Episode 49 – Eagles Hunt Drones
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Welcome to another episode of Geek Bytes Podcast.
I’m Ramon Mejia…….and I’m Edgar Acosta
Every podcast we bring you the roundup of the week’s best Geek and Tech news, then we discuss that news and anything else we’re interested in that week.
In Geek News this week, we’ll talk about Alphabet beats Apple, Microsoft forcing downloads of Windows 10, the $40,000 Exo-Suit, Drone Capturing Eagles, Ohlala the paid dating app, Hearthstone Evolves, DOOM gets release date, Fast and Furious 2021, ‘The Flash’ To Meet ‘Supergirl’, Trailers of the Week and More…
In our Discussion section we talk about…the best games to play with the family.
Now let’s Begin our show with Geek News
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Geek News
Alphabet beats Apple as the most valuable Company in the World
Alphabet smashed expectations this week, bringing in $21.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of $8.09 on $20.8 billion in revenue.
With that, Alphabet became the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world — coming in at a market cap $558 billion after jumping about 8% after the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and passing Apple, which sits at a market cap of $535 billion.
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/alphabet-becomes-the-most-valuable-company-in-the-world/
Public Housing Gets Google Gigabit Internet
Google Fiber announced Wednesday it will work the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Connect Home initiative to provide gigabit Internet service to public housing at no cost. The West Bluff property in Kansas City will be the first to receive gigabit Internet as part of this program, it will expand in Kansas City and eventually to all public housing in each city served by Google Fiber.
http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/connecthome-gigabit.html
Microsoft forcing downloads of Windows 10
Microsoft has changed the Windows 10 upgrade in Windows update from optional to recommend according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. This means Windows 10 will automatically begin the upgrade process and download for users with automatic updates turned on. However, users will still be prompted for approval of the install. Those that do install, have 31 days to roll back to their previous Windows version.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-starts-pushing-windows-10-as-a-recommended-update/
$40,000 Exo-Suit
Digital Trends has a story about an exoskeleton from SuitX called the Phoenix, meant to replace wheeled mobility devices like wheelchairs. At 27 pounds it weighs half as much as the popular ReWalk exoskeleton. The battery lasts for 4 hours of continuous walking or 8 hours of intermittent use. It’s modular so it can adapt to more needs and can be fine tuned to a particular gait using an Android app. It costs $40,000 which is around half what most other exoskeletons cost. SuitX is accepting preorders now and expects to ship the first unit in March. http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/suitx-phoenix-modular-robotic-exoskeleton/
Drone Capturing Eagles
The Verge points to a Politie.nl story that law enforcement in the Netherlands are partnering with a raptor training company named Guard from Above to intercept quadcopters and other UAS. A video from Politie shows an Eagle grabbing a quadcopter in mid-air using its incredibly sharp and strong talons. http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10884586/drone-vs-eagle-dutch-police
Ohlala, the App That Lets You Pay for Dates, Is Coming to the United States
Ohlala blends everything you normally see in a dating app with the twist that men are paying women for the dates. The original Ohlala has been up and running in Germany since August 2015. Ohlala works by allowing male users to create profiles and fill out paid date requests, which include duration (30 minutes, an hour, etc.) and budget. The person must be looking for a date within four hours of placing the request. All active female users see the request, and they have 21 minutes to respond. It’s only after a woman chooses to respond that the requester can see their profile and chat with the woman. Where, Poppenreiter, says the two can finalize the terms of the date.
If this version of the app goes well, Ohlala has plans on making a version for women to pay men as well as a version for the gay community.
http://gizmodo.com/ohlala-the-app-that-lets-you-pay-for-dates-is-coming-1756949015
Hearthstone Evolves
Blizzard announced this week on their blog that their massively profitable mobile card game, Hearthstone, will be undergoing some changes soon. Hearthstone will increase custom deck slots form 9 to 18. Older single player adventures will leave but all the cards they unlocked will be available to craft. Additionally, two new game modes will be incorporated into the play options: Standard and Wild.
· Standard Play will create preset decks that incorporate all the basic cards and any new cards released this year. This will let new players jump into play without giving advantages to long time players with a massive collections.
· Wild Play lets players create custom decks as they see fit but will only be paired with other players choosing the Wild play option.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19995505
DOOM gets release date, finally
Bethesda announced the new Doom reboot will come out May 13th for the PS4, Xbox One and PC. The last Doom, Doom 3 came out in 2004. The game will have a single player campaign, multiplayer mode and a map editor.
(Ramon: VR side story- Originally announced as Doom 4 in 2007. John Carmack, then lead designer and Co-Founder of ID, planned for the title to be a flagship Oculus game. )
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10915494/doom-release-date-ps4-xbox-one-pc
Fast and Furious 2021
Two years ago, Universal Pictures announced plans to use Fast 8 to launch a new Fast and Furious trilogy that would wrap up the film series. Last night, Fast and Furious star Vin Diesel made the official announcement for the ninth and tenth films on his Instagram account.
Fast and Furious 8 will release April 14th, 2017. Fast and Furious 9 is slated for April 19th, 2019, while Fast and Furious 10 will hit on April 2nd, 2021.
http://nerdist.com/vin-diesel-announces-final-fast-and-furious-trilogy/
Crossover Confirmed: ‘The Flash’ To Meet ‘Supergirl’ In March Episode
Executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg have been talking up the possibility since last summer. This week the CW and CBS have made it official: The DC Television multiverse becomes real in March when CW’s The Flash star Grant Gustin guests on an episode of CBS’ Supergirl. Set to air March 28, and titled “Worlds Finest”. While it’s been hypothesized that the tie-in relates to the Flash crossing dimensions into the Supergirl universe, more official details are set to be revealed at a later date.
https://deadline.com/2016/02/supergirl-the-flash-crossover-official-in-march-1201695796/
That’s it for Geek New
We’ll move on to trailers of the week.
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Trailers of the Week
Every week we bring you the best trailers that came out this week. This week we begin with…
Me Before You
Based on the novel of the same name by Jo Jo Moyes. Me Before You is the story of a girl in a small town forms an unlikely bond with a recently-paralyzed man she's taking care of.—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart? In theaters June 3, 2016.
Miles Ahead
Starring and directed by Don Cheadle. Miles Ahead is an exploration of the life and music of Miles Davis. Also starring: Ewan McGregor. In theaters: April 2, 2016.
That’s it for Trailers of the Week
Now onto our Discussion section
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In our discussion section we talk about anything we’re interested in this week, and this week we’ll begin our discussion with…
Games with the Family
We both have families and sometimes find it hard to find something fun to do. We’re both also gamers. We decided to talk about some of the best games (console, board, etc.) that we’ve played with our families.
· Best Couch Co-Op Games
o Diablo 3
o Borderlands 2
o Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare
o New Super Mario Brothers (Wii)
o Wii Sports
o Lego anything
· Board Games
o Settlers of Catan
o Munchkins
That’s it for us this week. Thanks for listening.
For the Geek Bytes Podcast I’m Ramon Mejia and I’m Edgar Acosta. Now Go Geek out about something.
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Music Credits
"Happy Bee", "Movement Proposition", "Theme for Harold (var.3) ", "Take the Lead"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/