Author: Brett Venter

If you’ve taken the time to poke around Amazon’s online store — South Africans are much more likely to do this in 2024 — you’ll know there are all sorts of things you can buy. Missing from the list of oddities, at least so far, has been a full-on motor vehicle. Yeah, that’s changing. Don’t get too excited, though. South Africa doesn’t even have a local Amazon outlet (yet). We won’t be on the list for vehicle purchases until other countries have it right. The online retailer and Hyundai have created a new partnership that will see the Korean automaker…

It’s been a couple of years since the Steam Deck first made its appearance on the gaming scene. In that time several copycat contenders have shown up, including the Asus ROG Ally. But, given that it’s 2023, it’s just about time the original hardware got an upgrade. And that’s exactly what Valve has just announced. The major difference between this and 2021’s version? 2023’s Steam Deck is launching with a 7.4in OLED screen and an increased price point. That second point is not just to make up for the switch from LCD to OLED, either. There are a few other…

If you’re not working on generative AI in 2023, you’re nothing. That’s the prevailing sense you get from the many (many) announcements flying out of every orifice of the internet this year. Samsung’s planning to yank something out of a hole of its own soon, announcing Samsung Gauss. It is, based on context (but also fact), the South Korean company’s very own generative AI and it’ll turn up in the next few months, according to an announcement made at the company’s AI Forum event. What’ll it do? It seems like it’ll power something called Galaxy AI. Gauss, I think I…

We hope you weren’t especially attached to the Fitbit brand. According to a report from TechCentral, the wearable brand is leaving South Africa. The call comes shortly after the company was bought by Google and is the result of the same policy that prevents you from buying a Pixel smartphone in SA with ease. Uhhh… Google doesn’t feel like it. That’s not exactly how the company put it in a statement confirming the wearable tech brand’s departure. The company has made the move “…to align our hardware portfolio to map closer to Pixel’s regional availability”. That also means that Nest…

Ford, the auto manufacturer, is celebrating 100 years in South Africa this month. At a celebration event at the Silverton manufacturing plant in Pretoria today, the company announced that it would begin production of a new type of Ranger in 2024 – a plug-in hybrid. Can you af-Ford one? Since production has yet to start, Ford hasn’t given out any pricing but expect them to be a little more costly than a stock Ranger. It’ll have a 2.3 litre EcoBoost engine alongside its EV components but the company reckons that you’ll be able to drive it in full EV mode.…

Transportation app Uber has marked its ten-year anniversary in South Africa by launching Uber Package. The service intends to offer same-day deliveries in the country using electrified bikes. Two of them, in fact. There won’t just be two bikes, obviously. You won’t get your package if there are two new drivers. Uber will launch two types of battery-powered scooters in SA, starting in Cape Town this year. Uber bikes The new bikes are differentiated by their batteries. Okay, fine, they also look different and have different ranges (and speeds). One is rated as medium speed and, with a 1.5kW battery…

If ever there was a place we didn’t want to see AI unleashed it would be YouTube’s comments section. Google’s video-sharing platform is well known for having a chaotic environment where folks will comment on the video they’re watching (while casting aspersions on other commentators). Do we really need AI to explain what’s going on in there? Turns out, the answer to that is ‘yes’. Google is conducting a small-scale experiment with some of its YouTube Premium subscribers that will net them an AI assistant devoted to navigating the vast world of YouTube more effectively. And yes, that includes the…

Launching a new streaming service is hard. Doing so by taking an existing name and adding a ‘+’ is even harder. NASA’s NASA+ service, due to go live later this week, will hopefully sidestep some of the challenges experienced by other services that expect you to pay for them. That’s right. The American space agency is launching its service without asking you for money. It also won’t be dumping ads in front of your face to make up for that, either. It’ll just be free. NASA+ is the one? We launch more than rockets. This month, we launch our new…

It’s time to decide how much you really need a new M3 MacBook Pro for work. Local pricing is available and pre-orders are live. Even if you get in on the ground floor, you can expect to spend at least R37,500 for one of Apple’s latest machines. The worst part? That price won’t even get you the new Space Black colourway. Pricing for the new M3 24in iMac is also out and about. It starts at R33,800 and goes as high as R44,300. That’s less a testament to the machine’s affordability and more an indication of the lack of customisation…

One of the main things you need to be if you work in space is mentally stable. That’s at least partially the reason why HTC, sometimes purveyor of Android smartphones and maker of virtual reality hardware, is partnering up with a company called XRHealth to send VR hardware into space. XRHealth, here on terra firma, specialises in mental health (and even physical therapy) applications that are assisted by the judicious usage of virtual reality experiences. And it’s time for those experiences to be experienced off-planet. Well, in orbit, which is close enough. Enough space for HTC? There is a third…