Author: Brett Venter

Netflix, in case you haven’t noticed, isn’t just about streaming video anymore. It’s also a budding mobile games publisher with designs on getting into the PC games space as well. Since it’s not really part of Ye Olde Video Game club, though, it more or less releases games whenever it wants. There are nine new titles launching on the company’s service. Some of them are familiar looking, even if they are original properties. There’s a Stranger Things-themed match-three game, a Farmville clone (of sorts) called Country Friends, and a cutesy bullet-hell shooter called Skies of Chaos. But they’re just the…

If you’re one of the select few able to afford Apple’s newest high-end smartwatch, then the launch of Oceanic+ should be on your radar. Apple’s Watch Ultra might cost a hefty R20,000 but that’s because it’s got a raft of interesting features — like a day-and-a-half battery and a larger display. Okay, and a few other features. And with the launch of Oceanic+, a new subscription service for the device, there’s one more. Specifically, the ability to use the company’s ‘premium’ wearable as a dive computer. Oceanic+ what? The Watch Ultra isn’t quite ready to pull a James Cameron but…

Video games have become expensive of late. It’ll still cost you in excess of R10,000 for the latest consoles. Game prices are nudging the R1,500 mark. And first-party game controllers will set you back about the same. Turtle Beach has something for the Player Two in the equation that won’t be quite as murderous to your bank balance — the React-R controller. It’s far from the only option from the peripheral maker. Recently, Stuff went hands-on with Turtle Beach’s Recon controller. That one’s a little more expensive than this edition for some reason but they’re both wired and they’re both…

The South African government is planning on spending the country’s money again. This time, though, it actually sounds like a good idea. SA’s government is investigating installing solar power at various State hospitals around the country. Since hospitals deal with residents who need electricity to live, this sounds like a fantastic plan. A plan that is being hammered out by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Health, but still just a plan. Solar-powered medicine The announcement was made during a different announcement revealing that another five hospitals in the country have been exempted from…

South African shopping giant Shoprite is pushing hard into sustainability. Most recently, it lobbed a fat wad of (other people’s) cash at improving its reliance on renewable energy. The most recent fruit from the company is a new battery-powered truck. It’s not an electric panel van like Woolworths is experimenting with. Nor is it a fleet of electric Mr. Bean cars, like the hippies over at Faithful to Nature are testing. Shoprite’s new prototype delivery vehicle is a full-sized Scania Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). Shoprite, meet BEV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ_XZh2oMd4 Shoprite’s newest fleet addition is powered by a combination of nine batteries…

Back when it first launched, the Fitbit Sense didn’t make a lot of sense. It had a massive price and its keynote feature, dermal sensors for stress testing, was quickly available on the Fitbit Charge 5 (which launched at half the price). The Fitbit Sense 2 manages to improve on its predecessor in a few ways. One of these, oddly enough, includes yanking out a few software features. Specifically, third-party app support isn’t a thing here. If you simply must have Spotify controls on your wrist (a frequent Fitbit favourite), this isn’t the wearable for you. But as a fitness-focused…

Eskom has a plan for the country’s power situation. Not so much how to fix it, but how severe it will be for the near future. Stage 1 and 2 load shedding are on the cards until Tuesday morning. After that, the state power utility plans to keep South Africa on Stage 2 load shedding during the evenings until further notice. So at least (some of) the traffic lights will be working as you head to work this week. Take to the Stage 2 #PowerAlert1 Loadshedding will be suspended at midnight, then resume with Stage 1 at 05:00 – 16:00…

They make robots for everything these days. Cars can drive themselves, and humanoid and canine robots exist. What’s next? Golf robots, of course. Researchers at Paderborn University in Germany have come up with Golfi, the least imaginatively named putting robot in existence. We don’t mean ‘putting’ in the sense of ‘putting that thing over there’. We mean ‘putting that golf ball into that very small hole’. Totally different pronunciation. Golfi goes golfing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKJV6QrNbtE The little golf robot does most of its work via part of a Microsoft Kinect camera unit. Specifically, the 3D camera used to peer into rooms to…

If there was one significant improvement Stuff would make to the Jaguar I-Pace, it would be to fully amour it up. Just kidding. At a little over 2,100kg, Jaguar’s EV is already a tank. But someone out there was looking for a little extra protection and they turned to Armormax, a South African company, for help. The result is the world’s first armoured Jaguar I-Pace. And since the EV was a beast to begin with, the company making the upgrades managed to do their work without substantially increasing the car’s weight. Just 200kg of additions were stuffed inside the vehicle.…

If you’ve been paying attention to alarmist outcries in recent years, you might have encountered the term ‘killer robots’. These are machines used specifically to kill humans. And not like guns or knives (a knife is just a very simple machine). Rather, they’re able to track and assassinate targets without human intervention. Loads of folks are understandably upset about the possibility. But it was thought that these robotic antagonists would be more likely to turn up on a battlefield than in a neighbourhood. But there’s always that one guy. In this case, the wombat taking things too far is the…