F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, the world's becoming more augmented, Steam is getting more modern, and Quibi is looking towards the law.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

It's no secret that, in the world of ultra-portable computing, the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform is the preferred choice. It's partially because the processors are the best in the market (even driving Intel to abandon their product line), and partially because they are incredibly easy to integrate. The chipset offers more than just a processor, as it includes radio technologies as well. This makes designing a device easier, as there is no need to try and integrate various components.

When Epic announced its Epic Games Store, there was a lot of concern about what it might do to the industry. Epic is not exactly known for being a great company, despite having built one of the world's most popular games. The company decided to take a different approach towards its store, focusing on the publishers rather than the customers. They did this by offering only a 12 percent fee, compared with the Microsoft Store's 20 percent, or Steam's 30 percent. This move has attracted a lot of developers, especially smaller developers, for whom that additional 18 percent revenue could be essential.

Senator Bernie Sanders has spent his political career with a complicated relationship with monopolies. On the one hand, he sees monopolies everywhere he looks, even in industries with a lot of competition. On the other hand, his solution to solving these "monopolies" is to build a true monopoly in its place. His current pitch is against the broadband industry, claiming that "monopolies" like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon hold their customers hostage.

In the streaming video world, this week has been one of contract announcements for the rights to popular older shows. The future of The Office, Friends, and more are solidified for a while. However, in the crowded streaming field, having something unique is essential to the success of the platform. Netflix has a ton of original programming, Hulu gets new episodes the day after airing, Disney has a century worth of catalog to offer. However, when Quibi announced that their service would be exclusive to T-Mobile customers, it looked like they were heading the wrong way.

This week, Huawei is leaving networks, Half-Life is coming to VR, and Apple is temporarily skipping theaters.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

There has been a lot of questions over the validity of Chinese hardware existing in the West, led by the United States. The worry comes from the close relationship between some of the big tech companies and the Communist government that controls China. This concern has covered everything from $200 phones and laptops to million-dollar cellular network hardware. While the future of the relationship between US and Chinese companies is still in question for consumer goods, the Federal Communications Commission has decided on network hardware.

It has been over 12 years since the latest entry in the Half-Life franchise was released. It was Half-Life 2 Episode 2, released in October 2007, part of the Orange Box, which also included the undisputed game of the year, Portal. In the subsequent decade, players have hoped that Valve would release the third chapter in that story, Episode 3, but to no avail. In its absence, the existence of Half-Life 3 has become the constant joke of the Internet.

The government has long had a complicated relationship with data security. On the one hand, Congress held hearings with top-level executives of Facebook, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, over the handling of user data, spurred on by the Cambridge Analytica issues. On the other, the Justice Department has campaigned against encryption, wanting a "backdoor" into encrypted data. The tech world has continued to fight against the idea of an easily broken encryption system because that undermines the entire concept of encryption.

While the release of Disney+ has seen its share of difficulties, including missing features and system availability, it's been the release of Apple TV+ that has been the real disaster. Disney has almost a century worth of content to fall back onto, but Apple is just getting started with content, and that content has been its downfall thus far.

This week, Google gives away Cardboard, China takes away some gaming, and Netflix retires older device support.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

I was just a few weeks ago that Google officially ended the experiment that was Google Daydream. With that, the era of phone-based virtual reality was officially dead. The two big companies in the space, Google and Samsung, were out, leaving the market void. However, consumers and developers were still interested in the concept - just not as intensely as several years ago.

Over the past few years, gaming addiction has become an increasingly hot topic. While there has been a lot of debate on the validity of the topic, both in the general population and among mental health professionals, some have taken a hard stance. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO), which has been known to overreact to some circumstances, has declared it a mental health disorder.

For the first time, the American government has charged Saudis for spying within the United States. The charges come against two former Twitter employees who are accused of using their positions within the company to collect information and send it back to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The indictment specifically cites that these individuals acted as unregistered agents and submitting falsified documents to the Federal Bureau of Investigations to support their continued activities within the United States.

