Keeping it Realme

Realme’s P4 Power doesn’t have the most fabulous display we’ve ever seen, but it’s far from poor. A 6.8in AMOLED sits up front, under a coating of Gorilla Glass 7i. It’s a FHD+ affair, promising a 144Hz refresh rate and 600 nits of brightness under normal use, though this can shoot up to 1,000 nits when needed.

Inside it lives the Dimensity 7400 Ultra chip, a decidedly mid-range 8-core offering from early 2025. It should get you through the basics with a choice of 8/12GB of RAM. Storage is less malleable, sticking to 256GB regardless of your flavour of RAM. As the name implies, it’ll hook up to the 5G network without issue.

Read More: Honor’s Magic V6 unfolds in South Africa for R40,000

Only two cameras are fixed to the phone’s rear, led by a 50MP f/1.8 wide-angle lens, set next to an 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle lens. Flip it ’round, and you’ll find a 16MP shooter lodged in the display handling selfie duty. How it’ll stack up to other competitors at this price point remains to be seen, but it should fare just fine.

Realme South Africa confirmed today that the device has launched locally. We’ve only managed to find two listings — one offering the 8/256GB model for a sizeable R13,000. Another lists a device packing all sorts of odd specs, such as a mere 4GB of RAM and an older Snapdragon chipset (plus a free watch) for only R12,000. Honestly, we’d steer clear of that one ’til those specs have been updated to something a bit more… correct.

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Surprise, surprise

The show, which is expected to focus on Apple’s latest batch of iPhones, will get underway at 19h00 on the night of Wednesday, 9 September. You’ll be able to tune in directly on Apple’s website or on the company’s YouTube channel. Or, if that’s too much work, you can always visit Stuff for up-to-date coverage of the event.

Apple will reportedly live up to the ‘Surprise and shine’ name (or… not) with our first look at the long-rumoured iPhone Ultra — or whatever it ends up being called. This will seemingly be Apple’s first crack at building a foldable, one that hopes to truly rival Samsung (and just about everyone else) at their own game.

Read More: Apple debuts a new AI-focused Mac Mini with M6 and M5 Pro chipsets

The obvious visitor will be the iPhone 18 family — or at least part of it. Apple is expected to debut the more expensive iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, leaving the stock iPhone off the guest list. Ditto for the iPhone Air 2 and iPhone 18e, all three of which will likely be bumped to early 2027. It begs the question: what else will we see?

If history is any indicator, a fresh batch of Apple Watches will be on display. Then there’s the software side of all these products, brimming with Apple Intelligence features. A revamped Apple TV is also on the cards, alongside a few other smart home bits, though we could see these being randomly shadow-dropped, à la the new Mac Mini.

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Filed in 2023 by a coalition of 29 US state attorneys general, the case alleged that Instagram and Facebook were engineered to keep teenagers hooked, that Meta misled the public about the harm, and that it collected data from children under 13 without parental consent.

The trial began just over a week ago. But instead of battling it out in court for four more weeks, the parties agreed to settle.

Even though Meta folded in this case, the settlement doesn’t amount to an admission of wrongdoing, liability or violation of any laws. In a statement, Meta said:

Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta. We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.

Why settle now?

This year has been brutal for Meta in court.

In March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman who joined Instagram at the age of nine.

The same week, a New Mexico jury found Meta had endangered children, ordering it to pay $567 million to address the youth mental health crisis. In August, a judge lifted that bill to $942 million.

In this most recent case, Meta said the states were seeking as much as $1.4 trillion in penalties. The states denied this, saying the maximum penalties could reach roughly $200 billion.

By settling now, Meta buys certainty and a cap on its public exposure. The states get money and product changes that no legislature has managed to pass.

The money has two layers. Meta will pay roughly $11.7 billion to 47 US states, plus the District of Colombia and three US territories, in ten annual instalments, as well as $1 billion to Texas as part of a separate legal agreement. It will pay a further US$5.3 billion only if TikTok, YouTube and Snap sign up to the same rules and pay their own share.

How Instagram and Facebook will actually change

For “Teen Users” – that is, anyone Meta believes is aged 13–17 – in the participating jurisdictions, the agreement will establish a night mode which blocks access to Facebook and Instagram from midnight to 6am by default, and silences notifications from 10pm to 7am.

A two-hour daily cap applies across both apps combined, although messaging and long-form videos that are at least 22 minutes long will not count. Essentially, this draws a line between something that resembles watching a TV show and something that resembles scrolling.

