Time to target those rich Mac users
Mass Effect gets new endings, Google computers love cat videos, and Orbitz steers Mac users to pricier rooms.
Today's headline roundup will have you worried about Terminator cats targeting rich Mac users via their Facebook email addresses:
The engineers at the super secret Google X lab have created the self-driving car and the augmented reality Google glasses. This time, while trying to push the limits of technology, they may have started to create Skynet. Google engineers strung 16,000 computer processors together, and then set the network free on the Internet. The New York Times explains that the system began to learn... about cats. Google engineers never told the computer what a cat was, it just picked it up from YouTube videos.
Marketing companies use all sorts of things to profile customers. Tracking cookies can tell companies what other sites you visited and where you live. It's also easy to track what type of computer you use: a Mac or PC. Well Orbitz discovered that Mac users were spending more when booking hotel rooms. So, Orbitz began steering Mac users to look at more expensive hotel rooms when they visit the site, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. So if you're a Mac user, just be sure to order your search results by price to make sure you're not missing out on any deals.
Facebook has named its first woman on the board of directors. Surprise, surprise, it's Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer and second-in-command at the company. The announcement comes after Facebook was criticised for having an all white-male board. But there's still much to be done for women in technology. Out of the 100 people in the Newsweek Daily Beast Digital Power Index, only seven are women.
And in other Facebook news, it's time to adjust your profile info. Facebook quietly changed the email address displayed on your profile to be the Facebook email address. (Which for many is a string of random characters.) You can change it by going to the "About" section in your profile, under your main photo. Then edit the details for your email. Facebook is banking that it'll promote more use of its internal messaging system.
If you've played Mass Effect 3, be sure to download the Extended Cut with new ending footage via your console today. Fans complained how the epic trilogy ended, so the game's creators added a little more footage to the end videos, with different results depending on your final choices. But judging from the comments online, gamers are still not all that thrilled.
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