Episode 44 – Star Wars Succeeds Star Trek Sues

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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 the Comcast broadband breakthrough, the Steam Christmas Sale Hack, CBS sue Star Trek fan film, Stars Wars breaks records, Marvel gets rights back to famous Villain, ‘Indiana Jones 5’, Trailers of the Week and More…

In our Discussion section we talk about…Our review of the movie Sisters, Our top 10 movies this year, and movie we are going to see in 2016.

Now let’s Begin our show with Geek News

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Geek News

 Comcast announces breakthrough in High Speed

Comcast announced this week that it has successfully tested the world's first DOCSIS 3.1 modem in Philadelphia.

This means Comcast has figured out how to use its existing cable lines to deliver super-fast gigabit internet speeds without having to do major work on its current infrastructure. 

Gigabit internet is broadband that delivers download speeds of 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps) or better. That's at least 10 times faster than what you get today from your cable modem.

Usually, gigabit internet requires internet providers to install new fiber lines in the cities they serve. It's an expensive, lengthy process, and cable companies aren't always incentivized to invest that much in the technology.

But Comcast's technology appears to be more promising since a lot of the upgrades can be done with software enhancements to its existing infrastructure. It also means Comcast will be able to offer gigabit internet to its customers a lot sooner than other cable companies can.

Comcast says it'll start testing the new technology in more homes in 2016 and expand from there.

http://www.techinsider.io/comcast-activates-first-docsis-3-1-2015-12

Steam Christmas Sale Hack

After almost a week of silence, Valve has issued an apology for the leak of private user information on Steam that took place just prior to Christmas, along with an explanation of what went wrong. The problem, which affected approximately 34,000 users, was the result of a caching error that arose out of a denial of service attack against Steam.

The leaked information varied by page request but included users' billing address, the last four digits of Steam Guard phone numbers, purchase history, the last two digits of credit card numbers, and/or email addresses. Full credit card numbers, passwords, or “enough data to allow logging in as or completing a transaction as another user” were not included among the erroneous cache requests, and users who weren't browsing the Steam store during that specific time frame were not affected.

Valve said it is continuing to work with the involved web caching partner to identify users impacted by the leak and improve its processes to ensure this doesn't happen again. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-apologizes-for-steams-troubled-christmas/

CBS sues makers of crowdfunded Star Trek fan film

CBS, the network that launched the franchise in 1966, is suing the makers of a crowdfunded Star Trek fan film for ripping off its intellectual property.

The upcoming Axanar, which will tell the story of legendary Starfleet captain—and Captain Kirk’s hero—Garth of Izar, raised more than a million dollars in two successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns. It’s expected to begin production in January, and looks pretty slick in their short film posted on YouTube to support its fundraising efforts (https://youtu.be/1W1_8IV8uhA )

Those plans might have to be put on hold, though, as CBS and Paramount Pictures, producers of Star Trek: Beyond, have sued Axanar’s production company and its executive producer/co-writer Alec Peters in federal court. The plaintiffs argue that the Axanar shorts and planned feature “infringe plaintiffs’ works by using innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species and themes.” (Although CBS and Paramount have allowed Star Trek fan fiction and even amateur fan series to exist for decades.

http://www.avclub.com/article/cbs-bites-itself-ass-sues-makers-crowdfunded-star--230186

Stars Wars breaks records

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been in theaters for just under two weeks, but the film has already entered the pantheon of the highest-grossing films of all time. Taking the 10th-place slot, The Force Awakens has knocked Minions off the charts with an astounding $1.16 billion intake worldwide.

The other records broken: the biggest Thursday preview night ever; biggest opening weekend; biggest Monday; biggest Tuesday; biggest second weekend at the box office; and fastest film to hit $1 billion.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/29/10684680/star-wars-the-force-awakens-joins-top-10-highest-grossing-films-ever

Marvel gets rights back to famous Villain

The rights to the Marvel Comics villain Taskmaster have been over at 20th Century Fox for some time now, but according to ComicBook.com, the rights have recently reverted back to Marvel Studios. 20th Century Fox tried to make a new Daredevil film that would have had Taskmaster as the villain but when the film fell through the rights to Taskmaster went back to Marvel. Taskmaster has played both hero and villain roles in the comic universe and faced off against every hero you can think of. His power is Photographic Reflexes, or the ability to copy any physical move he sees.

http://geektyrant.com/news/marvel-studios-got-the-rights-back-for-the-villain-taskmaster

‘Indiana Jones 5’ Is Coming Promises Disney CEO

It had been 19 years between 1989's Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade and 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and many fans have wondered if it will be that long before Indiana Jones 5 finally hits theaters. Just one year after Disney acquired George Lucas' LucasFilm for $4 billion in 2012, the studio also picked up the Indiana Jones franchise rights from Paramount, which offered fans hope that Indiana Jones 5 may still see the light of day. Disney CEO Robert A. Iger recently appeared on Bloomberg Go, where he confirmed that Indiana Jones 5 is in fact coming, but, unfortunately, he wouldn't say when.

http://movieweb.com/indiana-jones-5-disney-ceo-bob-iger/

That’s it for Geek News

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…

Lazer Team

Another crowd funded movie project from Rooster Teeth. In Lazer Team, residents of earth receive a coded message from outer space telling them that they are not alone and the galaxy is a dangerous place. Limited release 27th  January 2016.

https://youtu.be/C_Iu9JYO32c

Zootopia

In the animal city of Zootopia, a fast-talking fox who's trying to make it big goes on the run when he's framed for a crime he didn't commit. Zootopia's top cop, a self-righteous rabbit, is hot on his tail, but when both become targets of a conspiracy, they're forced to team up and discover even natural enemies can become best friends.

Release date: March 4, 2016 (USA)

https://youtu.be/lvEzTjuM81A

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…

Our review of Sisters

Top 10 movies of 2015

http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/30/10688378/10-best-movies-of-2015

Ramon’s List: 1) The Force Awakens, 2) Ant Man, 3) The Martian, 4) Ex Machina, 5) Inside Out, 6) Jurassic World, 7) Chappie, 8) Mad Max: Fury Road

Upcoming movies of 2016

 http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/-/2016

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. 4

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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/