Author: Tshepo Chauke

The anticipated iPhone SE 4 will reportedly eschew the old notch look in favour of the immensely more awesome Dynamic Island, which first got its start on the iPhone 14 Pro. Apple’s cheaper alternative to the flagship iPhone is finally looking to compete in the midrange market it has ignored for years and is now dominated by Android. Apple throws back the Dynamic Island Reputable leaker Evan Blass shared screenshots of what looks to be the official visual assets for the upcoming iPhone SE 4, iPad Air M3, and iPad 11. From these pics, it seems the iPhone SE 4…

It’s been an eventful week in US politics, but one topic that’s dominated the internet has been the imminent banning of TikTok by the US Supreme Court. X’s competitors wasted no time circling the TikTok refugees while rubbing their hands. The Chinese video app was only down for half a day over the weekend but that didn’t stop social media companies like Elon Musk’s X from rolling out a new videos tab, where users can scratch their short-form video content itch. ‘Videos’ x machina The “Videos” page replaces the previous “Community” page on the navigation bar. The new tab takes…

Jesse Eisenberg’s second outing in the writer-director chair is a meditation on grief and historical pain that manages to evade the Hollywood question-answer cliche. A Real Pain follows two Jewish American cousins who travel through Poland after their grandmother dies, with the hopes of better understanding her by understanding the hardships she endured. Grief is A Real Pain The film follows David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) as they reconnect through the recent death of their grandmother and embark on a Holocaust tour after not seeing each other for six years. The pair is close, but they’re also direct opposites.…

Drone delivery hopefuls will have to wait a bit longer because Amazon is putting its project on hold after two of its MK30 drones crashed at Pendleton Airport. The tech giant was running tests from its facility at the Oregon airport with commercial deliveries to Texas and Arizona. The company claims the project is not being halted because of the crashes but rather for some “software changes.” Amazon drones itself out The MK3o is the online delivery giant’s next-gen drone model. It’s lighter than its predecessors and has a longer range. Following the previously undisclosed crashes, Bloomberg reports that the…

Sony has cancelled a further two live-service games that were already in development. The unnamed games were being produced by remake and remaster studio Bluepoint and Days Gone developer Bend Studio. Though neither studio is being closed (for now), Sony – which had its fair share of layoffs in 2024 – has yet to confirm if more layoffs are coming. Sony runs out of GaaS Bluepoint, the developer Sony acquired in 2021, is responsible for the much-lauded remakes of Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. The studio also contributed to God of War: Ragnarok production in 2022. Its next…

A Finnish university has launched the Nokia Design Archive, an online collection of photos, videos, interviews, and design sketches from the company going back to the ’90s. Helsinki’s Aalto University launched the online archive for researchers and the general public who want to explore the design process of the company that revolutionised mobile communication. The Nokia Online Museum The Nokia Design Archive is launching with about 956GB of sketches, photographs, videos, and interviews from the mid-’90s to 2017. There are about 20,000 items in total, and the research team plans on continually updating the archive. Anyone can now relive Nokia’s…

WhatsApp’s new update includes features that add hilarity and humour to the chatting experience. The social media app brings more backgrounds and filters to the video chat interface, as well as the ability to make your own stickers and send whole sticker packs to your friends. The Meta-fication of WhatsApp The main update is beefing up the video chat interface so users have more options to amuse themselves and their contacts. The range of backgrounds, filters, and effects has been expanded to 30. They can be added to videos and photos in chat and live video calls. WhatsApp is also…

Adobe Firefly’s latest update includes a suite of generative AI tools for compressing labour-intensive repetitive tasks, like translating video presentations and editing large batches of images. With Adobe Firefly Bulk Create users can resize up to 10,000 pictures, or replace the whole batch’s backgrounds with a single click. Adobe Firefly: Time-saver or job-killer? Adobe Firefly Bulk Create is a culmination of several Firefly-powered APIs for developers, aiming to make them more accessible to creators with little coding experience. Bulk Create launched today in beta, and consists of two tools: “Remove background” and “Resize”. Both are self-explanatory. Files can be uploaded…

German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz is integrating Google Cloud’s Automotive AI agent to “continue conversations and reference information” as a user drives. The new AI tool will rollout with the new Mercedes CLA, which has an improved MB.OS operating system and MBUX user experience platform for a more responsive experience. Mercedes-Benz’s bigger bang for their MBUX The latest AI-powered Mercedes CLA model was first announced at last year’s CES conference but the car maker didn’t specify which LLM it would be running on. The current MBUX Voice Assistant previously could only handle twenty commands using the “Hey Mercedes” trigger. Now the…

WhatsApp’s newest update gives AI a dedicated tab on the navigation bar. The AI tab replaces the ‘Community’ tab, indicating the end of WhatsApp’s experiment with this group chat-focused mode of engagement with the app. Now, in a move that seems a tad dystopian, Meta is happy to settle for users engaging with AI chatbots, as long as they stay texting. WhatsApp wants you to talk to robots First spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp’s Android beta users can currently test the feature. Users clicking on the AI tab are greeted by a selection of “Popular AI characters.” Similar to those found…