Author: Brett Venter

Apple has something new coming down the pipe. That ‘something’ is a new M5 version of the company’s MacBook Pro. Or a collection of them. Apple tends not to release singular items, unless they’re more or less experimental. Take the M5 The company’s Greg Joswiak, senior vice president of global marketing, tweeted a teaser for whatever the American company is cooking up. It’s not much — a brief silhouette of a partially open MacBook Pro — but it’s enough for folks to take Apple’s meaning. If the V-shaped tease and Joswiak’s five-letter ‘Mmmmm’ in the tweet itself aren’t enough of…

Samsung’s Android XR headset, known internally as Project Moohan and quite possibly as the Galaxy XR, will finally greet the world on 21 October. We’d be more surprised if this information hadn’t leaked several weeks ago, but it’s still nice to have official confirmation. Paranoid, Android XR? Almost everything else about the pending headset launch has also leaked, though Samsung is doing its darnedest to pretend that hasn’t happened. The event, which Samsung has titled Worlds Wide Open (as opposed to Unpacked), will live-stream on Back to the Future day. Coincidence? Probably. But if Samsung has nailed its Android XR-based…

Advertising is everywhere else, so why wouldn’t it be in space? The idea of orbiting billboards isn’t new, but Russia’s newest government approval will let the country rake in some ad spend without completely screwing up the night sky for every human with functional eyes. Roscosmos will, according to a newly signed amendment to Russia’s laws, be able to display advertising on the country’s spacecraft. The plan, as far as is known, could make the country’s Soyuz rockets look like an American Nascar, but at least that won’t blight the night skies with blinking LEDs that zip around out of…

No matter what you think about the eventual trajectory of artificial intelligence, there’s plenty of noise being made in the space. Smaller developers can make some noise of their own by chucking one of Nvidia’s DGX Spark desktop “AI supercomputer” units into their workflows when they go on sale on 15 October. Nvidia calls it “the world’s smallest AI supercomputer” and, based on the visuals we’ve seen, the company probably isn’t wrong. Despite its size, the company reckons it has enough power to run inference or fine-tuning of AI models without resorting to someone else’s compute. It’ll also allow “developers…

Earlier this year, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey, formerly of Oculus, settled their differences for the sake of making more money. The first fruits from this, EagleEye, have now been properly revealed by Luckey’s Anduril Industries. As expected, it’s a headset for the US military. Yes, Meta is involved. If those last four words weren’t enough to terrify you, you could be a potential customer for this “modular, AI-powered family of systems that unifies command and control, digital vision, and survivability within a single, adaptive architecture.” EagleEye cherry EagleEye is actually a pretty cool bit of tech, if you’ve…

Load shedding has been in abeyance for months now (because power outages lose elections, probably), but South Africans are a cynical lot. It’ll be back. If you’ve somehow crammed one of Ecoflow’s new Delta Pro Ultra X units into your home in the interim, you’ll find yourself completely avoiding Eskom’s return to form. The Ecoflow of power For up to a few weeks at a time, according to the Chinese power manufacturer. The goofy name aside (we blame Apple for this chaotic collection of suffixes), the scalable home battery system could run your entire house — not just bits of…

Hey, McFly! Hello? Hello? Anybody home? You may not have been paying attention, but while you were distracted, Casio announced a special edition of its 1970s-era calculator watch, the CA-500WE BF. Later this month, on 21 October, the Japanese company will launch a Back to the Future-themed version of its nearly fifty-year-old wristwatch design. Great Scott, Casio! Why that date? You obviously haven’t seen the so-called ‘perfect’ movie lately. 21 October 1985 is the original date that Marty McFly zips back in time in the first film, riding Doc Brown’s souped-up DeLorean to do so. Since the film also turns…

When you think of the problems that plague South Africa’s government, you immediately think that the issue is a lack of information being passed around. Right? If that’s the case, the new pilot launch of MzansiXchange, “an initiative that will enable evidence-based policymaking and real-time data verification between departments”, should fix everything. The pilot, launched in Pretoria last week and scheduled to operate for a year, will “test the MzansiXchange in real-world conditions, strengthening the foundations for a broader national rollout.” Rather than collecting data, the new platform is concerned with “enabling secure, structured, and coordinated data sharing across government,”…

Samsung’s Galaxy S series smartphones have, for a while now, featured a tuned version of Qualcomm’s most advanced chipset branded ‘For Galaxy’. Because they’re made for the South Korean behemoth, obviously. But new industry rumours suggest that Samsung will take a little more control over the process by making the chipsets itself. Samsung gets Gen 5 These won’t be Exynos chips, which tend to grace the company’s lower orders (and some flagships), though it’s thought that the Exynos 2600 could be used for at least some models of the Galaxy S26. A report out of Korea suggests that the smartphone…

Italian sports car company Ferrari unveiled the technology that will live under the hood of its first electric car, the Elettrica, at an event in Maranello last week. The invite-only outing was followed by complete details of its EV platform for those who didn’t crack the nod for the Italian showcase. In typical Ferrari style, it’s impressive. As impressive as the company’s plug-in hybrid Testarossa reissue for the modern day? Perhaps, but anyone who clambers inside the Elettrica won’t have a V8, V12, or even a straight-6 under their speed-seeking command. It’ll be all-electric, with the platform the eventual EV…