Author: Brett Venter

SpaceX’s Starship rocket spent most of the first half of 2021 exploding, either on takeoff or on landing. It finally made it to the ground in one piece, setting the stage for an orbital test where the rocket would leave Earth’s atmosphere. We’ve waited. And waited. Now, the wait may be over. SpaceX’s Super Heavy Starship booster has been placed on a launch pad, waiting for the Starship rocket to be stacked on top of it. That rocket is called Ship 24 and, according to sources, it could finally enter orbit following a 10 April launch. However, nothing’s official just…

Following the success of the Artemis 1 mission test (and the reveal of the suit to be used for Artemis III), Artemis II — the crewed mission around Earth’s Moon — is set to have its astronauts revealed. The time is sooner than you’d think. NASA will announce the four astronauts participating in the mission today at 11h00 Eastern Daylight Time. Which, if you’re in a South African time zone (which we are), works out to 17h00 this evening. Watching the event is also incredibly simple. You can watch via NASA TV, a constant live stream from the space agency…

Audiobook platform Audible sometimes has some great ideas. Spatial audio, in the form of Dolby Atmos support, for instance, is a great idea. Putting ads into audiobooks, though? That’s… several steps down the ladder, somewhere below ‘Comprehensible’. It is, unfortunately, definitely happening. At the moment, it’s part of “…limited testing for non-members only that provides ad-supported access to a limited set of Audible titles.” So if you’re a paying member of the platform, your ears are safe from unexpected crypto ads while reading some Jane Austen. Probably. Who advertises in audiobooks? There’s no real explanation as to why Audible is…

The Electronic Software Association (ESA) had high hopes for this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) event. It was supposed to be a return to gaming’s most high-profile in-person event following the pandemic slowdown. Unfortunately, this year’s event has been completely cancelled. And while ReedPop, the company that was taking the organisational reigns of the event this year, is making positive noises about possible future events, it doesn’t look like this gaming institution is coming back. E3 – you sank my gaming event ReedPop’s global vice president of gaming, Kyle Marsden-Kish, said in a statement, “We appreciate and understand that interested…

Netflix giveth and Netflix taketh away. Mostly, though, the streaming platform giveth. And it looks as though it’s set to give its users a little more, in the shape of mobile games playable on TV sets. Even weirder, smartphones (the iPhone, specifically, but we expect Android would also get a look in) would function as controllers. At least, that’s the case according to some code that has turned up in the iOS version of the streaming app. If it’s executed, and there’s reason to think it might be, it would see mobile games playable on TVs. And that means more…

It’s been a long road to Apple’s WWDC 2023. Normally the World Wide Developer Conference is a software-based affair, where UI updates and apps are the order of the day.  But expectations are high for this year’s event. Apple’s finally dated the thing so we’d got some idea when to expect Apple’s Next Big Thing™ – 5 June is the day. And that’s official. What’s (still) not official is whether we’ll see Apple’s Reality headsets. All signs point to ‘yes’, including a report that company head Tim Cook is adamant that AR and/or VR headsets are on the menu for…

Lockheed Martin doesn’t just make weapons systems, the F22 Raptor, and… okay, and rocket engines. Crescent Space is the newest spinoff from the weapons and aerospace company and it’s dedicated to a slightly less explosive aim — that of lunar communications infrastructure. Which, if you’re paying attention, is a major target of the ongoing Artemis program. Nokia has already been tasked with building a 4G network on the lunar surface — gotta let astronauts doomscroll too, after all — but this new venture promises to be a bit more expansive. Dead Crescent Space Our snarky doomscrolling comment isn’t far off…

Elon Musk’s other, other moonshot company is Neuralink. For the uninitiated, that enterprise is looking to develop a brain-computer interface that will eventually be installed in human beings. That moment is coming ever closer, with the tech outfit actively seeking a clinical partner for human trials. That doesn’t mean that Neuralink is allowed to perform those trials yet. It’s still at the ‘making monkeys telepathic’ stage of development but, according to six sources “familiar with the matter”, a clinical partner is being sought. The missing Neuralink Specifically, the company has been discussing the possibility of teaming up with the Barrow…

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Asus has another notebook for us (and everyone else) to drool over. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is a refreshed version specifically for 2023. If you’re using last year’s 12th-gen Intel model, all you really need to know is that this year there’s a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 inside the brushed metal chassis. That’s… about it in terms of upgrades. The other core specs are all the same. If you’re not incredibly concerned with processing power, you can pull the ripcord on this review now and go snag last…

Generative AI like ChatGPT seems to be getting more advanced by the day. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to take the technology in the other direction. That’s happened thanks to a Singapore-based developer called Yeo Kheng Meng, who has convinced 2023’s most advanced AI to work in an MS-DOS environment. A little context for the younglings who might not be aware of it — once upon a time, computers operated in a very different environment. Known as the Disk Operating System (DOS), computer users were expected to remember, understand, and correctly implement complicated command-line strings…