Author: Brett Venter

The thing you have to know about video game adaptations is that Uwe Boll was allowed to make three different Bloodrayne films. He somehow managed to convince Sir Ben Kingsley (the ‘Mandarin’ from Iron Man III) that starring in the first one was a good idea. But that’s about the size of it. Turning a video game into a movie is always going to be a difficult endeavour. Turning one into a series — like the just-launched The Last of Us — might prove to be a little less horrifying. And yet Hollywood (and game publishers) keep trying. There are…

We’ve all sat in on enough Zoom and Teams online meetings to know how it works. If cameras are off, folks are doing more than just listening. Cameras on? Sure, there’s some attention being paid. Some. Nvidia Broadcast, the GPU-maker’s software for live streaming and conferencing, has something that’ll make it even easier to be distracted while you’re on camera. A distracted Broadcast  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR-vP_7XFHE&t=1s Nvidia Broadcast is adding, via its latest update, a feature called Eye Contact. This is an AI-powered function that makes it look as though you’re looking at the camera when you’re not. The feature “…moves the…

Earlier this week, Samsung confirmed the date and time for its first Unpacked event of 2023. Days later, another sack of beans spilled online. Official imagery of Samsung’s Galaxy S23 smartphone has turned up, giving us some idea of what’s changing design-wise. What’s actually different? Not a whole freaking lot. Here’s the Galaxy S23 That’s not to say that there are zero changes. Samsung’s design language just hasn’t altered a whole heck of a lot. We’ve seen variations on this theme in Samsung’s S- and A-Series phones for a few years now. But this time, the large camera bump, seen…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot is having a serious effect on the world. Users all over the world are using it to write some quite impressive content. It’s proved so effective that some Australian universities have returned to old-school examination methods to rule out its involvement. So, obviously, OpenAI reckons folks might be keen on paying for access. That’s not a guess or a rumour. There’s a Google Forms signup sheet for interested parties to register their intent to hand over cash. But signing up and having cash in hand isn’t a guarantee that you’ll have access to the bot. The price…

You’ve told yourself that 2023 is the year that you’ll start running and actually stick it out past the third week of January. We’ve all been there. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s a chore to drag your tired carcass outside the house. But it’s worth it in the end. But, as with a gym membership, sometimes it takes a little financial investment to get you to follow through. Or perhaps you can use this batch of technologically advanced running gear to improve on an already solid foundation. And, if you do happen to throw in the cooling towel, at the…

The beginning of the year is a little predictable. First, there’s CES. Then there’s Samsung’s Unpacked. Finally, there’s Mobile World Congress but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. The date for Samsung’s first big reveal was leaked a little while back but now it’s official. Officially. The company’s tagline this time around? “Share the epic.” Read More: Here’s pretty much everything you need to know about Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra Getting the S23 Unpacked This is a brief, pithy description but it doesn’t tell us very much about what Samsung’s got in mind for the upcoming event. It’s…

The Consumer Electronics Show is a wall-to-wall collection of connected devices. The annual event showcases the best and the strangest gadgets on the planet. Sometimes these are the same thing. But almost all of these gadgets have one thing in common — they run on data. Your data, specifically. Human beings produce data at a frightening (and lucrative) rate. Just your movement information is a wandering point in space that can be commercialised or weaponised. It can inform Google Maps that there’s a traffic jam nearby. Or it can let a government hit squad know where you live if you…

The largest mass-attendance technology event of the year has come and gone. The Consumer Electronics Show has reentered hibernation for another twelve months. It’ll be back in Las Vegas from 9 to 12 January 2024. Yes, the dates are set already. But CES 2023 is, technically, still around and it’s absolutely worth talking about. With 2,200 exhibitors roaming the halls of CES 2023, there’s an awful lot on show. Some of it is strange. Some of it will never make it to the retail space. The very best of it is, inevitably, made by companies with the money and time…

The Pale Blue Eye is Netflix’s next seriously big-budget film and stars a solid cast arranged around English actors Christian Bale and Harry Melling. It concerns a murder at West Point Military Academy in the 1830s, right about the time Edgar Allan Poe (the writer and famous depressed person) was in attendance. You can almost take it as given that anything featuring Bale as a lead is worth watching. This applies to everything from Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the film version of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Even Equilibrium, the film that introduced the world to the gun kata…

Every year the Consumer Electronics Show takes place in Las Vegas. Mostly. CES 2023 is up and running and everyone who’s anyone in the tech space is taking advantage of the event to show off what they’ve got coming up. With so much tech crammed into a single space, it’s a perfect time to see where the industry as a whole is headed. It’s not just about who is making the most noise. The metaverse folks are out there, punting everything from virtual worlds to haptic gloves to entertainment solutions. They’ll certainly be noisy but the idea’s time hasn’t come…