2015 Honda Civic Hybrid Review

The 2015 Civic Hybrid takes over from the Insight as being Honda's main hybrid model offering the best gas mileage in their 4 door line up.  The whole car has taken a huge futuristic styling leap forward starting in their redesign around 2010.  The Civic Hybrid is easily noticed by its unique wheels visible in the picture above.  Lets go over the finer points of the car, and see what it has to offer.

Honda has been working on this futuristic cockpit for about 5 years now and it is slowly evolving.  The screen on the media center has much better resolution, and as you can see from the picture above, they have recessed the almost heads up display too make it easily visible in the bright sun.  They have also started packing all sorts of digital options in their base models.  One feature I was surprised to see was the blindspot camera.  **Check out the video below to see how it works.  The ride is as you would expect from a Honda.  The lower price and fuel efficient(weight reduction) car has little room for sound dampeners for road noise.  The engine is small and has an "Econ" mode which limits gas pedal responsiveness to increase gas mileage.  Even with Econ mode off, the engine will not impress you, but being a hybrid that is not its intention.  

They have added functionality to the media center by including an HDMI port so that you can display just about anything that interfaces with it.  If you look around on YouTube you can find some Android mirroring and apps that allow you to control your phone with the cars touch screen.  If you do that you can avoid buying the navigation feature and run everything through your phone.  

All in all the exterior styling and futuristic look of the interior of the car make it a great value.  Not to mention Honda's reputation in making long lasting engines.  If you need a daily driver that looks nice and sips gas this may be the car for you.  

**Update: Grab one while you can! Honda recently announced the discontinuation of the Hybrid Civic and plug in Accord for a hydrogen car, some other hybrid and an all electric car.  The US currently has no hydrogen fueling infrastructure. 

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Train wreck

photos by www.theXSphoto.com

“Train wreck” is a term used to describe a large scale accident that happens slowly and is often times foreseeable. The major reason is because there is typically one driving car and a lot of mass being pulled behind it. Also, the train lacks the ability to function off its rails. One small problem can cause a massive derailment. The most recent wrecks in national media have been gaining publicity from their massive scale and human error.

Are they safe?
Across the US, using recent data, trains are involved in accidents at a rate of about one train wreck every three days. The train is not always at fault, but due to the cargo and potential for disaster when wrecks do happen they usually have a large impact and often times involve hazardous materials.
Google began a hard push to make driverless cars. With over 1.7 million miles and only 11 minor accidents(<1 per 100,000 miles!) attributed to human drivers, Google has had great success showing the viability of a system that is able to react to constantly changing variables. (S)

photos by www.theXSphoto.com

Why dont we have automated trains?
Trains have fewer variables and most speeds are dictated by location and not conditions. It seems that an automated train system would be easier to implement than a driverless car system. Automated trains have existed since 1961 on varying levels of automation but most are metro or subway systems. The automation ranges from “Grade of Automation 4 (GoA4) system like the Copenhagen Metro trains are capable of operating automatically at all times, including door closing, obstacle detection and emergency situations.” to “Grade of Automation 2 (GoA2) system with ATO like London Underground Victoria line, trains run automatically from station to station but a driver is in the cab, with responsibility for door closing, obstacle detection on the track in front of the train and handling of emergency situations.” (S)

photos by www.theXSphoto.com

The light at the end of the tunnel
The government has become involved with Positive Train Control (PTC). PTC is a part of RISA Act of 2008 and was signed into law by Pres. Bush. RISA has a deadline of December 2015 and even offers grants of $50M a year for upgrades to the specified requirements. PTC was not active on the portion of the track where the gay activist conductor(Brandon Bostian) was running the train at twice the posted speed that killed 8 and injured over 200. Many experts say PTC could have prevented the derailment. (S)
The conductor said he doesn't remember the incident prior to hitting the brake seconds before the crash. You usually don't remember what goes on around you while you are asleep. But the interwebs remember what you say 4 years earlier, “Everyone wants an extension to hours of service to avoid inconvenience, but what will you say when the crew that’s been on duty for longer than 12 hours accidentally falls asleep and passes a stop signal and rear-ends a loaded hazmat train, killing dozens or hundreds of people? A crew is probably not any less safe after 12 hours and one minute than they were a few moments ago, but you have to draw that line somewhere.” -Bostain (S)

The future is coming. Home automation, driverless cars, virtual reality and cyber wars are the heralds of a changing world. The nano revolution will usher in the massive change that will completely alter the world as we know it. For now, we wait.



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Everything you need to know about virtual reality.

