Author: Brett Venter

When you hear Mark Zuckerberg talking about something called a ‘metaverse’, it’s a little disconcerting. He sits at the top of the most data-hungry company the world has ever seen (give or take a Google or two), one with a terrible track record of keeping its users’ information safe. Why on Earth would anyone trust this man to build a metaverse? To answer that question, it helps to know what Zuck is talking about. He hasn’t gone all Reed Richards and starting building his own universe or anything like that. The metaverse is Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of Facebook.…

LG might be out of the smartphone game but their Tone true wireless headphones are sticking around. And, in typical LG style, they’re evolving a little — the company spent a lot of time putting audio first in its handsets before the Big Close, and that innovation seems to live on in its headphone lineup. Setting the Tone The South Korean tech-maker has announced a new batch of its in-ear buds, as well as a collection of new features not seen in the lineup before. There are three sets of buds making their way to “key markets” (that’s all we’ve…

It’s not just upstart startups taking on the space race. Boeing’s in the game with its Starliner crew capsule, which was supposed to be a little further along by now. Quite a bit further along, actually, but the capsule has been grounded since it didn’t manage the orbit it was supposed to in 2019. Starliner has a shot at redemption this month, however, as 30 July will see the Boeing-designed-and-developed capsule return to space in an attempt to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner goes a little old-school NASA has determined, following a flight readiness assessment, that Boeing’s…

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…