Author: Brett Venter

Fitbit’s Charge 4 is one of our favourite wearables at the moment, standing astride the line between smart and fitness dedicated gear. It’s simple, lightweight, features decent battery life and Fitbit Premium will guide you through all sorts of healthy ideas. But it could be better. And, now, it is. Just about, anyway. Wareable has the details about a large update for the wearable that adds all sorts of cool features. They’re live, but they haven’t made it everywhere just yet. If you’re not looking at an update yet, you probably will be soon No charge for the Charge 4…

The Audi E-Tron GT has been a concept for at least a few years now but last night the auto-maker made it, and the Audi E-Tron GT Quattro, an official thing. The new vehicle joins the plain ole E-Tron and the Sportback version on the market. And if you’re a Porsche fan, you might want to pay extra-special attention. Audi is using the Porsche Taycan’s J1 platform for the vehicle, which means that most of these specs are going to look a little familiar — if you’ve been paying attention. Meet the Porsche Taycan E-Tron GT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StkkIdBY5r0 The four-door electric…

Sometime people you’ve known for some time go bad — not because of anything you did, it’s just where they are right now. Such is the case with a popular barcode scanner app, imaginatively called Barcode Scanner, that switched from scanning little black-and-white lines to handing out malware. The Android app, which had more than 10 million downloads before it was eventually taken down from Google’s Play Store, used to be a regular old app, according to Malwarebytes researcher Nathan Collier. But then, late last year, something changed. Maybe it discovered drugs, or something. Building a better barcode scanner Basically,…

Conspiracy theories concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, and the vaccine developed to combat it, are everywhere. There are people denying its existence, others claiming that the vaccine (which we might eventually get here) will implant you with microchips or alter your DNA — and a substantial portion of this misinformation is shared on Facebook. A vaccine for Facebook stupidity? Facebook isn’t unaware of this fact, resolving in early 2020 to do something about the large quantities of COVID misinformation making its way onto the social network. Over the months, its content moderation policy has become stricter, to the point where all…

Xiaomi doesn’t just have interesting scooter tech on the way, it’s also got one monster of a smartphone headed to market. The Xiaomi Mi 11 is, technically, already out in the market but was previously only available in China. At an event yesterday, the global version of this moviephone (you’ll see) was made official. Here’s what you need to know about it. Turning the camera up to 11 Everybody is boasting about their camera tech and since Xiaomi tends to get theirs from Samsung, we reckon they can be a little snobbish. The Mi 11’s rear camera arrangement is an…

Okay, now we need you to pay attention. We’re only going to say this once — Xiaomi have launched, in partnership with the Mercedes F1 Team, a new scooter called the Xiaomi Mi Electric Scooter Pro 2 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team Edition. We’ll be calling it the XMESP2MAPFTE, or just the Mi Electric Scooter Pro 2, from now on. A better Scooter Pro 2 Xiaomi’s little two-wheeler, which first turned up about mid-way through last year, has been given a visual tune-up in the form of the  Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team’s colours. But what hasn’t changed is the scooter’s performance.…

Would you pay a subscription fee for Twitter? Of course not, it’s Twitter. Complaining about things on the internet should be free. But, according to a Bloomberg report, you might consider paying a subscription fee for access to Tweetdeck, or for so-called “unique content” on the microblogging service. All a-Twitter You see, you may consider a subscription fee the lesser of two evils. If, that is, you’d rather see the social media service reducing its reliance on advertising. But, in that case, you probably work for them. The report claims Twitter is exploring alternative revenue options, including ‘tipping’ users for…

Rumours are funny things. Some are very hard to believe, even if you really want them to be true. Others are extremely easy to find plausible, even if (sometimes especially if) everyone concerned is denying the rumours left and right. Which brings us to the latest info involving Apple, Hyundai, (probably) Kia, and the case of the autonomous electric vehicle. Hyundai the gun To recap: last month a Hyundai rep confirmed that the company was in talks with Apple concerning an autonomous electric vehicle. Money was made, then the statements were walked back (twice) until the company was in ‘talks’…

Chip-maker Intel took it in the neck a little in 2020 when Apple announced that it was dropping Intel chips for that fancy new Apple Silicon M1 processor. And, at the time, Apple had it all its own way, what with all those facts and figures to back up their claims of increased power, improved battery life, and overall Intel-spanking performance. Apple’s been enjoying its success for a bit but Intel has fired back, releasing a series of benchmarks for its new Core i7-1185G7 processor. The chip-maker claims to give Apple’s M1 processor quite a walloping, across most metrics. The…

Japanese automotive brand Toyota is no stranger to experimental vehicular tech. The company fields hydrogen-powered cars, it’s backing flying taxis and now it’s jumped right past that whole ‘self-driving’ trend to make a car that drifts by itself. The prototype GR Supra, the brainchild of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), seems to have a very practical purpose in mind. By making a car that can drift with minimal human intervention, the auto-maker hopes to… avoid… accidents…? Looking at Toyota, sideways https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2hIQEGWKhQ&feature=emb_logo That really does seem to be the aim: gifting drivers with “…the instinctive reflexes of a professional race car…