down. Standard Bank is a little sus Users also reported issues, according to Down Detector, with regular old online banking but a check by Stuff showed that its browser-based online banking was working as usual. But the app, many folks’ usual method of conducting their banking, was down for most of the morning. Earlier today, the app’s message said, “You…

Blue Origin might have sent William Shatner to the edge of space and brought him back in one piece but the company has yet to launch a vehicle into orbit or deliver its promised BE-4 engine to NASA. This hasn’t stopped Jeff Bezos’ space company from announcing plans to put a space station, called Orbital Reef, in low-Earth orbit sometime in the second half of this decade. Blue Origin reaches for the stars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3ooNXfcGE The point? The company hopes to offer “…research, industrial, international, and commercial customers the cost competitive end-to-end services they need including space transportation and logistics, space…

Samsung’s got a new tablet on the way, if a new leak from OnLeaks (the clue’s in the name) is accurate. A render of the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has turned up online and it suggests there are a few new features coming to market. It’s been some time since Samsung last launched a flagship tablet — the Galaxy Tab S7 was first announced in August last year, so the S8 lineup is a little overdue. If this render, apparently based on CAD files for the device, is accurate, then Samsung’s also embracing the notch. Another notch for the Galaxy…

There are two ways to get people’s attention — using the words ‘cryptocurrency’ and ‘free’. Worldcoin is a Silicon Valley-based startup that has opted to combine the two, attempting to kickstart its new cryptocurrency by handing out a free bit of it to as many people as possible. It’ll do this by using a device it calls an orb that scans people’s irises — the point is to get a unique identifier, so each person can only claim a portion of the currency once. Worldcoin has placed orbs in 30 locations across twelve countries, and it says it hopes to…

Generators seem like an awful lot of effort, what with set-up, maintenance and finding someplace to store the thing. If only there were some way around all of that? Owning a generator used to be all but unthinkable, unless you had a remote cabin tucked away on the Transkei coast that you visited semi-annually. Now, everyone wants one. But actually picking something from the vast array of red or blue motors-on-wheels can be an imposing task. How much is too much? How much is not enough? Do you need to buy extra bits or is everything you need in the…

Facebook, through Oculus consulting chief technology officer John Carmack, announced last month that it would unlock the Oculus Go headset’s software. The VR hardware wasn’t with us for very long, going on sale for about two years before being sent to that great big junk-heap in the sky. Only, the software update is supposed to prevent that. Will it work? Only you will be able to decide that, by loading the newly-released update to your Oculus Go and seeing what it can do when liberated from the tyranny of Facebook’s grip. Oculus Go and do something new with it Carmack’s…