Author: Brett Venter

This year seems to be all about space. NASA’s performed all sorts of Martian magic since the beginning of the year and now China, in the form of its Tianwen-1 Mars probe, has added its own spin to off-world exploration. China’s Mars mission was due to arrive at the red planet a short time after NASA’s Perseverance mission and that’s just what took place. And, over the weekend, the country’s probe deposited itself, as well as its Zhurong rover, on the surface of Mars Tianwen-1 touches down https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1393377744491147266 China’s probe and the accompanying Zhurong rover successfully landed on Mars, according…

Twitter’s investigations into alternate revenue streams have borne some interesting fruit. Along with paid tweets, it seems the company may also be launching Twitter Blue, a monthly subscription service that will see users getting specific features as long as they’re shelling out $2.99 (about R45) a month. Feeling Twitter Blue https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1393541248049303555? The micro-blogging service’s plans have apparently been revealed by Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher who does this sort of thing often. By which we mean, she knows what’s coming before most of us. Some of the features seemingly coming to those willing to give Twitter a few bucks…

SpaceX may have blown up a few of its rockets to get to this point but we have to give the company credit: When they get it right, they scale up quickly. On the heels of finally landing one of its Starship prototypes (SN15 is the one that made it down intact), the company is planning a much more ambitious orbital test of its new rocket system. SpaceX is shooting for the stars Previous Starship tests have seen the large rocket launching 10km into the air before dropping back to attempt a vertical landing. Try to imagine a Boeing 747…

Mobile World Congress was very optimistic in February when it announced an in-person event taking place in June. As we near MWC 2021’s launch, however, it’s looking less and less like a great idea. So much so that several big names have dropped out of the event this week. The newest of these is Qualcomm, which has just opted to go digital-only for 2021. How much more can MWC 2021 take? Qualcomm joins Samsung and Lenovo in choosing to exhibit only digitally for the 28 June to 1 July event being held in Barcelona, saying (to website TechCrunch), “While we…

A certain Chinese company has just managed to avoid the damage Donald Trump’s administration attempted to do to it. Unfortunately, it’s not Huawei. Xiaomi will be removed from the American blacklist that did massive damage to Huawei’s smartphone business, according to court documents filed in the US. Xiaomi how you did that The Chinese company’s fate was already headed in that direction, as far back as March this year, but the new documents show that Xiaomi and the current American government have agreed to settle their legal differences “…without contest”. The result is the Chinese tech-maker’s removes from the US…

We’ve seen this sort of pattern before. Mobile World Congress is adamant that this year will see an in-person event but several companies have ducked out of attending. And now one of the largest names in smartphones has also pulled the plug. That’s right, Samsung’s not sending any in-person representatives to MWC 2021. Marking off Mobile World Congress Samsung backed away from attending MWC 2021 on Tuesday this week, saying that “The health and safety of our employees, partners and customers is our number one priority, so we have made the decision to withdraw from exhibiting in-person at this year’s…

Apple has just thrown a huge amount of investment money at Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning. The smartphone maker has given the glass maker a rather solid $45 million cash injection, in order to “…drive research and development into innovative new technologies that support durability and long-lasting product life.” Clear investment It’s not like Apple doesn’t have the money. The investment in Corning Incorporated came from the tech company’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which contains a rather colossal $5 billion. And this isn’t the only money the Gorilla Glass maker has received. In the past four years, Apple has sent $450 million…

There’s mining for bitcoin and then there’s taking matters a little too far. A private equity firm based in the States, Atlas Holdings, has purchased an old power plant in New York State that it intends to bring back online. It’s not bringing Greenidge, the fossil-fuel powered facility, back online to supply power to the surrounding area though. No, they’ve got something much more lucrative in mind. Bobbing for bitcoin Atlas Holdings intends to use most of the (again, fossil-fuel powered) power plant’s output to run its bitcoin-mining machines. Greenidge will be used to power some 18,000 mining rigs before…

First, there was QLED, Samsung’s attempt to convince everyone that OLED wasn’t that big of a deal. Now there’s Neo QLED (which is short for ‘new Quantum light-emitting diode), and it’s just landed in South Africa. Samsung’s new range of Neo QLED TV sets has dropped — all six of them — and they’re priced well enough that your bank account won’t be completely terrified. This is good news if you’re desperate to make the jump to 8K, because you only need to sell one kidney this year. Use the Force, Neo QLED So what can you expect to pay…

Facebook has been wary of the (forced) changes coming to its app on the iPhone and, now that iOS 14.5 has dropped worldwide, it seems that the social network has been right to worry. Despite attempting to convince its iPhone users base to opt-in to all those lovely tracking settings Facebook’s so fond of, the response… hasn’t been stellar. iPhone says no Analytics firm Flurry Analytics has crunched the numbers and, of the 5.3 million global iOS 14.5 users (that is, people who have upgraded to the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system), just 13% have opted in to…