Getting Started With Fantasy Football

I am going on my fourth year of Fantasy Football, last year I played in two separate leagues and finished first in one league, second place in the other and in both leagues I auto-drafted my team(let the computer do my drafting for me). I got into fantasy football for multiple reasons, it gave me a chance to further the football season beyond just watching the games; gave me a chance to beat friends and coworkers at fantasy football plus it gave me a chance to win money from them as well. One recurring thing that I hear from a lot of people when I bring up fantasy football is that they do not watch football so they would lose, here I will introduce you to fantasy football and throughout the upcoming season I will make fantasy football posts a weekly occurrence.

First you will either need to join or start a league, if you are just now getting into fantasy football then I would recommend joining an existing league being as nobody wants a new person as their league's commissioner. A commissioner is the person that not only sets up the league, they may also be needed to uphold or deny potential trades based on fairness so you can see how a person that is inexperienced with the sport can not be ideal for this position. ESPN, NFL and Yahoo are all potential sites that you could set up a league, I have experience with all of them though I prefer ESPN. It is also possible to join a public Fantasy Football League with people you do not know, I would ask that it is clearly described how money for the league would be handled before the season even starts, and I personally would not play unless money is involved.

I play in a 10 man league as well as a 12 man league, monetarily speaking, if everyone pays $100 in a 12 man league then you could pay $100 for a chance at up to $1100 though it's rare that the entire prize goes to the first player. In my 12 man league the buy-in is only $50 and the prizes are divided as $375 for first place, $175 for second place while third place earns they $50 buy-in back. In my 10 man league where the buy-in is $100 and I am commissioner, I made it so first place is awarded $600 while second earns $300 and the remaining $100 was issued to the "Aaron Hernandez Award Winner"(the first individual player arrested on the season) for Dwayne Bowe. Again, for me I only play fantasy football because of the fact that I can play against, and win money from my friends and coworkers.

You will need a strong commissioner, one that will enforce full payments are received from the league's participants before the start of the season or else that team is removed from the league. In a former league we had a very new commissioner and when playoffs rolled around half of the league had yet to pay, those that did not make the playoffs refused to pay and payouts suffered because of it. You will of course have people that try to take advantage of newer players, offer you a trade of your Peyton Manning(last years top fantasy player) for 2-3 mediocre players and try to say that you are getting the better end of the deal because you are getting more in return, a good commissioner will veto that trade without hesitation. Fantasy Football, at least the way I play and have described how to play, can be a very fun and rewarding experience that lasts beyond the Fantasy Football season, I like to let the others know what I have spent their money on.

Links of the Week, Roadtrip Edition

I am still en route so this will be a brief update, I will make up for it in the upcoming week.

• An extremely limited release game could be anything but.
• Verizon employees profit from your stolen phones.
• The MPAA targets a subreddit for takedown.
• Net Neutrality Protestors arrested at Google HQ.
• Amazon Drones shot down by FAA.

I will try to update more later, kind of difficult to do without my laptop. This week I try to fill a week of content with Knoxville's Technology scene.

Finding Tech Abroad: Exploring Technology in Knoxville, TN

I will be out of the Miami area for the next week but I will be looking for technology in Knoxville, TN. LOPSA East Tennessee will be hosting their ARM Revolution this coming Tuesday, July 1st which I plan on attending. Taken from their page, the ARM Revolution is described as:

"ARM, as of 2013, is the most widely used 32-bit instruction set
architecture, and is used approximately 95% of all smartphones. After
some brief comments on the history ARM and the differences between ARM
and x86 architecture, I’ll talk about current ARM developments and
some cool projects using ARM-based CPUs.

If you have an ARM project you have built or are working on
(RaspberryPi, Arduino ARM, or any other ARM-based system), bring it
along so we can do a bit of show and tell. I will be bringing a couple
of RaspberryPis as well as the usual mobile platform suspects."

Hopefully I will have a write-up from the event available on Wednesday and I look forward to interviewing a few Raspberry Pi inventor/developers. I will also be interviewing one of the gentlemen behind the 2014 Knoxville 24 Hour Film Festival award winner for Best Comedy, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film. En route back to Miami I am hoping to have a chance to explore technology along the way. It looks like I will officially have a logo within the next week, so that puts me even closer to getting the .com running, hopefully within the next two weeks. Again, Thank You to everyone for the continued support worldwide, I am hoping for big things moving forward. 

What Is Hacking?

Despite what teenage girls or mothers on Facebook would have you believe, hacking is not accessing a computer after someone neglected to log out from it. A true hacker would never need you to forget to log out of your account nor would they need to even be at your location. They would get your account information remotely without any assistance from you at all. A hacker would also not need to phish for your information, phishing is a type of scam where a person pretends to be someone they are not to get your information, here is a good example.

The term hack is getting dangerously close to generic use as of late, there are "lifehacks", "kitchenhacks"...typically anything that makes an existing tasks even remotely faster is now considered a hack. The new generalization of hack and hacking takes away from the true hackers, and these are people that know far more about computers than you ever could. Commonly accepted uses of the term hacker taken from Wiki are:

•  People committed to computer security, primarily concerns those who work debugging or fixing security problems (White hats), differentiate from the morally ambiguous Grey hats and the illegal computer criminals, who perform unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats).
• A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as "[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular."
• The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (video games, software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen and created the personal computing industry.

We will focus on the computer security defined hacker here. These hackers will examine and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network, typically motivated by profit, protest, challenge or personal enjoyment. Hackers are essentially experts in computer or network security. Recent examples of websites actually being hacked are:

• State of Montana notifies 1.3 million patients of breach to Department of Public Health and Human Services server.
• Popular messaging app Yo gets breached.

PC World also recently released an informative map that shows in real time what it looks like when the web is hacked. Despite the bastardization of the term hacker, it is best that you do know what you are dealing with when encountering actually being hacked.

Division in the Dogecoin Community

In the past week the normally fun loving /r/Dogecoin community has been at odds with one another over a trademark dispute. The dispute seems to have mostly settled for now but it clearly will have lasting ramifications that have yet to be determined.

