Author: Brett Venter

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…

The world’s favourite messaging service WhatsApp has spent much of this year adding new features (partly, we think, to make up for the disaster that was its revised Terms of Service). One of those features is the ability to use the app on more than one device, while keeping it connected to just one phone number. That feature is now in private beta. Which, obviously, means you can’t use it yet. But it does give us an opportunity to try before we buy, so to speak. The feature and how it will work has been detailed by the parent company…

Look, not every startup can be a winner. Dead Startup Toys, another drop by the internet collective known as MSCHF, plans to commemorate that. You see, it’s not enough to just have a bad idea. All of the little toys in this actual online store are small versions of real products that got real funding and then really, really collapsed when everyone released how useless they really were. Dead Startup Toys for Africa? The products on offer include representations of the Juicero (an over-engineered juice presser that was easily replaced by human hands), the Coolest Cooler (which made huge bank…

Divisive South African politician Julius Malema was handed a brief suspension by Twitter last night, after the social media company found that he had “…violated the Twitter Rules” with regards to recent posts on the service. The 12-hour suspension looks like it was automatically triggered and, as of this morning, Malema’s suspension has ended. Julius Malema is briefly booted https://twitter.com/FloydShivambu/status/1415006565049016326? We’re not exactly sure what the EFF politician did to get kicked off the service. Malema’s most contentious tweets over the past few days are still up and active, despite one calling for EFF members to join the ongoing unrest…

Quantum computers might one day become commonplace but, for now, they’re strictly the domain of large companies. QuantWare, a startup company based in the Netherlands, hopes to expand the reach of the burgeoning technology by creating and shipping quantum processors. Which is a fantastic development, though not one that matters to consumer computer technology yet. QuantWare is my CPU? Computers used to be something you had to rent by the hour, because they were as large as buildings and owning one was just far too expensive. It was only after the technology became more affordable that computer usage really exploded.…