A teen with three Instagram accounts does not get six hours. Meta must link accounts using device IDs and phone numbers.

During school hours (8am to 3pm on weekdays), notifications are muted. Forced breaks appear at 60 and 90 minutes of daily use, with a nudge after 15 minutes of continuous scrolling. Only a parent linked through Meta’s supervision tools can loosen any of these defaults.

The agreement then turns to design. “Like” counts are hidden by default, and “cosmetic procedure filters” are switched off. Filters that reshape your face in ways only surgery could are out. Puppy ears and cat faces are fine. Teens must be offered a non-personalised feed (posts in time order rather than chosen by an algorithm) within ten days of joining and every 90 days after.

Finally, the agreement deals with who is on the platform and what happens to them there. Every user must be age-checked within a year, using tools tested against the international standard.

No more than 10% of 16- and 17-year-olds, and 3% of 13–15-year-olds, may be wrongly classified as adults. Failing to meet these service levels, as determined by an independent auditor, is a breach of the judgement and risks contempt proceedings.

Reports of harmful content must be answered within six hours in 90% of cases. Parents are notified the first time their teen messages an adult, and if the teen repeatedly searches for suicide, self-harm or eating disorder terms.

The auditor will report for five years, and Meta is barred from making misleading claims about its safety features.

Why this matters beyond the US

So far, other countries have taken a different approach to tackling big tech.

Many countries have been looking to Australia, where social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are required to take “reasonable steps” to stop under-16s from having accounts.

The new settlement in the US instead accepts that 13-year-olds can use social media and regulates the design of the platforms.

Where these two approaches overlap is age assurance – working out how old someone is without asking for a passport. Australian law requires “reasonable steps”; the new settlement in the US sets an error threshold of 10% and 3% for the two respective age categories, tested annually by an outside expert.

The US measures may in turn feed back to Australia, where error thresholds might be incorporated into assessments of age restrictions and the promised response times to reports of harm could influence law reform.

A big question is whether the changes agreed as part of this settlement will spread to other platforms.

The settlement is designed to make this happen: Meta pays the final $5.3 billion only once “industry-wide adoption” occurs, which the agreement defines as Snap, TikTok and YouTube being bound by equivalent rules through settlement, legislation or audited voluntary compliance. That is the same domino logic as the 1998 settlement between 52 US state and territory attorneys-general and the country’s four largest tobacco companies.

If this happens, the night block will widen to 10pm to 7am and the daily cap would drop to one hour per app.

Meta has published an open letter urging TikTok and YouTube to join “right away”, with chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney arguing that “teens move fluidly across dozens of apps”.

Whether TikTok and YouTube can resist the rules that Meta has accepted is the question for the next 12 months.

• Rob Nicholls is a Senior Research Associate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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Well, those are now official. The Magic V6 will be available from 1 September, but you’ll need R40,000 if you plan to walk out of the store with one and not have security chase you. Alternatively, if you enjoy paying more for your tech, you can get it from Vodacom or Cell C for R1,600/m over a 36-month period.

Honor brings the Magic

Keen-eyed readers should be able to spot that not much has changed with the Magic V6. It is technically thinner than the Magic V5, but only if comparing the white V6 with the non-white V5. It is also the same thickness when unfolded as Samsung’s recently announced Fold 8 Ultra at 4.1mm.

Only a couple of things have changed inside the V6. Most of the camera specs are identical (at least on paper), but the displays have had some work done. For the inner display, it’s mostly an incremental upgrade to the LPTO tech, which allows for the variable refresh rate. It also gets 4,320Hz PWM dimming, which is meant to help reduce eye strain. The same is true for the cover display, which is also slightly bigger and crispier, going from a resolution of 1,060 x 2,376px to 1,080 x 2,420px.

Qualcomm’s latest chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, is also present and provides substantial increases, up to 50% in some cases, over last year’s flagship. Whether you’ll notice the uplift depends on what you’re doing and how closely you’re paying attention. The SoC is paired with 16 GB of RAM and 512GB or 1TB of non-expandable storage.

The battery has also received an upgrade. The Magic V5 packs a decently sized 5,820mAh battery. Honor’s upped that to 6,660mAh in the Magic V6. Charging speeds have also improved. It now supports 80W wired and 66W wireless charging.

Big battery aside, the big deal with the Magic V6 is the focus on durability. Honor has somehow managed to secure IP68 and IP69 certificates for it, making it the first foldable to achieve that. While that might not mean much to you now, you’ll change your tune quickly when you’re firing heated high-pressure water at your device. Oh, you guys don’t do that? Well, when it happens by accident, your phone should survive.

