Posted September 30, 2016 by Alan Williamson Newsmarks

This week’s highlinks – 26th Sep 2016

Another week in the crazy world of technology. Here is this weeks stories that stood out for the week starting 26th September 2016, with Uber, Amazon, IMDB, Plex, Blackberry, Slack and why airplanes have ashtrays.

Uber drivers take selfies before they come for you

Uber is always on the look out to make sure we all feel safe and secure when our driver appears. They are introducing a feature where your driver will take a selfie of themselves before they appear, thus giving you an opportunity to decide if they are good looking enough for your transportation needs. Read More.

Actors can remove their age from IMDB

Can you believe it? California have made it law that an actor can remove their age from IMDB. The idea is to stop agents and casting directors from discriminating based on age. Completely pointless since this information is still freely available on news outlets who are not under this restriction. /cue rolling of eyes/ Read More.

Google Pixel laptop will merge Android with Chrome OS

Chromebooks have found a wonderful home with students and people that want more than a tablet but less than a PC. With the merging of the Android space, it opens up a whole world of Android apps to this platform making it a very attractive choice over a traditional Windows/Mac laptop. Read More.

Plex & Amazon teams up to offer Plex cloud

Plex, the popular personal media server hub that lets you stream your movies, tv, music and photos to any device in the world, has teamed with Amazon to let you host your content in the cloud without running your own server.

Sounds a great idea, but with the vast majority of content hosted on peoples Plex servers of questionable origin, Amazon won’t tolerate this and start shutting down and removing users files. Read More.

We finally learn what #slack means

This week we discovered that slack means something other than what we all thought which was to slack off work and chat – Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. Consider yourself informed. Read More.

IOT devices create the largest BOT net

This is a huge wake-up call to IOT developers – security really matters, it isn’t just about protecting your data. Devices such as cameras and routers, were hijacked and performed a continual Denial of Service attack by continually hitting the same URL, producing 620 gigabits per second from all over the world. Astonishing. Read More.

Where are all the Fortune 500 companies headquartered?

A great info-graphic was produced by Fortune magazine to highlight where the headquarters of all the top 500 companies in the USA. As you can see, the MST timezone is not represented at all (interesting fact I heard on this weeks Freakonomics podcast was that there is more people in Manhattan than in the whole MST timezone). Read More.

Blackberry finally gets out of making handsets

I know, I know, you thought Blackberry had already died, but this seems to be the last nail in the coffin – they are getting out of making their own handsets. Such a shame, I loved my Blackberry back in the day. They should have adopted Android from the start and hooked into the huge app store. Oh hum – my quest for a keyboard on an Android phone continues. Read More.

… and finally why do airplanes still have ashtrays?

Ever wondered why airplanes still have ashtrays when its been 26 years since smoking was banned? Its for those buggers that try to have that sneaky light-up thinking they will be the only one not to be caught! When caught, we prefer them not to throw it in the trashcan, creating a fire. /shakes head/ Read More.