Author: Brett Venter

Being an astronaut is a big deal (even if it does have ‘naut’ in the name). There’s been some debate whether space tourists like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, and others with enough money to travel really high in the sky on a rocket of some description, deserve the title. America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which takes care of this sort of thing, has finally weighed in. Bringing space tourists back to Earth See, it’s not enough to go really, really high up. If that was the case, just about anybody with a large enough fuel source could manage it.…

Bose, Sennheiser, Jabra, Sony — those are the names we associate with audio tech. Louis Vuitton, not so much, but its new Horizon wireless speaker, with its internal lights and totally-not-cribbed-from-a-UFO design really, really wants you to notice it. The LV Horizon Light Up speaker is supposedly inspired by the company’s Toupie handbag (whatever that is) but we’re also seeing some influence from the closing scenes of Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull there. What’s that on the Horizon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79cvOzcuJI But it’s not a UFO, it’s yet another piece of very expensive audio gear from the French fashion…

Are you prone to verbal excitement whenever someone does something completely expected? Then being a ring announcer for the WWE might just be the career you’re looking for. Normally that sort of job interview is out of reach of the typical South African but if that was the case here, we wouldn’t be writing about it. TikTok and the WWE are looking for a ring announcer (or announcers) for the upcoming SummerSlam event in August this year. They’re looking, rather obviously, on TikTok, because what better way to hunt for talent in 2021 than to turn it into a massive…

Last month the Hubble space telescope hit a glitch that powered down the long-lived scientific instrument. Objects in space stop working all the time, but this issue became remarkable because it took ages for NASA to get it fixed. But the folks at the American space agency are nothing if not resourceful and the telescope, launched into space in 1990, is taking photographs of the the stars again. Hubble no longer in trouble Above you can see a couple of the unusual sights Hubble has seen since it was powered back up last week. On the left is ARP-MADORE2115-273 (cool…

It’s no secret that Samsung’s launching a new set of folding smartphones, likely as soon as 11 August this year, but we’re not sure how much they’ll cost. Or are we? The Korea Herald has apparent pricing for the not-yet-confirmed folding smartphone range and they actually look attainable. More or less. See, last year’s Fold 2 was an excellent device but that price left it out of reach of all but a few. This new report indicates a more accessible price — and might point towards the Note range actually disappearing, despite Samsung’s protests to the contrary. The price of…

Once up a time, in the early days of the internet, you couldn’t visit a website that didn’t have masses of gifs and automatically-playing sound. Facebook seems to think that we want to return to a time when Geocities ruled the online Earth with its launch of Soundmojis. Soundmojis, in case the concept isn’t immediately obvious, are emojis that make noises. Because who wouldn’t want to share something like that with the rest of the world? Oh, right. Everybody. But why soundmojis? https://www.facebook.com/messenger/videos/150123953880602/ Someone at Facebook HQ must have thought this was a brilliant idea. In Facebook Messenger, you”ll be…

What with all of the leaks recently, and the total failure of any hardware to make an appearance at MWC, we’ve been expecting an Unpacked event from Samsung for some time now. Finally, we can put a date and time on it, thanks to a new leak from the guy who always knows what Samsung is up to, Evan Blass. If you want to know what Samsung’s up to for (most of) the rest of the year, you’ll be able to tune in on 11 August, at 16:00 South African Standard Time (SAST) — at least, that’s what Blass’ image…

Chicken nuggets are barely a meat, so it shouldn’t be too hard to recreate a plant version, right? Impossible Foods, the folks behind the Impossible Burger, seems to think that it’s rather… well, possible. Which is why the company that specialises in making meat out of things that aren’t meat is releasing its version of one later this year. Hardly, Impossible It’s not the first company to eye this food group appreciated mostly by small children and other groups we’re not about to mention. A couple of years ago, Beyond Meat (the other major company making artificial flesh for human…

You know which website people on this planet don’t pay enough attention to? Facebook. At least, that’s what the folks at Instagram seem to think. The Facebook-owned platform, which is more about video these days than anything else, may be taking a little too much attention from Zuckerberg’s main event — Insta is testing a message pointing its users over to Facebook. Instagram is where the cool kids are According to Engadget, a Facebook spokesperson said, “We’re testing a way to let people who have connected their Instagram accounts to Facebook know about features only available there, such as how…

If you’re making a supercar, you have to give it a mad name. Blade. Valkyrie. Or, in the case of the Aston Martin Valkyrie’s successor, Valhalla. Which means the next vehicle is probably either going to be called Fenrir, Jörmungandr or Ragnarök. But let’s not get caught on the future just yet. Valhalla awaits. Aston Martin’s newest hybrid supercar is the production version of the company’s AM-RB 003 hypercar concept, featuring plenty of power behind the steering wheel. Plus, it looks awesome enough to justify the title. Reaching Valhalla Aston’s newest machine has a top speed of 330km/h (which we’re…