Ultra Pro, a company most widely known for creating protective cases for collectibles, files a trademark application on Doge stating they are doing so to protect themselves from potentially being sued in the future for not having a trademark on merchandise they create utilizing the meme. This leads to immediate and very vocal backlash against Ultra Pro courtesy of the /r/Dogecoin community.

Following the trademark announcement by Ultra Pro, Moolah tweets this, which is then posted onto r/dogecoin. Moolah releases a statement that they are merely filing a notice of opposition and that nobody, including them, should hold a trademark on Doge.

Dogecoin co-creator, and owner of Dogecoin.com, Jackson Palmer expresses his belief that Moolah is intending to take the trademark for themselves as well as his support for Ultra Pro in acquiring the trademark for free public use. Jackson makes a post saying that he was misled by Moolah's ambiguous wording and decides to leave the community.

Ultra Pro makes an AMA on /r/dogecoin. They state that they still have no intention of using the trademark against anyone, and they are open to Moolah's idea of filing the notice of opposition to make sure NO ONE can have the trademark, as (allegedly) the original trademark application was just for Ultra's self-defense. However, until a notice of opposition is completed, Ultra is continuing to wait on the original application to protect themselves.

In the aftermath of this situation, original Dogecoin developer Billy Markus makes a post saying that the entire situation is stupid tells the /r/dogecoin community that it needs to stay silly. Ultra Pro is still awaiting on its trademark while Moolah is still waiting on their notice of opposition. Jackson Palmer tweets that he has left the /r/dogecoin community but not Dogecoin.

Dr. Austin Fowler Explains Quantum Computing

I recently had a request to explain quantum computing is, being as I did not know enough about the subject to answer it myself, I had an opportunity to ask Dr. Austin Fowler. Dr. Fowler is a quantum computing researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara and an honorary researcher at The University of Melbourne who has a background in computer engineering, computer science, mathematics, and physics.

What exactly is quantum computing?

"A different type of computer that given n quantum bits can store any combination of the 2ⁿ possible bitstrings simultaneously."

How new is the technology?

"Arguably the field of quantum computing was born in 1994, with the publication of Shor's efficient factoring algorithm."

What can it be used for?

"Many things, see http://math.nist.gov/quantum/zoo/"

How can I differentiate between a computer, a digital computer and a quantum computer?

"The former is cheap and widely available, you will only find prototypes of the latter in research laboratories. The only exception is the D-Wave machine, which occupies a small room and retails for approximately $15 million."

Would I have to study a particular programming language to develop digital computers?

"A good programmer can easily switch to a new language. You want to be good at programming, and this should not be considered a language specific goal."

Would a person with a basic knowledge of several languages be at a disadvantage against someone that specializes in one?

"More languages should be advantageous. More techniques. More ways of thinking."

You have a quadruple major and PhD, would this field but out of range for a person wanting to break in but they are far from having a doctorate?

"One of my students is 16 and in high school. Primarily you need to be smart and want to do this kind of work. And you need to team up with someone that has sufficiently broad background to guide you to problems that can be sold with your current background."

According to TIME Magazine, granted this was months ago, a D-Wave costs at least $10 Million dollars so who needs/could afford a quantum computer?

"Scientists. Modern classical supercomputers cost hundreds of millions of dollars. People still buy them."

How To Make Money Blogging: With Professional Blogger David Peralty

David Peralty was a full-time blogger for five years and created a lot of content about WordPress. In his own words "During my five year career writing online, I published more than 30,000 blog posts using my own name and various pseudonyms. I was part of over 100 podcast episodes. I felt very fortunate doing it all, and while I experienced some horrible burnout from some of my later projects, I still look back on my time working for Jacob Gower on Blogging Pro as some of the best times of my life." You can follow David at his personal site http://peralty.com.

What got you into blogging, is it something you set out to do or did it fall into your lap?

"Blogging wasn’t what I expected to do with my career, and no one that I knew was blogging at the time, and other than Darren Rowse, I hadn’t heard of anyone making any money doing it.

I went to school for computer networking, and finished as the tech bubble had finished collapsing. When I got online, the idea of journaling my life was super appealing to me as I had always enjoyed writing. I was learning PHP and creating my own online publishing system between using Blogger and being introduced to WordPress.

WordPress changed everything for me. I started following its development, and became part of the WordPress community. When a young man ended up buying a bunch of blogs that I had loved, I contacted him for an interview. He hadn’t planned out what he was going to do regarding the continued content development on those sites and offered me a job."

Would a person have to put a lot of time and energy into turning blogging into a career or could they do it in their spare time?

"Because the barrier for entry is so low now, with hosted software solutions, and more available information and tutorials, I don’t believe that blogging is an easy career option for most people.

There are people that rise to be well known and make some serious money from their content, but content is mostly a commodity these days, and it can be hard to build an audience. I would hazard a guess that unless you are being employed by an already established blog, the odds of earning a livable income from blogging alone is very low, especially in the first two years of publication."

How can a person make money from blogging, let alone enough to turn it into a career?

"This is a complex question and the options aren’t as many or as simple as they once were. I would say that the best way to make money from building your own blog today is to use your blog to build a brand and then convert that brand into a product. Look at people like Chris Garrett (chrisg.com) and his Authority Blogger community or what the Copyblogger team has done as an example.

Of course another way, and the way that I did it, was to find blogs you can write on and get paid. There are many successful blogs out there that need content production and are willing to pay for it. Envato is a great example of that, paying some high rates for quality tutorials in a variety of niches.

At the end of the day, making money from blogging requires a lot of hard work, organization, and the ability to develop and built multiple potential income streams through banner advertising, affiliate programs, creating products and services, or crafting content for others."

I see that you referenced yourself as a former professional blogger, what caused you to no longer do it?

"Two things: burnout and advertising rate drops. When the recession started happening, online advertising rates dropped like a stone, and sites that I worked on started making a small percentage of what they were earning only a few months prior. So then I switched to working on a site for a friend that I didn’t totally enjoy. I put in long, hard hours, and got paid a decent wage, but it caused me to not enjoy blogging as much. I then ended up taking a job doing web development for the local government. I’ve since mostly just stuck to personal blogging as I haven’t been able to find the determination to stick with professional blogging tasks/jobs for any reasonable period of time.

