Category: Newsmarks

This was a very tragic accident that resulted in the death of the driver behind the wheels of a Model S Tesla.  The NTSB concluded today, with their release of a 500 page report, that the driver had failed to respond to directions to put his hands on the wheel and therefore was responsible for the accident.

A software update has been since made to penalize drivers if they don’t keep their hands on the wheel when directed.  As a Tesla driver myself, I have fallen victim to this enhanced safety feature.  If you don’t respond quickly enough, then the car disengages the autopilot feature and you can’t turn it back on until the car has been at a complete rest for a period for time.

We can only wish that all cars will eventually have the same level of logging that Tesla cars do, so we can remove all doubt as to what actually happened at the scene of an accident.

The board said the Tesla alerted the driver seven times with a visual of “Hands Required Not Detected.” The authorities said the motorist, a former Navy Seal, had his hands on the wheel for 25 seconds during the 37 minutes of the trip when they should have been placed on the steering wheel.

via Tesla Model S warned driver in fatal crash to put hands on steering wheel | Ars Technica

Ouch, this is not good coming from the Republicans.   This is quite the data haul, particularly as it details people’s political views.

Sensitive personal details relating to almost 200 million US citizens have been accidentally exposed by a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee.

The 1.1 terabytes of data includes birthdates, home addresses, telephone numbers and political views of nearly 62% of the entire US population.

via Personal details of nearly 200 million US citizens exposed – BBC News

Okay so this caught most of the industry off their feet, with Amazon announcing they are getting into bricks’n’mortar business big time by buying a Whole Foods, the horrendously expensive supermarket.

With all the speculation on them buying Slack for $9B yesterday, this one makes far more sense.  Though, what will they do with it?  Whole Foods is a high end grocery outlet (often referred to as Whole Check) which does fly in the face of Amazon’s ideal of competing on price.   This definitely sends a shot across the bow of Walmart.

Let us observe what Amazon does with this property.

Amazon said on Friday that it had agreed to buy the upscale supermarket chain Whole Foods for $13.4 billion, in the online retailer’s latest push into the grocery business.

via Amazon to Buy Whole Foods in $13.4 Billion Deal – The New York Times

Kyle Wiggers over at Digital Trends published a good round up of email tracking techniques deployed by most of the ad networks of the world.  From the classic 1×1 magic pixel right through to deep cookie chaining analysis.

It was discovered that around 40% of your emails are being tracked for marketing purposes.  That was a little higher than I would have thought, but this includes newsletters that you may be getting from the likes of Medium, Quora etc, as well as the typical daily/weekly emails from newspapers who rely heavily on the income from the adverts.

If you want to scrub all your email then consider using a service like Senders that basically white washes your email before delivering it to you.

The world’s most popular form of peer-to-peer messaging reached new heights in 2015, when users sent and received a collective 205 billion emails. Its growth isn’t slowing down anytime soon — analysts at the Radicati Group project that email users will exchange as many as 246 billion messages in 2019.

via Email marketers are tracking your every move, and you might not even know it

Fascinating insight into those big blue highway signs that highlight the various eateries that are at the next junction.  Sold by the state, on an annual basis, they are nowhere near the price you would think they would be.   The amount of business these signs drive (as noted by the respected businesses) they should 10x the amount.

The cost of getting on a specific service sign varies by state, but in general, it spans between about $500 and a couple grand per year.

via Here’s How Much Businesses Pay To Get On Those Big Blue Exit Signs

It is now official, Verizon has completed its long awaited purchase of Yahoo, for only $4.48B – cheap for what was one of the Internet’s cornerstone properties.  Mayer, is out, but she can take some consolation with her $23M package.   Tim Armstrong steps into her shoes to run the combined Yahoo+AOL entity that will be called Oath.

Not all good news mind you – 2100 employees are about to get pink slips as the two companies combine.  Definitely be interesting to see where this goes.  Armstrong is no stranger to media platforms, having run a newspaper prior to joining Google then AOL.

Verizon has officially closed its $4.48 billion purchase of Yahoo, the company announced Tuesday.

Marissa Mayer, who has been Yahoo’s CEO since 2012, will step down with a $23 million package.

via Verizon closes Yahoo purchase – Business Insider