Producer Sean Birch is back. So, Ray is under control, no more innuendos and inappropriate jokes. In this episode Ray, Tom and Sean tackle how Facebook helped France but forgot about Lebanon and talk about crappy USB-C cables, Microsoft putting the Zune out to pasture, the new Star Trek TV show and the Chromestick.

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THE RUN DOWN

Facebook Safety Check Helps France, Ignores Beirut

The Washington Post reports that Facebook turned on its ?Safety Check? feature for a man-made disaster last weekend for the first time, for the attacks in Paris. With Safety Check, users who are in an area affected by a disaster who login to Facebook are greeted by a message asking them if they are safe. If they indicate that they are, a status update is then posted to their wall letting their friends and family know.

Facebook said that about 4.1 million users checked in within 24 hours after the attack, about one-third of metropolitan Paris?s population. Safety check has been deployed on five previous occasions, including the earthquake in Nepal in April, Tropical Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific, and Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines. It was originally inspired by the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

Facebook has drawn criticism because it has not deployed the feature for several recent disasters in the Middle East, including for the double suicide bombings in Beirut just a day earlier. Facebook says that it plans to deploy the tool more frequently in the future.

Crappy Cables Be Crappy

One of the dangers of buying something online is that it could be a dud. This is especially a problem if you buy things from some random website. But sometimes even products from Amazon can be lemons, and the reviews ? which are often written by less-than-tech-savvy customers ? don’t always save the day. Well, one very tech savvy customer is doing everything he can to change that.

Gizmodo reports that a Google engineer is buying USB-C cables off Amazon, testing them and reviewing them. Benson Leung is a Chromebook engineer, specifically an engineer on the Chromebook Pixel team, which, no surprise, has a USB-C port on it.

From Benson’s experience, good USB-C cables are hit-or-miss. And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter if they name brand or not. He’s found some cables with the wrong wiring, the wrong resisters, or will just completely burn out your charger, USB hubs or your mobile device.

You can follow him and read his reviews on Amazon or on his Google+ page, because? he works for Google? so of course he has a Google+ page.

Microsoft Finally Puts Zune Out of Its Misery

This week marks a sad time for those who love Microsoft?s Zune audio players (don?t laugh, there may be some out there).

PCWorld reports that Microsoft officially shut down all Zune-related services this week, including the Zune Music Pass streaming subscription service, and the Zune marketplace where users could buy MP3s.

Anyone still subscribed to Zune Music Pass was automatically switched to Microsoft?s new Groove Music service. As for the MP3s, if any of them had DRM they sadly might not work after a while because the license can?t be renewed.

It has taken a surprisingly long time for Microsoft to both stop the services and stop using the Zune name. The company stopped making Zune hardware all the way back in 2011. They kept using the brand name for a few years before they switched to using ?Xbox? branding for a lot of things.

Google Answers

Shout out to redditor BHK123 for suggesting our next story. Google?s search app is about to get better at understanding complex questions. According to VentureBeat, a new update to the Google search app allows it to better understand superlatives, ordered items, and dates. As an example, Google suggests the question ?Who was president when the Angels won the world series?? Google will figure out that you?re talking about US Presidents and baseball and combine the two to return the correct answer: George W. Bush.

Chromestick

Fans of ChromeOS rejoice, you are that much closer to being able to have Chrome on almost everything. Ars Technica says that Google and Asus have partnered up to create a 2.6 oz HDMI stick with ChromeOS that can be plugged into any monitor or screen, instantly turning it into a Chromebook. The stick contains 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. It also has a single USB port. The stick will reportedly retail for $85.

Star Trekkin’ Across The Universe

You are all no doubt very excited about the new Star Trek television show that has recently been announced. I know I am. Well The Hollywood Reporter claims that the show will not, as you might expect, be airing regularly on network TV. While the pilot episode will indeed air on CBS, the regular episodes will stream on CBS All Access and will require a $5.99 monthly subscription to view. CBS All Access includes CBS feed, which as of right now includes 85 shows, according to IT World. Some shows do appear to include commercials.

The new Trek show is slated to appear in January 2017.

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