Whoops. Looks like somewhere between Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, Google forgot their ‘don’t be evil’ rule and turned into the creepy uncle of the internet. Well, the other creepy uncle of the internet. It now follows users’ activities across YouTube, Gmail, Google Plus and Google Search, among others. Everybody, clear your history.
So! The shutdown MegaUpload and charging of founders with piracy ostensibly started with a copyright scuffle between the filesharing site and the Universal Music Group. Except the shut-down was also timed to scupper MegaBox, a venture to sell artist’s work directly to consumers while letting artists keep 90 percent of earnings. Raised eyebrows all around.
Tertiary education is turning into a very dangerous pursuit indeed. Following on the heels of the incident at the University of Johannesburg not too long ago, similar chaos is currently underway at the Vaal University of Technology. Students have been queuing since Monday to get registered for classes, but have been faced with heavy, and some would say aggressive, security.
Greeks are amongst the most notorious tax dodgers in the world. Currently, Greece has about 60 billion Euros in unpaid taxes outstanding – a figure equivalent to about a quarter of its total economy. Athens decided to release a list on Sunday that published the names of some of the 4 000 known dodgers.
As if they haven’t scared us enough with the release of their latest album cover and music video for its first single, “Fok julle naaiers”, check out what Die Antwoord is up to next. They’ve just released a very graphic teaser trailer for Ten$ion, which is set to release in February. Check it out after the jump.
Members of “hacktivist” group Anonymous have denied that they’re planning an attack on Facebook, in spite of a video claiming to speak for the group that has declared that the social network will be brought down on January 28th. This would be the second fake Anonymous threat in some months.
COMPETITION CLOSED – SEE BELOW TO BUY TICKETS WINNER IS NOLUTHANDO – well done! I’ve just drawn a diagram to explain something to you. You will see there is a circle with the words “Inner Circle” written inside it. That is a lot like a circle of trust. It’s where you want to be. But […]
A rather sexy poster, featuring a naked interracial couple sparked debates across social platforms yesterday. Created by the DA Student Organisation, it shows a white man embracing a black woman with the tagline: “DASO: In our future you wouldn’t look twice.”
International surfing superstar, Jordy Smith, sexy swimsuit model Roxy Louw, 5FM’s iconic DJ Fresh, masterblaster cricketing all-rounder Jacques Kallis, tennis supremo Mats Wilander and a growing list of celebrities all swear by it, and it’s currently set to take South Africa and the world by storm leading a new wave of nutraceuticals into the health […]
Start your Tuesday the way your forefathers did, with an amazing time-lapse video of the International Space Station passing over a storm-struck African continent with the Milky Way popping in to say hello in the background. Also visible is Comet Lovejoy, two weeks after its near-fatal sunburn. Please, go look. You’ll feel better about being up.
Alright. Yes. Pairing your product with an attractive woman is not exactly an original advertising tactic, and if anything the world could do with a little less of that. But because this happens to be a Brazilian TV ad for a language school, and a funny one, we can put these concerns momentarily aside.
The rumours began to do the rounds towards the end of last week, but now a top-level source within the South African Rugby Union has let it slip that Heyneke Meyer will be announced as the new Springbok coach on Friday.
Hacker group, Anonymous, evidently not content with taking down three major corporations and the US Department of Justice’s websites, are continuing their MegaUpload revenge spree, having gained access to CBS.com and deleting every file on the server, while keeping Universal Music inoperative with sustained denial-of-service attacks.
Zulu Monarch, King Goodwill Zwelethini took to the podium at yesterday’s 133rd commemoration of the Battle of Isandlwana, and addressed some of the key challenges facing South Africa, including how same sex relationships have no basis in traditional African cultures and are “wrong” and “rotten”.
It’s quite important that you watch this video, as it will no doubt appear in text books in years to come. It basically has South Africa’s most famous woman, Candice Swanepoel and another 2oceansvibe favourite, Adriana Lima, jumping around and hosing themselves in bikinis next to the ocean. I just love the way models always […]
A teenage girl from the Netherlands sailed into St Maarten harbour on Saturday, ending a year long solo journey around the globe. The Guinness World Records has said it’s not going to back that up though. It no longer recognises records for youngest sailors because it wants to discourage dangerous attempts.
During orientation at NWU in Potchefstroom on Saturday night, a group of first-year students were told to “clean themselves in a swimming pool.” When they left, not a single one of the “conductors” in charge noticed the group had one less member. The body was only later found at the bottom of the pool when a different group of students went for a swim.
Man, Samsung, you guys have been losing pretty much everything against Apple in the past couple of weeks. Germany’s Mannheim Regional court reached a decision on one point of the continuing lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, rejecting the claim that Apple have infringed upon Samsung’s German 3G patents.
Obviously. The credibility of Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been thrown into further disarray as the media giant finally admitted in the High Court that it had also illegally been accessing emails. This follows the emergence of some 36 hacking settlements yesterday.
As part of their ‘reinvention of the textbook,’ Apple yesterday unveiled three new applications for use in the digital educational under their Apple in Education program: iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U. The tools are designed to allow for interactive textbooks, digital textbook creation, and open-access educational resources from top universities, respectively.
Yesterday the popular file-sharing site, MegaUpload was taken down by the US government. In response, hackers aligned with the global cyber-collective known as Anonymous took down at least six prominent websites, including those of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group.
A British man has been arrested and questioned by UK police regarding his involvement in the alleged theft of a fragment of a statue of Saddam Hussein from Iraq in 2003, more specifically its ass.
I hate flying. I can’t explain it, but I have a terrible irrational fear of being in a plane. I just can’t get my head around that much metal not falling out of the sky. And now my fears are made worse – Airbus has found cracks in the wings of the A380 – but says it’s still safe to fly.
Do you know what self-immolation is? It’s the rather rare practice of setting oneself on fire to show how strongly you feel about something. Go figure. In the Middle East and North Africa though, it’s become more commonplace ever since a Tunisian vegetable seller did it to protest police harrassment, evoking an uprising at the end of 2010.
A Costa Cruises executive, and a woman with an obviously cold heart, has brandished her colleagues the “true heroes” of the Costa Concordia disaster. She also accused the passengers of “sensationalism” in a letter in which she discussed the tragedy that saw the Costa Concordia cruise ship capsize off the coast of Italy.
A short while ago, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper company agreed to pay damages to 36 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking. On top of this, News Corp has acknowledged to victims that executives covered up the scale of the unlawful activity by destroying evidence and lying to investigators.
Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway transforms famous vintage black and white pictures into high resolution colour versions. Examples include scenes from Pearl Harbour, a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, and the “The Burning Monk” used on the Rage Against the Machine album cover. See these, along with famous people such as Albert Einstein and Anne Frank, after the jump.
Following criticism over pretty much everything he’s done in the past decades, Star Wars creator/destroyer George Lucas announced his planned retirement in a recent interview with the New York Times – adding, “Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”
And guess who’s got a finger in that pie? None other than convicted fraudster, Tony Yengeni. Granted it probably won’t be a very big warship, if we can really even call it that, but it has the potential to cost even more than the four frigates we bought as part of the controversial 1999 R60 billion arms deal.
This is sort of like Robocop! Brazilian police forces are testing out glasses fitted out with cameras linked to a central computer network that stores a database of criminal suspects’ faces, so that they’ll be able to arrest people during the 2014 World Cup without having to ask them their names.