Thankfully, my skills in web development and online marketing have kept me well employed."

If you could give one piece of advice to a potential blogger from you personal experiences in blogging, what would it be?

'Be true to yourself. My blogging career came to a halt because I chased money for the sake of money. I didn’t think about what that would do to my psyche. I didn’t realize that by working on projects I didn’t enjoy that I could ruin my passion and interest in writing professionally. I have also seen others go through this same transition, and I am still trying to help one close friend change paths before he is too far gone and quits blogging as well.

If you aren’t being yourself, doing what you enjoy, writing posts you’d love to read, then no matter how hard you work, it won’t last, and you won’t achieve success."

Links of the Week and a Look Ahead

This past week was without its major conferences but it was far from slow as far as science and technology goes. There are plenty of big time video game sales going on with the Steam Summer Sale as ell as Gamefly's sale.

• British scientists have discovered a technique which can make a decayed tooth repair itself.
• Scientists have created a bionic pancreas that outperforms insulin pumps.
• Democratic lawmakers will unveil a piece of bicameral legislation Tuesday that would force the Federal Communications Commission to ban fast lanes on the Internet.
• Tesla is now most important automaker in world, Morgan Stanley says.
• Hackers reverse-engineer NSA's leaked bugging devices.
• Quantum computing firm calls 'bullshit' as scientists undermine its technology

This week we will explain quantum computing and speak with an expert in the field, Austin Fowler, a quantum computing researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara and an honorary researcher at The University of Melbourne. We will also speak with former professional blogger David Peralty, who will explain how to monetize your blog. I will be showing how I fix a disease ridden laptop and attempt to bring it back from the dead, however there is no cure for choosing Vista as your OS.

Netflix Casting and Game of Thrones Finale Sets a Piracy Record

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Deadline reports that Naveen Andrews, Daryl Hannah and Brian J. Smith are among the 14-member cast of Netflix‘s upcoming sci-fi drama Sense8from the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski. The remaining cast members include Tuppence Middleton, Tena Desae, Doona Bae, Max Riemelt, Alfonso Herrera,Erendira Ibarra, Jamie Clayton, Miguel Silvestri andTerrence Mann. Co-showrunner J. Michael Straczynskigave the first details about the show, stating that “The series follows eight characters around the world who, in the aftermath of a tragic death, find themselves linked to each other mentally and emotionally,” “They can not only see and talk to each other as though they were in the same place, they have access to each other’s deepest secrets. Not only must they figure out what happened and why and what it means for the future of humanity, they must do so while being hunted by an organization out to capture, kill or vivisect them.”

Marvel and Netflix announced that acclaimed actress Rosario Dawson has joined Marvel’s Daredevil, which premiers on Netflix in 2015. Rosario Dawson will play a dedicated young woman whose quest to heal the wounds of Hell’s Kitchen brings Matt Murdock unexpectedly crashing into her life, while her own journey forever alters the course of his battle against the injustices of this broken city.  Dawson joinsCharlie Cox who will portray Daredevil and his alter-ego attorney Matt Murdock as well as Vincent D’Onofrio cast as villain Wilson Fisk also known as Kingpin in the critically-lauded cast of Marvel’s Daredevil. “Rosario Dawson is one the most charismatic, talented and powerful actresses in Hollywood, so she was always at the top of our list for ‘Marvel’s Daredevil,’” said Jeph Loeb, Marvel’s Head of Television. “Her role in the series is absolutely critical to Matt Murdock’s journey to become the hero we know as Daredevil.” “Marvel’s Daredevil” follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the super hero Daredevil in modern day Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.

Deadline is also reporting that Chelsea Handler will be getting a talk show on Netflix launching in early 2016. Keeping in line with her current E! late-night show, the Netflix talk show will feature Handler’s unfiltered opinions on topics of the day as well as guest interviews. It is still yet to be decided if show will be released daily, weekly or in between. “The Internet has disrupted many of the conventions of traditional television and together with Chelsea Handler, Netflix is looking forward to reimagining the late night talk show for the on-demand generation, starting with the late-night part….” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. In Handler’s now infamous Howard Stern Show radio interview in March, in which she called E! “a sad, sad place to live” and “a failure,”  Handler suggested that after she leaves the cable network she would be interested in going to an outlet like Netflix. It was the first time Handler addressed her plans for the future as her E! contract was coming up, and several months and a ton of speculation later, she landed at Netflix, giving the streaming service its first talk show. “If I was going to continue working in this industry, I knew I had to do something outside the box to keep myself interested,” Handler said. “I wanted to sit with the cool kids at lunch so I approached Netflix to make sure they were as cool as I thought they were, and when I confirmed my suspicions, like with any other future lover, I made my move. I’m more excited than I’ve been in awhile, and the team at Netflix is the most forward thinking, alert group I’ve sat down with in ages. No offense to the Shahs Of Sunset.” Before she starts her new talk show, Handler will tape an one-hour stand-up special during the June 20 stop of her tour “Uganda Be Kidding Me” Live in Chicago. It will premiere on Netflix on Oct. 10. And next year, Handler will create four new docu-comedy specials for Netflix featuring her efforts to gain a better understanding on a variety of subjects ranging from NASCAR to politics and from Silicon Valley to the NBA draft. The talk show, stand-up special and  docu-comedy specials will be produced by Handler and her partners in Borderline Amazing, Tom Brunelle and Brad Wollack.

TorrentFreak is reporting that the Season 4 Finale ofGame of Thrones broke not only viewership records for HBO, but also among online pirates. The official U.S. ratings show that “The Children” was the most viewed season finale thus far, with 7.1 million people tuning in. In the black market the same episode did well too, setting a mind-boggling piracy record. The latest episode resulted in the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. That is, never before have so many people gathered to share a single file on the Internet. A few hours after the first torrent of the show appeared on torrent sites, the Demonii tracker reported that 254,114 people were sharing one single torrent at the same time. 190,701 were sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 63,413 were still downloading. The previous record was also held by Game of Thrones, with a little over 200,000 people sharing a single file. There was also quite bit of interest in higher definition releases. The most popular 720p copy was shared by 108,539 BitTorrent users simultaneously, and the most shared 1080p release had 23,922 people connected to it.