One of the biggest concerns about cloud-powered software services is the longevity of those platforms. With standard software, you can use it for as long as you want. Take, for example, Photoshop. If you purchased a copy of Photoshop from Adobe in 1989 and continued to have a computer on which you could use it, it would continue to operate today, 30 years later. However, if you subscribe to Photoshop CC today, that version may be terminated from operation at any moment.

This week, wireless carriers are working together, Fallout players are working in private, and Google is working to improve results.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

When Apple introduced iMessage, it seemed like a strange move. Today, however, it is the standard by which messaging services are judged. That is partially because it was responsible for eliminating text messaging caps across the board, but it's also because it adds features to texting that the SMS standard lacks. For those who live in the Android ecosystem, iMessage offers delivery receipts as well as read receipts. Its biggest downfall, however, is that it is not a standard, but instead an Apple brand. That means that it is an iPhone exclusive.

When gamers think of recent failed game launches, most will point to Fallout 76. While a lot of players had fun with the game from the beginning, others found certain aspects of the game to be out of line with the franchise. One of the primary concerns was that you could not play the game in a closed environment, being forced to play on public servers, subject to the unpredictability of random players. Granted, the game was billed as an MMO in the Fallout universe, it still caused displeasure.

Google updates its search algorithm daily. They add little tweaks manually and their AI platform makes small adjustments on its own. However, it is unusual for Google to make a change so big that it requires a big announcement. That is exactly what happened this week, with Google announcing a change that could affect 10% of all searches on the platform.

The streaming video space has gone from a two brand system to being overcrowded. We always knew that it was inevitable that brands would begin to dry up and begin to either close, shift owners, or merge with other platforms. Disney+ and Hulu, both to be owned by Disney, have begun running cross-promotions. AT&T TV Now subscribers have seen repeated price increases, now higher than cable.

This week, Google has given up its Daydream, Blizzard is giving up their loyalty, and tech companies may no longer give up your data.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

At the resurgence of virtual reality in this decade, many companies saw using your phone and its screen as the basis for VR systems as the best solution. Samsung and Oculus built the Gear VR platform. Google created the Cardboard and then the Daydream platforms. A variety of other companies, including Monster, got into the game. All of these used your phone as the center of the VR experience, rather than creating dedicated VR hardware.

In the past few weeks, Blizzard has made some decisions that have caused not just consumer, but international backlash. It started a few weeks ago when a professional Hearthstone player, Ng "Blitzchung" Wai Chung, made a pro-Hong Kong protest comment after a competition. The company stripped him of his tournament win and banned him from professional play for a year. Consumers responded swiftly, with people across the globe canceling their Blizzard game subscriptions. As a result, Blizzard seemed to disable the ability to cancel a subscription, claiming technical difficulties. After backlash, the company reinstated his win, as well as reducing his ban to six months instead of twelve.

Over the past few years, we have seen a rise in inappropriate data usage. Some of it has come from the data collectors themselves, such as Twitter's recent revelation that they had used security recovery email addresses and phone numbers for targeted advertising. Others have come from third parties, such as Cambridge Analytica and Hyp3r. No matter the source, the inappropriate or unintended use of personal data is on the rise and is causing the world to have less trust in tech companies.

As more video streaming services enter the market, each one is looking for a way to differentiate themselves. Disney+ is focusing on the big Disney franchises. Apple TV+ is focusing on high profile original content with a large production budget. Quibi, short for "quick bites," has decided to focus on short-form episodic content. It's a strong pitch in a market filled with traditional length content on all of the services.

This week, Apple's phones can be broken, Microsoft's streaming can be tested, and Google's news results can't be previewed.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

It is not unusual for companies to discover software vulnerabilities. The thing that makes software great is that it can be patched if an issue is discovered so that the issue can be mitigated. However, a hardware-level vulnerability is far less common and even harder to repair. This is the situation that Apple has found itself in, as a hardware-level vulnerability has been discovered and actively exploited in a wide range of iPhones.

