Author: Brett Venter

Fujifilm doesn’t really do snooty camera names. You’re getting a coded string of numbers and letters and you’ll like it. The new Fuji X-S20 mirrorless camera is proof of that. It’s marketed as a beginner’s big-boy camera. Given its nearly R30,000 price tag, you have to be fairly sure that the shutterbug life is for you. If you’ve made the right call, though, you’ll also find that you’ve made the right call with regard to your hardware. This is only really a beginner’s camera in the sense that it’s less intimidating than Fuji’s really high-end kit. The pricing difference between…

Stuff has waded into the waters where VolkanoX’s audio gear lurks before but we weren’t expecting to encounter the Python while we were there. This fairly large (it’s sized somewhere between a two-litre Coke bottle and a large coffee tin) speaker isn’t the best-sounding thing you’ll ever encounter. Nor is it the most expensive. And the audio, frankly, might just surprise you. As with the VolkanoX Silenzo headphones, this Bluetooth speaker combines some budget and higher-end features with a solidly budget price point to produce something that’s worth checking out. If you’re an audiophile, you can check out now. We…

Roblox, one of the most metaverse-like platforms before the term was even a thing, is joining Meta. No, Zuckerberg hasn’t opened his wallet and made its owners an offer they can’t refuse. The popular game/virtual world is adding a new platform to its ever-growing repertoire — the Meta Quest series of headsets. Roblox has been around for ages. Not as long as Second Life, one of its more similar competitors, but certainly longer than Fortnite, the gaming juggernaut with a similar appeal (but without the user customisation). Its appearance on Meta’s hardware will advance the idea that Zuckerberg’s platform is…

There are changes afoot at Netflix. That’s not new. These typically swing between updates that mostly benefit the company to those designed to keep the customer base happy. This is one of the latter and it’s about time. Engadget reports that all Netflix users now have the ability to transfer user profiles over to existing accounts. Think of a situation like a bunch of friends moving into the same house and combining all of their profiles into the same account. That wasn’t previously possible. Nice one, Netflix Combining households no longer has to mean one person must choose to lose…

The moment we took the 500W Titan Elecstor power station out of its box, we could see the problem we were going to have with it. Don’t get us wrong — the best backup battery you can own in South Africa is the most expensive one you can afford and spending R9,000 on this sort of capacity isn’t a terrible idea. But it’s also not the best idea. If you’re confined to a budget of just under R10,000, there aren’t many options for you that feature this sort of capacity but you really should know what you’re getting into. Sure,…

Why are advanced humanoid robots always named after mythical godlike figures? Boston Dynamics has Atlas, NASA has Valkyrie, and even Hanson Robotics’ Sophia is named after the embodiment of wisdom. Shouldn’t that be a little concerning? Be that as it may, we’re actually here to talk about NASA’s bipedal ‘bot. It’s been in the works since at least 2013 and now it’s about to leave home on a sort of work-release program. NASA is sending the Valkyrie to work at a power station in Australia because that’s a totally normal thing we’re doing with robots now. Ride of the Valkyrie Valkyrie…

It seems that augmented reality, along with artificial intelligence, is the theme for 2023. BMW Motorrad has unveiled its ConnectedRide smart glasses. You’re probably familiar with the concept — smart glasses display information about your surroundings that you might otherwise gather from a smartphone or a console display. These glasses, which actually look like a pair of glasses, albeit with thicker bows, will show motorcyclists the same sort of info you’d get from an in-car heads-up display (HUD). So expect speed, gear, and navigation information to be projected onto the two sets of lenses BMW will provide to bikers with…

Before the age of vertically-landing rockets, the pinnacle of the space program’s reusable ambitions was the space shuttle. NASA’s iconic re-entry vehicles once made an imposing presence when stacked on a launch platform with a fuel tank and two booster rockets. That’s now a part of history but it isn’t going to be relegated to images and video. Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to become a display at the under-construction Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center. The remarkable bit about that? It’ll be stacked as though for launch. A space shuttle at rest Currently, Endeavour is on display at the…

The first-person shooter, or FPS (which also stands for frames-per-second but we’re not talking PC benchmarks or camera hardware here), has been a staple of gaming for decades. In fact, the genre has existed for fifty years now (in case you wanted to feel old). It’s about time for a decent documentary, no? FPS: First Person Shooter aims to be that documentary when it launches online on 31 August. It’s got all of the biggest names from the biggest games in the genre’s history. Doom, Quake, GoldenEye, Halo, Deus Ex, System Shock, Duke Nukem, Half-Life, and many other titles are…

Yes, smartphone RAM is important for the smooth running of the device. Ask anyone how their 1GB-packing handset is doing these days for a blistering example of that. But cranking it up to 24GB might be stretching the ‘bigger is better’ concept a smidge. Still, that’s a thing now. You’ll have to be keen on smartphone brand Nubia’s Red Magic 8S Pro + gaming smartphone and you’ll have to buy it from China (because it’s not available here) but you can officially have 24GB of RAM in your smartphone. If you really want to. RAM it down up Nubia is…