Crash Course: What Is Reddit?

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Reddit is a user submitted social news site which calls itself “The front page of the internet”. Anyone can view the material on Reddit but you would have to register an account if you would like to vote on the submitted material or if you would like to customize your experience, the point of submitting content is for ‘karma’, or simply imaginary internet points. Material is grouped into subsets(subreddits) so if you would like to view only political news or gifs of cats, there is a subreddit for that. Recently Reddit underwent a change in their default subreddits(what an unregistered user would see) where they removed one of the most popular subreddits, /r/AdviceAnimals which specializes in memes, better explained as internet inside jokes.

The Good: Reddit is a great place for certain communities, I always refer to /r/dogecoin as one of the best communities that I have ever been a part of, I list some of their fundraising ventures in my feature about Dogecoin. /r/IAma is also a great place to be able to interact with celebrities or most anyone else you may admire, some noteworthy AMA(Ask Me Anything)’s include President Barack Obama, Bill Gates and very recently Julian Assange. Beyond its communities and celebrities Reddit does what it is supposed to do very well, it compiles links from news sites in one place so you don’t have to mess with your browser’s RSS feeds, just go to the subreddit of choice and there you should have it. I have also found Reddit to be useful in learning, when I first signed up almost two years ago I knew next to nothing about CSS or programming, through individual community assistance I have people to consult when I am lost. 

The Bad: Redditors like to think of themselves as part of some indie/underground culture when the reality is that Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the internet. Taking a look at the front page right now while not logged in, I would say not even half of the top 25 posts are worthwhile, currently the top 3 are a Flintstones gif; a picture of someones game inspired cappuccino and a meme. I may have praised certain communities in ‘The Good’ but as a whole the individual subreddit communities are terrible, in most popular threads’ comment sections you will be met with ongoing puns and re-referenced inside Reddit jokes. To put the inside joke mentality into perspective, let’s say you have one friend whose idea of being funny is to recite lines from movies/television or just keeps talking about the same thing from a year ago over and over again. There is also an oft-referenced hivemind mentality that comes with Reddit, if you are unfortunate enough to declare your position on a topic and it happens to not be the popular decision, you can expect to hate when you see your new message indicator. 

The Ugly: Reddit has not been without its controversies, taken from its own wiki:

• Anderson Cooper of CNN devoted a segment of his program to condemning /r/jailbait and criticized Reddit for hosting it. Initially this caused a spike in Internet traffic to the subreddit, causing the page to peak at 1.73 million views on the day of the report. In the wake of these news reports, a Reddit user posted an image of an underage girl to /r/jailbait, subsequently claiming to have naked images of her as well. Dozens of Reddit users then posted requests for these nude photos to be shared to them by private message. Other Reddit users drew attention to this discussion and the /r/jailbait forum was subsequently closed by Reddit administrators on October 10, 2011. Critics such as /r/jailbait’s creator /u/violentacrez disputed claims that this thread was the basis of the decision, instead claiming it was an excuse to close down a controversial subreddit due to recent negative media coverage. 
• A year after the closure of the jailbait subreddit, a Reddit community called “/r/Creepshots” drew controversy in the press for hosting sexualized images of women without their knowledge. In the wake of this media attention, /u/violentacrez was added to /r/Creepshots as a moderator,and reports emerged that Gawker reporter Adrian Chen was planning an exposé that would reveal the real-life identity of this user, who moderated dozens of controversial subreddits as well as a few hundred general-interest communities. Several major subreddits banned links to Gawker in response to the impending exposé and the violentacrez account was deleted. Moderators defended their decisions to block the site from these sections of Reddit on the basis that the impending report was “doxxing” (a term for exposing the identity of a pseudonymous person), and that such exposure threatened the site’s structural integrity. Chen published the piece on October 12, 2012, revealing that the operator of /u/violentacrez was a middle-aged programmer from Texas named Michael Brutsch. Within a day of the article being published, Brutsch’s position was terminated by his employer and the link to the exposé was briefly banned from Reddit. He stated on Reddit after the article was published that he has received numerous death threats.

Reddit can be the best or the worst of the internet, it is effectively what you make of it. If you wanted to have an account just for NSFW content then you could register and subscribe to all NSFW subreddits that interest you. I have personally used Reddit to meet people in the technology world that I in turn have interviewed for this blog and I also use it for research when I am looking for a group of people that specialize in the certain field that I want to learn more about. One thing that I could list under ‘The Good’ and ‘The Bad’ is Reddit’s addicting nature, more than once have I gotten bored with Reddit so I went to type in my go-to-when-bored site into my browser…Reddit.

Amazon Unveils Its First SmartPhone

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Yesterday Amazon revealed its first foray into the smartphone market with its Amazon Fire Phone, which starts shipping on July 25th. Amazon is looking to separate the Fire Phone from its smart phone contemporaries by offering several options not currently available with any other smart phone.

• Dynamic Perspective: A custom-designed sensor system that responds to how you hold, view, and move your phone. You can tilt to navigate menus  or access shortcuts; swivel to access important notifications and quick actions; peek to access Yelp ratings or take the perspective of your character in a video game. You will also be able to auto-scroll, making it easier to read one-handed.
• Firefly technology: Allows you to identify printed text which can let you make a phone call, save a new contact, send an email or visit a website without having to type. Firefly can also recognize a song which will allow you to access artist information, download albums directly to your phone, or add them to your Wish List.

• Amazon Prime: Your Fire phone will have access to Amazon’s digital video and audio libraries with a full year of Amazon Prime with phone purchase, existing Prime members receive the year added to their existing membership.Prime also grants you access to free two day shipping, Amazon is listing the free year of Prime as a limited time offer.