There is no doubt that the big players in the gaming industry believe that the future of gaming lies in streaming. Microsoft, Google, and even Electronic Arts are working on game streaming platforms. While EA began testing their platform a few weeks ago, Microsoft has been holding out on public testing of Project xCloud. That is until now, as the company has officially announced the beginning of their public platform test for October.

As the tech industry swings heavily towards cloud services, the government has been issuing a lot more data requests to cloud providers. Often, the requests for data are sealed, meaning that the cloud provider is legally forbidden from informing their client that their data has been taken by the government. While many companies simply turn the data over, one of the biggest players regularly fights these gag orders: Microsoft.

Google can be a difficult company to predict. This is because, while the company ardently sticky to its values, those values can be near impossible to nail down at any given moment. In 2010, Googled ended operations in China over mandated search result censorship, taking moral exception to the requirement to censor human rights topics. Last year, however, they began work on a censored search product specifically for China. They have since canceled the project, but only because of employee and public backlash.

This week, Uber's fighting off pressure, EA's testing under stress, and Vudu's hiding from bad words.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

This has been a rough year for ride-sharing platform Uber. The company has seen increasing losses every quarter, and there seems to be no slowing it down. In just the second quarter of 2019, the company reported a loss of $5 billion, or roughly the entire GDP of Barbados. A large portion of that loss is related to the company's IPO, but the company is still losing about $1 billion per quarter without those one-time losses.

The gig economy is the basis for companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates, TaskRabbit, etc. The idea is that you can sign up to be a contractor for the company, setting your hours and working within your confines. You're never required to do a job, and your payment is entirely dependent on how much work you take on. Think of an Uber driver, who is allowed to work when is convenient for them and take or skip any ride that is offered to them. The gig economy has grown into a major player in the market over the past few years and shows no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, one US state is making it more difficult for those companies to exist.

Cloud gaming is quickly becoming a hot market. Sony bought into the idea several years ago with Gaikai, which later became the basis for PlayStation Now. However, other companies have held off on the idea, as limitations in infrastructure and cost have ended brands like OnLive. The winds seem to be changing, as all of the big players, and a few new ones, are trying their hand at game streaming. Microsoft has Project xCloud, Google has Stadia, and now Electronic Arts is throwing their hat in the ring with Project Atlas.

Data scraping has long been the scourge of website owners. You do a lot of work to produce a website that provides useful information to people, and someone else comes along and scrapes that data from your website and uses it for their gain. In some cases, it can simply be an annoyance that makes it feel like your work was violated. In other cases, it can be the basis of an entire business model, such as Hyp3r's scraping location data from Instagram. In that case, Instagram cut off access to the data, but that's not always possible.

Family-friendly content has always been a mucky topic. In the 90s, movie rental stores tried removing questionable content from movies, only to be sued by the movie studios. More recently, VidAngel tried to do the same thing, only with the added bonus of having stolen the movies in the first place. They also didn't fare well in a legal battle with the studios, being denied the "right" to sell pirated and altered movies.

This week, Apple's trying to dodge bugs, Nintendo's embracing their past, and Facebook's giving out your number.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

Google's Project Zero is a security team within the company that identifies and discloses security issues in products produced by the company and other high profile products from other companies. The original concept of Project Zero was very dangerous, but the company amended their ways. Today, Project Zero works with the developers of the products in which they find the exploits to determine how and when the exploit should be disclosed.

When Switch Online first launched, Nintendo added free games to the subscription. Knowing their customer base better than any of the gaming companies, they decided to reach into their back catalog and offer games from the original NES console. However, we discovered recently that they planned to make games from other consoles available, particularly the Super NES. During this week's Nintendo Direct presentation, the company announced the first titles that would be coming from the Super NES, and it is quite a collection.

It wouldn't be a week on the internet if Facebook hadn't created a scenario in which consumer and governmental trust in their handling of data weren't called into question. This week's example of bad decision making comes in the form of a database of user phone numbers, made available via an unsecured cloud database. To make matters worse, this was not the only version of this database made available, as Facebook had already taken down a similar database of phone numbers.

