PTJ 223: Ahead, Warp Factor Four!

Things down here on Earth may be business as usual — mergers, lawsuits, taxes, paradigm shifts, feature updates and so on — but exciting things are happening Up Above as well as Out There. SpaceX had another successful rocket launch and resupply mission to the International Space Station, the Juno craft decided to take the long way around Jupiter for bonus science, NASA announced the discovery of seven possibly life-supporting exoplanets and Winston Churchill was writing about life beyond Earth way back in the 1930s. El Kaiser and J.D. discuss it all on this week’s episode of Pop Tech Jam, so Mr. Sulu, take us out!

Links to Stories in This Week’s News Segment

Stream “Trek”

The discerning pop-culture geek has so many video services to choose from these days, all without being yoked to a pricey cable TV subscription. Netflix and Hulu are the obvious big players here, with shows like Stranger Things or Marvel’s trio of  Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage on Netflix; Hulu’s got 10 seasons of Smallville and the upcoming original adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale among its nerd bait. Cable-free fans of Game of Thrones can now watch legally with the a la carte HBO Now streaming service, while Showtime has its own standalone streamer for those who only want to watch Homeland. Life is good.

But for Star Trek fans, there’s only one service if you want to see the entire television canon — including all 22 episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series:  The CBS All Access streaming channel. Among tons of other CBS shows, the service hosts almost 700 episodes of Star Trek programs. That number will get higher soon because there’s another entry in the works.

Star Trek: Discovery is currently in production and will hopefully debut later this year (after slipping from January to May as possible arrival dates). For those who vaguely remember the announcement, the series will have a new ship, new characters and new missions, all firmly rooted within the established Star Trek Universe. The show is set about a decade before the events depicted in The Original Series and the season-long storyline reportedly revolves around “an incident and an event in Star Trek history that’s been talked about but never been explored.”

According to early reports, the new show focuses on Lieutenant Commander Rainsford, the Number One serving aboard the USS Discovery. She’s played by Sonequa Martin-Green, who many genre TV fans will recall from her work on Walking Dead and Once Upon a Time. James Frain, who played Ferdinand on Orphan Black, is in the cast as a younger version of Sarek, Spock’s father. You can’t have a Star Trek show without Klingons, and Chris Obi from Ghost in the Shell, Shazad Latif, (MI-5 and Black Mirror), and Mary Chieffo represent Team Bat’leth. And fans of Michelle Yeoh will get to see her in a recurring role as captain of the USS Shenzhou.

If you’re on the fence about plunking down either $6 or $10 a month for CBS All Access (prices varying based on limited or no commercials), you should be able to see the first episode for free when the series kicks off, as CBS plans to show it on its regular broadcast TV channels before switching over exclusively to the streaming service. The extra cost may be annoying, but some may find it a small price to pay for fresh new Star Trek stories.

PTJ 222: Noises Off

On this week’s episode,  Don Donofrio returns to discuss possible paths ahead for of Apple this year as the company comes off a record-breaking quarterly profit and a surging stock price.  El Kaiser and J.D. have some things to say about Facebook’s new autoplay audio on videos, the price war between Verizon Wireless and
T-Mobile for unlimited data plans, and new tools for Google Maps. Oh, and the Queen of England is doing her part in the global war on cybercrime. Tally-ho!

Links to Stories in This Week’s News Segment

PTJ 221: Watching and Waiting

On this week’s episode, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the collision of the technology industry with the government, smart television sets that watch you, the ongoing battle with fake news and the demise of the message boards on IMDb.com. Get out of the winter weather and fire up Episode 221!

Links to This Week’s News Stories

PTJ 220: Lost Worlds

Politics body-slammed the tech world this week, cyber-criminals have figured out yet another way to rip off unsuspecting victims and an enterprising young archaeologist has come up with a way to let volunteers help look for lost ruins from the comfort of their own homes. And when El Kaiser and J.D. finish the news, it’s time to pour one out for the Father of Pac-Man. Welcome to Episode 220!

Ghostbusters

Masaya Nakamura, known to many as the Father of Pac-Man, died earlier this week at the age of 91. In 1980, his company, Namco, released the original Pac-Man game by designer Toru Iwatani — and we’ve been busting ghosts ever since. The influence of Pac-Man on popular culture these past 30-odd years is hard to underestimate, but if you’re feeling nostalgic, fire up the Android, iOS and Windows app versions of the game.

If you prefer a desktop experience, download the ROMs to play on an emulator with your PC or Mac. The Internet Archive’s software repository has several versions of Pac-Man for your web browser. Google even did a browser-playable Google Doodle of the game for its 30th anniversary in 2010. You can buy the chomping yellow fellow for consoles or even in standalone gadgets.

Many live-action versions of the game have popped up over the years, with people running through the streets. (The Pac-Manhattan event here in New York City is a big one.)

And if you grew up playing Pac-Man in the big console cabinet at the video arcade in the mall, you can relive those days, too — for about $3000, Amazon will ship a 237-pound working replica to your home.