YATS 87: The HTC Troll

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“Ant has larger pockets than you and I.”

Welcome to YetAnotherTechShow.com, or as we call it, YATS. Thanks for coming to check out our site and show. This is the weekly technology podcast where we sit and discuss the latest interesting and entertaining tech stories. I’m Ant Pruitt and this week the panel consists of myself, producer Mat Lee and Larry Press. Be sure to click on our names here to follow our social connections. After you do that, come back here, click “play” at the top of the page and follow along with this week’s show notes.

Image Credit: Ant Pruitt

Image Credit: Ant Pruitt

First we get into some Mobile World Congress coverage from our colleague at aNewDomain. Mat liked the Yota Phone. We also get into the Black Phone, the Ubuntu Phone and of course the Samsung Galaxy S5. I mentioned picking up a new phone. I have the 5.9’’ HTC One Max.  Wearable tech was big at MWC2014 as well. Basically wearable tech tracking your health stats.

Image Credit: HTC

Image Credit: HTC

Speaking of HTC, the mobile device manufacturer served up some troll pie to Samsung on Twitter. With all of the hoopla around the Samsung Galaxy S5 announcement, HTC pulled out the troll skills and tweeted a few entertaining images aimed at Samsung.

Recently, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was slated to be on a US stamp. All good, right? Well the concern is the geek culture wanting to give Steve Wozniak credit. According to a discussion Mr. Wozniak held with Gina Smith, the engineer was forgotten when it came down to the stamp decision. What are you thoughts? Gina’s discussion and piece was quite interesting on aNewDomain.

Larry rehashed our discussion about Google Fiber expanding to nine additional metro areas in the US. His blog post got into more about the pressure from the cable companies in this battle. We also get into the Netflix/Comcast deal.

Remember Watson? You know, it’s the computer that totally whooped up on the best of the best in Jeopardy. Now IBM wants to power up your mobile apps with a Watson API. This discussion made us wonder what else could this mean for IBM as well as Google. It’s Skynet versus Skynet. Looks like Watson could be a new service to the enterprise with API implementation.

Image Credit: NBC News

Image Credit: NBC News

Have you jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon? If so, be careful as this crypto currency continues to be a volatile one. Here in the US we’re now at a point of senators wanting the currency banned. Bitcoin has now been labeled as “speculative gambling.” Seriously? Isn’t that what some consider to be the New York Stock Exchange? Don’t worry, dogecoin is on the scene.

As I mentioned in a previous paragraph, we talked about the “black phone” from Boeing. This phone is the phone to be uber secure. Down to encryption and self-destructing hardware. So all of you tinfoil hat wearers can get in line for one of these bad boys. Mat explains more about how it secures your data and hardware. The catch, conversations aren’t secured if the other caller is on a non-secured phone.

cubainternet

Lastly, Larry shares some pretty “amazing” broadband rates from Cuba. How about spending a couple thousand bucks to watch a movie on Netflix. It’s unfortunate what some people have to pay for a decent internet connection. I’m definitely thankful for my rates.

That’s it for YATS this week, y’all. Thank you for listening and sharing with others each week. Your support truly means a lot. Be sure to subscribe to our content and tell others to subscribe and comment. Don’t forget the social connections and our Google+ community. We shall see you all next week!

Check out the hangout video below. If you want to watch us live, check out YATS tv Wednesday nights.