The Fire Phone also features a 13MP camera with optical image stabilization which will film in full 1080p at 30 fps from both front and rear-facing cameras; A 2.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM to launch apps and websites faster as well as an Adreno 330 graphics processor for its immersive gaming. Amazon is currently listing its price at ranging from $199.00 – $649.00 and it is exclusive to AT&T.

I figured that I would do a comparison of the Amazon Fire Phone to the recently released Samsung Galaxy S5 both priced at $649 without a contract. The Galaxy S5 has a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor also with 2GB of Ram and a 16MP rear-facing camera/2MP front-facing camera. It should be noted that the Galaxy S5 in this case has 16GB of internal memory where the Fire Phone in question is 32GB, Amazon seems accurate in their description of “32GB for the same price as other 16GB smartphones“, you can also get 64GB of internal memory for $100 more.

Why Your Tech Person May Hate You

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Do you have a go to tech guy/gal? Maybe it’s a relative or a coworker, or maybe you are in the minority of people that keep a technology expert on retainer, if you are of the latter group I personally wish to thank you. I have been professionally working on computers for near two decades now, my first job was employed by the government when I was still in High School as part of a Cooperative Office Education Program. I never liked a single area of computers enough to allow myself to be restricted by any one field, though I started my tech life doing hardware in the past decade have had a shift towards software. I have been employed to do everything from PC Repair, networking, programming, marketing, consulting, etc….please note the emphasis on employed.

Not everybody knows computers, sure they are familiar with their individual devices and are aware of exactly what they want them to accomplish, but they do not know anything about how they work. If you are going to ask me to take time out of my schedule to help you, and yes fixing your computer issue helps you and not me, then you need to understand that I am offering you a service that you yourself are not capable of. If your question is a simple one to answer, “How can I improve my wireless signal?” then I will most likely give you an answer and be on my way. It’s when some people now feel that I am there as their personal computer professional and I now somehow owe them something, that I take issue.

I had one acquaintance in particular a few years back, for the sake of this post we shall call him Nate. Nate found out that I knew about computers and asked me a simple question, as I stated before, I answered and moved on. No more than a week later Nate calls saying he bricked his computer and needs to get the stuff off of his IPhone, my mistake is that I did not broach the subject of payment right then and there. I am not an Apple device user so this may no longer be the case, but at that time to get his music from his IPhone to a new storage device I had to download 3rd party software and could only transfer a certain amount of files at a time, this took at least an hour and when I finished he went on about his way. He would call or text with any question under the sun and I just got to the point that I would not respond, finally I told him that I usually get paid for this kind of stuff and he didn’t seem to grasp what I was implying. Later on Nate cracked his laptop screen and I flat out told him what I charged for this, he agreed yet when he showed up with his laptop he told me he didn’t have all of the money. Nate’s laptop sat and collected dust for months as he still didn’t have the money to pay me, nor had he paid me for any of the questions he would call me with at all hours of the night. After almost a year of his laptop sitting in a corner, and him posting on social media all of the nights he was at clubs and the new toys he had bought, yet didn’t have the money to pay me, he found some other sucker to do it for him, I never heard from him again after that.

I wish that last paragraph was the exception here but it is not, I see it all of the time. Even at my current main employer, which has nothing to do with technology, I am almost expected to jump and help with any sort of technology related issue, yet I am apparently the bad guy when I tell them what said job would charge. Respect your technology friends, if you offer to pay that person they will possibly even refuse to take the money, it’s more the respect that you offered. If you are a person that is in need of a computer expert for a wide array of issues, then offer to pay one and keep them on retainer. Keeping an expert on retainer means no matter what the issue is and no matter what the time of day is, if you need them they will be there.

Expanding Consensual Techs

I am approaching the one month mark for this blog and though I think that I have been doing well so far, I just want to do better. I will now be posting on consensualtechs.wordpress.com as an easy transition towards getting my actual website consensualtechs.com up and running, as of now that will be in addition to, and not a substitution for, this blogspot address. I have been using twitter to increase recognition of Consensual Techs' web presence and over the past four days I have averaged 100 new followers each day. I will continue to produce how-to material and get interviews with experts in their respective fields in an effort to acquire and maintain credibility for this brand.

In addition to what we are currently doing, you can look forward to new material including Convention coverage and the ability to hire our techs for anything from consulting, web design, social media marketing, custom built PC's and computer/laptop repair among others, just keep in mind that we are based in South Florida. Thank You to everyone for your early support and I will strive to continue to make technology easily accessible and understandable for everyone.

Getting Started With Game Collecting

I got started game collecting years back and though I do not keep up with it as much as I used to, I still managed to obtain a decent collection and I am capable of adding to it whenever I feel inclined. Game collecting can also be a source of extra income where you find great deals and then turn around to sell them for profit, I would label myself both a collector and a seller. The main thing that I would recommend for a person looking to get involved in any form of collecting is to know what you are collecting, specifically are you focusing on a particular franchise, genre, platform, etc. I am going to list a variety of places that you can use to buy/acquire games, I will only discuss methods that I myself have used so understand that there are always more options at your disposal.

• Large Retailers(Target, Walmart...): The Pikachu 3DS XL is one of my favorite items in my collection and I picked it up at a Target store when it was on sale for $160, including tax I paid a total of $176. I never opened my copy and just a couple of days ago one sold on Ebay for a total of $400 including shipping.
• Ebay: Not only is Ebay the best idea of what a game is actually worth, you could also come across a great deal. Some people that list on Ebay do not know what they are listing and can miss out big time, that particular game Earthbound will sell for over $130 all day.
• Pawn Shops: I have scored great finds more frequently at pawn shops than anywhere else, they tend tend carry current releases as well as older games but if you do not know what you should be paying for a game you could easily overpay. I have managed to pick up older consoles and games complete in the box and rare gems that I would have had to pay 10x more had I gotten them anywhere else.
• Yard Sales: Second to only pawn shops as far as where I have gotten the best deals, you may need to get there early but you can always negotiate(what would be the total price if I bought all of the games?) and you may have to ask specifically if they have games for sale, some people look at those old things and tell themselves that nobody would want to buy them.
• Thrift Stores(Salvation Army/Goodwill): Recently I have been having the most luck here, you can find all sorts of unique items and I recently picked up a brand new in box NES "dogbone" controller for a couple of dollars.
• Friends/Coworkers/Neighbors...: There are probably more people than you realize that are currently sitting on a bunch of old games collecting dust. Given that these are people that you personally know, you should offer to buy the games, especially if your intent is to turn around and sell them.

