Author: Trent Meikle

It’s official. After showing up to Tim Cook’s Wonderlust event and listening to him talk about all the money we’d be spending on his iPhones and smartwatches, the time has finally come to buy his products. Pre-orders go live today, with orders set to start arriving at their new owners’ homes a week later, Friday 29 September. You’ll be able to place your order with cold hard cash, or through a contract with some of SA’s largest operators, Vodacom, MTN and Telkom if you’re going through the iStore direct. (If you need any help determining which has the fastest network,…

DALL-E 3 is a thing now OpenAI, the company behind the wildly successful ChatGPT large language model (LLM), has announced DALL-E 3, a much-improved text-to-image AI generator that’s supposedly safer, smarter, and can leverage ChatGPT to create prompts on the fly. DALL-E 2 is still one of the more sophisticated generative AI platforms out there, and even then, it gets things wrong – ignoring specific prompts or just making things look plain weird. OpenAI reckons those issues will be far less prominent, with DALL-E 3 being more understanding of situational context. Aside from understanding user prompts better, DALL-E 3’s coolest…

Earlier this week, Microsoft let slip a wealth of internal documents courtesy of the company’s trial against the FTC. This doesn’t look to be some dinky internal leak designed to drum up hype. Microsoft showed its entire hand here, revealing the company’s outline for upcoming consoles, a new controller, and outdated (but still valuable) release schedules for several games. Hell, it even revealed CEO Phil Spencer’s desire to purchase Nintendo back in 2020. We’re more interested in the hardware. We already know the company is reviving at least two of its greatest hits: Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV:…

Neuralink goes home-sapien Elon Musk’s Neuralink – a company working on implantable brain–computer interfaces – has seemingly moved past the need for testing on monkeys and has begun recruiting humans for its cause. You’ll need to be willing to have the company’s N1 computer interface implanted into your brain – but you probably already knew that. The study, known as PRIME – Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface – (someone needs to teach Musk how acronyms work), isn’t looking for anyone who shows up and rings the doorbell. It’s encouraging applications from candidates suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or quadriplegia…

If you thought the owners of Ford’s Ranger line-up of bakkies weren’t nearly smug enough, the company’s newly announced Ford Ranger hybrid plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV), set to release sometime in 2025, might just change your mind on that. Not much of Ford’s new EV is known yet, aside from the name and a few other details. Of course, the name does speak to the bakkie’s hybrid capabilities from the offset. We also know it’s packing a 2.3l Ford EcoBoost turbo petrol engine, coupled with a battery that’ll net 45km of range off a single charge. That’s “without using a…

What with the current Rand-to-Dollar conversion rate, and the continually rising price of refined oil globally, it’s no wonder that the most recent round of data from the Central Energy Fund (CEF) looks so grim. If you thought September’s big price hike was worth getting upset over, you won’t be looking forward to the nearly R2 increase slated for diesel prices come October. A hefty month for diesel Don’t panic just yet. We’ve still got two weeks to go before the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy decides the country’s official petrol and diesel prices. So why are we discussing…

X could get a “small” monthly fee Elon Musk is getting desperate. That’s been the case for a while where Twitter, now X, is concerned. The platform was losing money long before Musk took the joke too far and dropped $44 billion back in October. The company’s single-letter rebrand didn’t help matters, thanks to a 50% drop in advertising revenue and a “heavy debt load”. That’s why we weren’t especially surprised when Musk floated the idea of a “small” monthly entry fee that would give users access to the service. During an ‘AI Safety Roundtable’ that was live-streamed on X,…

You’d think, after MTN’s SuperFlex launched last week that the company’s largest rival, Vodacom, would respond in kind, right? Well, it hasn’t. Instead, it’s launched a new service going by the name Enhance, “giving [customers] the choice and control to build their world of connectivity, entertainment, and gaming, all in one.” Vodacom wants to Enhance your lifestyle Sure, it’s not a month-to-month product that offers unlimited SMSes and minutes, but that’s not what Vodacom is going for. We’re pretty confident that Vodacom will catch up to MTN on that front eventually, but for now, Enhance is all you’re getting. It’s a service that…

Acer’s going 540Hz Acer has unveiled a new gaming monitor, boasting an astonishingly high 540Hz refresh rate, that’ll make games like Rocket League a breeze, and leaves no room for excuses when coming second. There’s just one issue. The Acer Nitro XV242F as it’s known is only available in China – with no confirmation of a global release. We’re not complaining. While other 540Hz monitors do exist and will be making their way to South Africa in the near future, they’re incredibly niche and can be rather pricey. Getting them to work at the advertised 540Hz is another matter altogether,…

Ford has confirmed that the crossover SUV, the Puma, is making its way to South Africa in 2023 – with a starting price of R570,000 attached. It’s most likely going to replace Ford’s EcoSport in the market, which has now been discontinued. If you’ve been to Europe before, you’ve probably seen one of these rolling ‘round the streets. The Puma has been on the market in certain countries since as far back as 2019. South Africa will see two derivatives come October: the Puma Titanium and Puma ST-Line Vignale. A Puma for both sides To lay your hands on Ford’s…