Author: Brett Venter

The thing about setting up a smart home is that it requires several things. Those would be technical skill and large amounts of money. Usually, when you’re confronted by affordable smart home gear, like this batch from Aqara, you should run screaming. That’s not the case here. Cheap smart home kit tends to have several flaws. It’s a mission to set up, troubleshooting is a nightmare, or interoperability doesn’t operate. Usually, it’s all three, with an added side of poor design and/or build quality. We’re running down the list of possible cons here for an obvious reason — Aquara’s gear…

Education, in a country like South Africa, is arguably the most important (and underappreciated) aspect of changing a life. Vodacom — you all know who Vodacom is — is offering bursaries to South African students studying in specific fields. The programme is being run by the Vodacom Foundation. It’s open to school leavers, and first, second, and third-year students studying in various STEM fields. Those chosen for a corporate cash injection will be picked “…based on merit and their neediness for financial assistance.” Vodacom comes to the party The mobile service provider isn’t being totally altruistic. Vodacom, based on the…

Load shedding Stage 2 has returned. This isn’t exactly unexpected, even if it’s unwelcome. South Africa’s recent cold snap, plus a loss of generation capacity, is to blame for the most recent bout. Timed power outages will begin this evening from 16:00 and will continue through until midnight. If you don’t know the drill by now, we’d like to congratulate you on your solar installation. Load shedding blues #POWERALERT1 Due to a shortage of generation capacity, Stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented at 16:00 – 24:00 this evening; with a high probability of loadshedding on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. pic.twitter.com/VwomBFY3tj…

You might have heard that Russia will be leaving the International Space Station, thanks to a variety of ongoing tensions. Well, while the country is on a break, it could well set up ROSS. That’s the name of a proposed Russia-operated space station the country revealed at Army-2022. Army-2022 is a military event held in Moscow, and ROSS is only a model for the moment. But it could well be the future of Russia in space. Based on its initial design, it’s also rather ambitious. ROSS looks… Friend-ly Don’t get the wrong idea, the station isn’t inspired by the Friends…

When your tech breaks, you don’t want to wait forever to get it back. LG’s new premium service centre, launched today in Gauteng, hopes to keep that wait short. The new facility is based at the company’s relatively new Johannesburg offices in Midrand. The company’s new centre is built around speedy repairs of TVs, microwaves, washing machines, and fridges. The company says that thanks to onsite parts, it hopes to turn some repairs around in an hour or so. That appears to be more a target than a promise, but it’s still good to know that the company has speed…

If you own a recent Porsche then, first, congratulations. We hate you a little bit. But also, you owe it to yourself to check out the new TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Porsche Edition. The newest smartwatch from the iconic watchmaker has been designed with Taycan owners in mind. You don’t need to own one. But if you want your smartwatch to match… The Connected Calibre smartwatch is the result of an ongoing TAG/Porsche partnership, first undertaken last year. The first device from that team-up, the Carrera Porsche Chronograph, was a much more conventional timepiece. This one features much more…

Going to space is a remarkable achievement. Getting up there and deciding to get outside of the construction keeping you alive is another entirely. Soon, private citizens might join the ranks of those who have conducted a spacewalk. This is Polaris Dawn, a SpaceX-powered mission that will include the first commercial spacewalk. The event could take place as soon as December this year. It’ll be a world first — four private citizens launched into space, at least some of whom will get out of the capsule they’re in. It forms part of the Polaris Program, a privately-funded expedition looking to…

YouTube, modern-day babysitter, and place where people watch other people play video games, has something completely new in the works. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google’s platform is about to launch another platform. This one will act as an online store for streaming services, more or less. More specifically, the new function is internally referred to as a “channel store”, according to the report. Exactly how it’ll work hasn’t been explained, but YouTube has apparently been working on the idea for eighteen months. YouTube, NewTube The company hopes to convince potential partners to offer streaming services…

Some of you might remember the humble Beach Buggy, a converted VW Beetle with a fibreglass shell, a roll cage, and basically no way to keep drivers and passengers warm. They used to (and still do) roam South Africa’s coastline. They were also seen in all manner of places outside of SA because they were made by a company called Meyers Manx. Manx used to sell Beach Buggies to anyone who was willing to put them together. The iconic vehicle was a fun experience, but what if it was utterly terrifying? Enter the Manx 2.0, an electric Beach Buggy. Brisk…

So you wanted a future with robots, did you? Xiaomi, apparently, is about to make that happen. CyberOne is its first humanoid robot, revealed during an event yesterday. It joins the company’s existing Cyberdog, a surprisingly affordable robotic quadruped. If there’s no option to have the pair interact, Xiaomi will have failed. Unlike Tesla’s own humanoid droid, Xiaomi’s robotic person actually walked out on stage yesterday. It might not look as slickly human as Elon Musk’s concept but it’s apparently completely functional. The CyberOne robot joined Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun on stage, gave him a flower, and then posed for…