Author: Brett Venter

Perhaps you remember the Dragon Age series of RPGs. You know, story-heavy single-player, extremely popular experiences? The upcoming Dragon Age sequel wasn’t going to be anything like that. Only, according to reports, now it is. We hope. The report, coming via Bloomberg, states that this welcome change is because publisher Electronic Arts is backing away from making developer Bioware stick multiplayer into another game. Citing people familiar with the matter, EA’s reportedly permitting “…the developers to remove all planned multiplayer components from the game.” Saving Dragon Age And how this change in the RPG series’ fortunes came about is an interesting…

The worst thing about laptops is that you can’t upgrade them. Much. A new startup called Framework hopes to change that, by released a laptop you can improve over time. And not just the RAM and SSD, either. Everything from the screen to the keyboard can be swapped out, and there’s a modular section that can be put to many different uses. Building a better Framework In practise, based on what we’ve seen from the company’s website, most of the upgrades look like they’d come via a much more accessible notebook chassis — think fewer annoying clips and glued sections…

Facebook (you know who they are) is transitioning to a new wake-word for voice control of its Portal and Oculus Quest hardware — “Hey Facebook” is the new phrase that users will utter to summon Mark Zuckerberg’s newest surveillance hardware from its slumber. Facebook has only made a proper announcement for the Oculus Quest, with the phrase letting you trigger all manner of voice commands for the Quest 2. Later, Facebook intends to bring the functionality to all of its Oculus hardware, which means soon every one of its VR headsets sold will have a mic listening in (and will…

Space has been in the news as of late and while both the UAE and China had missions arrive at the red planet this month, NASA offers the most spectacular footage. But China’s also got its sights set on the final frontier in a larger capacity. To that end, the country has revealed plans for a new super-heavy rocket, called Long March 9 (also known as CZ-9), which is intended to get humans from this rock we live on to other rocks, far, far away. The Long March 9 to freedom The existence of the rocket system was revealed this…

The year was 2014. It was the last time we officially saw a Samsung-made laptop in the South African market. Since then, there has been intermittent talk of the company bringing its range of computer hardware back to SA but nothing has come of it. We hope that changes. Because Samsung’s rumoured to be trying something a little different with its notebook hardware soon. It’ll still be making the conventional stuff, but it’s what’s inside that counts. And the South Korean tech-maker is rumoured to be including Exynos processors in its Windows machines soon. Surprising Samsung That’s the word according…

Let’s just start off by saying that Boston Dynamics, the company behind Spot, Atlas, and a collection of other interesting robots, isn’t happy about this. A group calling themselves MSCHF (pronounced ‘mischief’) has acquired one of the company’s Spot robots and they’re about to use it to prove a point. The point is about weapons, and police departments, and guns, and the way MSCHF is attempting to make that point is by letting the internet control Spot. Only Spot now has a paintball gun mounted on top of his head. This sounds like a fun time, until you consider the…

Haptic response on devices toting Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 chipset is set to improve, thanks to a little trip to the Lofelt. The chipmaker has entered into a new partnership with the company, which sounds like it belongs in the Kruger National Park, which will see haptics improvements conferred on devices later this year. Longing for the Lofelt The deal will improve the haptic feedback on Android phones sporting the Snapdragon 888, with the improvements added via a software update in the second half of 2021. Specifically,  “Lofelt and Qualcomm will deliver a universal haptic software framework that runs natively on…

It’s a chaotic time in the smartphone market. Mid-way through 2020, Huawei kicked Samsung off its podium and now Apple’s gone and done the same for the end of 2020. Market research firm Gartner, detailing the 5% decline in world smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020, also pointed out that Samsung’s dominance has, once again, been temporarily curtailed. By the American phenomenon, Apple, obviously. The Apple of Tim’s eye The last time Apple stood atop the pile was in Q4 of 2016 — four years is a long time to wait to dethrone your nemesis, we reckon. The…

Want to do something that you’ve never, ever done before? Watch this video of NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on the surface of Mars. Because, as weird as it seems, almost nobody (before this week) has directly watched a spacecraft land on another planet before. And, if you’re any kind of space nerd, the video is exhilarating. Perhaps it’s the cheers from NASA’s control room every time something goes right with the Perseverance landing (which they didn’t have much control over) but mostly we reckon it’s just seeing this gigantic object complete its months-long journey from Earth to the surface of…

Huawei’s still got its eye on a new folding smartphone in its stable, with details finally emerging around its new Mate X2 handset. Rather than utilising the design from its original Mate Xs, the Mate X2 looks surprisingly like Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 2. The major difference? Huawei’s HMS instead of Google’s service. But Huawei’s newest folding device isn’t quite identical to Samsung’s contender. It is slightly larger, for one, even if the folding design is more or less the same. The handset actually tapers from one side to the other, making it a very expensive doorstop, if you’re that way…