Author: Brett Venter

Electric cars: They’re not just for Elon Musk anymore. Nissan has announced Ambition 2030, its intention to invest a substantial sum (more than 2 trillion yen) in electric vehicles. And not just a few either. The company hopes to dish out 23 EV models by 2030, with at least twenty of those being available in the next five years. Nissan hopes to, “…deliver exciting, electrified vehicles and technological innovations while expanding its operations globally” over the next ten years, with an eye on becoming fully carbon neutral by 2050. Because, you know, the planet’s on fire. It’s good to have…

Eventually, life imitates video games. Because video games are art, yes? Unfortunately the means eventually we’ll compete for fame in 100-person televised elimination contests where the main prize is death. But, right now, it just means that football overlords FIFA are bringing a feature from the video games to real life. At the FIFA Arab Cup 2021, the organisation is testing something called semi-automated offside technology. The name is fairly explanatory. It works like that computer-generated LBW thing from televised cricket matches, only it points out whether football players are offside. By tracking their limbs, naturally. FIFA filches features The…

Another Black Friday has come and gone. Maybe you got a bargain, probably you didn’t. That doesn’t matter, the not-so-subtle social manipulation is over for a few more weeks. It’s entirely possible that the massive psychological experiment that is Black Friday is becoming less effective, though. Like every popular IP Activision has made popular in the last decade, the late-November shopping day may be oversaturated. In other words, folks are spending less on the shopping holiday. A black day for Black Friday? At least, that’s the word according to Adobe Analytics. For the very first time ever, (American) sales totals…

The cellular phone has been around for almost 40 years now. That’s not a terribly long time, but enough change has taken place that the technology justifies its own museum. What would you call something like that? The Mobile Phone Museum has a nice ring to it (heh). Such a place exists, though its physical presence is relegated to a secure storage facility for the more than 3,500 devices the non-profit has in its collection. It comes to 2,130 different devices (at the time of writing) across more than 200 different brands. And yes, the first cellphone, the Motorola DynaTAC…

If there’s one thing we like more than testing stuff, it’s giving stuff away. But, since we don’t get to keep test units, it’s really hard for us to give kit away. We could… but then we’d be asked some serious questions by the people who actually own the device. Life’s too short for that conversation. It’s a discussion we don’t have to have today, though. Samsung gave us one Galaxy Watch3 to give away to one lucky Stuff reader, and all they had to do was a little light reading. If you wanted to get your hands on a…

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the blockchain, along comes dictionary-maker Collins to bring up NFTs again. Only this time they’re not trying to convince you that you can be the sole owner of a JPG. No, they’re here to tell you that the abbreviation for ‘non-fungible token’ is 2021’s word of the year. The annual ‘word of the year’ announcement tends to be tech-related, for the simple reason that new tech tends to create new words. There was that one year when the word of the year was an emoji. That was a fun…

Art is sort of a subjective thing. An old tin of beans can be art, in the right hands. But creating it usually takes a certain sort of mind. Wombo Dream, an AI-powered artist that works using a combination of word prompts and machine learning, may just have that mind. What’s a Wombo Dream? The app is available through a web browser, as well as on Android and iOS, and it’s a splendid little time-waster. Even more so because the images it generates are surprisingly compelling. We fed it several prompts, from Donald Trump to Seaside Views, and settled on…

One of the more stealthy tech lineups to emerge in recent years is the smart tracker. Starting with the Tile, which began life as a Kickstarter project, we’ve seen loads of companies introduce their own versions. Apple, Samsung, heck, even Vodacom has a version of the Tile. All of this competition has left the Tile feeling a little neglected. Until, that is, the folks from Life360 came along to a) acquire the company and b) supply it with enough cash to punch Samsung in the face. Shopping for Tiles Okay, there might not be enough money to blacken the eye…

Smartphone processors, if the device you’re likely reading this on wasn’t a big enough clue, are very big business. The major name in the game is Qualcomm, with some competition by Apple and Samsung thrown in. MediaTek, a name we tend to associate with budget and mid-range phones, is looking to get into the lucrative flagship device market. It plans to do this with the launch of its new Dimensity 9000 processor, a chipset that the company claims can stand toe-to-toe with the best mobile processor on the planet. ‘The best’, in this instance, means the likes of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon…

Back in September this year, we heard about the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Innovation. At the time, the all-electric aircraft the engine manufacturer was working on undertook a successful test flight. Well, it’s back. And, unlike the brief test a few short weeks ago, this time it’s moving much faster. Originally, the company was hoping to eventually get its Project ACCEL engine to reach a top speed of at least 480km/h. It seems that it has reached its mark, and then some, though we’re still not sure about the whole target distance, thing. Rolls-Royce rocket The engine-makers have, in a press…