Welcome to Between the Bytes. I’m Arash Bakhshandehpour. And I’m Gary Arnold. This week we’re going to be giving you guys updates on Facebook Watch, the upcoming solar eclipse and some crazy new news in the in the eSports world.
To kick off this week’s news we have an announcement from Facebook. Facebook is launching a new tab in both the mobile and desktop version. This tab is called “Watch” and you probably guess it’s about watching videos. Facebook is trying to compete more and more with YouTube and so now they’re offering original content in their in their platform. So you’ll be able to go to that tab soon and be able to watch some of your favorite stars from TV and other places do unique and original shows on Facebook. There’ll be some cooking shows, there’s some science related shows, Discovery shows and also just drama. You’ll be able to watch TV on Facebook. That’s awesome, it looks like they’re trying to stream live sports as well. They’re going to compete with television as well. Yeah, they’ll have MLB games once a week.
As many of you are aware, there is a solar eclipse coming up on August 21st it will be starting at 9 a.m. in Oregon and working its way in view by 4:00 p.m. in South Carolina. When viewing, make sure you are watching with special viewing glasses you don’t want to damage your eyes. Also, be prepared, the towns that are hosting the Eclipse where the Eclipse would that be passing through are going to be packed, so plan ahead if you haven’t already. Other areas in the country will also have great viewing.
Microsoft made an announcement this week, they’re launching some new applications for office 365 business. So if you subscribe to the business premium version of Office 365 you’ll have a couple new features available. One is called Connections, that allows you to send emails. It’s an email marketing software built-in with Microsoft. The other one is called Listings which allows you to publish your business information on various sites across the internet. The last one is Invoicing which allows you to obviously send and receive invoices and payments and process it all within the Microsoft ecosystem and Office 365 accounts. So something to look forward to. We’ve featured Microsoft office multiple times on Between the Bytes
Next, a 1 billion dollar side project including Elon Musk called OpenAI played some professional eSports gamers in Dota 2 and beat them. In the first match it beat the gamer in ten minutes in the second the gamer resigned and come match three the gamer refused to play. Something very cool about the AI is that it doesn’t learn by playing lesser competitors or stronger competitors it actually plays itself to get smarter. It developed its gaming tactic by literally playing itself a thousand lifetimes, an equal competitor every single time and improved over time. I’m speechless, I mean what are we going to do? We just keep letting these artificial intelligences get smarter, the inevitable is going to happen. And it literally beat the best player that we have in the world. The gamer said when he played it, it was a mix of both human and something else.
The last bit of news we have is from SpaceX. SpaceX recently launched their Falcon 9 rocket for the 14th time this year. They had a successful launch and of course re-landing which is one of the specialties of the rocket. The launch was to head to the International Space Station. They’re delivering over 6,400 pounds of cargo and a load to resupply and help the international space station. Congratulations to them and I’m sure we will see more launches this year. We’re big fans with everything Elon Musk here on Between the Bytes.
Before we head over to our product insider we wanted to let you know about what’s coming up. Our featured guest is going to be something a little different, a little special. Stay tuned it’s going to be exciting we’re going on the road with one of our technicians.
This week’s Product Insider is another app that we wanted to showcase to you. This app is a really easy way to invest it’s called Robin Hood free stock trading. With Robin Hood, you connect your bank account and you can instantly trade any type of stock. It allows you to search stocks of the ones that you find interesting or that you want to invest in and then you can then invest your money and get shares into whatever socks that you’re looking at. It’s completely secure and can have multi-factor authentication. You can know what markets open and when they close. It also has an app for Apple Watch, it allows you to track it on the go. You can see trends in the market both recently and over time so that you can make great decisions. It’s a super easy way to get into investing. You can download it now on Android and Apple.
This week’s featured guest on Between the Bytes is our very own KC Kuhns, a Tier III technician here at Executech.
BtB: How are you doing Casey?
Kuhns: I’m good man, how are you?
BtB: Good, thanks for letting us jump in on a on a ride with you today. So tell us kind of your background how did you get into IT and then let’s look after that get a little more into the day and a life of a tech.
Kuhns: Yeah of course. So I’ve been doing IT for a couple of years now. I used to support a law firm downtown. I’ve been doing it forever with just with my friends kind of at my house on just little personal projects and then I got into it professional environment. Ever since then it’s been awesome.
BtB: What are some trends are you are noticing right now in your realm? What are some tips you have for businesses and what kind of things can they do?
Kuhns: I think the biggest thing to tell is something we bring up a lot is the integrity of back up. Companies are told that they have backup and but we take it a step further make sure that we verify this backup and can recover them consistently I think that super important because if your backup are there but you can’t recover them then that’s a problem.
BtB: KC one more thing we like to ask is to get a little better picture of who you are what you like. Are there any books, movies, podcast, shows or anything that you’re listening to or reading right now?
Kuhns: Not much into books or anything like that. We’ve been watching Game of Thrones and getting into the Ozarks. Trying to catch up on my Netflix.
BtB: We’re on our way to clean your clients right now you mind giving us kind of a rundown of what it looks like with this client?
Kuhns: Yeah, it’s Principle Funding Group. We run a moderately complicated Network .
BtB: Thank You KC
Kuhns: So when I first get here I always go back check in with everybody and make sure they know we’re here and present. I’ll look over backups and then I’ll check the hardware and make sure the servers are functioning the way they should and make sure the Internet’s working the way that it should.
This is their conference room. We just finished setting this up. They have developers over in Pakistan so we actually set them up with a webcam and some online software where they can Skype with their developers and have meetings and things like that. It just makes it a little bit more efficient.
We’re back at the studio from that field trip. We want to give a shout out to Principle Funding Group for letting us come over to their office and see their great space and meet their people. It was a lot of fun and they have a beautiful facility. Be sure to check them out.
This week’s tech tip on Between the Bytes is a website called moviepass.com. They used to offer $49/month subscription, they’ve actually recently lowered it to $10/month. The idea and the concept of what they do is they have relationships with a network of 95% of the theaters throughout the United States where you pay $10 per month with movie pass and as long as you reserved your movie seats and your tickets within 24 hours prior to the film you have a seat. Steal of a deal. I see six seven movies a month can save about $60.
Arash, what’s your favorite super hero? Batman.
What’s yours? Captain America. Okay okay he’s cool, that’s cool. Alexa, who’s your favorite superhero? Wonder Woman is pretty amazing I think I’m going to have to choose her.
Hey Alexa who’s better Batman or Superman? I don’t know. Sounds right. The world may never know may never know.
Thanks for watching Between the Bytes. Don’t forget to subscribe, like and let us know if there’s anything else you’d like to cover in coming weeks and we’ll catch you next week.