I want to stress that no matter what any game collecting website may say, your item is worth exactly what a person is willing to pay for it and nothing more. If a website tells you that your copy of BMX XXX is worth $10 but I can readily pick one up on Ebay for $2, your copy is actually worth $2. If you do intend on selling on Ebay it's best to have an existing history of buying/selling there and make sure you have positive feedback but I will get more into selling successfully on Ebay at another time.

Renowned Immunologist Dr Ellen Vitetta Discusses The Importance Of Vaccinations

I am a supporter of vaccinations and though I try to remain impartial on most topics I cannot on this one. There was a single report that linked autism to vaccinations, that report has been completely disproved and its authors have admitted they were wrong, yet people still remain anti-vaccination. I was fortunate enough to correspond with Dr Ellen Vitetta, the director of the Cancer Immunobiology Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and also one of the top 100 most cited biomedical scientists in the world.

• What is your opinion of those individuals that are anti-vaccination, are they unknowingly contributing to the recent influx of superbugs? I typically link Penn and Teller's Bullshit regarding vaccines if somebody tells me they are anti-vaccine. "Knowingly or unknowingly, they are obviously doing harm to many innocent people. This is leading to the return of preventable (but untreatable) diseases such as whooping cough, measles, polio etc. and perhaps the emergence of superbugs. The morbidity and mortality of these diseases is huge to me, the fallout of failing to get vaccinated is as bad as driving while intoxicated."

• What would this mass vaccination movement need to be able to progress (public awareness, fundraising, other support)? "All of the above. I would take it a step further and make it a criminal offense...the same as drunk driving. It would be illegal not to vaccinate your children or get vaccinated yourself since you put many other people in danger. In many parts of the US we require vaccination for kids to enter school. This is good but not good enough."

• How could somebody that supports this get involved? "Contact your local and federal representatives to make the laws/rules about vaccination more stringent. Participate in public awareness campaigns in the meanwhile. Refer doubters to good articles an ask them to read them!"

• How do you feel vaccines are currently viewed, do you find a lot of resistance from the anti-vaccine movement? "Most people actually approve of and follow the vaccine guidelines and support the development of vaccines. It's the vocal minority that we hear from. The problem is that it only takes a few noncompliant people to put the entire population of very young kids (and the elderly) at risk."

• The published article which started the recent anti-vaccine movement, if I am accurate, has all but been debunked so why do people still support its widespread inaccuracies? What can be done to further spread awareness that vaccines are necessary? "Yes it has been debunked in many articles and the original study has been retracted. unfortunately people become "believers" and like to oppose conventional wisdom. It is really no different from taking useless supplements, carrying around lucky pennies, or for that matter believing in god and insisting that others do to[sic]. Supplements do damage, religious fanatics do damage and so do anti-vaxxers. Sadly, faith and science are very different!"

• This probably should have been the first question, if someone were to know nothing about vaccines or your companies approach to vaccines, how would you explain the necessity of vaccination? "I would say that vaccines have saved more lives and money than any other medical discovery  in history. If you look at the ENTERMIM.COM website, you will see how life expectancy has been extended since vaccines became common medical practice. This is because infectious diseases have been the biggest killers on the planet, and in many countries, still are."

Links Of The Past Week And A Look Ahead: Father's Day Edition

The most noteworthy event from this past week had to be E3, the video game industry's biggest event. I posted some of my favorite trailers and gameplay videos in this post which also lists dates for upcoming betas and their available platforms. This week I will be giving away a code for a copy of Humble Bundle's E3 Digital Ticket with the giveaway taking place on our Twitter @ConsensualTechs. 

• Netflix fires back at Verizon's cease and desist letters.
• Tesla opens up their Supercharger patents.
• New Ruling Shows the NSA Can’t Legally Justify Its Phone Spying Anymore.
• Google buys a satellite company for $500 million.
• Expedia to accept Bitcoins as payment for hotel bookings.
• Smartphone holograms bring us closer to Star Wars' technology.
• MIT students create new solar panels that work without direct sunlight.
• Telekinesis through technology is now a thing.

This week I will be doing a write-up on  why your IT guy/gal may actually hate you as well as tell you how to get started with game collecting. Don't forget that the next two free Games with Gold titles Charlie Murder and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition are available to download at midnight tonight.

GetLenses Saved My Friend $100+

My friend is historically a very honest person, to the point that when we were growing up he was the last person you wanted talking to a parent or teacher if we had done something wrong. The other day he called me outright enraged due to his recent exchange with a Lenscrafters store and given his history of being too honest I have to take his side of the story at face value. Roughly 18 months ago he went in for a complete eye exam including contacts, he got a year supply of contacts as well as an expensive set of glasses(over $500 including transition lenses) even paying for optional insurance. I was not with him when he went in for his exam but as he tells me when he asked how long his prescription was good for, they told him specifically "it's good for two years". Fast forward to this past week, before the very long phone conversation he and I had. He recently moved to a different state but given the fact that there are Lenscrafters nationwide he was told that they would be able to get his prescription from the other store and order his contacts for him. Not long after hanging up the phone, the new store called him back and told him his prescription was expired, in the subsequent exchange they told him contacts are only good for a year whereas glasses are good for two. My friend explained that he was specifically told that his prescription was good for two years but the only response he was given was "You were told wrong."

