Author: Nick Cowen

Yes, we know that headline is basically the opposite of one we ran last week, but a lot can happen in eight days; Facebook has reversed its decision to meet with the Communications and Digital Technologies Committee – a meeting that supposed to take place next week. We have to say, we were surprised that Facebook agreed to meet with the committee last week. We also have to say, we are completely unsurprised that the social media giant has pulled out of the meeting today. Facebook snubs parliament while Google confirms attendance “It is most unfortunate that Facebook has at the…

The EU is demanding that Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech giants pledge to curb the monetisation of false information — that would be fake news — through advertisement placements, according to a European Commission document seen by Reuters. The document also lays out that the Commission wants smaller social media or search services, ad exchanges, ad-tech providers, private messaging services, communication agencies and e-payment services,  e-commerce platforms and crowdfunding/donation systems to commit to do the same. EU’s fake news wrecking ball The document essentially is aimed at shoring up to shore any wiggle room that exists in the voluntary…

If you’re an Internet Explorer fan… well, well done for hanging in there. Also, we have some bad news: Microsoft is finally retiring this browser for good. In a post on Microsoft’s official blog, program manager Sean Lyndersay says the software giant’s browser future lies in Edge. Bye-bye Internet Explorer, Hello Edge “Today, we are at the next stage of that journey: we are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge,” Lyndersay writes. “Not only is Microsoft Edge a faster, more secure and more modern browsing experience than Internet Explorer, but it is…

To say that Cyberpunk 2077’s launch last year had issues is putting things politely. When the game finally landed after multiple delays, players and reviewers kicked it up and down the street for being a bug-ridden hot mess. The game was in such bad shape that Sony pulled it from its online store. This prompted several investors — who were understandably angry with CD Projekt Red at the state of the game at launch — to launch a lot of class-action lawsuits against the developer. There is so much litigation facing CD Projekt that the developer has now announced that…

Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, has slammed Apple calling it ‘totalitarian’ in response to a New York Times article, which reported that Apple was making concessions to China. The Russian-born entrepreneur took to Telegram — which was later shared with Android Central — this week to say that Apple hardware is like something from the “Middle Ages”, is “appreciated by the Communist Party of China” and that all Apple iPhone users are “digital slaves.” Apple slammed on Telegram “Apple is very efficient at pursuing their business model, which is based on selling overpriced, obsolete hardware to customers locked in their ecosystem,”…

India’s government has given WhatsApp — and by extension Facebook — seven days to withdraw its new privacy policy saying it violates several local laws. The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) says that should the chat app fail to withdraw the policy by 25th May of this year, the government will take legal action. This is the second time MEITY has conveyed its dissatisfaction with the new privacy policy, having issued a similar letter to WhatsApp in January of this year. Users were first informed of the changes to the app’s privacy policy in January and Facebook…

Resident Evil is pretty hot property right now. In the last month, players saw the release of Resident Evil Village, which scared the bejesus out of players and sold oodles of copies, continuing the franchise’s hot-streak established by Resident Evil 7: BioHazard back in 2017. Now, Capcom’s survival horror IP is coming to Netflix in the form of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness and it has a release date – 8th July 2021. Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness Yes, yes, we know that Capcom’s survival horror series hasn’t really had the illustrious transferal from the game to the silver screen in the past -…

Anyone who is a sci-fi fan will know that over the years books, films and television shows in this beloved genre have an interesting knack for predicting the future. From robots, to smartphones, to self-driving cars and more, science fiction stories have presented ideas that have made it into everyday life in the 21st century. You could probably populate a lengthy list with such inventions… but we’re not going to do that here. Instead, we’re going to take a look at the times when science fiction films got it wrong. Like really wrong. Wrong enough that we’re confident that the…

In the latest round of the already heated battle between streaming services, Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) for the princely sum of $9 billion. For that amount, Jeff Bezos’ company would manage to bag a rather hefty catalogue that would include – amongst others – Legally Blonde, Vikings, The Handmaid’s Tale, all of the Rocky films, all The Hobbit films, Stargate, Robocop, Poltergeist and all of the James Bond films. Amazon throws its hat in the ring According to a report on Variety, the is said to be being orchestrated by Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Amazon…

South Africans are getting a brief reprieve over their power woes today (19th May 2021) as Eskom has announced it plans to suspend load shedding until 5pm this evening. After that, if you’re unfortunate enough to be on the list of suburbs still affected, you may be in the dark, because the parastatal will then reimplement the planned Stage 2 outages until 11pm – as it announced it would on Sunday. Eskom flicks the switch There’s a statement released on the power utility’s Twitter account (that would be its social media team rather than the utility itself),  that says its…