Author: Duncan Pike

Aside from being a fun and engaging platform that allows users to connect with distant friends or host virtual gatherings and meetings, Discord has other more nefarious uses. Sophos, a UK-based security software and hardware company, released a new report that details how the app is often used to distribute, control and host different forms of malware. Discord has been steadily growing its userbase over the past few years, so much so that it was in talks regarding a $10 billion buyout with Microsoft. Those didn’t amount to anything but you can see why it’s to be expected that with all the new ‘good’…

There have been several updates to the Africrypt story that broke a few months ago, around what is quite possibly the world’s largest-ever potential cryptocurrency scam. Now, a US-based South African-born forensic investigator, Hamilton Cheong, is assisting authorities to track where all those bitcoins went. Cheong’s company, Crypto Investigation Bureau, specialises in information security and securing its clients’ crypto-assets. In this case, they are using a self-developed track-and-trace program called ‘God’s View’ to trace the movement of funds into and out of Africrypt controlled wallets. Hopefully, Cheong and his team will be able to shed some light on what exactly occurred…

When you think of processors and the manufacture thereof, you would assume that the companies that come to mind — Intel, AMD, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Qualcomm and Samsung — are all trying to do the same thing but better than the others, making them competitors. However, what many people don’t know is that, while many companies design their own chips there are only a few that actually make them. Of the companies mentioned above, only Intel and Samsung both design and manufacture their own chips. But the former has recently started expanding its foundry capabilities and will start manufacturing chips for other…

Lucasfilm thinks ‘if you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em’, and that’s just what it’s done for Shamook, one of the many deepfake content creators on the internet. What makes Shamook’s work stand out, however, is that it’s actually good. Better, one could argue, than the work of a multibillion-dollar company in some cases. The particular video that got him noticed was his improvement of the Visual Effects (VFX) that were used to de-age Mark Hamill for his cameo in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, sorry spoilers. Shamook announced in the comments of one of his videos, that he had been…

Samsung will be teaming up with CJ ENM, the Korean production studio that brought us the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner Parasite, to create a virtual production set for content creation. The Korean electronics manufacturer will be supplying CJ ENM’s virtual studio with a version of its 1,000in microLED ‘The Wall’. The virtual studio will be a part of its television and film production studio complex scheduled to open in Paju, Korea later this year. This partnership and, by extension the studio, will be the first in the world to make use of Samsung’s massive microLED display for digital content creation.…

Tokyo 2020 drone show dazzles Image: Olympics The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games kicked off on Friday last week and as is tradition with the opening ceremony, we were treated to a dazzling display. This year, towards the end of the ceremony, we saw a fleet of over 1,800 drones take to the sky where they collectively

Leave it to Google to kick-off the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games in one of the most creative ways we’ve ever seen, with an ambitious new Doodle. https://twitter.com/GoogleDoodles/status/1418420632719695872 The doodle Champion Island Games, which is pretty much a full-blown JRPG, launched today ahead of the opening ceremony of this year’s unconventional Olympic Games. You play as (c)athlete Lucky — get it? Because it’s a cat that’s an athlete. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help Lucky defeat the island’s Champions and obtain seven sacred scrolls. To do this you’ll need to compete in seven different sporting events;…

Last night we were finally treated to some more gaming news from EA during the EA Play Live event. Like most events during the pandemic, this one was an online-only event. If you want to watch the whole thing then it’s still available but we’ll warn you that there’s a lot of fluff and you’ll need to skip through 30 minutes of waiting. Why would you want to put yourself through that when we’re here to give you all the highlights? EA Play Live sped off to a great start with Codemasters In case you missed it, earlier this year EA acquired…

In case you’ve been hiding away a little too well and haven’t seen that there is, for the most part, government-controlled and sanctioned spyware called Pegasus going around, check this out. Go on, we’ll wait. Now that you’re up to speed about Pegasus and the fact that your images, messages and conversations may have been compromised, we might have a bit of better news. Introducing the Mobile Verification Toolkit Security Lab, the technical wing of Amnesty International — who belong to the group that initially broke the news about Pegasus being used on the phones of journalists and heads of…

Best known for his films District 9, Elysium and Chappie, South African-born Neill Blomkamp joins the relatively new AAA game developer Gunzilla Games as the chief visionary officer to work on an unrevealed multiplayer FPS game. While he is most well-known for his work on Hollywood blockbusters, he also co-founded the independent film studio Oats Studios with his brother Mike Blomkamp. Using a combination of live-action and photo-realistic computer-generated mediums, they created sci-fi experimental digital short films which are available on YouTube and Steam. A few of which stars pretty big Hollywood names like Sigourney Weaver and Dakota Fanning. According to…