Author: Brett Venter

Rolls-Royce, as a brand, conjures images of very expensive British motor vehicles. Sure, you could drive it yourself, but the point of having all that money is to purchase a marvel of motoring engineering that you pay someone else to drive. But the company’s about more than that and it’s about to become even more: Rolls-Royce wants to go to space. Specifically, the company hopes to take to space with a very small nuclear reactor. A Micro-Reactor, to be precise. The company recently shared its hopes to power spacecraft on longer journeys using nuclear technology. The tech could also be…

Marvel, even before it was swallowed by Disney, has always been keen on telling extended, interconnected stories. The company does it well. That’s how something like Marvel’s Wastelanders, a series of narrative podcasts, came about. Wastelanders has a little something in common with a comic book series of the same name but its roots lie in the iconic Marvel comic series Old Man Logan. It’s dark. Like… DC dark. An aging Wolverine sets out on one last heroic quest as a way to atone for… well, you’ll see. The comic series involves one of Peter Parker’s descendants, some truly disturbing…

Every year Stuff faces the same challenge. Choosing the best technology from an entire annual cycle can really take it out of you. But the effort is always worth it when we see the results in print. At least, it’s worth it for us. We’re hoping that it’s worth it for you too. Whether it’s the best smartphone or laptop or tablet or motor vehicle, Stuff has crunched the numbers and come up with several winners. Oh, and we also found time to do our usual gadgets, gear, and other awesome bits too. Check it out in the February-March 2023 issue of Stuff.…

Swedish (technically) auto brand Volvo has plans to launch six new EV models before 2026, according to a new report. Five of these vehicles, three sedans and two SUVs, are destined for international markets. The sixth, a luxury electric van, is slated for launch in the Asian market. The move is unsurprising in at least one way. Volvo may be nominally Swedish but it’s mostly owned by Chinese automaker Geely. Vans are generally popular in the region and the company is looking to drive EV adoption in that particular market. Electrifying Volvo The first of these vehicles, the company’s EX90…

Load shedding has been around for far too long but there’s some relief in sight. South Africans are in for a lessening of the mental, physical, and financial burden of not having power, according to Eskom. If, that is, everything goes according to plan and nothing else breaks. Load shedding is a load of… https://twitter.com/Eskom_SA/status/1621180625892917255 Eskom said yesterday night that today, 3 February, would see rolling blackouts stepping down their intensity to Stage 4. Saturday is supposed to offer further improvement at Stage 3, followed by a brief, blissful period on Sunday when there are no outages planned at all.…

Where there’s money to be made on the internet you can bet that Meta’s not far behind. Instagram, possibly inspired by recent events over at Twitter, may be considering paid verification for its users. That speculation is the result of some code mining within the app. Developer Alessandro Paluzzi has been poking around in Insta’s app and has discovered a couple of very suggestive references. Authenticity on Instagram? Surely not? Paluzzi, speaking to TechCrunch, shared screenshots of the references. They suggest that Insta is acting true to form for Meta in ‘borrowing’ features it thinks might be beneficial. The references…

One of the unpleasant things about living in South Africa is that sometimes our tech isn’t entirely functional. Services and features are all too often geo-limited. Well, Sonos and Amazon have ensured that there’s one less item on the list — Alexa voice control for Sonos products. South Africa isn’t entirely special, however. Yes, Alexa support is coming to various Sonos devices but it’s also coming to 26 other countries. Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and…

When you talk about Facebook, it’s generally appropriate to use the word ‘billions’ in conversation. The company bought VR company Oculus for $2 billion. It passed 2 billion monthly users some time in 2017. At the time, it saw a little over 1.2 billion of those users turning up every day. Well, now there’s a new milestone for Mark Zuckerberg and co. to celebrate. The company’s most recent earnings reports dropped a surprising statistic — Facebook has crossed the 2 billion daily users mark. Facebook hungers To be fair to the company, it has been creeping up on the total…

Netflix giveth and occasionally the streaming platform taketh away. Mostly it taketh away just lately, with the company cracking down on sharing accounts outside of single households and eying paid password revenue. It’s about time it tried something else. That ‘something’ is making its most expensive tier just a little more attractive. After all, getting subscribers to go from a standard subscription to a Premium one counts as increased revenue. And, if you’re a certain sort of viewer, the streaming platform’s incoming upgrades might just justify the cost. Sounds like a good idea, Netflix The company announced new features for…

Stuff had a chance to play with Samsung’s newest smartphones. We got our hands on the Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra… for a few minutes. It wasn’t nearly long enough for a proper review but it was enough to show us that Samsung hasn’t taken any steps backwards. It was also enough to show that the company hasn’t made any massive strides forward. Once you hit a certain level of quality there’s bound to be diminishing returns and Samsung’s handsets… have just been too good lately. There’s not much headroom for improvement. A refined experience If there hasn’t been…