The post Honor’s Magic V6 unfolds in South Africa for R40,000 appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Still the same Xbox Ally you remember

It’s not the most intriguing redesign we’ve ever seen, but it’ll do something for somebody. It’s got a new chassis, featuring a translucent black shell with a smattering of gold accents to round it out. It looks better than the original plain black design, at any rate. It’s also slightly larger in hand, meant to accommodate the new display.

The biggest (and only) upgrade here is the arrival of a 7.4in Nebula HDR display. It’s marginally larger than the 7in display of the original Ally, but the switch from an IPS to OLED panel can’t be ignored. It’ll deliver a significantly more robust experience, with greater colour saturation and contrast. It’s also getting a brightness bump, going from the somewhat measly 500 nits to 600 nits, with peaks of up to 1,400 nits.

Read More: This totally-not-Lego brick set resurrects the original Xbox

Unfortunately, Asus hasn’t tweaked the internals. That means the same AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, 24GB of RAM, and 80Wh battery stick around. It’s probably for the best. Even a lick more RAM would send the price skyrocketing more than it has already. If you’ve more money than sense, a new bundle chucks in the ROG Xreal R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR Glasses, a Dbrand Killswitch shell, a 68W adapter, and a protective case.

All that to say, if you’re still rocking last year’s ROG Xbox Ally X, you may want to hold onto it a little while longer. We’re confident that the OLED upgrade is a worthy one, though not at the prices Asus and Xbox are punting. You’ll drop at least R20,700 ($1,300) before it finds its way to South Africa. To get the Xreal bundle, you’re looking at R39,800 ($2,500) for the privilege. Can that AI bubble get to poppin’, pretty please?

The post The ROG Xbox Ally X20 dresses up last year’s hardware with an OLED screen appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Apple reckons its new version, with either an M5 Pro or M6 chipset, delivers up to four times the AI performance of the previous M4 release. This “delivers a massive leap in AI performance,” but that could be Apple’s marketing team being hyperbolic.

Maxing out the Mac Mini

Apple touts improved performance for both its M6 and M5 Pro Mac Mini variants. The M6 is supposedly quicker (“up to 4.8x faster than M4”), with the M5 Pro (“up to 4x faster than M4 Pro”) seeing more moderate gains. But there are also WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6, and speedier Ethernet connections to look forward to. If you happen to use it for something other than running LLMs, gaming performance has also been improved.

The more affordable M6 looks to be the major AI-focused hardware. It’ll launch with 16GB of RAM as standard, and supports up to 32GB. That one starts at $900 (R14,500) in the States, but don’t expect the price to carry over here. The Mac Mini with M5 Pro is considerably more expensive, at R28,700 ($1,700), but with 64GB of system memory support, it’ll probably be more versatile. Plus, there’s a ‘Pro’ in the hardware somewhere.

Apple chief hardware officer, Johny Srouji, said, “With a more powerful CPU and graphics, Neural Accelerators in the GPU, and higher memory bandwidth, Mac Mini with M6 delivers a whole new level of AI performance. And with up to an 18-core CPU and 20-core GPU, Mac Mini with M5 Pro is an ultracompact powerhouse for complex pro workflows.”

Pre-orders for the new hardware have started in the States, with a 22 September launch date. Locally, the M4 and M4 Pro versions remain the only ones listed. Those start at R24,000. Given the $100 international price increase, expect a jump when it launches here.

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The standard Garmin Fenix 9 will run runners (and other fitness fans) a solid R22,500. That seems to apply to the 43mm and 47mm casings. Moving up to the Pro puts the price between R25k and R26,500. The Solar edition only has 47mm and 51mm casings, and the most you’ll pay is R26,500.

If getting lost is a possibility, you might want to opt for Garmin’s inReach Connectivity, which adds LTE and satellite coverage for an extra R2,500.

Fenix 9 lives

If you’re questioning whether it’s worth paying this much for a fitness wearable, you’re probably not athletic enough to have used a previous Fenix. Across the range, titanium is a feature. All models include a titanium bezel, with the Fenix 9 Pro and Solar using a titanium casing. The standard version has a polymer/fibre chassis, with a titanium back panel.

Each model has a 10ATM rating, with a dive depth rating of 40 metres. The Fenix 9 and the Pro both sport AMOLED displays, with the Solar using a memory-in-pixel screen which gives it substantial battery life. Ten days is the lowest number Garmin provides, with the Pro taking that up to sixteen. If you’re strapping on a Fenix 9 Pro Solar, expect up to 34 days on a charge. Garmin reckons it’ll survive more than two months in Expedition Mode.

