Happy Monday, we hope you had a great weekend. Here’s what happened in tech land while we were out.
1. RIP Internet Explorer
Microsoft has officially killed Internet Explorer. After ceasing support for Internet Explorer in June last year, asking users to swap out the annoying browser for a still annoying Edge, Microsoft has now laid IE to rest for good. A Windows update will now disable the browser.
2. Basic features now paywalled
Instead of simply adding new features and giving them to users willing to spend a monthly fee, Elon Musk is putting existing ones behind a paywall. Twitter is making users pay for….security. Per the retweeted tweet below, Twitter announced SMS-based two-factor authentication will only be available to paying Twitter Blue subscribers. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is an important means of securing accounts, making it significantly harder for hackers to gain unauthorised access. But you do you, Elon.
Use of free authentication apps for 2FA will remain free and are much more secure than SMS https://t.co/pFMdxWPlai
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 18, 2023
3. Lol
Staying on rich tech bros and now Mark Zuckerberg wants to make money off your doomscrolling addiction. The Meta CEO announced his company will be rolling out Meta Verified, a subscription service that will cost a minimum of $US11.99 ($19.99) per month. This absolute joke will start rolling out in Australia and New Zealand this week.
4. GoDaddy in all sorts
GoDaddy revealed in a statement last week it had discovered that hackers inside its systems had installed malware on its network and stolen parts of its code. The company says it became aware of the intrusion in December 2022, but per a report from Wired, GoDaddy believes the hackers are the same group that it found inside the company’s networks in March 2020, and which had stolen the login credentials of 28,000 customers and some of GoDaddy’s staff. Those hackers in November 2021 then used a stolen password to compromise 1.2 million customers’ WordPress instances, getting access to email addresses, usernames, passwords, and, in some cases, their websites’ SSL private keys. Yikes.
5. Grim AI words from Big Blue
Once, IBM was the world leader in AI, trotting out robots to face off against chess grandmasters and Jeopardy! champions in televised media stunts. Now AI is back in the limelight, but IBM is nowhere near the front of the pack. The company’s chief executive Arvind Krishna sat down with the Financial Times for an interview about his effort to revamp IBM’s AI business. What he ended up giving were grim predictions about the future of work. Read all about it here.
BONUS ITEM: Oh dear… Secondhand anxiety is high with this one.
Breaking News: A woman accidentally knocked over a balloon dog sculpture by Jeff Koons at an art fair in Miami, causing the $42,000 artwork to shatter, witnesses said. https://t.co/NVXY8D7srU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 18, 2023
See you tomorrow.