Author: Brett Venter

Why are advanced humanoid robots always named after mythical godlike figures? Boston Dynamics has Atlas, NASA has Valkyrie, and even Hanson Robotics’ Sophia is named after the embodiment of wisdom. Shouldn’t that be a little concerning? Be that as it may, we’re actually here to talk about NASA’s bipedal ‘bot. It’s been in the works since at least 2013 and now it’s about to leave home on a sort of work-release program. NASA is sending the Valkyrie to work at a power station in Australia because that’s a totally normal thing we’re doing with robots now. Ride of the Valkyrie Valkyrie…

It seems that augmented reality, along with artificial intelligence, is the theme for 2023. BMW Motorrad has unveiled its ConnectedRide smart glasses. You’re probably familiar with the concept — smart glasses display information about your surroundings that you might otherwise gather from a smartphone or a console display. These glasses, which actually look like a pair of glasses, albeit with thicker bows, will show motorcyclists the same sort of info you’d get from an in-car heads-up display (HUD). So expect speed, gear, and navigation information to be projected onto the two sets of lenses BMW will provide to bikers with…

Before the age of vertically-landing rockets, the pinnacle of the space program’s reusable ambitions was the space shuttle. NASA’s iconic re-entry vehicles once made an imposing presence when stacked on a launch platform with a fuel tank and two booster rockets. That’s now a part of history but it isn’t going to be relegated to images and video. Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to become a display at the under-construction Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. The remarkable bit about that? It’ll be stacked as though for launch. A space shuttle at rest Currently, Endeavour is on display at the…

The first-person shooter, or FPS (which also stands for frames-per-second but we’re not talking PC benchmarks or camera hardware here), has been a staple of gaming for decades. In fact, the genre has existed for fifty years now (in case you wanted to feel old). It’s about time for a decent documentary, no? FPS: First Person Shooter aims to be that documentary when it launches online on 31 August. It’s got all of the biggest names from the biggest games in the genre’s history. Doom, Quake, GoldenEye, Halo, Deus Ex, System Shock, Duke Nukem, Half-Life, and many other titles are…

Yes, smartphone RAM is important for the smooth running of the device. Ask anyone how their 1GB-packing handset is doing these days for a blistering example of that. But cranking it up to 24GB might be stretching the ‘bigger is better’ concept a smidge. Still, that’s a thing now. You’ll have to be keen on smartphone brand Nubia’s Red Magic 8S Pro + gaming smartphone and you’ll have to buy it from China (because it’s not available here) but you can officially have 24GB of RAM in your smartphone. If you really want to. RAM it down up Nubia is…

If you know Samsung (and we do), you’d know that there was an Unpacked scheduled for about this time this year. That’s now official, with a date and time set for Samsung’s event. Unusually, it’ll take place sooner in the day than we were expecting. The date is 26 July and the official time is 07h00 ET (Eastern Time). The American timing is odd because the event is taking place in Seoul for the very first time. Here in South Africa, the event will kick off at 13h00 on the day. Generally, these things happen in the evening but we’re…

Basically anybody could have told you, once Apple revealed the pricing for its Vision Pro augmented reality headset, that the brand would have a hard time shifting units. $3,500 is a steep purchase even for American buyers. But a R70,000 price tag here at home puts it almost beyond reach — even for Apple’s die-hard fans. That news has filtered down to Apple HQ, according to a report by the Financial Times. Apple is said to be scaling back its ambitions from about a million Vision Pro headsets to somewhere in the region of about 400,000. Happily, depending on your…

It’s certainly taken long enough to get to this point but Virgin Galactic has finally sent some of its paying customers to space. The company has yet to start chipping away at the list of paid tickets sold from 2012, however. Perhaps it was the company’s hesitancy to risk a civilian who wasn’t Richard Branson (who volunteered for his trip) but Virgin Galactic took a batch of Italian military crew (we assume Italy paid for the tickets) and some 13 scientific experiments on the company’s inaugural commercial trip. Virgin Galactic flies (at last) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-bnaq9BKio Based on the flight’s stream –…

If you were paying attention last year, you would have noticed that Samsung didn’t release a more affordable version of its flagship smartphone. That could change, with a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE heading to market according to a (very reliable) leaker. We’re not sure what prompted the return to the afforda-phone, or why an S22 FE wasn’t launched last year, but @OnLeaks reckons it’s coming. When it comes to insider Samsung info, he tends to be super reliable. But while the look of the thing is apparently known — renders are available on a website called SmartPrix — less is…

TikTok, the time-sink app slowly destroying your kid’s long-term concentration ability, has decided to turn its disruption skills onto the workforce. Specifically, that section of the workforce that might have handled public relations for a brand. Best of all (for the brand), it won’t cost much at all. Relatively speaking. The app has done this by unveiling what it calls the TikTok Creative Challenge. It’s framed as “a new in-app feature that allows creators to submit video ads to brand challenges and receive rewards based on video performance”. In reality, it’s one of the scummier corporate practices rebranded for a…