Author: Brett Venter

Nvidia, makers of the most desirable bitcoin mining gear on the planet (and sometimes GPUs), has a big sad. Its proposed purchase of Arm, the British company responsible for most of the chips in your phone, is officially toast. First announced in September 2020, the merger ran into trouble right off the bat. Sure, Arm parent company SoftBank could have used $40 billion (which ballooned to $66 billion in the interim). But Arm is too important a company to too many other tech-makers, according to regulators. Nvidia won’t be a shot in the Arm Regulators in Arm’s native UK, as…

The year is 2022, and nobody will look at your products unless there’s an NFT or the metaverse involved. At least, that’s the thinking over at Samsung HQ. The South Korean company has got an Unpacked looming large this weekend and, wouldn’t you know it, they’ve also got a virtual experience coming. And it’s not just virtual reality — which we’ve apparently now collectively redefined as the ‘metaverse’. The rest of the best buzzwords from 2021 are present — crypto and blockchain and NFTs, oh my! Samsung’s reality? Check.  Samsung’s offering viewers the chance to check out Unpacked 2022 in…

Everybody is trying to be the next Spotify. Not everybody does it all that well. An outfit that seems to have its act together is Anghami, a streaming service from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Odds are, however, that you haven’t even heard of them. Or perhaps you have. The streaming service claims some 70 million users around the world, even if its focus is quite neatly localised. See, Anghami was founded in 2012 with users in the Middle East and North Africa in mind. It was also created as an alternative to music piracy in those regions. That seems…

It’s never a good thing when the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has you in their sights. The company’s approach to copyright enforcement, historically, hasn’t been fantastic. But when the fight is between folks turning music into NFTs (without permission) and record industry dillweeds, it becomes hard to know who to root for. See, the RIAA is after a website called HitPiece. The company recently shut itself down but the RIAA still wants a piece of the action. See, HitPiece billed itself as a marketplace where folks could buy music-related NFTs. This might be a good idea (somewhere in…

Apple Music, when it launched, wasn’t shy about giving away access to the app. New device owners found themselves netting multiple months of access, and even now you can snag six months of streaming without paying a cent. Other than the cash money you gave Apple for a new audio device, obviously. But if you’re just a regular person trying to get a regular free trial, we’re sorry to say that Apple’s got enough users now. Apple Music is popular enough now that the company is able to trim back how much free access you get. Marketing Apple Music Most…

Space travel is an interesting business. It’s like flying, except you don’t get to use wings, and there’s a constant explosion happening underneath the craft. It’s no surprise that it’s a difficult industry to keep safe. That said, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is now officially the safest ever made. Why? Because it’s had a total of 139 launches. Of those, there was a single failure in flight — a resupply mission to the International Space Station in 2015. There was also a single launch that failed prior to takeoff, which isn’t counted towards that total. Flying the Falcon 9 The…

Everyone is making NFTs now. Some are doing it completely legally, but the nature of NFTs means that anyone can turn any digital property into a potentially lucrative blockchain entry. Some intrepid speculators decided to craft a batch of NFTs based around Nike sneakers. Without asking the brand first. Nike hasn’t taken that sitting down. This, as is often the case with large companies, means that lawyers are involved. StockX, a company that resells various sneaker-shaped goods, decided to turn actual, physical pairs of Nike shoes into NFTs. Now they’re heading to court over it. A new kind of Nike…

So you’ve been waiting patiently for uncle Elon to give you your Starlink internet access? You will have to wait until Starlink Premium, a far more expensive version of the internet-from-space service, rolls out first. The original version of the service (which cost R1,500 to book) offered speeds of up to 150Mbps, beamed down from space by Starlink satellites dropped off by SpaceX rockets. The Premium version offers speeds of between 150Mbps and 500Mbps. But there’s obviously a bit of a financial catch. Paying a premium for Starlink Premium Starlink high performance antenna https://t.co/83kIQSNV3l — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2,…

Meta this week revealed its fourth-quarter results for 2021. News of the company’s performance sent its stock into the toilet — relatively speaking. Losing 20% of the value of anything is rather severe, but there’s still plenty of value left out. Facebook’s user performance in particular was to blame for some of the company’s stock issues. The other part might be Meta’s metaverse ambitions. Reality Labs, the internal division exploring the metaverse for Meta, cost the company $10 billion in 2021. That’s a fair sum of money to throw at a future that is far from certain, despite being such…

There’s no denying that audio brand Sonos makes some amazing tech. The company is a consistent Stuff Gadget Awards winner, but it’s only just entered the mobile audio market. The Sonos Roam is an excellent debut for a properly portable speaker but where does the company go next? Headphones make a fair amount of sense. Last year, we saw the brand had filed a patent application for a set of noise-cancelling headphones. Now, a new acquisition might have pushed them closer to release. A set of Sonos cans Tech website Protocol reports that Sonos has acquired an American Bluetooth audio…