Author: Max Milella

Myanmar has had a tumultuous history of civil unrest and cultural/religious violence, the most recent fallout of which being a military coup earlier this year. Back in 2017, after years of abuse, violence and vitriolic hatred at the hands of the Myanmar military, over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled out of the nation into Bangladesh in the largest human exodus in Asia since the Vietnam War.  In 2018, a U.N. investigation found that Facebook had played a key role in distributing hate speech to stoke violence against the Rohingya people. Myanmar has a particularly large and active Facebook user-base, and social…

As part of a ‘Safer Public Bus’ campaign, the South Korean province of Gyeonnggi is looking to improve the safety of its bus systems by monitoring the brain waves of drivers. Drivers equipped with the brainwave sensors, developed by Hyundai, will receive a number of audio-visual alerts in response to brain activity indicating that they are driving unsafely. Getting into the mind of a bus driver This sounds a little intrusive at first, and it would be if there were some governmental mandate forcing drivers to shove Neuralink chips into their ears, but that’s not what this is. This system…

The budget to mid-range smartphone market is as hot as it’s ever been right now, and it’s taken the global South by storm. Huawei’s Nova series arrived earlier this year to capitalise on that popularity, with the efficient but not particularly exciting Nova 8 helming the ship. The Nova 8i is the even budget-er version of the standard 8, and it shows.  But that isn’t something we can really pan it for. Specs-wise it probably won’t wow anyone, but in terms of value for money the 8i is hard to beat. A little unorthodox Like the standard Nova 8 (and,…

This year’s Game Awards are just around the corner. 4 days from time of writing (6 December 2021), to be precise. While the awards are usually a holistic wrap up of the past year’s biggest titles and most noteworthy studios, this year’s addition will have one notable face missing from its lineup: Activision Blizzard. Acti-Blizz absentee Geoff Keighley, executive producer behind The Game Awards, confirmed on Twitter that Activision Blizzard would not be appearing at the event “Beyond its nominations”. It’s not a particularly shocking revelation considering the controversial news cycle surrounding the company at the moment. Keighley goes on…

Following Jack Dorsey’s departure from the company last week, Twitter updated the ‘Private Media’ section of its privacy policy. In short, the updated policy lets users report images that contain them posted non-consensually. At face value, it sounds like a solid idea, letting people in potentially vulnerable situations keep themselves out of the online-harassment reticle.  Turns out far-right extremists have been abusing it to remove images of themselves attending hate rallies. Twitter tamper In a blog post accompanying the policy update, Twitter outlined that the new ‘Private Media’ amendment was put in place to “curb the misuse of media to…

You can do a lot of stuff other than message your friends with WhatsApp these days. Renew your car licence, pay for some goods and even order yourself some fried chicken. Now, you can hail a ride with it, thanks to a collaboration with Uber. Need a ride? Send a WhatsApp. The feature is being first tested in India, in the city of Lucknow, which makes a lot of sense since that’s where WhatsApp’s biggest audience lies. Nearly half a billion people. With it, users will be able to book rides through a WhatsApp chat bot. The Meta-Uber partnership allows…

Social media platforms like TikTok and their biggest creators have a symbiotic relationship. Those millions of views top content creators pull in earn platforms a lot of money, so it’s in their best interests to create creator incentives to keep producing content.  TikTok has a handful of payout opportunities now, like its new tip-jar feature. The wildly successful platform has now decided to take creator monetisation to the next level with ‘Creator Next’, a hub with unlockable tools that “offer a variety of ways for the TikTok community to reward their favorite creators.” TikTok and its creators take their relationship…

And here we thought the Steam Deck was the only dark horse handheld competitor coming after the Switch. Now, thanks to a few leaks, it turns out Razer has one in the works too. And it’s making it with Qualcomm. A Razer sharp console These leaks come by way of VideoCardz, a reliable game-hardware news site. Alongside a few cheeky snaps, the site also gives us a look at some key specs and a working title for the console: a Qualcomm Snapdragon G3x and Razer Handheld Developer Kit. For a modern handheld built by Razer, the console certainly looks the…

Jack Dorsey only just stepped out of the office, and Twitter is already pumping out changes. The newest one goes towards its privacy policy, specifically regarding the publication of “private media”.  Until now, this policy has prohibited the publication of things like phone numbers, home addresses, and ID documents. This is typically referred to as ‘doxxing’. Now Twitter’s expanding that scope to include pictures of private individuals. Twitter-ing on the side of caution The amendment appears as follows on Twitter’s official blog:  “NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted.” In essence, this means that users…

We can add Panasonic to the list of companies that faced hacker attacks this year. The Japanese tech conglomerate has sent out a press release announcing that it experienced a data breach earlier this month. According to the release, Panasonic discovered that its internal network had been accessed by an unauthorised party on the 11th of November. A subsequent investigation found that the intruder had managed to access private data stored on one of the company’s servers. Panasonic pandemonium “After detecting the unauthorized access, the company immediately reported the incident to the relevant authorities and implemented security countermeasures, including steps…