Why our government should make paying ransoms to cyber criminals illegal

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Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has been in the headlines lately defending the proposed new hate speech laws. The laws sparked opprobrium from both the left and right, critics citing the limits...

If you’re over 30, it’s safer not to use emoji

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Language can be a tricky thing, even when there shouldn’t be any ambiguity at all. Case in point, during a 1977 jaunt to Poland, President Jimmy Carter made quite an impression...

Tragedy bring out the worst of Twitter (or: you say it best when you...

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I don’t know how much — if at all — the story registered in New Zealand, but last week in Britain, a member of parliament was murdered. Sir David Amess was...

Sorry Xiaomi: 4K smartphones are still utterly pointless

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It’s tough being a smartphone manufacturer. With so little to differentiate one shiny black rectangle from one another (“look: this one has slightly smaller bezels!”), it must be tempting to see...

5 ways Amazon Astro is better than a real butler (and 5 ways it’s...

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Say what you like about Amazon (and we have), it’s certainly a company that’s full of surprises.  On Tuesday, the company announced Astro the robot assistant would be rolling into select American...

We spent a day looking for Covid and Vaccine disinformation on Facebook: Here’s what...

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Like most of us who believe in science rather than crackpot conspiracy theories, I'd unfollowed the few Facebook friends who - out of the blue - started posting anti-vaccination rants.  But here...

Spatial Audio: The best (and worse) remixed tracks

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After reporting the announcement regarding Spatial Audio last week I figured it was time to check out what Apple calls “the next generation of sound”. As a music lover I’ve spent countless...

Apple’s future vision of wireless charging convenience sounds awful (not awfully convenient)

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Remember AirPower? Announced alongside the iPhone 8 and iPhone X in 2017 as a wireless charging pad to fill up all your Apple devices at once, it missed its 2018 release...

Microsoft’s $100bn purchase of Activision looks like crazy money

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This week, it was revealed that Microsoft plans to spend just over NZ$100 billion on buying Activision Blizzard — a company that’s been more newsworthy for its alleged unsavoury work culture...

Now Meta wants to teach our news organisations to “develop better business models”

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After a decade of Facebook and Google hammering news organisations globally by effectively taking over the mobile advertising space while using its news content on its platform for little recompense, the...