OnePlus steps in it again by asking men to vote on pictures of women in their community, a new USB connector is near, and its amazing. Data shows women are often more serious about gaming then men and the ultimate telemarketer burn.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

OnePlus asks women to participate in degrading contest to get a smartphone

The startup OnePlus recently launched its first smartphone, the One, and to deal with production issues it’s been letting people buy them by invitation only, slowly offering them to more people as more are produced. It’s a weird system, and today OnePlus began supplementing it with a horribly conceived and deeply sexist contest that allows women to jump the line if they’re willing to have a bunch of internet dudes vote on their appearance. The contest asks women to draw the OnePlus logo on their body (or on a sheet of paper that they’re holding) and then take a photo of themselves and post it in OnePlus’ forums. From there, the 50 “most well liked” will get a free T-shirt and have the option of buying the phone.

OnePlus is calling it the “Ladies First” contest, and it’s basically as awful as it sounds. To say nothing of the fact that the prize is merely the opportunity to buy a phone at full price, the entire conceit is that the male fans of OnePlus are honoring women by voting on them. “In true gentlemen fashion and because chivalry is not dead, we are giving the lovely ladies of OnePlus a chance to skip the invite line,” OnePlus staffer Jerry writes. Jerry introduces the contest by writing that “OnePlus wants to give a shout out to the few but beautiful female fans in our community.”

OnePlus launches, then deletes ‘Ladies First’ promo contest – CNET

After letting the contest continue for a few hours, it looks like OnePlus finally made the right decision to take the forum offline. In a blog post on its contest page, the company acknowledged the contest was in poor taste, and called on the community for ideas on how to better get women involved in tech.

Reversible USB Type-C connector finalized: Devices, cables, and adapters coming soon

The USB Promoter Group has announced that the greatest invention in the known universe — the reversible Type-C USB connector — is finally ready for mass production.

The USB Implementers Forum will now take the Type-C spec and start building devices, cables, and adapters that support the new reversible connector. We could begin seeing Type-C USB devices over the next few months, but considering the lack of backwards compatibility (an adapter is required) and the mass proliferation of Micro-USB chargers, it may take a little while for Type-C to reach critical mass.

It’s essentially two USB 3.1 SuperSpeed connectors (which have the standard four pins, plus five more to enable 10Gbps connections). If you plug the connector in one way, the top set of pins are used; if you plug it in the other way, the bottom set of pins are used. It’s pretty simple.

The Type-C connector also supports the new USB Power Delivery spec (also finalized today), which allows for up to 100 watts to be carried over a USB cable (enough to charge a laptop or power most peripherals, including a monitor).

Report: Women Spend More On Mobile Games Than Men

• Supportive evidence for the report
• Additional Supportive evidence for the report

The mobile ad firm found that Flurry based on a sample of games that reach a total of 1.1 million devices on the Flurry platform, women actually make 31 percent more in-app purchases than men. Other than that, it found that women also spend 35 percent more time in gaming apps, and have 42 percent more retention over seven days on average compared to men.

Flurry notes that the data is measured on a worldwide basis, but “there is very little difference in the numbers when we looked at the US audience only.”

The new report comes as a Kim Kardashian mobile game has taken the world by storm. The New York Times reporting that game developer Glu Mobile said it generated $1.6 million in revenue during the first five days of the game’s release — and since the game is free, this money is streaming in from in-app purchases. An analyst even told the newspaper that the game could generate $200 million worth of revenue on an annual basis.

Males, however, are passionate about certain kinds of mobile games. Flurry also measured the amount of time that gamers spend in 19 categories of iOS games and found that men still spend more time in card/battle games, strategy, tower defense, sports and action/RPG. This shows that in general, hardcore mobile gaming still appeals mostly to men.

And now for a moment in Faux

Today is a good day…

Chris Blasko originally shared:

Today is a good day. I just had a call from a telemarketer. Did I yell and scream at them, you ask? Certainly not. Like a good IT administrator I put my skills to use for their benefit. Here’s how the conversation went:

Computer: “Press 9 to not be contacted in the future. Press 4 to speak to someone about your mortgage issues”

TM: “Hello, are you having problems paying your mortgage?”
Me: “Hi, this is the IT department. We intercepted your call as we detected a problem with you phone and need to fix it.”
TM: “Oh… ok, well what do we need to do?”
Me: “We’re going to need to fix the settings by pressing 4-6-8 and * at the same time”
TM: “Ok, nothing happened.”
<alright, so he’s not using a Polycom>
Me: “Are you using the new Polycom phones that we deployed?”
TM: “No, it’s a Yealink”
Me: “Ok, I see. You haven’t had the new Polycom phone deployed to your desk yet. Let me check our technical documentations for the Yealink.”

Me: “Alright, do you see an “OK” button on your phone?”
TM: “Yes I do”
Me: “Alright, you’re going to press and hold that button for 10 seconds.”
TM: “OK, pressing it now”
Me: “Perfect, let me know if you get a password request”
TM: “OK, nothing has popped up ye—-“
<click>

That’s right. I made a telemarketer unwittingly factory reset his phone which means he will be unable to make anymore calls until someone is able to reconfigure his phone and that will take at least an hour or longer if they can’t do it right away!