Author: Brett Venter

Driving is an occupation that could have various emotional effects. Drive in traffic and you’re bound to become stressed. If you’re a courier, speed is of the essence. Ditto if you’re a Formula One driver. And if you’ve got nowhere to be, driving can be rather relaxing. Slow Roads, a free browser-based game, is one of the latter experiences. Slow Roads to nowhere The concept behind the game is simple. You take a vehicle, whether it’s a car, bike, or bus, and traverse roads. Slowly, sure, but there’s also the option to clock up some serious speed. But the relaxing…

Industry partnerships are nothing new but Halo developer 343 Industries’ agreement with a company called Limbitless Solutions is something a little unusual. Limbitless develops and supplies custom 3D-printed prosthetics to kids that have experienced limb loss. So, of course, a Halo team-up makes perfect sense. The partnership isn’t new. 343 Industries has been working with the Florida-based company for four years now. What is new, is a set of designs based around Halo Infinite and Halo Reach. Reach for the stars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW51afwSk0E The two new prosthetic designs are based on Halo icon Master Chief’s armour from Infinite, as well as…

Humans experience all manner of things every day without noticing it. You walk through massive magnetic fields. You are bombarded by wireless transmissions (which you’re totally not allergic to. Find another way to feel special). You move at 107,208km/h, even when you’re standing still. The trick is perceiving any of this. It’s very hard to perceive Earth’s orbit. It’s easy to perceive wireless transmissions. That’s how WiFi, internet, radio, and TV signals work. Just open Spotify. Magnetic fields are also perceptible. You can do that thing with iron filings, a magnet, and a piece of paper but it’s difficult to…

Huawei has a new folding smartphone heading to market in the next couple of weeks. The Huawei Pocket S was originally known as the ‘Huawei P50 Pocket New’, before the Chinese company made the device — and its launch date — official. The official launch is on 2 November for the Chinese market. If the folding Huawei Pocket S follows the pattern set by the P50 Pocket’s launch in 2020, other markets (like South Africa) will see it around April 2023. For now, though, it’s confined to China. Pick a Pocket S Huawei Pocket S teaser pic.twitter.com/sIL8VfQB0Q — Deng Li…

We’re used to Meta copying everything new for its own purposes. That’s how we got Reels and more than a few other features besides. But Make-A-Video, a video-centric spinoff of the AI-generated images that are so hot right now, is a cloned technology we were not expecting to see. And yet, here we are. Meta head Mark Zuckerberg introduced the technology in a Facebook post earlier this week. It’s very similar to other AI-powered image generation in that it works off of a text prompt. But apparently, it’s harder to create videos than static images. Dall-E but make it video…

Surveillance capitalism is about to start tracking yet another aspect of your life. This time, it’s your breathing that’s up for grabs. Amazon last night announced the Halo Rise, a night-time gadget designed to keep an eye on your nocturnal habits. The sleeping ones, anyway. It’s not just a tracker, of course. That would be far harder to allow in a bedroom so it can watch you sleep. Amazon’s newest gizmo is a bedside lap but with smart features. A gradually increasing light when you wake up, to simulate a sunrise, is just the start. A game of Halo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPWkhN60Lo&feature=emb_logo…

You know how, towards the end of the year, sometimes you just know you’re not going to make any significant changes in the coming year? Based on the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra leak, that must be how the South Korean company feels right now. Honestly, we kinda get it. It’s been a rough few years. Seriously though, the new Galaxy S23 Ultra leak shows that, on a visual level at least, very little is going to change. As with the Galaxy Fold 4, you’ll spot the differences but only if you’re using a very large magnifying glass. Spare some…

Earlier this month, Amazon announced a new update to its standard Kindle e-reader. We weren’t expecting something completely new, but the new Kindle Scribe definitely fits that bill. At first glance, it looks an awful lot like the Kindle Oasis. It’s a little more versatile than that, however. A career as a Scribe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSl721wVaqI Usually, you’re discouraged from writing in books. Unless, of course, they’re yours and you’re not planning on letting anyone else ever see them. But even if you were a scribbler, the advent of the e-reader made that really hard to do. The Kindle Scribe plans to…

Volvo’s done a lot to innovate motor vehicles. The seatbelt in its current form comes from the Swedish car maker. Now it’s launching something wholly new — radar. But not radar outside the vehicle. That’s been done before. This is introspective radar. It looks inward. It sees what other radars do not. And what it sees is that you’ve left a puppy or a small child asleep on the back seat. And the window’s not open and the air conditioner isn’t on. Volvo evolves The feature — and it’s definitely a feature — will arrive in the company’s EX90 EV,…

Earlier this year we saw Oppo’s Reno 7 5G smartphone hit the South African market. It’s taken less than six months for the Oppo Reno 8 5G to follow suit. This time, though, it’s brought a larger price tag and a Pro version of the handset along for the ride. Last night was the South African launch of the Chinese handset. Stuff was there, which you would know if you followed our Twitter account. While you fix that hideous oversight, here’s what you missed from the event. Going to Reno 8 – Reno-fication Oppo was quick to point out several…