Windows 10 Updates, Instant Translators, and Gmail Redesign

You are tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek. Hello and welcome to Altered Geek. I'm

your host Steve Megatron Phillips and in this

episode I'll be talking tech. That's right, all

kinds of tech. First off, I'm going to jump into

some Windows news. Some of this might be a little

bit old hat to some people. aside from the fact

that Microsoft is killing off Internet Explorer

finally by removing it from future updates of

Windows on certain devices. But they also, in

version 18 .03, Spring Creators Update, one thing

that's coming is the important updates for Windows

Update. It says some, it allows you to pick a

time, remind me later, or restart now instead

of just totally taking over and just doing whatever

it wants. I'm loving that aspect. They also have

some new timeline task view switcher so you can

kind of switch between things you were doing

in case they get closed out. The window settings

got a little bit of a revamp. They've got a new

sound modifier thing. in the control panel. You

can turn on and off startup stuff. They've kind

of redone some of what the task manager did and

kind of ported it to this new layout. Like a

telemetry data to see where your stuff's going.

Windows Defender application guards. They've

gotten how much of your upload download settings.

You can modify some of that for updates. And

then there's also some sharing of files between

Bluetooth and Wi -Fi, which I really am in favor

of. Cortana, I'm not a fan of, even though they

keep renovating it. I don't even use it. I don't

see the use in it on a PC anyway. I tried it

on my phone and it just bogged it down and killed

my battery, so I took it off. And then there's

focus assist, which kind of disables. So like

when you're playing a game, you can turn things

off. When you're duplicating your display, you

can turn certain things off. There's a password

recovery for local accounts. You can disable

sound on Microsoft Edge. There's a lot of different

benefits. You can turn your graphic settings

to like power saving, high performance. You can

kind of mess with the fonts and download new

fonts from a Windows store. So I mean, there's

all kinds of different things in there. And then

I saw something else that kind of came through

my view the other day. It was from in the know.

They posted a video, but there's this... Mojo

Epic has produced a 32 plus languages instant

translator, which is on sale from 249 to 99 dollars

now and It's it's like super small. It's like

the size of a flash drive And it's got a four

-day standby Battery rechargeable 800mah Works

for about five to seven hours two hour to a full

charge But it's it's it's very small it's for

face -to -face communication so you can Bluetooth

it to your phone to use it as a speaker And then

and then also it's like I said, it's got real

-time translation communication barrier free

1 .5 seconds to translate So it's like I said,

super small. It's also got a speaker on the back

though too. Looks like it uses USB, like the

mini plug that you would use on cell phones like

from a couple years ago. But it translates languages

from like Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, Spanish,

Thai, Korean, Japanese, German, French, Italian

or Arabic, Portuguese, Danish, Czech, Iceland,

Croatian. Indonesian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian,

Slavic, Slovenia, Finnish, Swedish, Vietnamese,

Turkish, Greek. You get the picture. The list

goes on. But it translates 32 languages. And

I'm loving this. This is like Star Trek level

tech, and we're getting it today. So you can

also connect the translator and mobile phone,

like I said, through Bluetooth. You can have,

you know, through the app store, you can download

an app that does things. But it uses this device,

it looks like. But can you imagine going to another

country? I mean, yes, you probably should actually

learn a language from another country, but I

think that it's actually really cool that they

have this. But either way, it's awesome. So moving

on to another thing that I saw Google Play Music

will be killed off Yes, so if you're a podcaster,

what does that mean for you? well, it's gonna

be replaced by YouTube remix this year and It's

like a totally different but yet the same I guess

they've been planning this since last July about

Google's plan to merge YouTube and Google Play

Music to create a new streaming service and yep,

they've decided that it will be replaced by the

upcoming YouTube Remix platform which is slated

to launch later this year and existing Play Music

users will be migrated to the new service by

the end of 2018. So a statement from YouTube.

Basically says we've previously announced the

combination of the YouTube music and Google Play

product teams Music is very important to Google.

So it's critical. We have one offering that meets

the music the needs of consumers and artists

Nothing will change for users today and will

probably provide plenty of notice before any

changes are made They said that It's worth noting

that YouTube Remix was expected to launch at

South by Southwest back in March, but Google

denied that it had such plans. So yeah, they're

going to combine YouTube's vast catalog of music

videos and Google Plays Music into an immense

audio library. So we'll see how that plays out.

