Author: Brett Venter

There’s only one constant when it comes to space travel. Well, besides rockets blowing up sometimes. And that is delays. Starship, SpaceX’s ambitious new craft, was originally supposed to take to the skies in January this year. There’s now a new date floating about that may or may not be achieved. And that date is May this year. Knowing Meme-Lord Elon, the company will try as hard as they can to turn 4 May into a viable option. May the Fourth, and all that. But it’s far more likely they’ll actually pick the date that’s the safest for an orbital…

Google’s Equiano internet cable, first announced in 2019, has made landfall in its very first African country. Though the cable was supposed to first stop in Nigeria, the government of Togo was able to persuade the search giant to give them first dibs. The cable forms part of Google’s plan to invest in Africa’s ‘digital transformation’. It follows a general trend of large tech companies investing in African internet infrastructure. The landing was handled by CSquared, a Uganda-based internet company that started life as a Google initiative. South Africa is represented here as well. Convergence Partners, a South African company,…

Governments generally approach new trends very slowly. South Africa, famously, can’t even manage its television signal switchover. That operation is about a decade late, so far. So it’s a little surprising to learn that the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is working on a digital Rand. More or less. It’s not something that’ll come to everyday South Africans in a big hurry, however. It’s part of a joint project between the reserve banks of several countries, as well as the Bank for International Settlements. The other countries involved are Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The value of a digital Rand The…

VW does a lot of interesting things in the tech space. It’s working on autonomous driving, recycling, there was that whole diesel thing we don’t talk about… But VW South Africa’s got something a little more modern for us this week. Selling cars… wait for it… using NFTs. Impossible, you say? Actually, it’s not. It is, from a marketing perspective, almost genius. VW has stashed NFTs in the new locally-filed ad for the Polo. It’s giving away twenty unique digital items URLs that you can claim ownership of (a day) over five days. All you have to do is find…

Back to the Future is one of the most seriously disturbing family movies ever made. Seriously. Watch it again. But the tale of Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s voyage back (and forward, and further back in time) is also an iconic cinematic adventure. It deserves the fans that love it. Even if they are a little weird. The most iconic bit of the film, besides Marty’s outfit or Doc’s hair, has to be the Delorean. The movie’s influence is so extensive that the brand is coming back as an EV. And now Lego is also getting into the act, with…

We’ve been waiting for Huawei’s P50 lineup of phones since July last year. The P50 Pocket, a folding phone in the vein of Samsung’s Flip series, has been on our radar for months as well. Last night, the Chinese tech maker finally made both phones official for South Africa. Pre-orders for both handsets start next week, on 22 March. They’ll turn up in retail stores from 1 April. The only item missing from the list of info we had on the P50 Pocket and Pro was pricing. Well, that’s been sorted out. More or less. Want to pocket a P50…

The launch presentation for Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G smartphone might go down as the company’s most ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ moment to date. The entire event was filmed vertically. There were colours and influencer types everywhere. The music was thumpy and non-stop. You can almost smell the executives in the background, nodding sagely and saying, “The kids’ll watch this one, for sure.” But at Stuff, it’s mostly the olds watching. While trying not to claw their eyes out. The only mercy was that the event was brief. Still, we got to take a look at Samsung’s Galaxy A53…

Stuff has covered loads of MSI notebooks in the past. Until about nine months ago, they were all largely the same. Powerful, slabby black monoliths of gaming perfection. The brand’s red-and-black motif was recognisable, sure, but it was hard to tell machines apart without measuring the thickness with a calliper. The MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition is a welcome break from the monotony. It’s a gorgeous-looking gaming PC with enough spec inside to make you feel all internally warm. Externally too. Yellow, can you hear me? There’s no sedate colouring to be found here. When the MSI Crosshair…

Tech is entering the sporting world in ever bigger ways. This week we saw Spotify join forces with FC Barcelona, now it’s Google’s turn. The search giant has gone in a slightly speedier direction, by sponsoring McLaren’s Formula One ambitions for the next few years. The new partnership between the British automotive company and the American purveyor of tech goes beyond just a few stickers. Yes, Google will include its Android mascot on McLaren’s F1 livery. But it’s the new Chrome rims that are especially (visually) impressive. Searching for Google McLaren’s MCL36 Formula 1 race cars will feature Chrome branding…

When the fine folks over at Multichoice decided to limit concurrent DStv streams to a single screen, South Africans were very much annoyed. The attempt at preventing password sharing makes sense from a financial perspective. But from a customer perspective, not so much. So news that Netflix is also working on ways to limit password sharing between households might draw at least some ire. Or perhaps it won’t. The American streaming platform is no stranger to attempts to maintain fewer than four viewers on an account. Its latest crack at it, currently being tested in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru…