Newsmarks – alan williamson

Uber Works – car no longer required

Sure there are services that offer this already, but if Uber can make this truly accessible, for people to earn an extra dollars in their free time, this could be a major game changer.

Uber explained that it has partnered with local businesses in Chicago to offer would-be workers roles in six job categories: back-of-house, front-of-house, warehouse, cleaning, customer service and general labor. Jobs taken might include bartending, assembly-line work, or prep cooking

Source: Uber Is Launching a New App That Matches Freelance Workers With Businesses | Inc.com

FedEx CEO finally admits Amazon is a real competitor

“We basically compete in an ecosphere that’s got five entities in it,” Smith said, adding: “There is UPS. There is DHL. There is a US Postal Service. And now increasingly there is Amazon. That’s who we wake up every day trying to think about how we compete against and give the best services to our sales force.”

I am getting a Blockbuster feeling about FedEx – though this time, after years of denying Amazon’s logistics growth, they can do something about it.

Source: FedEx CEO finally admits Amazon is a real competitor – Business Insider

Netflix Loses No. 1 Spot as Bandwidth User for 2019

Interesting to see who is consuming the global bandwidth with this study. Buried deep in this report is how Google represents 17%.

Worldwide, these are the top 10 applications by downstream bandwidth consumption: HTTP media stream (12.8%); Netflix (12.6%); YouTube (8.7%); operator IPTV (7.2%); HTTP download (4.5%); HTTP TLS (4.4%); HTTP (3.0%); Facebook (3.0%); PlayStation download (2.8%); BitTorrent (2.4%).

Source: Netflix Loses No. 1 Spot as Bandwidth-Eating Application for 2019 – Variety

Audi unveils Mars rover-looking electric off-roader

Audi has teased the world at this years Frankfurt show, and by george, it looks fantastic. Changes of anything like this getting near production is next to zero, but let’s hope I proved wrong. Move over Tesla – the old vanguard has still some miles in it.

The concept vehicle is called AI:TRAIL, and Audi uses it to communicate its vision of a future vehicle segment where a vehicle would drive autonomously on the road and then could be used as an off-road vehicle with driver-assist features.

Source: Audi unveils Mars rover-looking electric off-roader with insane specs – Electrek

Hands up who didn’t see this coming? FDA warns Juul for marketing e-cigs as safe

Anything you pump into your body, that let’s face it isn’t water, is going to have side effects – death being one of the harsher ones. The new e-cigarettes was somewhat wishful thinking by the industrial titans of health, (namely the tobacco industry) that this was their next product growth opportunity now that smoking was finally recognized as something that “may cause cancer”.

The $38 billion e-cig company, partially owned by tobacco giant Altria, received a warning letter on Monday from the US Food and Drug Administration saying that it wrongly portrayed its devices as safer than cigarettes and marketed them intentionally to youth

Source: FDA warns Juul for marketing e-cigs as safe at schools – Business Insider

Over half a million active GPS trackers have ‘123456’ as default password

It is ridiculous that this is still happening in this day’n’age. We are not making it at all harder for the would-be hackers.

Researchers have found serious security vulnerabilities in over 600,000 GPS trackers that may have exposed users data, including the exact real-time GPS coordinates.

Source: Over half a million active GPS trackers have ‘123456’ as default password