Author: Brett Venter

Technology sometimes does some distressing things. Twitter still exists. So does Facebook. But sometimes tech does really, really well. Like the drone program currently running in the Spanish municipality of Sagunto, in Valencia. Earlier this month, a drone helped facilitate the rescue of a swimmer in distress. It did this by getting from the shore, out past the breakers to where a 14-year-old swimmer was struggling. Lifeguards could see that the swimmer was fatigued and used the drone to drop off a life jacket. Baywatch, but with drones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_CAtrn7-wY In the video, you can see the unnamed swimmer battling to…

Security is an issue for just about everyone on the planet right now. Even if you don’t use electronic devices regularly, you should remain cognisant about your data floating around in other places. One neglected area when it comes to data security is mobile phones. Apple’s got a plan for that, called ‘Lockdown Mode’. By the sound of it, this is one Lockdown you’re going to want to participate in. Apple’s new feature is expected to launch a little later this year. When it does, it’ll help protect basically any Apple device with an operating system. iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks…

If you’ve ever wondered when humans might exist on a planet not our own, wonder no more. There’s a working design for a lunar base out and about. Designed by a company called AI SpaceFctory and engineers from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, humans might one day live off-world in one of these. The lunar base design is called LINA, and is designed to house humans on the moon. And, unlike most Earth architecture, it accounts for aesthetics as well as functionality. Lunar base of operations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22QlHZtwTSc The curved buildings that make up these bases were created with a specific part…

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. There might be an exception in the case of products so obviously awful that they a) will never come to fruition or b) will blatantly steal your money if they do. Meet the Polium One. The Polium One claims to be a games console. The minds behind it, though, have apparently never seen a console in their lives. That’s because the Polium One is supposedly the “world’s first multi-chain gaming console”. The big hook is that blockchain support is built into it from the start. Even better, there are multiple blockchains…

Switzerland really seems to have its act together. The country has spent the last fourteen years constructing a power generation source that has to be seen to be believed. You can think of it as a ‘water battery’. That is, a battery that stores water for later use. And it’s not small, either. It stores the equivalent of 20 million kWh, for use in case of emergencies, and it’s powered by those times when there’s too much power being generated. Can you imagine such a thing? Switzerland’s hydropower facility, run by a company called Nant de Drance, went into operation…

If you were a Vodacom Video Play subscriber, you perhaps haven’t used the service for a while. If you had, you probably would have noticed a message telling you the service was going away. It has now ventured past the point of no return. First noted by a MyBroadband reader, Vodacom’s video-on-demand service seems to have entirely disappeared. Neither of Video Play’s URLs (here and here) are functional, though the page on the company’s main website is still live. No more Video Play? The user who pointed out the streaming service’s demise was greeted by a message in the app…

Samsung is the global front-runner when it comes to folding smartphones. That much is hardly in doubt, and is a testament to how much R&D the brand is putting in. But a new report out of South Korea suggests that the company’s folding phone ambitions are about to get a little more… democratic. Don’t get too excited, though. We might already know more or less what 2022’s folding Samsung devices look like, but the cheaper versions may take a while. Like, 2024, at the soonest. But, if they’re actually released, they could mainstream the still-niche smartphone segment. Samsung knows when…

Unless you were very fortunate, you’re probably aware that South Africa has hit Stage 6 load shedding. Again. If you’re a typical South African, you’re currently looking for options. Emmigration seems popular. So are generators. And then there’s solar power, which offers the ability to stay at your home and continue while the rest of the neighbourhood complains. But the problem with solar power is that it’s expensive. In the region of nearly two hundred thousand rands for a standard home in South Africa. That’s a tremendous amount of money to slap down to keep the lights on. Some companies…

At times like this, it might pay to rock a phone with a little extra battery life. The extremely budget Nokia 105 Africa Edition (dual SIM — and this is the last time we’re writing it all out) may just be that phone. And that’s because… it’s a phone. You can make calls, you can send messages, you can even play a few pre-installed games if you want to. But it’s mostly a phone. A phone with two SIM card slots, so it’s for entrepreneurs on a serious budget. Mostly, though, it’s cheap. Really, really cheap. Deja vu It’s not…

Samsung in South Korea really seems out to impress specific blocks of fans. Specifically, coffee fans. Following its Pokémon partnership, with custom versions of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Buds 2, there’s a Starbucks collab on the boil. First spotted, outside of South Korea, by 9to5Google, this is a slightly less intense cross-branding session. It’s for Samsung’s latest and greatest hardware, yes, but the hardware isn’t custom. Mostly, it’s just a collection of cases, for the Galaxy S22 series of phones, and the Galaxy Buds 2. Gotta get those Starbucks A few of these cases are straight-up branding.…