The first human trial of potential coronavirus vaccine shows promise
Oxford University has partnered with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to produce a global coronavirus vaccine and hopefully begin delivering doses by the end of the year. After preliminary trial results revealed that Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine – called AZD1222 – appears to be safe, AstraZeneca has stated that it hopes to...
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Is TikTok really an elaborate façade for Chinese spyware?
Cyber-experts are claiming that 2020’s number one app is a shady front for Chinese spyware and mass censorship. Suggestions that ByteDance’s ‘innocuous’ short-bite video app TikTok has all the makings of a totalitarian plot hatched by the Chinese government are looking more plausible by the day. Suffice to say, people are freaked. Months of bad...
Clown protests take Read Dead Online by storm
It’s been close to a year since Rockstar meaningfully expanded Red Dead Redemption 2, and players have started populating entire servers with clowns in protest. All is not well in the digital wild west. It’s been seven months since Red Dead Online’s ‘Moonshiners’ expansion dropped, and players are growing frustrated...
Chinese face-tracking tech bans foreigners from live streaming
A global inquest into TikTok has done little to deter China from pushing stricter censorship on its own soil. Official documents from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance have confirmed rumours that the viral video app is constantly running facial recognition technology to monitor and censor content on Douyin – China’s version...
Russian hacking group attack vaccine researchers
According to British authorities, Russia is sponsoring hacking group APT29 who’re attacking British, US, and Canadian medical organisations. The UK’s National Cyber Security has publicly stated that drug companies and research groups focusing on a Covid-19 vaccine have been targeted by a hacker group called APT29. Known in hacking circles...
Publishers to raise gaming prices for next gen
2K announced last week that NBA 2K21 will cost $70 USD on next-gen, setting a precedent for other publishers to increase prices - but it should come with a reduction in microtransactions. The regular pricing for video games could be seeing an increase as we move into the next...
Reddit must persist with alt-right purge despite ‘free speech’ concerns
Media efforts to combat hate is pressuring user-based platforms like Reddit and MeWe to follow suit, and rightly so. Since the 18th century we have used boycotting as a political weapon for good. In 1791 some 300,000 people abstained from buying any goods produced by slaves in the West Indies, demonstrating for the first time the undeniable influence of consumer action in bringing about tangible change. Today, with social media being...
Zuckerberg loses $7 billion as advertisers abandon Facebook ads
Advertisers are pressuring Facebook to be more rigorous with its approach to hate speech and misinformation as they abandon the platform with the hashtag #StopHateForProfit. Does anyone remember when Facebook wasn’t a hot bed of dodgy memes and uninformed political opinions? Zuckerberg is once again in hot water with advertisers over Facebook’s ongoing problem with self-moderation and hate speech. If you’ve checked the site at all in the last few years...
Insomniac Games sexual harassment case the latest in a surge of new allegations
Based on the outpouring of women’s stories this week, it’s clear the gaming industry has a deep rooted problem with sexism and harassment. Change is desperately needed. Insomniac Games is the latest games developer to face new sexual assault and harassment allegations this week. Former employee Sol Brennan tweeted that he left last year due to the company’s mistreatment of women. He states that Edgar Vargas, a human resource co-ordinator...
NASA set to return to Mars with new rover ‘Perseverance’
Having bid farewell to the Mars rover in 2019, NASA is revisiting the Red Planet in 2021 with its most sophisticated vehicle to date, ‘Perseverance’. America’s chief space agency is set to embark on a new adventure to Mount Sharp, a huge summit on Mars, and the expedition will be carried out by a new and improved iteration of the 2019 rover called Perseverance. Dubbed the new rover’s ‘summer road trip’...
