Author: Nick Cowen

Facebook has decided to end its policy that shields politicians from being booted off the platform for violating its terms of use. In the past, the social media giant let political figures post pretty much whatever they liked — be it bullying, offensive or controversial — saying that their statements were inherently newsworthy and thus should not be removed. However, in the wake of the Capitol Hill invasion at the beginning of the year, and Donald Trump’s subsequent suspension,  Zuckerberg’s platform has come in for some scrutiny — both internally and externally. Facebook gets tough with politicians According to a…

One of Spotify’s most popular features is its annual Wrap, which pops up at the end of every year. It’s around this time you’ll see a tonne of users posting their most-played tracks, artists, podcasts of the year. The Wrap results are always entertaining and sometimes unexpected, but like all rather good things, users are forced to wait for it. Well, it’s the middle of the year and the music-streaming has decided to release its new Only You feature, which once again offers users a “Wrapped-like” experience in the app that is unique to every user. And yes, of course…

If you’re a Lego fan — and let’s face it, if you’re not, there’s something wrong with you — you’ll be thrilled to hear that 2021 will see the first Lego Con take place, this month on 26th June at 18h00 local time. As one would expect in this day and age — thanks to the COVID-19 virus — the Con will take the form of a livestream. But in this case, it’s a whopping 90-minute livestream that you can view on the company’s official website. Lego fans rejoice! To be honest, we’re kind of perplexed that it’s taken this…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has stated that a cyber-criminal group with links to Russia is responsible for the recent ransomware attack against JBS, the world’s largest meat supplier. The agency said it has identified REvil – also known as Sodinokibi – as the author of the breach, which JBS revealed had compromised servers for its North American and Australian facilities, leading to operations being shut down in the US, Canada and Australia. “We have attributed the JBS attack to REvil and Sodinokibi and are working diligently to bring the threat actors to justice,” the FBI said in a statement. “We…

Last week, Hollywood blockbuster film director and lens-flare enthusiast J.J. Abrams mentioned in passing that the movie adaptation of Valve’s Portal series was “on the rails”. This, one can take as meaning, is the Portal movie it’s more of a reality than it was when Abrams first mentioned it on stage with Valve’s Gabe Newell at the DICE summit back in 2013. As much as it may me sound like a curmudgeon, the news of an impending Portal movie left me completely cold. The reason for this is because Hollywood’s past attempts to adapt gaming IPs to the silver screen,…

And so it was, on the 3rd day of June 2021 on which God Of War fans awoke to the news that the next adventure of Kratos was to be delayed. And lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The developer behind Sony’s much anticipated PS5 exclusive, Santa Monica Studio, didst tweet that God Of War: Ragnarok would now be birthed into existence in the year 2022. Not 2021 as had originally been announced. And, verily, players wept. No God Of War for 2021 In its tweet, Santa Monica Studio didst try and explain the necessity for such…

Microsoft is set to launch its new version of Windows via a virtual event on 24th June 2021. This was teased at the Build event last week, where MS CEO Satya Nadella announced that details about “the next generation of Windows” would be revealed very soon. “’I’ve been self-hosting it over the past several months, and I’m incredibly excited about the next generation of Windows,” Nadella said. “Our promise to you is this: we will create more opportunity for every Windows developer today and welcome every creator who is looking for the most innovative, new, and open platform to build and…

Donald Trump has shuttered his blog just under a month after it was initially launched. Sad. The blog, which was named ‘From The Desk Of Donald Trump‘, was basically a place for the former president to moan and complain things – like most blogs, really – and was created to give him an online platform after he was thrown off of many of the major social media platforms at the beginning of the year, in the wake of the Capitol Hill riots. Whether it was shut down due to its tanking numbers or whether, you know, maintaining a blog is actually quite…

The pre-E3 reveal train keeps on rolling with Battlefield 6 set to join the likes of Horizon Forbidden West, Far Cry 6 and Sonic The Hedgehog – who have all seen reveals over the last week or so. The latest instalment in EA’s military shooter franchise will be shown off next week Wednesday (9th June 2021) at 10 am EDT (that would be 4 pm local time). The announcement was made on the franchise’s official Twitter account, with an accompanying teaser. https://twitter.com/Battlefield/status/1399742535942258691 What to expect from the next Battlefield Eagle-eyed readers will note that Stuff has tagged the game with…

Eskom has announced that this week’s load shedding, which kicked in on Monday, is set to last until 22h00 this Friday, 4th June 2021. While the power utility was barely managing to keep the lights on during this work-a-day week (which also happens to be the coldest so far this year) for the most part, Eskom says that more breakdowns in generating units at power stations mean that it’ll have to implement load shedding continuously. Load shedding until the weekend “The emergency generation reserves have been used extensively in the past days to avoid loadshedding during the day. This has…