64GB of internal storage is standard across Garmin’s new lineup. The company’s sports tracking, training programs, and deep metrics are all supposed to be at their best here, as well. On-wrist calls with a connected phone, improved mapping, and Garmin Epic are also included. Epic is supposed to let athletes “record, relive, and share multiple days of activities with photos, as well as health and performance stats, in a cohesive story of events over time.”

Given that local pricing is out, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll land at retail here. Garmin’s website only lists it as “coming soon,” which is a little less definite than the brand usually is. You can probably stick to your Garmin Fenix 8 a little longer, right?

The post Garmin’s Fenix 9 lineup is official, priced from R22,500 to R29,000 appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past

Are there any other decade-old single-player games that still have this much motion? The new Songs of the Past DLC gives players one final hurrah with the White Wolf before we hunker down to wait for The Witcher 4. If it’s anything like its past two expansion packs, Songs of the Past should be brimming with new story content, weapons, music, and things to do. The only problem is the wait. CD Projekt Red isn’t quite ready to offer up a release date. It should be along sometime in 2027, though, a year before the The Witcher 4 releases. Allegedly.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered

To really prepare for Songs of the Past, we feel a full playthrough of Geralt’s latest adventure is in order. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered is about the best way to do that, adding upgraded visuals, better combat, and improved photo mode, to name a few. It’s an upgrade that’ll be available to all owners of The Witcher 3 on 29 September. Better yet, both previous expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are now free to all owners.

Gears of War: E-Day

We’re sure there will be those upset that Gears of War: E-Day isn’t a ‘proper’ sequel, but rather a prequel. Honestly, we’re not all that fussed. It looks about par for the course where the Gears of War series is concerned. All you’re getting here is a campaign trailer, promising a 6 October release date on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation

We got another look at Final Fantasy VII Revelation after its debut at the Summer Games Fest. Set to be the final instalment in the remake trilogy, Revelation is currently on track to launch in autumn 2027 (Spring for us). Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed the game was headed for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Nodusfall

If you’ve ever wanted to see what HoYoverse, creators of Genshin Impact, could do in an Elden-Ring-like setting, complete with dodge-rolling and ominous voice-overs, then this is your chance. Players step into the shoes of The Weavers, taking on hordes of devastating enemies while fire seemingly erupts everywhere. It looks like a whole lot of fun, and even more so in co-op. Don’t hold your breath for a release date anytime soon, though.

Lofsöng

Easily the most surprising reveal was that of Lofsöng, an exploration adventure game that marries Journey, Limbo, and Sword of the Sea just to see what would happen. The result looks interesting enough, even if this trailer doesn’t really give us a deep enough look at the gameplay after its reveal in April. Either way, we’re curious to see how this one handles when it drops on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC… one day.

Game of Thrones: War for Westeros

It’s almost criminal that we haven’t gotten a fully-fledged action RPG set in the world of Westeros thus far. That still hasn’t changed, with War for Westeros taking a more RTS approach to George R.R Martin’s epic universe. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Don’t let the AI-looking thumbnail put you off. Gameplay looks sufficiently deep, allowing gamers to sink their teeth in for a good few hours at a time. It’s coming to PC sometime in 2027.

Lego Skylines

If the hundreds of Lego games have never appealed to you before, Lego Skylines might just fix that. Players will do their best to build a sprawling metropolis just like the real Skylines, unhindered by the bonkers prices that do their best to thwart creativity in real life. It all looks mightily impressive in the 40-second trailer, running on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Sadly, no release date was revealed.

The post The biggest reveals from Gamescom Opening Night Live appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

The trickiest bit is laying your hands on the various components needed. The part that should be hardest — fabricating a case — is cleverly circumvented. Raspberry Pi’s build uses a waterproof storage case, essentially making the mini-PC a rugged unit capable of surviving much more than a standard laptop.

Cyberdeck yourself

The Pi build uses a less rugged version of a R600 Grip waterproof case to stash its innards, with a full list of components (and their attachment methods) outlined. It uses a Pi 5 board, one of the company’s own flash drives (product placement, baby), and a 7in touchscreen display. Naturally, the cyberdeck method — first published in the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine (Issue #168) — uses as many branded products as possible.