Now, with no options at his disposal other than dropping over $100 for the complete eye exam plus contacts and then the $50-$100 for the contact lenses on top of that, he asked me if I knew what he could do. I did what I usually do when I don't know something off of the top of my head, I turned to the internet. I searched several online retailers, all of which would not do it without a current prescription and every time they would contact the eye doctor they were told it was expired. Some people online recommended that he should wait until a holiday such as the 4th of July when the doctors office would be closed so that way when the online retailers attempted to verify the prescription nobody would be available and the contacts would be shipped after a couple of days. My friend did not have another month of waiting in him so I looked for another option, that is when I was told about international online contact lens retailers. He decided to go with GetLenses who did not require his prescription which he got the information from his now empty box of contacts. Within a week his contacts arrived from England and they even came shipped with a pack of Haribo gummies. He has every intention of going to a completely new doctor when his current prescription is expired and doesn't plan on having to go this route again, however, he feels good knowing that it is still an option at his disposal given that his eye prescription has not changed in five years.

It is a United States law that contact prescriptions are good for only a year whereas glasses prescriptions are good for two years. My friend would have purchased two years worth of contact lenses from Lenscrafters had they been honest and let him know that his two separate prescriptions each had their own expiration date.

E3 2014: Giveaway; Betas, Recap

E3 2014 is in the bag, there were far too many moments to touch on in a single post so I will feature a few highlights as well as link full pressers from the event. Here are links to individual press conferences Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA. I have picked games that I personally enjoyed from the show and I will post their trailers as well as gameplay. If you missed out on the E3 2014: Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket, worry not as we will be giving one away either through here or our Twitter @ConsensualTechs. Also PS4 and PC gamers can still sign up for the Battlefield Hardline closed beta. The multiplayer beta for Halo 5: Guardians will begin on December 27th and will be available by purchasing The Master Chief Collection, available November 11 for the Xbox One. The Destiny beta will begin on July 14th for PlayStation 4 and will be available with a pre-order, the alpha is currently ongoing for those that signed up through the game's website. You can currently sign up for The Crew beta for which beings July 23rd.

Destiny- Developed by Bungie, creators of Halo: Combat Evolved. Action RPG; single and cooperative missions; scheduled for release on September 9th for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Evolve- developed by Turtle Rock Studios, creators of Left 4 Dead; first-person shooter; four-player vs one-player cooperative; scheduled for release on October 21st for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Assassin's Creed: Unity- developed by Ubisoft Montreal; action-adventure, stealth; single and four-player cooperative; scheduled for release on October 28th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

No Man's Sky- developed by Hello Games; not yet scheduled for release for PlayStation 4.

Super Smash Bros.- developed by Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco Games; fighting game; scheduled for release on October 3, 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS and Q4 2014 for The Wii U.

Batman: Arkham Knight- developed by Rocksteady Studios; action adventure; scheduled for release 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Kingdom Hearts 3- developed by Square Enix; action RPG; scheduled for release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

E-Learning: Video Game Style

Neil Degrasse Tyson recently told Time magazine “I try to learn something new every day or else the day is wasted”.  I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment which is why I started this blog in the first place, technology is only going to become a larger part of our lives and it's best to equip yourself with at least a working knowledge of technology basics. Here we will look at multiple outlets that give you a variety of topics that you can learn from which also incorporate a video game style achievement and point system. All of these sites offer free e-learning and allow you to sign in using existing accounts so you don't have to sign up for them.  

•  Microsoft Virtual Academy offers "Free Microsoft Training Delivered by Experts." You can search courses by topics or by products and add them to customize your learning plan. MVA has leaderboards that track your progress and award you points for completing modules as well as bonus points for completing a course, you can see how you stack up against others on the site and in your country. In addition to the courses offered MVA also offers live events, the next of which will be from June 17th-19th on Windows 8.1 Update for Enterprise Jump Start.
• Khan Academy features much more than technology training, including multiple levels of math, science and economics. You can learn more about computer science and computer programming, and as a follow up to yesterday's post regarding Getting Started With Animation, Khan Academy currently offers a course on Introduction to Java Script: Drawing & Animation. The site even states "We're full of game mechanics. As soon as you log in, you'll start earning badges and points for learning. The more you challenge yourself, the more bragging rights you'll get."
• Duolingo is a language learning website that is also supported by an easy to use mobile application. An English speaker currently has five different languages that they can choose from including Spanish, French and Portuguese with another seven language courses currently in development including Turkish, Dutch(Netherlands) and Irish. Bilingual speakers can also offer their services in contributing towards making new language courses available. 
  
   

Getting Started With Animation

There are so many different ways that you could get started with animation, what I am going to try to do here is give you multiple options to choose from. The intention behind this post isn't for you to start making cartoons, it's for you to be able to make an animation which could eventually lead to you creating cartoons in the future.

• Wideo is an online animated video creation tool that allows you to create, edit, and share videos online for free. You can select their or upload your own images, backgrounds, and music that you want to use in order to create your own online video. Wideo was originally billed as a way to make animated commercials for your company.  

• Flash is the most widely used animation software and there are several tutorials available so you can quickly learn and begin animating. It costs $19.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

• Photoshop is an extremely useful tool for creating far more than just animations, but that's what we will focus on here. It costs $9.99 a month for Flash Professional CC or $49.99 a month for the complete Creative Cloud.

I have given two actual options to begin animating with, as well as provided where you can download them. Neither Flash nor Photoshop require the most state of the art computer to run so you most likely can begin today. If you aren't sure about paying for either product than you can get a one month free trial to see for yourself. Wideo is included as an option because there are plenty of people that just want to play around with animation and all you have to do is visit their site to do so. I plan on beginning animation as a regular occurrence on this site as an additional post and one day hope to be able to create my own cartoons for here.

Going Further With Torrenting

Yesterday I touched on How To Get Started With Torrenting, today I will further explain common terms you may encounter as well as where to get started with private trackers. I cannot post web addresses here as it is firmly against the rules of several private trackers but what I can do is post a reference to r/trackers here, where they keep a somewhat updated list. As I stated in yesterday's post, an issue you may run into on a private tracker is that the content you are looking for is not available, that's where specialty sites come in handy. If you cannot find what you are looking for on your private tracker of choice, let's say sports, then you can be sure that there is a private tracker that specializes in just sports, if you only care about football, you can find one that only features that.

