Second Opinion

Overview

Google Trips - Travel Planner - Android Apps on Google Play

Google Trips – Travel planner on the App Store

App for trip planning

Integrates into the rest of the Googleverse

Location info sourced from Google Maps, Wikipedia

Reviews from Google Maps

Tickets, reservations, bookings that are emailed to your Gmail automatically appear

Anything you star in Google Trips appears in Google Maps

Sections in the app

Reservations

Either appear automatically, or you can add them manually

Can send details of reservations to others via email

Things to do

Does well at surfacing attractions you might not be able to find just by searching around on Google Maps

Listed by category - top spots, nearby, on a budget, etc

Each attraction has

Pictures

Average Google Maps rating

Paragraph summary (my “tour guide factoids”)

Map

Business hours

Phone number

Top reviews

Saved places

List of attractions you've starred

Appear in Google Maps

Day plans

User-created strings of attractions

Heavily depends on how popular a destination the area is

You can create your own

App can magically make one for you, with some preferences like morning/afternoon/full day or favoring saved places

Food & Drink

Overview is a custom summary of the area in question

Top Spots shows the highest-rated restaurants from Google Maps

Getting around

Gives info on public transit, taxi/riding services, drivability, and walking/biking

Need to know

Emergency numbers, hospital information

Popular shopping areas

Money - currency and tipping practices

Internet access

Works best if planning a visit to a larger metro area

In smaller areas, all “custom written” stuff is missing, only has Google Maps locations

Does not do well at telling you the prices of attractions

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Overview

Monument Valley 2 on the App Store

Nexus Special #52: WWDC 2017 › The Nexus

ustwo games on Twitter: "Interesting fact: Only 5% of Monument Valley installs on Android are paid for. 40% on iOS. There’s a sneak peak of data!"

Second Opinion #17: Westworld › The Nexus

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Overview

1:14 | Quick Facts

Released July 2014 for $300

A few months before Lollipop and Material Design, so the box has a different look than I have ever used it with

8” 1920x1200 screen

Nvidia Tegra K1

2GB RAM

16GB/32GB in LTE model

Micro SD card slot

Stylus

Refreshed model "Shield K1" released November 2015 without stylus for $200

4:41 | My reasons for buying it

I allowed myself one major purchase per semester in college

I was very intrigued by the Nvidia-specific features

Shadowplay

Game streaming from a PC (and PC games being ported over)

Game streaming from Nvidia servers (I was never going to pay monthly for it though)

Streaming to Twitch

Wireless controller

Mini HDMI

I knew a small tablet would fit into my life, as I had enjoyed the Nexus 7 (both models)

Stock Android meant it was likely to get timely updates, and I would be familiar

I have a large library of Android games from Humble Bundles, but not enough storage on my phone for most of them

14:20 | Hardware

SHIELD Tablet and Nintendo Switch size comparison

Great design for an 8” tablet from 2014

Front-facing speakers double as grips when holding it in landscape

Wedge shape tapers the device from front to back (think Microsoft Surface) making it easier to hold in portrait

Soft plastic back with “SHIELD” written on it is very 2014 Nexus

Stylus

I don’t draw, so I can’t speak to how good it is for that; it does have a chisel tip, and brush strokes widen when you use the wider part

I only recently discovered it has a handwriting-recognition keyboard. I wasn’t wowed enough to keep using it or the Google Handwriting Recognition.

Screen can differentiate the stylus from skin, so you can have it ignore finger/palm

I use the stylus mostly for Hearthstone. It’s nice to be able to see what I’m dragging around on the board.

16GB is a joke. Using an SD card is a hassle

Nexus 9 - Wikipedia

Pixel C - Wikipedia

25:04 | Software

Just the right balance of stock Android with nifty features added on

Many special features are based on specific hardware, like the stylus or optimizations for the Tegra chip.

Some customization options that Android normally hides are totally visible in the system settings.

Android updates

Usually ~4 months after they are released

This is critical, since the versions of Android that made tablets properly useful (multitasking, improved standby battery life, treating SD cards as internal storage) didn't come out until after the tablet was released

They even occasionally do security updates every few months, about a month after it comes out

Has been supported through more major versions of Android than the Nexus 5

32:40 | Performance

Battery

Better than my phone, but pretty meh for a tablet

Improved greatly with Android 6 Marshmallow

Still not as great as an iPad in standby

Don't stream or record gameplay if you care about battery life

Tablet was recalled in July 2015 far a battery issue that could cause fires. Before it was cool.

Responsiveness

This has been roller coaster

Most problems are with "context switching” aka switching apps, loading new info

Problem seems to arise from having storage encrypted

Figured this out when I installed Cyanogen and it ran smoothly until I encrypted it

Unfortunately, formatting the SD card as internal storage causes the same problem

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Index

2:36 | Marvel News

13:45 | Spoiler-free

24:13 | Spoilers

Links

This episode on The RAFT

The RAFT RSS feed (paste the link into your podcast player)

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Episode Index

Overview

The show is very much a modern Fight Club, and it knows it.

