Captain’s log: Stardate 68927.1

We have made contact with a strange subset of the species homo sapiens. They seem to be consumed with all things technological. At first we feared that they were a newly assimilated unit of the Borg collective. Thankfully we’ve determined that is not the case — they are simply Citizens of Tech!

Today on the show: unicorns watching your every move, reducing your electricity consumption, bikes, E3 bombshells, tiny robotic lassos and more.

So buckle into your Aluminum Falcon and prepare to jump to hyper-speed as we dive into this week’s edition of Citizens of Tech!

Present

Unicorns – New Livestream App Lets Strangers Watch You Use Your Phone

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/unicorns-app/

* Called Unicorns

* Seriously

* Intended audience is developers, game demos / walkthroughs / “let’s play” / anyone that needs to give a presentation of an app on a phone.

* Accidental “overshare” of information is a big concern. PINs, email contents / contacts / etc.

* “Think about what Twitch did for games that nobody seemingly thought others would watch,” says Owen Williams, who writes for The Next Web.

* Ethan’s notes.

* Periscope lets you livecast from your phone. Seems to have lots of buzz with the young people.

* Perch.co lets you use your tablet as a remote window into coworkers’ spaces. Helpful for distributed companies.

Saving Electricity

* From a high over 40Kwh per day to under 20Kwh per day

* LED Bulbs

* Conservative light usage (natural light FTW)

* Lowered timer for landscape lighting

* Monitors from 3 to 1

* Shut down equipment in lab rack

* Cut back on laundry loads

* Cut back on dishwasher loads, set to “smart wash” setting with no heated drying

* Removed small refrigerator that was seeing little use

* Hard to cut back

* Electric stove

* Next steps

* More equipment shut downs in rack

* Reviewing everything that’s plugged in (the tiny electrical thieves)

* Cutting back on dryer use

Adjusting a bicycle front derailleur: 4 tweaks

* Barrel adjustor

* Cable tension

* Upper limit screw

* Lower limit screw

Big Announcements from the E3 Conference:

* XBox One backward compatibility with Xbox 360 (Via emulation) !!

* Microsoft Hololens; Halo and Minecraft

* Hololens is *not* Oculus or HTC Vive – Not “VR”

* Hololens *is* “AR” – augmented reality

* New Doom

* Star Wars: Battlefront

* Gears of War 4

* Mass Effect: Andromeda – 2016

* Mirror’s Edge – 2016 (2008 Original – 8 years later)

* Dark Souls 3

* Fallout 4 – Boston!!

* Just Cause 3

* Kingdom Hearts 3

* Final Fantasy 7 Remake: 18 Years later (Wow, that makes me feel old!)

* The Last Guardian: Part 3 of the Trilogy – Ico (2001), Shadow of the Colossus (2006)

Deathwatch

* Goodbye, ello.

TIL

TIL the inventor of the heart stent approached numerous companies for funding and was rejected. It was funded by the owner of Fuddrucker’s, whom he met by chance on a golf course.

Past

The Computer History Museum

1401 N Shoreline Blvd.

Mountain View, CA 94043

http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/

Future

Tiny Robotic Tentacles Can Lasso An Ant

http://www.popularmechanics.