It'll definitely make it harder for those people

that... want to just listen to the music on YouTube

and don't want to pay any money, so we'll see

how that goes. They may turn that into a subscription

service like YouTube is, like YouTube Red or

whatever. So we'll see what happens there, I

guess, especially with all these different services

having music. I wonder how that's going to affect

podcasters specifically. But I guess we'll just

have to kind of wait and see how it goes. I don't

know. So another YouTube related news. YouTube

Kids app hands the reins to parents rather than

fixing its own mess. YouTube is giving parents

greater control over its Kids app in the attempt

to curtail the complaints that it's not doing

enough. So parents get a better handle on what

their child watches on the kids app Which is

great except for the fact that you shouldn't

have been a problem in the first place Yeah,

so they're saying rumors about this change have

been floating around BuzzFeed kind of reported

it the kids app is now Is up to now has the algorithm

allowing an adult content, which is unfortunate

Majority of the time what I do for my kids and

this seems to help If I'm going to have them

watch a plethora of YouTube, I don't give them

the handle on it. I don't give them control.

It's regular YouTube But it's my wife's YouTube

account and we create a playlist So that when

it's done with video a it goes to video B There

is no in -between the only bad thing is you may

run into the fact that there's ads that may not

be appropriate but I haven't seen that yet. Also,

it helps if your browser has that ability to

block it, aka Firefox. There's a plugin where

you can block YouTube ads and it'll play the

video after like six, seven seconds. But yeah,

it's... I guess it's okay if you're trying to

do this and... Hand over the phone or the device

to your kid and let them control it But uh, I

don't trust technology enough to let them have

that kind of control the kids them I mean and

I'm not gonna sit there and police it. So I'd

rather just not have them watch it Then have

to deal with it so Again, I think the playlist

way is probably the best route to go As a whole

I just don't see any reason, especially with

how connected our kids are these days. I don't

want to be giving them that kind of control.

There's something that's been bothering me. As

you know, I've been experimenting with other

technology. been quite familiar with over the

years like the streaming or just being live in

general but I saw this thing called and I don't

get it maybe somebody would care to enlighten

me but I just don't understand it the appeal

or the the massive amount of people that are

doing it as videos, but what the heck are ASMR?

I know what the acronym stands for, it's like

an audio sensory something response, but I just

don't get the appeal of it, where you're listening

to somebody crinkle paper, whisper in your ear.

Then they jump between your ears like I just

I don't understand it. I find it disturbing I

Don't know why why it's a thing I guess it's

just the next thing that people are doing. I

mean we don't it's bad enough We don't have enough

memes going around anymore like we used to when

the internet was like I don't know like five

years ago six years ago Where we had like a meme

every other week? Until it just became non -existent

I guess this is like the next type of thing.

I just, I don't get it. Another thing I don't

get though, talking about things I don't get,

there's this thing on IFLScience .com and they

show suicide machines that let you experience

death. And it's now available for the public

to try. Like this is as bad as the like the the

video tombstone things like in a sense like well

not as bad this is actually worse, but I Just

I don't get it like they're saying death could

be quick and easy and painless by pressing a

button at least that's what the creator of the

world's first 3d printed suicide machine intent

intends to do They announced plans to debut this

suicide assisting machine Sarko, short for sarcophagus

at Amsterdam's funeral affair. You can try it

out. It's in virtual reality by stepping inside

a full -size depiction of the euthanasia capsule.

It gives the user a glimpse into how death operates

the machine. Potential users for the real deal

will have to fill out an online test to gauge

their mental fitness. If passed, they will then

receive an access code valid for 24 hours once

the code is entered and other confirmation. It

will sit on a generator that uses liquid nitrogen

that, when released, will bring down the level

of oxygen in the capsule to induce hypoxia. The

brain relies on oxygen to function, so when putting

in environments with low levels of oxygen, the

body slowly begins to shut down, resulting in

confusion, increased heart rate, rapid breathing,

shortness of breath, sweating, wheezing. So in

the sarco, however, they say that death will

have style and elegance. Within one minute, the

user loses consciousness. Death shortly follows.

