Author: Max Milella

As convenient and endlessly useful as smartwatches are, they’re still largely dependent on their connected smartphones for their cooler features. Like Spotify playback for example. Having to worry about your fragile, glass brick clunking around in your pocket while you run kind of undermines the convenience of controlling your music through your smartwatch, doesn’t it? Well, Spotify’s fixing that problem on Wear OS watches, by rolling out offline playback. Spotify on your wrist, offline “In the coming weeks, Spotify users will be able to play their favorite playlists, albums, and podcasts with their smartwatches that run Wear OS,” the streaming…

WhatsApp hasn’t exactly been void of any way to transfer money in-app, but all of its more reliable methods have been in the form of partnerships. For example, Telkom Pay and Money Message (courtesy of Nedbank). But neither of these are catch-all options, and are relatively restricted in their usage. Now, the mega-messaging app is working on an in-app button specifically to easily and conveniently transfer money. “Cash or card?” “WhatsApp, please.” The feature, spotted by (who else?) WABetaInfo is currently in beta testing on beta version 2.21.17, and is available to a handful of Indian users operating on that…

Currently, Afghanistan is still experiencing a fair amount of chaos and uncertainty that’s come in the wake of the Taliban overtaking the city of Kabul, overthrowing the previous government, and claiming power for itself. In order to protect users who may find themselves in trouble with the new regime thanks to their online profiles, Clubhouse has edited thousands of Afghan users accounts to keep them inconspicuous.  Clubhouse cleans house As of earlier this week, thousands of the app’s users in Afghanistan have effectively had their profiles wiped. The social audio app has erased their bios and profile pictures, and has…

Halo Infinite hasn’t had the greatest development cycle so far. After fans had to wait 5 years for a new mainline Halo title, 343 Industries announced that Infinite needed another year in the oven and that it would not be releasing alongside the Xbox Series X last year. Now things seem to be moving along steadily, with 343 Industries giving players a peek at the multiplayer experience a few weeks ago, and a release date set for sometime in the holiday season towards the end of the year, barring any further delays. There’s a slight catch, though. Halo Infinite will…

On Thursday, Tesla held its ‘AI Day’ presentation, where it showed off all of its new and developing projects in the wonderful world of artificial intelligence. One project in particular stuck out amidst all of Tesla’s updates to its car AI systems: a humanoid AI robot. Tesla’s bot is no Wall-E The robot, named the Tesla Bot, was shown off in a PowerPoint presentation given by CEO Elon Musk. It’s a 5-foot-8 humanoid figure, mostly white barring for its nightmarishly void coloured face that only a mother could love.  Musk explained that the robot’s head will sport the same autopilot…

Ford is issuing a call to all South African sim racers to strap in and put their (virtual) pedals to the metal in an upcoming racing-sim competition, one that could see them competing against racers from around the world. Dubbed the “Team Fordzilla Nations Cup”, this is the second time the automaker has hosted a racing-sim competition in South Africa, and the qualifiers begin on the 31st of August. Get fast and furious with Ford The event is free to enter and open to all age groups, and registration is open now. You can check it out here if you’re…

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone to learn that the International Space Station (ISS) is packing some pretty impressive tech. It has to in order to facilitate all the spacey super-science that occurs on board. One piece of fancy new kit on the ISS is an edge supercomputer sent up by NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). That the supercomputer was created in part by a tech company with a name close to ‘Picard’ that also contains the word ‘Enterprise’ is extremely fitting. Space edge computing… the final frontier HPE sent up its Spaceborne Computer-2 to the ISS…

As podcasts continue to soar in popularity, Apple’s been focusing a lot harder on its podcast app, creatively named ‘Apple Podcasts’. Along with a slew of updates, the company announced the arrival of a subscription service back in April, which would allow content creators to support themselves through their listeners rather than by solely relying on ad revenue. Unfortunately, since then, content creators feel let down by Apple Podcasts, putting up with rampant bugs and having to jump through too many hoops to reap the benefits of Apple’s subscription model. Apple users’ podcast blues The big issue creators are having…

iPhone users are complaining that the newest iOS update has left them without network connectivity on their phones. Instead, they’re met with an understandably frustrating “No Service” message. iOS users sans service Users have been talking to Apple’s Developer and Discussion forums since the release of iOS 14.7.1, which was launched to correct a security issue, as well as an unlock bug on the Apple Watch. Users on a wide variety of devices such as the iPhone 6S, 7, 8, and 11, describe being completely stranded network-wise, even after trying several fixes to get back online. Apple’s own support page…

In the wake of the US’ continued withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban has overtaken the capital city of Kabul, and has overthrown the Afghanistan government. Due to the following panic and unrest throughout the middle-eastern country, the Taliban created a WhatsApp-based helpline for citizens to raise concerns over related violence. Now, Facebook has blocked that channel and several other official Taliban accounts.  Facebook restricts any Taliban support The Taliban has set up such helplines before, says The Financial Times, which also reports that Facebook is currently looking for any and all WhatsApp groups with names and descriptions that suggest similar…