In April of 2018, a group of more than 20 privacy groups filed a complaint with the FTC, claiming that YouTube had repeatedly and knowingly violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). The allegations involved knowing that users under the age of 13 have regularly used YouTube to access video content, and YouTube had collected viewing history in order to make recommendations, as well as serve targeted advertisements, all without parental consent.

This week, Android is a little less sweet, Apple is a little less expensive, and Libra is a little less confident.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

One of the most popular and long-standing traditions in the Android ecosystem is the naming convention. While Android versions have numbers, like most software, they have also famously had development names that are taken from the names of desserts. Some have been generic, like Android 9 Pie, while others have been named in partnership with dessert brands, like Android 8 Oreo. Trying to guess what the name of the next version is going to be is one of the best parts of the development cycle. Unfortunately, that is all coming to an end right now.

It's been a few months since Apple announced its new subscription gaming service, Apple Arcade, at WWDC 2019. The service will come with a collection of games, including all in-app purchases and no advertisements. The service will launch this Fall and has been much anticipated for its Xbox Game Pass style take on mobile gaming. However, some apprehension has remained, as Apple never announced pricing for the new service. However, according to a new report this week, the price of the service will be $4.99 per month.

The announcement from Facebook earlier this year that they were working on launching a cryptocurrency called Libra immediately drew scrutiny, from other companies and governments the world over. It seems that Facebook, their subsidiary Calibra, and the other members of the Libra Association hadn't considered the possibility that there could be concerns over the platform before the announcement. Now, because of the backlash, the Financial Times reports that members of the Association are getting cold feet.

Since AT&T purchased DirecTV, they have continued to have one problem after another. The DoJ has reconsidered their position on the purchase, while investors have called the company out. The investor lawsuit surrounds the accuracy of the number of people leaving the company's streaming service. Investors claim that far more customers have jumped ship than AT&T have claimed.

This week, Apple is fighting the EU, Ninja is fighting for his brand, and CBS and Viacom are trying to fight Disney.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

In 2016, the European Union decided that Ireland had not charged Apple enough in taxes, and demanded that Ireland collect an additional 13 billion euro (or roughly $14.4 billion) in "back taxes." This would be far from the first time a company, especially a tech company, was accused of avoiding taxes. For example, Bernie Sanders believes that Amazon has skirted tax law in the United States. However, this might be the first time that the country in question believes that the company paid what they were supposed to.

At the beginning of the month, popular Twitch streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced that he would be leaving his home of 8 years on Twitch to exclusively stream on Microsoft's Mixer platform. He was streaming the next day on Mixer, leaving his Twitch channel offline for the first time in a while. Ninja did a great job of keeping the transition smooth and professional, never saying anything bad about his former home because he had nothing negative to say. He had been happy on Twitch, but Microsoft made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

One of the hardest things to do online these days is protecting your privacy. Between tracking cookies, Facebook pixels, and the like, it can be difficult to keep websites from following you across the web. Incognito mode in your browser does an okay job of hiding your activity by preventing the cookies. Tools like PureVPN allow you to obfuscate your browsing history by adjusting your IP address, and even your global location, as you browse. Other tools, such as Tor, create an untraceable route to hide your activities. While there are certain ways to identify some users, these processes do a good job for most users.

Everyone in the United States knows Viacom, whether they recognize the name or not. Viacom owns networks like MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. The company, or more specifically the brand name, has had a long and bizarre history with broadcast company CBS. Viacom started out as CBS Films and was the syndication wing of CBS. It became Viacom (short for Video & Audio Communications) in 1970 and became its own, independent corporation in 1971. In 1999, Viacom acquired CBS through parent company Westinghouse Electric Company, making Viacom the new parent. In 2006, Viacom became CBS Corporation, and a new company, called Viacom, was created, to offload business that CBS no longer wanted.