Episode 5 – Daredevil and Apple Watches Oh my
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Welcome to another episode of Geek Bytes, the weekly podcast that brings you all the Geek news you need to know. Remember to visit us at geekbytespodcast.com
I’m Ramon Mejia…….I’m Edgar Acosta
This Week we talk about the new Daredevil show, Netflix original content, the newly announced Deus Ex game, A battery that can be charged in less than one minute, the Apple Watch, and HBO Now
In Discussions we’ll talk about getting Edgar to play Hearthstone, my anime preferences and anything else we’ve been up to this week.
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Geek News
Netflix original series Daredevil starts today
Our impressions
o Ramon
§ Great show. I’ve only seen the first episode. Without getting spoilery. I thought it was gritty, and had a great feel for the vigilante nature of the dare devil character. On Netflix so they don’t have the same restrictions on violence, language, or sex. This works wonderfully for Daredevil. There is blood flying in the fight scenes. Get some side boob action briefly.
§ Problem I have with Arrow on the CW is the lack of blood in all that violence. It’s a small thing but it says something about how that channel has bend rules or use trick camera work to make a darker character acceptable to a family audience.
o Edgar-
Netflix announces new shows this week
· The Get Down,
o A rag tag group of teenagers who are wild in the streets of the Bronx in the late 1970’s.
· Special Correspondents,
o The film is written and directed by Ricky Gervais and starring Eric Bana (Deliver Us From Evil, Lone Survivor) will debut worldwide on Netflix next year.
o A modern comedy in which Bana plays a struggling New York based radio journalist, whose arrogance and decadent lifestyle has hindered his career. With his job on the line he fakes front line war reports from the comfort of his hideout above a Spanish restaurant in the heart of Manhattan.
· Montauk
o Set in 1980 Montauk, Long Island, a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family, and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces, and one very strange little girl. Montauk is a love letter to the 80s classics that captivated a generation.
Star Wars available for digital download
· Disney announced earlier this week that they were making all six Star Wars films available, starting Today 4/10, for HD digital download on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, and Xbox Video.
· The six movies each come with bonus features, including documentaries, interviews with production staff, deleted scenes, and closer looks at the films' models and sets.
· We checked and all the downloads run $89.99 for all six films, and $19.99 each.
· http://www.starwars.com/news/the-star-wars-digital-movie-collection-coming-april-10
New Deus Ex game coming for PS4, Xbox One, and PC
· Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sequel to Human Revolution (2011)
o Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a cyberpunk-themed first-person action role-playing stealth video game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix, which also produced the game's CGI sequences
· RPG system- Upgrade skills, weapons, augmentations
· Choose your play style in more open world- Solve missions by brute force, get sneaky, or hack your way though.
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2kd7F3YFz8
Stanford creates battery you can charge in just one minute
· Researchers have created an aluminum based battery that can be built at a fraction of the price of lithium ion and recharges completely in just over a minute.
o Upside: 1) Longer life, can be recharged over 7.5 times longer than lithium ion
o Downside: 1) Currently lower voltage, 2) research project still
· Single-use alkaline batteries have been around for decades. These are the type of batteries you put in your remote control or in your car generally.
· These have been replaced by longer lasting rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries.
o Type you have in your cellphone currently.
o Downside to these types of batteries is that they rarely over heat and explode.
· http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/06/stanfords-battery-charges-in-one-minute/
Apple watch reviews have come out
Apple Watch Apple Watch Sport Apple Watch Edition (gold)
$549-599 $349-399 $10,000-12,000
20 watch bands 10 watch bands 8 models
· All come to sizes 38mm or 42mm.
· Must connect to IPhone for most functions and apps to work.
Common review notes
· Nicest smart watch on the market
· Taptic feedback has great potential.
o Variety of buzzes that tell you different notifications have arrived.
· Fitness tracker is very accurate.
o combines the heartrate monitor on the watch with the other tracking info recorded from the phone
· Apple pay works seamlessly and is very convenient.
o Press fingerprint to phone then swipe watch to pay.
o Done!
· Sluggish performance.
o There is often a delay between actions or accessing apps.
o Apple says an upcoming patch will help with this.
· Most apps are not native to watch.
o Slow and limited info since pulling info from your phone’s version of the app.
· Social issues.
o Every review noted that they kept looking at the watch more to see their notifications.
o People around them commented that they looked bored or had to be somewhere.
http://ww.theverge.com/a/apple-watch-review
HBO Now available on apple devices
· Stream HBO shows live or watch their back catalogue
o Game of Thrones, True Detective, Girl, Last Week Tonight
· $14.99/ month
· Differs from HBO Go in that you don’t have to subscribe to a cable package to use it online
· http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/7/8363811/hbo-now-apple-tv-hands-on
Stories Submitted by the Audience
This article was submitted by one of our patreon subscribers
Madeline Messer, a 6th grader wrote a piece for the Washington post website
· 12-Year-Old Girl Takes the Gaming Industry to Task Over Paying for Female Characters.
· She one day noticed her friend playing an endless running game, like Temple Run, was only able to play as a boy.
· When she researched top 50 endless running apps
o I found that 18 percent had characters whose gender was not identifiable (i.e., potatoes, cats or monkeys).
o Of the apps that did have gender-identifiable characters, 98 percent offered boy characters.
o What shocked me was that only 46 percent offered girl characters.
o Even worse, of these 50 apps, 90 percent offered boy characters for free, while only 15 percent offered girl characters for free.
o Considering that the players of Temple Run, which has been downloaded more than one billion times, are 60 percent female, this system seems ridiculous.
o I found that when an app did sell girl characters, it charged on average $7.53, which is a lot in the world of apps. After all, each of the apps I downloaded only cost an average of $0.26.
o In other words, girl characters cost about 29 times more than the cost of the apps themselves. Disney’s “Temple Run Oz” charges $29.97 to become the only girl character.
For a review of the topics we covered and any of the links in show notes for this episode visit our site geekbytespodcast.com
If you have any comments or suggestions for discussion topics please e-mail us a feedback@geekbytespodcast.com
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Discussion
Hearthstone
Winter and Spring Anime
o Review of our winter Anime recommendations and where you can watch them
o Visit our review page at geekbytespodcast.com
Recommendations
Knights of the Old Republic – An epic RPG, created by Bioware, where you get to play an original story in the star wars expanded universe.
“It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. As the last hope of the Jedi, you must lead a band of freedom fighters in an epic struggle to save the galaxy. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side? Hero or villain, savior or conqueror you must choose wisely as you alone will determine the destiny of the entire galaxy.”-Bioware
You get to play as a Jedi and choose whether to use the light or dark side of the force. Customize your character and choose whether to level up light or dark side powers. The choices you make will alter the story and give you a different endings.
PC Steam- $9.99 (recommendation to play on)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32370/
Apple IOS - $9.99
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wars-knights-old-republic/id611436052?mt=8
Android Google Play - $9.99
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aspyr.swkotor&hl=en
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Thanks for listening folks. Go try something new this week.
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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/