Author: Brett Venter

No, DJI hasn’t released a mini-drone that zips around while focused on your crotch (though there’s probably a market for it — someone see if Leonid Radvinsky will place an order). Instead, the drone maker has announced its new FlyCart 100 drone, a significantly more boring affair. Unless, that is, you’re in the logistics business. The idea of drone-based package delivery isn’t new, but most projects seem to involve building the hardware specifically for a given company. Enhanced verticals, you see? But having a major manufacturer create a purpose-built drone for sale suggests that the delivery method is about to…

It’s easy to argue that the Need for Speed series was at its height during the heady days of Underground and Underground 2, right about the same time as the Fast and Furious franchise was all about cars going fast and less about drifting a Pontiac Fiero in space. If you’d like to travel back to that time, even in your crappy stock standard vehicle, you should check out the custom NFS Underground 2 minimap being designed by Garage Tinkering. It replicates the iconic circular map from Underground 2, but tracks a real vehicle across UK roads. Real Need for…

It’s not just South Africa going all out for festive travellers. International companies like Uber are also hoping to up the convenience factor for people going away on their holidays. The latest from the ride-share all is the introduction of kiosks at (some) airports. It’s little more than a tablet and a card reader, but it’s intended to let you snag a ride even if your international roaming hasn’t kicked in yet. Of course, that means more money for Uber and less need for interaction with real people. Still, if you’re in the States and don’t have a compatible data…

Thought you’d seen the last of Skyrim, had you? Until Bethesda gets around to releasing The Elder Scrolls VI, the action RPG that first saw daylight in 2011 will continue to be released. Case in point: Todd Howard’s money printer has just launched on Nintendo’s Switch 2. There’s good news and bad news, depending on whether you’ve previously bought the title from Nintendo’s storefront. Those who skipped over the last edition who merely want the Switch 2 version are on the hook for R1,030, while anyone who bought the original Switch edition will pay less. How much less, we can’t…

It took a while for us to get here. Once upon a time, Google was the very best internet search engine on the planet. That wasn’t hard to do in the 1990s, but it managed to retain its position right up until it placed current Chief Technologist Prabhakar Raghavan in charge of ads and commerce at the company in 2018. It wasn’t all Raghavan’s fault. The company had been in a downward slide for some time before that, but that point marks the moment when Google explicitly cared more about money than about making a decent product. The search giant’s…

Something like this was always inevitable. South African Tourism, in conjunction with a company called GuideGeek, has launched Siyanda, a tourist-specific AI that will “[provide] instant answers to any travel or tourism related questions about the country.” It’s hardly the first upgrade for the upcoming tourist season, but it’s easily the most buzzwordy. GuideGeek, which specialises in travel AI, reckons that Siyanda will “support travelers seeking authentic, vibrant, and joy-filled journeys across South Africa.” Specifically, North American travellers, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t use it yourself. Who knows? You might learn something about South Africa. Ask Siyanda?  As…

Some ideas make perfect sense. One of those ideas is, weirdly, putting samurai in a space setting. Sol Shogunate is an excellent (and brand new) example of just this, though we’d also have accepted a game revolving around Frank Herbet’s Ginaz Swordmasters. Still, this one — the creation of a new developer called Chaos Manufacturing — looks to have potential. The aesthetics are something we’ve seen before, a weird hybrid of PlatinumGames’ Vanquish (notably the powered armour) and the frenetic combat (and female protagonist) from Shift Up’s Stellar Blade. It works. If you’re up for a more vertical version of…

It’s difficult to think of a way to change the average laptop in any novel manner. Asus has given it a shot, adding special control peripherals to the keyboard area of some of its ProArt laptops. Lenovo’s Legion Pro Rollable, a still-rumoured gaming notebook, is targeting the other flat surface. It’s not the first time Lenovo has launched a rollable display, having already put its ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable out in the world. While that one extends upward to ensure that you can always scroll a little further in Excel, its Legion Pro will expand sideways. Great for flight…

Uber Intelligence, a new function in the ride-sharing apps for its advertising partners, has just recruited you (and everyone else who uses the service) as Intelligence operatives. The company just announced the ‘feature’, a “data and insights platform that gives brands a clearer view of how people move through the world, from the trips they take to the meals they order.” If you need it spelled out, that means the data Uber has gathered from its users, encompassing travel and meal orders, is up for grabs. It’ll be suitably anonymised (“pseudonymized”, according to Uber), resulting in “a privacy-enhancing way to…

If you’ve been on the lookout for a new high-spec Toyota to drool over, the new GT GR and GT GR3 models will be happy to set your saliva production into overdrive. The two new vehicles are prototypes of the Japanese company’s motorsport and performance ambitions, intended to “showcase technologies never before used in a Toyota production car.” Toyota is all about futuristic vehicles, when it’s not releasing the more reliable and boring sort you see on the road every day. The GT GR and GR3 are more forward-looking than the latter, eventually functioning as “future flagships for Toyota’s performance…