Author: Brett Venter

Ford has figured out a use for self-driving cars that you can bet every other car manufacturer is about to develop in a hurry. The American automaker filed for a patent in 2021 that was published in late February. It describes a vehicle that’s able to up and bail on an owner that has stopped paying for it. The patent, called Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle, deals with autonomous, semi-autonomous, and conventional vehicles. In the latter case, the company could “disable a functionality of a component… or may place the vehicle in a lockout condition.” That’s a remote…

Apple has managed to secure its largest-ever share of the world’s smartphone market, according to research done by Counterpoint. This was against a backdrop of generally falling smartphone sales but it doesn’t matter. It still counts. Usually, when words like “smartphone” and “market share” are thrown around, it’s because Samsung is (still) on top or was (briefly) dethroned. Performance tends to go the South Korean company’s way but it turns out that Q4 2022 was the exception. Whether it proves the rule remains to be seen. A good Apple quarter According to Counterpoint’s analysts, Apple secured 18% of the world’s…

In South Africa Tecno is known as a budget-focused smartphone maker. The last thing we were expecting to hear from the company is that it’s making a folding smartphone. But hey, everyone else is doing it. Might as well. The Chinese company’s first folding smartphone is the Phantom V Fold. In terms of form factor, it bears some resemblance to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold series of devices. It’s the same two-screen arrangement with the fold along the long edge. But it will, of course, be a cheaper purchase. Listen to Tecno That’s because Tecno is famous for creating phones that don’t…

Former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, has long been in favour of a decentralised social media platform. A service that Dorsey is involved with, Bluesky, may have started life as a Twitter division but it’s hoping to soon become its own platform. Its launch is edging nearer, with the app version of the social media protocol turning up on Apple’s App Store. Don’t get your hopes up too high just yet, though. The fledgling service is still in private beta, meaning that you’ll need an invitation in order to gain access. You can request one here, as it happens. But what’s…

Some companies are backing away from virtual and augmented reality. Others are running at it full tilt. You can count Xiaomi as one of the latter. The company certainly seems keen enough. The company’s new Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, set to be profiled at Mobile World Congress this year, uses the same chipset as Meta’s most recent VR headset. The company’s new augmented reality glasses prototype has already been unveiled. The company says that the glasses use a new magnesium-lithium alloy and carbon fiber in their construction, which allows it to come in at 126 grams. Xiaomi something new…

Atomic Heart is a surprisingly enthralling game. It’s an unusual collection of a very obvious set of influences – especially when it comes to gameplay, style and setting. If you’re a fan of the Bioshock series, Cyberpunk, Deus Ex, Fallout, Portal, and perhaps Wolfenstein, you should have this one on your radar. Developer Mundfish is based in Cyprus but is comprised of a team from various Eastern European countries, including Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Armenia, and Serbia (among others). This might be why this first-attempt title manages to nail its setting in 1955 (kinda) Russia — the good old USSR –…

In the future, you’ll always be at work. That’s what this new partnership between Mercedes Benz, Cisco, and (apparently) Zoom signals. You can probably guess what it entails. If you guessed that Merc is adding the ability to have online meetings to its cars, congratulations on being able to infer from context (and your deep knowledge of the tech industry). Specifically, the 2024 Mercedes Benz E-Class is in line for some online meeting action when it launches next year. Time to ‘meet’ the Mercedes At least this means that it’s just the boss who has to log in while in…

Let’s get this out of the way right up front. The vast majority of people reading this review will never, ever own a Range Rover First Edition. If we’d known what it cost before we’d started driving it, we’d have spent a week looking nervously at every other bit of traffic and parking lot obstacle we’d encountered. It’s THAT expensive. At this point you’re looking at the header image and saying to yourself, ‘Surely it can’t cost that much.’ Oh yes, it bloody well can. Our review vehicle turned up at the Stuff offices with absolutely no optional extras installed.…

If you venture out beyond the calming waters of Spotify and Deezer, you’ll encounter strange new lands like YouTube Music. It’s not new, having occupied space in South Africa since 2019, but it does have something new going for it. The service has launched a new feature that lets listeners create their very own custom radio stations. The concept isn’t new. Most streaming music platforms offer something like it. But the Google-owned platform seems to be offering more granular control. Making YouTube Music Specifically, users can select up to 30 different artists to appear on the radio station. From there,…

In news that should surprise absolutely nobody, Microsoft is using ChatGPT to control robots and drones. Specifically, it’s attempting to make it easier for the average person (who isn’t all that complicated) to control existing robot arms and drones (which are fearsomely complicated indeed). Any time you see Spot the robot dog out and about? That critter’s… actually pretty autonomous. It has a fairly simple instruction set and it gets on with it. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas videos? That takes a considerable amount of setup and that setup requires training. Microsoft’s idea is to minimise the amount of knowledge needed to…