Virtual Reality is BACK! It only took a few decades.  The main driver for the technology is small high resolution screens.  We can thank cell phones for that.  The VR space is unfortunately fragmented with everyone working toward their own view of VR, which is divided into two major spheres: interactive VR and "spectative VR"(I am starting this as a word for VR).  

Oculus Rift

Via Oculus.com

Oculus Rift is the one that started all the hype on KickStarter.  Oculus Rift was bought by Facebook and recently acquired backing from Unreal.  Native game integration makes game setup smooth.  Also, Unreal recently made an interesting pivot to virtual space rendering offering $5 million in grants toward video game and virtual presence within the Unreal 4 engine.  Unreal is also offering its Unreal 4 engine free for development of future games. Even with Unreal support OR is primarily spectative VR in nature.

Gear VR is an Oculus backed mobile platform with support from Samsung.  Gear VR came about after Facebook got involved with Oculus Rift. Facebook previously gave little support to Android Facebook apps.  Facebooks focus has changed due to the sheer numbers of Android devices, and presumably this peripheral.  Gear VR offers “3D Spatial Sound” all through a Galaxy S4.

*Prediction* Expect to see this go somewhere in the social media space.  

Project Morpheus

Via playstation.com

Sony has created a VR system called Project Morpheus that is directly connected to the PS4 system.  There isn't much talk about standalone functionality and that could limit its potential.  Morpheus is in the early development stages with functioning prototypes.  We will see about future game support and backwards compatibility.  Morpheus will have integration with the Move controller system that will allow a more interactive VR experience within the PS4 ecosystem.  

OSVR

Razer has been making advanced peripherals for the PC for a while now.  Razer's offering into the VR space, OSVR, is open source which will rely largely on the community to development. This is great but without software support this is for a niche group of tinkerers who dont mind figuring out why things dont work. Razer does have other hardware to offer an interactive VR experience.

SteamVR

Via Steam

They finally released SteamOS and Steam Boxes are official now.  Read more about why Steam is the way to go.  

In a surprise move Steam launched a joint venture with HTC to create its own VR system.  You might think this is redundant to the Oculus Rift , but the vision of SteamVR is movement within a room.  Imagine an empty room and actually being able to walk around and play a game similar to "Portal".  SteamVR has trackable left and right controllers.  This will add an additional layer of interactive VR and game development support that none of the others have to offer.

Oculus will probably be the most mainstream offering out there for specatative VR, and Steam has the potential to be the pinnacle of interactive VR assuming its Steam Boxes do well. Right now this is how the VR landscape looks. It is still an evolving genre.

Did we miss anything?

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Nintendo's lost power

Nintendo has been trying to reestablish itself as something aside from a niche gaming market.  It has survived largely on nostalgia.  But from this generation on Nintendo's legacy is fading.  We have already reported and predicted this state and made the only logical solution. A step away from hardware and a focus on game development.

Nintendo is way behind the curve on hardware, and it has yet to announce or attempt to update its system that was behind at the start.  But now it is selling out its most popular franchise to have a live action series on Netflix.(S)  

Segas(SGAMY) last 5 years have been trending in a more positive direction than Nintendos(NTDOY).  Sega has been kept afloat by its merger with a casino game machine business.  And Sega has recently made an announcement that they will not develop for consoles anymore.(S)  

Considering entire companies survive on mobile alone, this could be a positive move.  The problem is they are holding on to franchises that are killing them.  Comment if you would like to read more about Sega. But this is a Nintendo article.

Nintendo is quickly losing its market share to tablet and cellphone games that are most of the time free, rely on small in app purchases and are very convenient for parents to acquire for Nintendo's target market.  But Nintendo is dead set on remaining a first-party developer.  

Nintendo is keeping its stock bloated by constantly selling more and more DS variants and combining these into a family and inflating their numbers.  But there are drawbacks to having a console.  Sales, according to the President of Nintendo, have been directly impacted by US port strikes.(S)

Also, much press was put into the glasses free 3D portion of the 3DS, but it also messed with children's vision.  The possible implications gave way to a 2DS which was cheaper and sold well adding to overall sales.  The latest sales figure we could find showed all DS sales totaling about 45 million units with ~2% increase from the previous year, most likely from the 2DS.  On the other hand, Android alone shows a history of doubling tablet sales that were at 37 million in 2012, and phones are activated on an average of 1.5 Million a day.  And Nintendo doesn't have to worry about shipping cartridges or consoles.  Meanwhile, you can't buy a legitimate copy of a Nintendo game on the billion or so Android devices out there.   

Do you think Nintendo survives? 

**Note article written prior to Nintendo's 3rd party announcement. 

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