Amazon wants to tell you how fat you are 
 
Amazon has launched ‘Halo’ a product that is an activity tracker service. 
 
It’s like a Fitbit, or Apple Watch - except that it doesn’t have a screen. You do everything on your phone. It means the battery lasts longer so it can track your sleep too. 

Here’s where it’s different about the service: 

There is a 3D body scanning tool which will tell you your body fat percentage. You take a series of photos of yourself using the app and they’ll track your body fat over time. It’s algorithm will also allow you to see yourself with more and less body fat.. which is meant to be motivational!  

Also in the band are two microphones which will analyze your tone of voice throughout the day. It’s goal is to work out your emotional state through the day. It’s looking for positivity and energy in your voice. Start yelling at the kids? It’ll note it. Amazon says your voice is never uploaded to its servers, or heard by any human, it is processed on your phone. 

What happened with the NZX outage this week?  

From what we can tell, the NZX has been hit as part of a worldwide extortion attempt. Companies across the world in finance, travel, and e-commerce are being hit with random letters and coordinated DDoS attacks. Basically, if you don't pay them in bitcoin, they'll flood your servers with traffic rendering them useless. 
 
Spark was the NZX's service provider and these attacks appear to have impacted other businesses too because the network was so overloaded. NZX has now moved their domain to Akamai - a global provider of internet content delivery who have expertise in dealing with attacks of this nature. 

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