Kim Jong Un and ‘dotard’ Trump get the internet excited about words again

Instagram has come under fire for advertising itself on parent company Facebook's platform with a screenshot of an email that read "I will rape you before I kill you". Instagram is using one of my most "engaging" posts to advertise its service to others on Facebook 😂pic.twitter.com/lyEBHQXMfa — Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) September 21, 2017 The Guardian reporter Olivia Solon had posted the image to her feed a year ago. Her caption read: "This is an email I received this afternoon. Sadly this is all too common for women on the internet. I am sure this is just an idiot rather than any kind...

Welcome to The Weekly Roundup, our podcast discussing the latest tech trends, innovation and news from the last few days. This week, Andy Walker hosts Julia Breakey and Stephen Timm in studio. We kick off the episode by laying out what we know about the cryptocurrency mining issue that saw our site temporarily disabled this week. We then move on to a Ventureburn story about ICOs and the emerging popularity of the cryptocurrency scene in South Africa. Over on Memeburn, Julia talks how Facebook enabled the Russian tampering of the 2016 US election. Receiving over US$100 000 in ad sales from the propaganda, the...

Instagram will soon allow users to apply awkward Face Filters to their live video broadcasts. "Starting today, you can play with face filters while sharing live video," the social network notes in a blog post. "Whether you’re channelling a kitten or want to add some stars or rainbow light to your face, you can easily try on face filters while connecting with friends and followers in the moment." Yes, this is indeed the first time we've seen "channelling a kitten" in a press release. 6 Instagram users who have risked their lives for likes Now that Vine is dead, people are back to “doing...

You can always trust US President Donald Trump to say something controversial, whether it be on Twitter, or at the UN General Assembly. But beyond this week's comments about North Korea, Trump had enough free time to invent an African country. While speaking at a conference hosting African leaders in New York City, the President praised "Nambia" and its advancements in healthcare. Honored to host a luncheon for African leaders this afternoon. Great discussions on the challenges & opportunities facing our nations today. pic.twitter.com/AbnBJtKCAI — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017 But there's no country called Nambia on the continent, nor the...

Suspected Russian Facebook page Being Patriotic organised pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rallies in the build-up to the 2016 US election, The Daily Beast has found. On 20 August 2016 -- less than three months before the election in November -- the page created a number of events collectively titled "Florida Goes Trump!" It called for supporters to rally together in 17 different cities and towns. The position in Florida is crucial, as it is a swing state that could have reasonably been won by either party. US President Donald Trump won 49.1% of the vote in Florida, as opposed to Hillary Clinton's 47.8%. The Daily Beast found proof...

Twitter's latest transparency report reveals that the platform's effort to cut down on pro-terror content is working. According to the report, the first half of the year saw just under 300 000 accounts removed for promoting internationally recognized terror movements or the violence associated with them. This is a 20% drop from the previous reporting period. The company recently joined forces with the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Microsoft to share information on how to combat pro-terror content, including AI that can swiftly detect dangerous content. The report says that 95% of the removed terror accounts were the result of internal efforts...

On 20 September, you may have noticed that Memeburn was inaccessible. On Monday, you also may have noticed a spike in CPU usage when visiting any of the site's pages. Upon deeper inspection by our developers, we discovered a script that used our visitor’s CPU power to mine cryptocurrency. The script was injected into a segment of our website's source code. Said script was from Coinhive -- a service that allows site admins to embed a line of Javascript in their websites to secretly mine a cryptocurrency called Monero. The Pirate Bay also sported a similar line of code in a covert test...

On 15 April 2013 Jeff Bauman was at the finish line of the Boston Marathon to win back his girlfriend. He was next to the bomb when it exploded; he lost both his legs. An image of his rescue went viral, and Bauman was thrust unwillingly into the spotlight. He became the face of the Boston Strong movement, of a city clinging to hope and love in a time when despair would have been easy. Now, three years after Bauman published his memoir, David Gordon Green (Our Brand is Crisis) has brought his story to the big screen. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal...

Update: Taxify has responded to our request for comment, and issued the following statement. It told Memeburn that it takes these incidents "very seriously". "Safety of both our riders and driver-partners is our priority. Our team has contacted both parties involved in the incident. Unfortunately, it is a complicated word against word situation as the driver's part of the story is very different." The company also revealed the driver's side of the argument: Rider requested a ride, inserted Braamfontein as a destination in the app (this is not a specific address and Taxify team can confirm it was so from the system). They...

The car alarm system is probably the most conflicting part of your car. Designed to prevent car theft by attracting concerned onlookers with a noise, it does more to annoy everybody in the neighbourhood than anything else. Just because we know that 99% of times it goes off accidentally either triggered by the vibration of passing vehicles, car’s electric system glitch or simply a bird, we don’t take car alarms seriously. So, are alarm systems capable of protecting your car from thieves? Tyres-guru.co.uk, the UK’s online tyre and spare parts retailer, explains why car alarms are still on the market. What’s wrong with...

The Stephen King adaptation It has smashed into top spot at South Africa's box office after bringing in over R5-million -- officially making it the largest opening for a horror film ever. The film has already broken plenty records: It's the highest-grossing film ever released in September in the US, the highest-grossing Stephen King film ever, it has the widest R-rated release, and it looks set to overtake The Exorcist as the highest-grossing horror film of all time. But with Pennywise pulling us all down to the sewers, how did the other films manage this weekend? (15 - 17 September) 'It' has already broken plenty records: it's the highest-grossing film ever released...

CCleaner -- a program usually used to clean Windows, Android and MacOS of errant software and data -- has itself been infected by a trojan. A new report by Talos suggests that for nearly a month the program's installer didn't just install Piriform's file cleaner, but rather additional malware. "For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner," the Talos team explains in a blog post. This malware was reportedly bundled with the program's install files located within Piriform's legitimate...

The last week in trailers promoted A-list faces in highly-anticipated movies, so grab some popcorn because there's bound to be something in this list that gets you hype. The Shape of Water The red-band trailer for Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water has been released, and, no, there isn't any inter-species fish sex, I'm sorry to say. The "other-worldly fairy tale" is set in Cold War-era America, and tells of a lonely mute woman whose life changes when she discovers a top secret "asset" in the form of an alien fish-man. It stars Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon, and hits South African...

As if the Caribbean islands haven't had enough wind and rain from Hurricane Irma, there's a new storm about to batter the region. Dubbed Hurricane Maria, the storm formed on 16 September and is currently a category 2 hurricane. Moving NNW and churning just east of the Leeward Islands, she's expected to strengthen into a category 4 storm before directly striking Puerto Rico. At present, Maria is one of five named cyclones currently churning in the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic. Hurricane Jose continues to survive just East of the United States' eastern coastline. Tropical Depression Lee is set to fizzle out during...

Every year, Hollywood's television bigwigs get together in one room to praise each other and themselves at the Emmy Awards. This year's ceremony, hosted by Stephen Colbert, was rife with political commentary and Hollywood's favourite brand of self-congratulations. But not everyone could stomach the show -- so here's a roundup of the response to what went down Sunday night. The Handmaid's Tale won five awards Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale pulled in the most of awards of the evening: Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Elisabeth Moss), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Ann Dowd), Outstanding Directing for a Drama...