The setup also calls for a Bluetooth keyboard, power bank or battery, and a USB audio card. There are some 3D-printed support components, which are less complex than completely fabricating a customised case. The internal supporting structure uses mounting tape (good) or a glue gun (better) to finish the assembly. Obviously, sorting out the cyberdeck operating system beforehand is a good idea.

There are a couple of optional extras, like LED integration, to play with. Likely, you’d have to tweak Raspberry Pi’s plans to suit whichever case you settle on. But it removes most of the thinking from the process of creating a custom PC in a storage box.

The post Raspberry Pi has an official guide for you to build your own cyberdeck appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

This follows a new reporting button from LinkedIn that lets users chime in that a post “seems like AI slop.” It is supposed to help LinkedIn “better understand how our community experiences low-quality content.” It’s also, in typical Microsoft fashion, roping in the platform’s users to fix the mistakes LinkedIn made.

Slop doing that

It really was LinkedIn who started the ball rolling. Back in 2023, AI-powered features rolled out to its Premium users. Initially based around summary and job search, it also included the company’s messaging suggestions. Said suggesting was done by artificial intelligence, of course.

The same tech was handed to hiring managers to a) assess candidates and b) craft replies to those deemed worthy. At the beginning of the year, an AI recruiting tool was added to LinkedIn as well. That’s almost definitely still in operation. It does things like “screening resumes, writing InMails, [and] tracking responses,” supposedly making anyone in HR “who’s only good at admin tasks like posting jobs and forwarding resumes” redundant.

But sticking all of this automation into looking for work (the main reason folks are on LinkedIn) wasn’t all. There was also an AI-powered writing tool. That’s since been yanked from the platform, presumably because users don’t like to hear what an AI has to say. When that happens, engagement drops. And when engagement drops, social platforms die.

Partner content

Microsoft and LinkedIn can’t afford to have engagement drop. The platform is a major driver of AI uptake in the companies that use the platform. It’s a tangential link, at the very least, to Microsoft’s greater business services. And it’s also an excellent source of information on what other companies around the world are doing. Job listings can signal new projects, potential threats to Microsoft’s market position, and aspects of business the company may have neglected or may need to accelerate. Officially, that’s not what LinkedIn is used for, but the entire platform is built to summarise and isolate trends in the business world. It’s hard to believe that information doesn’t leak, at the very least. It needn’t be actively harvested to give Microsoft directions.

Competitor companies know the possibility exists. Check out Google and Meta‘s job listings pages — the vast majority of jobs offered (if not all) are product manager, communications, and consultant roles. The sort of jobs that could signify their future plans are kept off LinkedIn. There’s little value in advertising what you’re doing directly to others who might have the resources to match or exceed your efforts.

LinkedIn doesn’t do for Microsoft what it claims to do for its users. The workplace social network is a sales avenue, an information repository, and a subscription payment generator. The site’s users are encouraged not to think about this at every possible opportunity. Instead, they’re invited to think of LinkedIn as a place “where you can find real people & real perspectives.” That worked, until AI slop — facilitated by the platform itself — came along and wrecked the illusion.

Part of the problem

And so the user-facing problem is being suppressed. The ‘seems like AI slop’ button acknowledges that it’s not just LinkedIn’s systems wrecking the quality of posts. Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, and whatever Meta is calling its product are all included. It’s as simple as a copy-paste following a vague ‘give me an inspirational workplace post’ prompt. Hell, Google Search will do it unprompted if you aren’t sufficiently complicated with your search query.

But the back-end systems that further contribute to the frustration with slop aren’t likely to disappear. Why would they? You can’t see them. But LinkedIn users can still experience them. There’s almost no way to speak to a recruiter on the platform. The replies and messages, when they arrive, are probably written by a machine.

LinkedIn remains proud of that fact. Jobs posted are described by AI. Resumes and CVs that are sent to jobs on the platform are assessed and sorted by AI. There’s an increasing machine buffer between prospective job seekers and employers. When that exists, is it surprising that posters on the site are phoning in their contributions by generating their own AI slop?

LinkedIn’s efforts to contain machine-written posts on its platform are being outsourced to users. There are reasons for this. It’s cheaper. An AI system can’t effectively clean up its own mess. Competitor AIs mean that it’s not enough to turn off the function in LinkedIn itself. It may mean up to 40% less slop in your feed, but that won’t cure the malaise. Job searches will continue to butt up against the internal AI systems that make the rest of the experience a frustration. LinkedIn’s changes may keep engagement steady for a while. The frustration with machine filters will remain. The flood of slop is a symptom, rather than the problem itself.

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