Author: Brett Venter

We always knew that the James Webb Space Telescope would go on to do wonderful things. It cost in the region of $10 billion and was several years late. There’s no way NASA would sink that much time and money in a project that would produce sub-standard results. Speaking of results, the first proper image from the James Webb telescope dropped last night. It was unveiled by the American president. It’s even got an official title. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, we reckon the full image probably justifies the capital letters. James Webb would be proud There’s an iconic…

Rumours about the iPhone 14 started not too long after the iPhone 13 launched. Some interesting details, like increased RAM and a possible hole-punch display, are suggested. Now there’s something new — the possible date of the iPhone 14 lineup launch. Specifically? Apple’s newest smartphones are supposedly showing up on 13 September this year. Pre-orders are expected to start on 16 September, while international sales will start on 23 September. iPhone 14 loading At least, that’s the word behind an Apple leaker on Twitter, iHacktu. The anonymous user claims that 13 September is the big day. Given their track record,…

It’s almost nice to know that after fourteen years of load shedding, South Africa finally has a plan. Or a clue. Or something. No, really. South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in his weekly letter to the country, has said that he will soon reveal plans to “…accelerate all efforts to increase our electricity supply”. This sounds like a good thing. Various factors have combined to give South Africa its worst bout of load shedding in recent years. Sabotage, strike action, the fact that Eskom has been plundered over several decades… yeah, South Africa’s power generation could be better. Ramaphosa has…

Back when Meta was still Facebook and Oculus was still Oculus, the Oculus Quest 2 launched. It was an improvement on its predecessor in every way. Except one. You needed a Facebook account to use it. Delete your Facebook account, and you lose everything you purchased on your VR hardware. We were… unimpressed. The problem behind it seems obvious. In order to use your VR hardware, you either had to sign up for, or retain, a Facebook account. And since Facebook (now Meta) around that time was being a little… lax… when it came to user data, that wasn’t an…

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…