On a public tracker you could download the file and be on your way, a frowned upon practice dubbed hit and run, but on a private tracker you are required to seed that torrent after you have downloaded it to help others leech from it. You may have to seed for a designated period of time, at least 48 hours or just simply seed back the ratio you have downloaded, example being if you download a 1GB file then you should upload at least the same 1 GB. That brings us to ratio requirements which vary by trackers but typically want you to have uploaded more than half of the data that you have downloaded, keep in mind that if you are trying to get onto a more elite private tracker then a 1.0 ratio is not that impressive. Some private trackers will have torrents designated as free leech where you can download the torrent and not have it count against your download total, effectively a ratio booster. So, I guess your big question is how do you get onto a private tracker?

• Some private trackers allow you to go to their site and sign up, this could be one of your best options for getting started and can also be a stepping stone for getting into the better private trackers available if they require proof of your ratio.
• Private trackers may hold open enrollment, a temporary designated period where you can sign up for that tracker without an invite.
• Invite only trackers are exactly that, you will need to be invited to join and unless you personally know the person inviting you, you may have to provide proof that you can understand how a private tracker works. Some of the more elite private trackers may only issue invites to their donors, people that donate money to the continued operation of the site. There are several levels of elite trackers, some of which you may have to take a quiz to be accepted to.

I feel at this point you understand the legality of torrenting; the difference in private and public trackers; how to set up your computer to start torrenting; where to look for private trackers and understanding common terms you may encounter in torrenting. Also, TorrentFreak is a great source to keep up with the latest news in the torrenting world.

E3 2014: Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket

Hurry now and pick up Humble Bundle E3 Digital Ticket, where you can name your price, at least $1, for more than $100 worth of digital content including:

• EVE Online Starter Pack and Rifter Krusual Skin 
• PAYDAY 2 Orc and Crossbreed masks 
• SMITE Almighty Zeus bundle including the Almighty Zeus skin and Zeus 
• Company of Heroes 2 DLC
• Total War: ROME II Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack 
• Warframe Booster Pack,
• Landmark 1-week closed beta key
• Magicka: Wizard Wars  E3 Robe
• MX vs ATV Reflex full version.
• Anomaly 2 full version plus soundtrack 
• Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete full version
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection full version
• Twitch Turbo 1-month subscription

How To Get Started With Torrenting.

I should preface this by letting you know that the act of torrenting itself is not illegal, it is specifically the content which is downloaded that could make you torrenting something illegal. People that have downloaded copyrighted material through torrenting have been arrested and owners/operators of sites that support torrents containing copyrighted material have also been arrested. However, more often than not downloading copyrighted material could lead to a stern letter from the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) or Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA) or potential lawsuits from the aforementioned Associations.

Think of BitTorrent as a way of transmitting files across the internet; a torrent as an indivdual file; torrenting as the act of downloading files. Files that are transmitted can vary in size from a single .jpg which is a couple of kB's in size to entire video libraries which can be hundreds of GB's in size. With the speeds that BitTorrent is capable of, a full movie will take a few minutes to download given there are enough people sharing the file. Sharing the file is not only uploading a file to be downloaded but also supporting that file after you upload it so others can download that same file, you in this case would be a seeder while the person trying to download that file would be a leecher. If you upload a file to a tracker site and do not in turn seed that file then nobody will be able to download it but if you upload it and seed then others can download from it and become seeders as well, after they have finished the download. This video gives not only a basic overview of BitTorrent, it also double as one of the worst commercial advertisements ever made.

With a basic understanding of what BitTorrent does and also the concept of needing seeders to allow downloads for leechers, let's discuss how to get started with torrents. There are mimimal hardware capabilities required for torrenting with possibly only a hard drive large enough for your downloaded files, an inexpensive external hard drive will work just fine for this. What you will need to make torrenting possible is a torrent client, of which µTorrent is currently the most popular outside of China. After you have a torrent client that enables the file sharing, you need to know where to look to get files that you can torrent. The Pirate Bay is one of the most widely known magnet link sites which we will label a public tracker meaning anyone can access it. The process after finding a torrent you like is as follows: click the download link to have that file load in your client; click the button to accept that torrent being added to your client; opening the file after the torrent has finished downloading; an optional step may be needing to unzip the file so you can access it. Public trackers will give you a huge selection of content to choose from with an equally as large number of peers seeding and leeching, the downside to public trackers is that there can be a public record of what your IP address has downloaded. A more secure way of torrenting would be from private trackers which usually require signing up, and in more elite private trackers, the need to be invited.

Acceptance into private trackers could also require proof that you are not only familiar with torrenting, but you are also a person that seeds more than you leech, or ratio requirements. Private trackers give a little more piece of mind but they can have wait times associated with downloads, not have enough seeders for downloads or just not have a particular download you are looking for. I feel that is more than enough to give an overview of what exactly torrenting is, next time I will get into the more advanced terms and options associated with torrenting.

What You May Have Missed This Past Week and What's Upcoming.

Xbox finally extended its Games With Gold program to the Xbox One and released their big update which no longer requires a gold membership for its most popular apps. The biggest news of the tech world this past week involved Apple and their WWDC, because it garnered such widespread interest a few important, or at least noteworthy, items may have been missed in the process. 

• Miami-Dade police impound three Lyft cars in two days.
• Tesla wins back the right to sell directly to consumers in New Jersey.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook tweets a photo of an Apple assembly line running Windows.
• Facebook approved, and is now running, a Dogecoin tipping app.
• A computer has passed the Turing Test for the first time in history. Debunked
• Netflix lets users know it's Verizon that is impairing streaming quality, Verizon files a cease and desist letter.
• A patent troll is ordered to pay up for the first time.
• Telecom companies are to blame for you not being able to get Google Fiber.
• John Oliver asks internet trolls to tell the FCC they are against net neutrality, FCC's website gets bogged down.

This week I will touch on what exactly torrenting is including how to get started, if such a thing might interest you. I also plan on writing about getting started with animation and how I started the process of beginning a website. I would like to extend a Thank You to all of my readers in an amazing thirteen different countries in just two weeks.