Author: Stuff writer

Meta has upped its inclusivity game by adding new body shapes, hair, and sporty clothes for avatars. The social media giant which owns Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp says it now has more than one billion avatars across its platforms. The multiracial avatars range from curvy to skinny characters with a range of hairstyles including afros, straight hair, and grey hair on older-looking representations. Some even have a bun or headwraps on their heads. “We’re adding a handful of new avatar body shapes to help you better express yourself — especially if expressing yourself means dancing along to “Hips Don’t…

Tech giant Microsoft has agreed to unbundle Teams from its Office Productivity Suite following an anti-trust investigation in the European Union (EU), according to a report by the Financial Times (FT). This is Microsoft continues to face its biggest regulatory battle in over ten years in the EU. In 2020, Teams competitor Slack asked the European Union regulators to officially make Microsoft sell Teams separately from the Office Suite. It called Teams a ‘weak, copycat product’ and said Microsoft was forcing it on its users. In the complaint, Slack also accused it of blocking some customers from removing Teams and…

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems like the gift that keeps on giving despite warnings about potential side effects and abuse. Well, it seems the chickens are quickly coming home to roost. Spam creators are increasingly using AI to create bots for product reviews on platforms including Amazon and Twitter. Chatbots have become popular for efficiently creating content that’s almost indistinguishable from that created by humans. In fact, chatbots have proven to sometimes create better content than (most) humans. AI don’t like this Language used by chatbots like ChatGPT and GPT-4 has been spotted in internet review sections but it’s not quite…

Apple is rumoured to be working on an app designed to boost both physical and mental health. You could soon find yourself typing ‘Dear Apple’ instead of ‘Dear diary’…if the rumour mill is on the right track. This comes as the company continues its investment in healthcare technology.  The giant tech is reportedly working on an iPhone journaling app aimed at encouraging users to jot down their daily activities, according to the Wall Street Journal. An Apple a day… The app is expected to analyse a user’s daily activities and then make recommendations. Based on what you jot down, the…

As a significant portion of the world enjoys a spliff on 4/20, some will come down to find their Twitter checkmarks gone. After months of protest against Twitter’s move to charge a fee for the blue checkmarks that verified some of its users, the platform tweeted a reminder alerting users to subscribe to Twitter Blue in order to keep their checkmarks. “Tomorrow, 4/20, we are removing legacy verified checkmarks. To remain verified on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here,” tweeted the platform this week with a link directing users to a Blue application form. That coveted blue…

Have you ever had the experience of visiting your childhood home and unearthing a wealth of treasures from your past? Old comic books with torn pages or boxes of dusty dismantled LEGO, manuals long since discarded. The tangible sense of nostalgia one gets from sifting through the little slice of personal history is captivating, a reminder of a simpler time when all one needed to have fun was an Action Man and his flimsy grappling hook. In many ways, Dead Island 2 feels akin to this experience as a game firmly rooted in the past that manages to still be…

Instagram, which used to be photography heaven, is increasingly switching focus to Reels which are basically TikTok videos with additional filters. The Meta-owned platform announced this week that it’s adding features to inspire creators and also help them to manage the content on Instagram Reels. It’s only a matter of time before most social media platforms morph into the same thing with only the branding separating the lot. Now that TikTok has most of us addicted to endless hours of flicking, expect multiple venues where that’s possible. Platforms are adding more features to entice content creators. Instagram is just the…

Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services are calling on the UK government to reconsider parts of the Online Safety Bill (OSB) that will give it the right to snoop into private chats on their platforms. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? That’s because governments around the world are hungry for your personal information. Most have opted to use the law to their advantage. The UK government wants the right to force tech companies to grant it access to messages that are protected by end-to-end encryption. This ensures that messages between people chatting on the platforms are not intercepted by…

As a country, South Africans have become accustomed to strange things happening under the cover of darkness. Just when we were getting used to the relief of lower load-shedding stages, Eskom sent the country into darkness with Stage 6 shedding over the weekend. In the latest instalment of strange things happening in South Africa, power utility Eskom opted to send out Stage 6 load-shedding alerts despite the country facing an effective Stage 8. Over 7,000 MW of electricity was cut from the grid on Thursday last week. What’s the deal, Eskom? Energy experts have accused Eskom of misinforming the country…

Content creators on Twitter will finally get a cut of the money that the social media platform makes from their work, but there’s a catch (or so it seems). The platform’s ‘Chief Twit’, Elon Musk, says creators can cash in on content ranging “from long-form text to hours-long video”. Naturally, Musk made the announcement on Thursday in a tweet. Twitter is trying to be supportive For the next 12 months, Twitter will keep none of the money. You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on web (could…