Why the heck would you do this? Like this is

just I don't know like There's better things

we could be doing with with Technology than creating

Death Death machines like Experiencing it. Why

would you want virtual reality death? Why would

you want real death? Like it just doesn't I don't

I don't get it like It just I don't know man

like the more I'm on the internet the more crazy

crap I see Like it's just I Don't know like especially

with how volatile today's world is like like

we really need excuses for people to just mass

off themselves It just confuses me utterly of

why we have these things I just, I don't get

it. Now if you actually want good virtual reality

stuff, they have this article on Inverse about

augmented reality, virtual wearables. They're

talking about like special AR headsets. when

flipped palms side up, three tabs appear on the

hand, or things like that. Like that I'm more

in tune with. Wearables in that sense are more

interesting with the hand tracking, with the

eye movements, with holodeck type technology.

We don't need... this other goofy stuff that

people are coming up with. I don't want to experience

death. I don't know about you, but I'm kind of

not looking forward to death. Just the ceasing

to be, as it were. But yeah, and then the last

bit of tech. Tech news now when I say the C seem

to be I mean like physically being here. I believe

in God I believe in heaven. I I know you know

going there, but I it's the physically stop here

of what I know at this point, so it's it's just

it's totally different like The idea of death

still creeps me out, but so moving on Google

Gmail will get a major redesign soon From what

I can see, it looks cleaner. I don't really know,

like from a screenshot anyway. So they're going

to give a fresh, clean look for Gmail on the

web, easy access to G Suite apps like Calendar

within Gmail, smart reply on the web just like

mobile, ability to snooze emails and choose when

they reappear in your inbox, offline support.

I'm in favor for anything like that. It's just

when you get things like what Microsoft's doing

with with Hotmail or Livemail or Outlook or whatever

it's calling itself this year Or Decade I'm not

a fan of it changing because like they I don't

know I got more Clustered and more of a mess

on their their service whereas Gmail is pretty

clean. I've gotten used to Gmail I used to hate

it because I'm I've always been a hotmail guy.

I hate Yahoo's mail But honestly like my my server

email for Geek cast radio related stuff. It's

very clean very compact. I actually really like

the the new email I've been using it on altered

geek for some time now because it's been on an

alternate server for a while Recently, we just

moved GeekCastRadio, like I mentioned a couple

episodes ago, to 1 &1 for Media Temple. The email

left something to be desired on the old service.

I hated it with a passion. Plus, their spam service

sucked. It's somewhat better on 1 &1 with the

spam, but the interface is much nicer, much easier

to maneuver through. It's more modern, which

is what I like about it. Additionally with that,

there's other pros and cons to moving Geekcast

Radio over, which hopefully I don't have to deal

with anytime soon, but Media Temple, we just

kind of outgrown it. It was not really helping

things much. But I do have a new website that

I'm working on. I've recently completed a lot

of sections. I've completed a lot of renovation.

The menu interface is going to change a lot of

the main page. It's going to be cleaner, faster,

more mobile friendly. The menu is going to be

a lot more capable of handling things that it's

up to this point made entirely too complicated.

When we switched to the Mega Menu design a few

years back and switched, I think it's after version

3 .0 we went to this different style and I've

not been pleased with it since and that's why

the website keeps changing frequently. But I've

learned the ins and outs of this particular theme.

and I really, really, really, really like it

and what it's doing. I think that everyone else

will enjoy the new theme as well. There's a lot

of maneuverability. When we start having events

again, I'll be able to actually put them on the

site. We will have advertising on the site. I

have another method of getting rid of that as

well for certain people. There's a lot going

into the planning, a lot of thought into this

site. I'm not putting any unnecessary work into

it. I'm cleaning out a lot of garbage from way

back in 2009. Completely rebuilding sections

that needed to be rebuilt years ago that I just,

I didn't want to mess with, didn't feel like

messing with, or didn't know how to fix it. But

with this theme I have a lot more capability,

so I'm looking forward to how it turns out. So

anyways, that runs out of my tech episode of

Altered Geek. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

If there's anything you want to comment on, leave

comments in the feedback area or on Twitter at

AlteredGeek or myself at SCP -21. So until next

time, get altered, get geeky with the Altered

Geeks.