On this week’s Drill Down podcast, Dwayne goes to CES 2018 and lives to tell the tale Google brings Pay together in one place, can white noise be copyright protected?… and much, much more.

It’s early 2018 and the year has already seen a match made literally in the heavens. Two days ago, Intel‘s CEO, Brian Krzanich, became one of the first people to fly in German air taxi company Volocopter‘s latest prototype. He did so as he announced a strategic partnership between the two companies, which was met with all sorts of fanfare and applause.

Knowing that everyone wanted a closer look, we headed over the Central Plaza here at CES 2018 to get next to the device, and to hear what Volocopter leadership had to say. More on that and videos can be found below.

Las Vegas Convention Center – Nevada. People know DJI for their drones, but at CES 2018, DJI debuted the Ronin-S gimbal. Even though it was in the back, behind the flying apparatuses, the gimbal was one of most, if not the most, popular item there.

Rather than holding a phone steady, this gimbal is focused on keeping your SLR’s footage as smooth as can be while you’re on the move. Control of the device is simplified from other gimbal designs – there’s a thumbstick to control panning and framing shots, and a sport mode that helps stability when you’re on the move.

In case you needed another reason to go Alexa rather than Google, the media gods have got one for you. The avalanche of CES 2017 press conferences hadn’t even begun when the news came in from Dish Network. In addition to their Sling Box and their 2014 breakthrough, no-contract live-streaming cable service, SlingTV, Dish decided to take another leap forward in delivering television entertainment to their consumers — support for Amazon‘s Alexa Voice Services or AVS.

Dish users with Hopper DRV devices of any generation will be able to control them using their voice through Amazon’s Echo or Echo Dot hardware.

This week, Facebook’s CEO wants to be the next Tony Stark, GM invests in Lyft, Twitter wants you to tweet longer, Oculus Rift gets a price and date, the latest from CES 2016 … all this and more on The Drill Down podcast.

This week, Chinese hackers infiltrate U.S. newspaper networks, Twitter also gets hacked, Oreo takes advantage of the Super Bowl blackout, is Netflix’s full season release schedule the future of television…or a big mistake, will your body be the next unlimited storage device, and if you thought J.J. Abrams hit the motherlode last week for helming both Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!

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This week, tragedy strikes the life of a maverick online activist Aaron Swartz, CBS‘s journalistic bias at CES, Amazon rips your previously purchased CDs, MySpace relaunches, Facebook unveils a few surprises, and the Obama Administration shoots down the Death Star.

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This week, black boxes for cars, Intel’s top-secret cord-cutter, an Ubuntu phone, Google makes nice with the FTC, a new controller/console from NVIDIA, Valve‘s “Steam Box”, Kickstarter project Pebble gets a launch date, the most insane keynote ever, and can we put an end to legalese in our EULAs?

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