Author: Max Milella

You know what sucks? Seeing that you’ve received an image from and opening it, only to find that the quality has been compressed beyond recognition. It happens more often than we’d like, particularly on the (currently controversial) instant messaging platform, Whatsapp. However, having heard our complaints for once, the app is working on a feature that will put users in control of compression and image quality.  Meme or mass of pixels? Whatsapp lets you decide After all this time, Whatsapp is finally offering a quality selection for when you’re sending images. This feature was added in the latest Whatsapp Beta…

BMW Motorrad debuted its concept CE 04 electric scooter back in November 2020 but at the time, it wasn’t much more than a mild tease. Now the automaker has announced that it’s turning the CE 04 from a concept vehicle to reality, ready for city streets. BMW’s beaming new bike We’ve said before that fully realised vehicles only ever seem to wear the scaffolding of their conceptual counterparts, but the for-sale model of the CE 04 is strikingly similar to the concept model. Minus a few nips and tucks. Still looks like something straight out of Akira though, and we’re…

TikTok giveth features, and TikTok taketh features. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. The social media titan has been looking for ways to bring in more than just advertising cash, such as an in-app shopping feature and by putting its tech on sale. Now it plans to let content creators put themselves on sale through a video commission feature that looks a lot like Cameo.  TikTok likes to borrow, too As we said, the feature is remarkably similar to Cameo, a platform that lets users pay creators (often celebrities) to film a short video specifically for themselves or for a…

The Indian government has declared that Twitter has lost its intermediary status in the country for failing to uphold its recently re-structured content moderation policies. The social media platform has been in hot water with India for a while now, and this appears to be the culmination of several earlier slights. India vs Twitter: final round Now, that’s not set in stone just yet. The courts in India still need to decide on the ultimate outcome of the bout, but that appears to be where this particular contest is heading. The conversation in the Delhi High court is concerned with…

There’s nothing like a government-scale financial screw-up to remind you that the mistakes you make in your day to day really aren’t worth stressing about. This recent mess is a doozy. Gauteng’s provincial government was meant to pay Microsoft R20.9 million for software. In an accounting error for the ages, the government instead paid $20.9 million, which translates to over R300 million.  Your taxes are safe in our hands – JHB government The transaction took place in February, but only became known to the public recently. The DA’s Gauteng shadow MEC for finance and e-government Adriana Randall described, in a…

Over this last weekend Kaseya, a company providing IT management software to businesses all over the world, was hit by a ransomware attack that cybersecurity firms claim was undertaken by an affiliate of the Russian cybercriminal group REvil. Now, the group has confirmed that it was entirely responsible for the attack, and is demanding an enormous ransom: $70 million.  REvil has demands, and they aren’t small In a post on a dark web blog (ironically called ‘Happy Blog’), uncovered by The Record, REvil takes credit for the attack and claims that its total reach affects over a million systems world…

It’s no secret that the face-to-face dating scene has taken a bit of a hit due to current, pandemic-y circumstances. Online dating apps like Bumble and Tinder were already wildly popular pre-Covid but were more of an auxiliary source for acquiring dates and meeting people. With in-person meet-ups down to an absolute minimum, dating apps became the main place to interact with potential paramours.  Now, with parts of the world beginning to open up again thanks to vaccine rollouts, Bumble is hoping to inspire people into venturing out into the world to meet one another once again, and is opening…

Over the weekend, an affiliate of cybercriminal gang REvil attacked Kaseya, who provides IT management software to companies across the globe. This peripheral attack allowed the cybercriminals to access hundreds of Kaseya’s customers and target them with ransomware attacks.  Ransomware run rampant Sophos, a cyber-security firm, became aware of the Kaseya attack on Friday afternoon. The attackers managed to exploit a vulnerability in Kaseya’s systems to remotely access its VSA Server, which is generally used to deploy software and automate IT tasks in Kaseya’s software. The VSA server is highly trusted on customer devices, meaning that attached clients do exactly…

If you’re tech/internet-minded enough to have found your way onto this website there’s a pretty high chance that you know what TikTok is. The social media platform was already blowing up pre-pandemic, and its popularity (particularly amongst younger folks) soared to new heights in 2020. Now it’s decided to put its clearly successful AI tech and algorithms up for grabs.  TikTok talks totals TikTok’s overarching company, ByteDance, launched ‘BytePlus’ last month, reports the Financial Times, a subdivision geared at selling some of the app’s most coveted features to other businesses. Specifically, some of its AI kit and the algorithm behind…

Because misinformation spreads fast, and its consequences range from cementing ignorance to violent insurrection attempts, Facebook is testing out new prompts reaching out to users it thinks have been exposed to extremist content. The prompt messages inform you that certain groups, posts, and profiles you’ve been viewing may contain extremist content, and also contain links to resources meant to dissuade extremism. Facebook’s extreme prompts are More Than Words The prompts, first reported on by CNN, began circling the social media verse on Thursday. One is aimed at providing support for user’s worried that their friends and family may be consuming…