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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss an artificial brain chip for devices, Netflix’s continue watching section, Twitter’s audio record feature, Microsoft closing down their gaming streaming platform, end to end encryption good news, Segway ending production of their iconic product, social watch parties, Olympus leaving the camera business, Flash player’s retirement, a Twitter leak, and more.
Gian in Winter Park, Florida listens online and is calling via the App and asked: “Given the rise of many streaming apps and companies, we’re starting to see a whole bunch of them pop up. Given how many there are, do you feel there is a comparison to be made with the dot com bubble and how when that crashed, many companies went out of business because of that? What are your thoughts?”
Gian, Quibi is probably feeling that way considering how their rollout has been.
The saving grace of the many streaming services seems to be that so far they don’t have a minimum commitment, which is something that will probably change as more of them get into what is a fairly limited field. How many people do you know that kept their HBO streaming subscription after Game of Thrones ended?
Having said that, the market is bloated and it’s hard to imagine that piracy won’t start to creep back up soon.
No one really wants to pay a full subscription for a single show they’re interested in and having to pay 4 to 4 different services to watch exactly 4 shows isn’t too appealing either.
For a while they each thought that they could set themselves apart by making their own content but, realistically, most of the content they make is not good. They sometimes hit upon a good show, but most of what they put out is not interesting to most subscribers and they may start to lose them as they realize that they’re not using these services that looked cheap, before signing up for 10 of them at the same time.
Lee in Windsor, Ontario listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “I have an iPad but use this “clunker” computer with windows xp. It says Google Chrome updates cant be received because of this. Not concerned about much stuff because I only use this for home fun and not for banking. Just saying hi to family in florida, etc…. Should i be concerned when something pops up sying I have to replace the browser? I really don’t want to pay for anything and have been OK for a long time.”
Well Lee, it’s not good, you’re missing security updates and you’re likely far more vulnerable than users on supported systems.
Having said that, Microsoft stopped supporting XP in 2014 and Google dropped Chrome support for XP in 2016, so your situation is probably not about to change. You’re not in a great place, but you haven’t been for a while.
If you’re going to continue to use an operating system that old, you won’t find many if any browsers that still support it, having said that, Microsoft not supporting it either is probably a bigger problem.
With something that’s been out of date for so long you will probably notice that many parts of the modern internet won’t work for you either, and more will start to fail as time goes by.
You may want to think about buying a cheap replacement for that computer when you can, but you’ve been on an unsupported system for a long time already.
Son in Houston, Texas listens to the podcast and asked: “I have a question about 3D printing. What is it, how does it work and which brands are affordable?”
Son, 3D printers are big bulky boxes that use typically ABS plastic, sometimes other materials, to make objects from 3D models.
Some people go through the trouble of designing their own models, but most people just download a 3D model from a website and print it.
Since you don’t seem to be very familiar with them, there are a few things you should know about how they work in the real world.
You’ll get a plastic model that you’ll have to sand down to make it look good, they put out fairly rough around the edges products.
They take a very, very long time to print. A single smallish model can easily take hours.
They are mostly used by people who want specific custom parts for a project, for example, if you build projects with microcomputers like Raspberry Pis and want a specifically sized and shaped box, or if you build robots and want specific parts that will interlock in a unique way.
In terms of price – a Monoprice Mini Delta is probably about as cheap as you can get for $150, but it’s also… mini. So you’ll be limited in what you can use it for.
Prices are all over the map though, for example, an Anycubic Mega will cost you around $700 while a Formlabs Form 3B will cost you over $5000. What you plan to do with it is a big part of choosing what to buy.
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