Right off the bat, they present the goal of fsociety as erasing all the world’s debt.

Elliot addresses the audience directly as the narrator. Mr Robot grounds this in the show’s world by presenting the audience as Elliot’s imaginary friend.

Late in the season they use a piano cover of Where Is My Mind? which is the song that appears at the end of Fight Club.

Modern not just because of the tech in the show, but also in the fact that it is a TV show with short seasons.

Huge focus on cinematography. Almost every shot has framing that is just slightly off from where you would expect.

[Buck] There was a period in the middle of the season where I felt it was just being edgy for edginess’ sake, and nothing interesting was happening. But then the plot picked back up in the last few episodes.

They got the hacking terms right (Using AES-256, WPA2 being unhackable, 2FA being important, rainbow tables/easy password hacks based off of pet names, etc.)

Will it age well? Pop culture references, security practices?

Are the people following Elliot real or in his head?

Main Lesson From Each Episode

Use randomly generated passwords, kids!

Walk your dog regularly, or it will poop on your bed.

Dinner at your boss’ place will be awkward as heck.

Don't do drugs!

Social engineering is the most powerful hacking.

Don’t pick up thumb drives from the parking lot and plug them into your work computer (or any computer).

Be careful when seducing people not to get carried away.

Time is money.

Stealing from pricks is okay!

If you need to hide your fingerprints, just throw a big party at your place!

Buck's Favorite Lines

Ollie: “I just feel like it's been really awkward between us.”

Elliot: “I'm okay with it being awkward between us.”

Tyrell: “Join me for lunch?”

Eliot: “Sure. I eat lunch.”

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Where is My Mind piano cover by Maxence Cyrin, used here for illustrative purposes.

1.0_8-whatssyourask.m4p from the Mr. Robot soundtrack, used here for illustrative purposes.

00:01:43 | Spoiler-free

Blend of science-fiction and western

Artificial Intelligence

Free-for all world

What will people do when there are basically no consequences?

Based loosely on the movie from 1973

Lisa Joy - IMDb

Jonathan Nolan - IMDb

Revamped by Jonathan Nolan (of Christopher Nolan fame) and Lisa Joy

Story editor: Charles Yu (of Sorry Please Thank You and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe fame)

Charles Yu - Wikipedia

00:11:32 | Spoilers!

View page source for show notes from the spoiler section.

Attributions

Our Theme Song: Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Songs from the Westworld Soundtrack used in this episode for illustrative purposes:

This World

Sweetwater

House of the Rising Sun

Back to Black

Main Title Theme - Westworld

Reverie

Freeze All Motor Functions

Time for another Star Wars movie review! You know what that means: Ian Buck is never going to stop talking. Ian Decker and Tanushri Buck manage to get in a few words here and there.

00:01:40 | Spoiler-free

00:25:45 | Spoilers! View page source for show notes

Attributions

This episode of Second Opinion has a Fringe episode. You should really listen to The Fringe #416: SO #16 — I Need to Read More!

Listen to more at The Nexus and follow us on Twitter and Google+ for our latest episodes and news.

00:01:40 | Spoiler-free

Plot summary (opening crawl of A New Hope)

Differences from other Star Wars movies

Movie title

No opening crawl

Soundtrack very different

Lower-third every time we switch planets

They went to a lot of effort to keep it consistent with A New Hope

Computers very physical

Great hearing classic sound effects like X-wing lasers!

Costuming

Great acting, story, dialogue

Very snarky, esp K-2SO

Really cool cast!

On the other hand, almost none of them had flaws. Or substance. Couldn't even remember their names.

Visual effects great, maybe a little overdone with smoke and lens flare

TIE airplanes, AT-ACT - funny seeing new tech in this movie when ep 7 had none

Scene with Death Star shadow great at conveying scale

00:25:45 | Spoilers! View page source for show notes

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Other headphone reviews:

Links

Georgia 🖇 on Twitter: "Theft proof your Apple Airpods https://t.co/FW495FdevL"

SRS-X5 | Wireless Speakers & Speaker Docks | Sony US

Anker SoundBuds Wireless Headphones

SOL REPUBLIC Shadow Wireless In-Ear Headphones

Apple's AirPods may be the best Bluetooth earbuds for Android | Android Central

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor - Organic (electric edit)

Despite the fact that not all services are available on it yet, Ian R Buck and Ryan Rampersad wanted to give you an idea of whether or not the Google Home would make a good holiday gift.

Overview

Attributions

This episode of Second Opinion has a Fringe episode. You should really listen to The Fringe #412: SO #14 — Plugin Hell!

Listen to more at The Nexus and follow us on Twitter and Google+ for our latest episodes and news.