Author: Brett Venter

The private spacewalk that is the sexiest feature of the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, being facilitated by SpaceX and a billionaire (not that one), looks set to go ahead on 27 August 2024. When the time comes, some (or all) of the crew will step outside of the capsule. It’s a scary thing to imagine at any time and we’d suspect it’s even scarier to do. Especially if you’re not sure exactly what this operation entails. SpaceX has just shown what will be expected of the astronauts when they enter orbit further out than any human beings since the Apollo…

One of the more annoying things about astronomy is the amount of learning involved before taking part. It’s not just optical systems but cameras and atmospheric conditions to contend with too. Beaverlab’s Finder TW2, a fully crowdfunded (but not yet properly on-sale) telescope hopes to sidestep all of that by doing all the thinking for its users. It’ll do this mostly by exploiting the buzziest of 2024’s buzzwords — artificial intelligence. Oh, all right, and some fairly advanced hardware designed to take one of the most common (and versatile) telescope designs and make it a) more versatile and b) vastly…

It was just a few short months ago when speculation about what would happen to the Apple engineers formerly working on Project Titan (the long-rumoured Apple car). Since the project was shut down,  some of them have reportedly shifted to robotics. Now we may have some idea what some of these engineers have been working on. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who was also the source of the Project-Titan-to-robotics news, reckons the iPhone maker has an all-new product in the works. Yes, robotic components are involved. No, it’s not what you think it is. Apple knows how to pick ’em Rather than…

Samsung’s Odyssey monitors are generally excellent pieces of gaming hardware, even if some iterations have proved too… enthusiastic. But there’s always room for one more feature and that feature has just turned up from the South Korean company at Gamescom. Samsung used the German gaming convention to announce its new Odyssey 3D gaming monitor. If the title isn’t a complete giveaway, it’s a screen with 3D capabilities. Not the sort that requires special glasses, either. No, this is glasses-free 3D. The Odyssey (in 3D) Samsung isn’t the first to leap onto this particular bandwagon. Acer and Asus have already released…

LG South Africa will embark on a journey the company hasn’t undertaken in South Africa before — the South Korean appliance maker is setting up shop. It’ll mark a new way for the company to do business, “bringing optimism and convenience straight to South African consumers”, according to the PR announcement. There’s not much change for South African customers. Another avenue for purchase is opening, specifically on the local LG website. You’ll still be able to visit showrooms and stores around SA. Or you could grab your tech directly from the source. Shop LG LG Electronics SA’s subsidiary president Jinkook…

At this point, it would be more remarkable if Samsung could keep a secret. The South Korean company’s next flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra (and the S10 Plus) has turned up on the Chinese regulator’s website, indicating that they’re heading to market sooner rather than later. It’s about time, if that’s the case, because Samsung’s newest tablet could also be described as… late. Typically a refresh would show up about mid-year but we’re past that point and the Tab S10 Ultra and friends have yet to appear. It’s not unexpected — the slates are confirmed to be delayed…

Fujifilm’s range of Instax cameras of late has offered a weird and wonderful mix of tech. The new Instax Wide 400 takes a few steps back by going completely retro, serving up an instant camera that does just that. It focuses on quick snaps with no second chances and is all the better for it. This makes the R3,500 price tag a little hard to bite down on. Three and a half grand for a low-tech camera that runs on AA batteries stings a bit. Add an extra two hundred bucks every time you want to fire off ten images…

If you’ve spent any time in the amateur astronomy space in the past few years, you might have come across the name SVBony. Even then, the SVBony SV202 8×32 ED binoculars might well have escaped your notice because… well, they’re brand new. But Stuff has been mucking around with a pair for the past few weeks, exploring the wonder that is extra-low dispersion (ED) glass. It’s never been out of the question for Stuff to review binoculars, telescopes, and other optics. The tricky bit is laying hands on it in the first place. SVBony is a relative newcomer on the…

It’s not a good time to be a website operator who isn’t all that keen on being replaced by AI. Google’s AI Overviews ‘feature’, which throws up summaries from websites, is powered by the same section of the company that includes websites in Google’s search results. According to Bloomberg, opting out of the ‘AI’ side of the equation will also opt sites out of the actually useful function provided by the search giant. In other words, if websites are unwilling to let their sites be crawled for AI purposes they’ll also be left out of Google’s search results. It might…

If you’ve been to London in Britain (there are plenty of others) lately, you can feel secure in the knowledge that you were in one of the most surveilled cities outside of Asia (and Moscow). The British city, as of 2021, had around 700,000 cameras and the number might be as high as a solid million. That’s still nothing on Chinese cities but the Brits might have a way around that — flying cameras. The country’s Civil Aviation Authority has announced several trial projects that will introduce drones to the skies above London and other cities in Britain. Planned to…