Hasta La Gadget!

Getting a character to level 100 in World of Warcraft can be a rather tedious task and understandably so, which is why sometimes when you hear that some gamers have managed to get every single class in the game to level 100, it is even more impressive as it means leveling 11 different characters.

However one gamer has taken things to the extreme and has revealed that he has managed to level 100 characters to level 100 in the game. Some of you might think it’s impossible, and some of you might think that he might be resorting to exploits or hacks, but he has not. In fact if you were to read his post, he details the entire process which basically boils down to good old hard work.

Watola, the player in question, does take advantage of several mechanics in the game, such as the RAF feature which allows gamers to gain more XP when playing with a friend (he created multiple accounts). He also had Heirloom items which are basically items that scale with your level and grant a lot of bonus XP in the process.

According to Watola, “I did approximately 460 levels in 16 days. My levelling was primarily done via questing and the gathering of treasures; mission experience played a huge role in rounding out the experience so that I could be stricter on my questing paths.” In any case it is a pretty impressive feat, although many gamers in the forums do point out that maybe it’s time to Watola to step outside of the game and take a break for a while.

World Of Warcraft Gamer Reaches Level 100 With 100 Characters , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

In November 2014, it was revealed that NBC’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt would be arriving on Netflix instead of the network, the reasons for which revolving around NBC’s drama-heavy mid-season schedule and the belief that the show would do best on the video streaming service. While we’ve known for a while now what the show would be about, we haven’t yet … Continue reading

Larry Magid interviews Ford CEO Mark Fields

As you walk around the parking lot, garage and labs at Ford’s newly opened Silicon Valley Research Center, you see plenty of cars and trucks along with all sorts of electronic gear. But there are also bicycles which, said Ford CEO Mark Fields, are among the many “mobility” technologies the company is looking at. “We’re thinking of ourselves not only as just an auto company,” he said in an interview, “but we’re also thinking ourselves as a mobility company (scroll down to listen),” He said that Ford is “thinking broadly about a lot of these big societal issues such as congestion in large cities,” and added, “we want to help be part of the solution.” He said it’s all about experiments ranging from bicycles and cars with sensors looking for open parking spaces

I didn’t see a Ford logo on any of the bicycles but the company is equipping them with sensors to collect data about how people are getting from place to place. “It is a bit of opening the lens on our business, he said. “We’re first and foremost a car and truck company,” but he added “it’s important for us to experiment and to think from a consumer standpoint,” including “making customer’s lives easier getting from point A to point B.” He also said that expanding to other modes of mobility is “a good business opportunity.”

The company is also experimenting with what Fields called a “car swapping” app. Ford employees, many of whom drive company cars, have access to an app that lets them swap cars with fellow employees. An example, said Fields might be “I’m looking for a Mustang for the weekend,” in the hopes that a Mustang driving colleague might want to switch cars for a couple of days. So far, the app is only for employees, not the general public.

Ford is also experimenting with ride sharing services. “in other parts of the world we’re testing small mini-buses. Folks are OK getting into a vehicle and sharing it but they want the appropriate amount of person space so we’re looking at seating configurations,” said Fields.

Broadening the business

Calling itself a mobility company is a lot like a newspaper or radio station calling itself a media company or a railroad saying that’s in in the transportation business, not the train business. Ford is known for making motorized vehicles that move people and things, but as the company looks forward, it’s starting to think about all the possible ways to move humans and objects from place to place.

Silicon Valley connection

Fields said that Ford wants to be part of the “Silicon Valley eco-system” and to that end, the new lab, which Ford says is “one of the largest automotive manufacturer research labs in Silicon Valley,” expects to employ 125 researchers, engineers and scientists by the end of the year. The lab is run by Dragos Maciuca, who came to Ford from Apple. Ford is also working with Google-owned Nest to deliver data from Nest home sensors (currently thermostats and smoke detectors) to the car. If smoke is detected at home, an alarm will go off in car with a notice on the car’s infotainment system.

Like Google, Ford is also experimenting with autonomous vehicles along with partners from University of Michigan, M.I.T. and Stanford. The company is providing a Fusion Hybrid autonomous research car to Stanford’s engineering program so that researchers can test planning and prediction algorithms.

Remote driving

In addition to bicycles, I also saw a golf cart at the facility. Actually what I saw was a Ford engineer sitting at what looked like an auto-simulator but he was remotely driving a golf cart located at Georgia Institute of Technology. This technology could come to market far sooner than autonomous cars, which are still years away, and could be used for specific applications such as off-road services or valet parking.

Ford is also working on improved voice recognition systems not only for infotainment and navigation but to assist in driving too.

No flying machines

I asked Fields whether I’ll ever achieve my boyhood dream of having my own personal flying machine and all he could say was that “we’re busy working on alternative fuels and autonomous vehicles but the Jetsons, I think, are still a cartoon.”

Click below to listen to Larry Magid’s entire 12-minute CBS News interview with Ford CEO Mark Fields.

By Mark Hosenball and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) – The United States has pulled more staff out of its embassy in Yemen, U.S. officials said on Thursday as Washington scrambled to cope with the collapse of a government that had been a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda.

The officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. diplomatic contingent in the Yemeni capital Sanaa has been drawn down due to the deteriorating security situation there but that there were no plans to close the embassy.

U.S. authorities have privately made clear they want the compound, an important outpost for counter-terrorism cooperation with Yemeni forces, to remain open as a demonstration of American resolve.

But current and former U.S. officials say the chaos engulfing Yemen has already threatened the administration’s strategy against a powerful al Qaeda branch there. Just four months ago, Obama had touted Yemen as a model for “successful” counter-terrorism partnerships worldwide.

Word of the withdrawal of further U.S. personnel came on the same day that Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi stepped down, throwing the country deeper into chaos days after Iran-backed Houthi rebels battled their way into his presidential palace.

The Obama administration was caught off guard by the resignation of Hadi, a key security ally of the United States who had backed American drone strikes and special forces operations against al Qaeda militants.

“We are still assessing the implications,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The decision to withdraw more embassy staff followed repeated public assurances from the Obama administration that it considered the safety of U.S. personnel of paramount importance.

The State Department had already reduced staff at the embassy in recent months to essential personnel, mostly related to security matters, as the fighters from the Shi’ite Houthi minority seized control of the capital.

“In response to the changing security situation in Yemen, the United States Embassy in Sanaa has further reduced its American personnel working in Yemen,” a senior State Department official told Reuters.

“While the Embassy remains open and is continuing to operate, we may continue to re-align resources based on the situation on the ground. We will continue to operate as normal, albeit with reduced staff,” the official said.

It was not immediately known how many U.S. staffers remained or how many would be withdrawn.

INCREASING ALARM IN WASHINGTON

Washington watched with increasing alarm in recent days as Houthi rebels held Hadi as a virtual prisoner in his official residence. U.S. officials had hoped that Hadi’s announcement on Wednesday that he was ready to make concessions to the Houthi movement would calm the situation but that prospect fell apart just a day later.

Washington is concerned that the chaos in Yemen could create conditions that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) will exploit to strengthen its base of support there and use the country to plot attacks on Western interests. AQAP claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Paris early this month.

A former senior U.S. official said that events in Yemen will “absolutely” limit U.S. drone strikes and counter-terrorism operations in the country in the short-term and that if the Houthis ends up in full control of the government they will demand a halt to the drone campaign.

Some U.S. officials believe that while the Houthis are determined to wield more power in Yemen the movement may not want to assume responsibility for actually governing the divided, impoverished country.

But overall the Obama administration appears to have few contacts with the Houthis and remains concerned that their emergence as the country’s main powerbrokers will mean greater influence for Iran in Yemen’s affairs. (Reporting by Jason Szep, David Rohde, Arshad Mohammed, Patricia Zengerle; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

These should be happy times for the U.S. stock market. GDP is booming, employment is up and interest rates are low. And yet, throughout the first month of 2015, the stock market has at times behaved as though it were 2008. What happened?

As great as the economic news has been on the domestic front, developments have been increasingly troubling outside of the U.S. America is a rare bright spot in a world of trouble, and no wall is high enough nor trade barrier steep enough to insulate a country in today’s global economy.

The following are some trouble spots around the world that could damage America’s economic fortunes (not to mention security) in the year ahead:

1. Greece. Sorry if you feel like you’ve heard this before, but Greece is threatening to default on its debts and fail to meet conditions necessary for continued inclusion in the euro currency zone. This might seem like a replay of 2012, except now there is a threat that a populist party will take power and tell a weary people what they want to hear: that they no longer have to meet their obligations. Greece is not a huge economy by global standards, so their domestic mess alone would not have serious ramifications here, but potentially destabilizing the euro is a bigger problem.
2. Germany. Fiscally conservative Germany might seem like the anti-Greece, but in some ways that’s the problem. Their hard-line approach to more profligate nations is causing growing divisions within the European Union, and their commitment to austerity may also be bringing their domestic economy to a standstill.
3. Russia. Face it, Vladimir Putin might already have been the world’s most dangerous man, but how do you think he is going to react now that oil — his country’s major source of revenues — is selling for half what it was six months ago?
4. Iran. Iran may have seemed to have been inching toward reasonableness, but this is another country highly dependent upon oil. Both Russia and Iran are scrambling to make up for lower prices by selling more oil, which will only make the over-supply problem worse. An economic setback could cause Iran to return to its former belligerence.
5. North Korea. It has been easy to think of North Korea as a country whose bark was worse than its bite, but the Sony hacking situation demonstrates that a country need not be a world power these days to be highly disruptive economically.
6. China. The nice version of the narrative is that China is slowly moving away from communism and toward capitalism. The somewhat harsher reality is that having another heavyweight in the field just makes the global economic game rougher — especially if that heavyweight has shown it is not above playing dirty, in the form of hacking and copyright infringement.

This list does not even include the burgeoning Islamic State in the Middle East, which is not a problem isolated to one country, but rather a representation of an extremism that threatens the region in general.

In short, as much as America has done to get itself back on track, there are plenty of threats that could derail that progress. The positive side of this is that a strong U.S. economy gives the world a better chance of averting catastrophe.

Also by Richard Barrington:

• The best savings account rates: A saver’s guide
• Best states for retirees
• 2015 interest rate forecast