Author: Brett Venter

Skyworth’s got another TV for you to check out this year and this one’s a monster. Actually, they refer to the 86in SUC9500 TV as a beast, but that’s a little bit because of their celebrity partner — SA rugby player Tendai ‘Beast’ Mtawarira. And also because this R35,000 TV set is 86in in size. R35k (though you can find it for cheaper than that online already) isn’t much at all for a 4K TV of this size and, in keeping with previous releases, it’s also got a whole bunch of Google tech inside. The SUC9500 doesn’t… er… suck The…

Samsung’s MWC event is just around the corner but most of its surprises seem to be spoiled. We already knew much about the Galaxy Fold 3 and the Galaxy Flip 3, but we weren’t properly sure what they’d look like. That’s changed. Spying on the Galaxy Fold 3 https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/1408107239903223808? A couple of much more official-looking images have dropped online, thanks to Evan Blass (otherwise known as EVLeaks on Twitter). The Galaxy Fold 3 looks about how you’d expect, in that it’s a flat slab with a hinge in the middle. A follow-up image shows an S Pen and a more…

China plans to send its first crewed missions to Mars by 2033, as part of a series of missions intended to establish a long-term human presence on the red planet. Reuters reports that Wang Xiaojun, the head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the country’s main rocket construction company, explained as much at a Russian space exploration company. You’re going to Mars, China? According to Wang, China is eying manned missions to Mars in 2033, with followup missions in 2035, 2037 and then in 2041 — quite a specific timeline for the country to establish a presence on…

We’ve been hearing about it for weeks, even if we weren’t expecting Windows 10 to be supplanted, and now it’s official. Microsoft’s Windows 11 has been revealed and it looks, on first glance, like a very clean take on the company’s operating system. But then, that’s always the case with a fresh install of Windows (we don’t talk about Windows 8 any more). There are some serious changes afoot, despite how familiar the interface looks. That’s… sort of the point. Microsoft is leaning hard into the idea that this is the Windows you’re used to, with some furniture shuffled and…

The iPod is a beloved piece of tech, although it’s one that has been made redundant by all the other tech out there — specifically the smartphone and the rise of streaming. Nobody needs a dedicated music player any more — even if that hasn’t stopped folks from making them. Apple’s iconic music player is no more, but you can go back and revisit the past thanks to a browser-based version of the music hardware. Although it’s not made by Apple, it does, of course, support Apple Music. And it’s a fan of Spotify. Spotify the iPod difference The creation…

When a scientific enterprise refers to itself as the “Noah’s Ark of science”, we have to start asking what they know. Earth 300 is a proposed scientific superyacht that wouldn’t look out of place in a Roland Emmerich movie about surviving the apocalypse. We’re still trying to decide if that’s a good thing. Exploring the Earth 300 It’s certainly ambitious. The craft, if it ever winds up being built, will be a 300-metre floating scientific laboratory, powered by a type of nuclear reactor called a Molten Salt Reactor that is supposedly safe and emission-free. The tricky bit will be making…

Samsung’s got a Mobile World Congress event kicking off next week, with smartwatches in the spotlight. One of those is the Galaxy Watch Active 4, a device that has seemingly been revealed (almost totally) before the 28 June event. But that’s nothing unusual for Samsung. Details have been turning up for some time now, so this latest batch just adds to the growing pile of what we know. Here’s what that consists of (so far). Galaxy Watch Active 4 looks like a watch Perhaps the most striking thing about this leak is just how much Samsung’s action-focused wearable looks like…

The idea of Starlink, SpaceX’s internet access beamed down from space, is quite an interesting one. We know for sure that the service will be launching in South Africa at some point, but there’s first the matter of coverage to sort out. Well, that problem might just about to over. Starlink company president Gwynne Shotwel said earlier this week that global coverage could be in place by September this year. That’s… faster than we were expecting. Starlink out of reach? Nah Shotwel said, reports Reuters, “We’ve successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational…

Tide, if you’re a South African internet user, was last seen in 2018 during something called the Tide Pod Challenge. The company is back now, though, with something far more awesome and something considerably less stupid — a partnership with NASA to create the first laundry detergents designed for space. The Tide is turning (to space) Seriously. It’s not all 3D-printed human organs and travelling to other celestial bodies, NASA’s also putting money behind doing chores on the International Space Station. And, admittedly, on longer space missions. Currently, International Space Station (ISS) astronauts wear their clothing over and over again…

Welcome to the new capitalist hell-scape. Facebook, arbiter of reality and holder of information (which it then hands over to those with the money for it), has decided that WhatsApp could use a few new features. Not features that will make communication better, though. That would make far too much sense. No, Facebook is expanding the rollout of Shops to the messaging app, because capitalism demands that you’re always thinking of buying something at every point in time. Facebook finds new ways to Zuck Shops, in case you’ve forgotten, are online stores hosted on the social media platform. In a…