F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Samsung wants all your cash, Sony wants a way out, and China wants a virtual anchorman.

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.

For months, the tech industry has been focused on the inevitable announcement of Samsung's foldable phone, the first of this generation's multi-screen Android devices. Unlike the last generation, the Samsung device is designed to eliminate the seam between folded and unfolded modes, making it a far better concept than the Kyocera Echo and similar devices. Last week, the device, officially dubbed Samsung Galaxy F, was finally announced and shown to the world with all of the expected features in tow.

It has long been known that E3 is collapsing in on itself. Despite the fact the conference was only known because of its rather inclusive badging system, the hosts decided to close the rules up, allowing only those with a high profile in the industry to attend. This meant that fans could no longer go, beginning the downward decline of the show. This, combined with their complete lack of understanding around new media, led to the big companies within the industry to get scared.

The past couple of years have been difficult for Facebook. With controversy after controversy, the largest being Cambridge Analytica, it sure seems that the company cannot seem to do anything right. As such, trust in their brand is at an all-time low, both with consumers and with legislators.

Last week, China unveiled what is, on the surface, a pretty impressive achievement: an AI reporter for their state-run television news. This virtual anchorman was developed by Xinhua and the Chinese search engine, Sogou, as a way to create a 24/7 face for the news, that never gets tired and is always there. According to Qiu Hao, the name of the digital host who is a representation of a real anchor for the network,

This week, Apple is expressing multiple personalities, Nintendo is expressing their love for the 3DS, and Netflix is showing some love for movie 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.

This week was one of several annual "Apple Days" where Apple unveils a collection of new products. This month's event was focused on Apple's computers and tablets. While the company announced new laptops and a refreshed (after 4 years) Mac Mini, the real hero of the event was even smaller than the company's tiny desktop. In fact, it was smaller than an inch: Apple replaced the Lightning connector on the iPad Pro!

There is no doubt that Nintendo has seen incredible success with the Switch. Creating a console that can be both an in-home and portable console in one brought to reality a promise made by both Microsoft and Sony, but accomplishing it first. The success of the device has created a lot of questions about the fate of Nintendo's other portable console, however: the 3DS family.

The tech industry has long had a difficult relationship with sexual conduct within the context of work. HP lost a CEO over sexual misconduct. Uber fired an exec over it last month. One company at CES is known for "hookers and blow" at their events. Even Microsoft hosted a party at the Game Developers Conference which featured scantily clad women on tables.

There is no question that streaming services are the current go-to for many movie viewers. The industry, however, feels very differently about streaming services, including industry leader Netflix. Studios and producers continue to look down on these services, despite the rising viewership versus shrinking viewership in theaters. It has caused a problem for Netflix, who has maintained a policy of "day-and-date" delivery for the films they bring to theaters, which means that they launch in theaters and on Netflix at the same time.

This week, karaoke is coming to Twitch, no information is coming from Apple, and some big names are not coming to the big screen.

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.

While many aspects of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) are in place to protect the correct entities, in some cases the wording has created unintended problems. The most notable issue has been Section 1201, which is described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation,

While two decades ago Konami was the kind of rhythm games, today that title definitely belongs to Harmonix. It seems that no one knows how to produce a fun and creative rhythm game quite like Harmonix. The company created their name on the massively successful title Rock Band, and last year, in partnership with Hasbro, launched one of our top holiday gifts: DropMix. Our team at DDRLover was surprised to see not only a new music title but even more surprised that it was a new take on music.

With the way the electronics world works today when a cloud-based service goes down, Twitter loses their minds. In fact, you can always find out within minutes if a service is having an outage simply by opening up your Twitter feed. If you need evidence of this, go look last week when YouTube crashed for only an hour, or the last time PlayStation network experienced an outage. More importantly, you can also find out about these outages quickly directly from the companies. YouTube, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Azure, Amazon Web Services, and more all notify users almost immediately when they experience issues.

Over the last few years, two Disney-owned franchises have absolutely ruled the big screen: Marvel and Star Wars. New films are always just around the corner, and almost all of them have received nothing but positive box office results. However, 2018 has been hard on both of these brands, and this week saw Disney responding to the issues.

This week, Apple says they haven't been hacked, Google says it's fixed a privacy violation, and Netflix says the EU is trying to limit content.

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.

On October 4, 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article detailing how China included a tiny microchip on server motherboards in an attempt to bypass corporate security at some major companies, including Amazon and Apple. They described an intricate plot, involving manufacturing plants in China that produced motherboards for Supermicro server hardware. They claim that Amazon noticed the chip, which they reported to US authorities, who have spent over 3 years investigating. The article cites information from insiders at Amazon, Apple, and the Federal government. Newsweek felt this investigative piece, which covers incidents dating back as far as 2015, was important enough that it was the cover story for October 8, 2018.

A few months ago, Discord announced a game store to compete with Valve's Steam service. This was part of a back-and-forth between the companies, which started with Steam trying to clone Discord's core product: chat. The store launched initially in Canada alone for testing, but this week has grown their market to cover the globe. This means that all of Discord's 150 million users now have access to the curated collection of indie games.

When Google released version 69 of their Chrome web browser, they introduced a new "feature": if you log into any Google service using the browser, Google will automatically sign you into the browser. This is a small but important change. It means that as soon as you sign in to Gmail or YouTube, all of your browser activity is immediately attachable to you - no more anonymity using Chrome. Geek News Central describes the problem in detail.

Over the last year or so, the European Union has seemed intent on either isolating itself from the rest of the digital world or in crippling the ability of consumers within. GDPR seemed to be the beginning, though the regulations ended up being mostly easy to implement (unless you're using blockchain). They followed it up with copyright laws that could prevent user-generated content sites from operating within the Union.

This week, Facebook wants to watch you cook, Microsoft wants to help you game, and WarnerMedia wants to stream its own content.

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.

Anyone who is unaware of Facebook's privacy and security violations does not live in the same century as the rest of us. Between major controversies like Cambridge Analytica and their recent data breach, faith and trust in the company is not in a great place. All of that makes this week's announcement even more surprising: Facebook is launching Portal: an Alexa-powered smart display and video chatting device.

It has long been known that Microsoft was working on an Azure-powered Xbox streaming platform. At E3 this year, the project was confirmed, with a promise of further details to come. Following Google's Project Stream going into beta last week, Microsoft has made good on that promise, with new details released this week.

Since is launched in 2011, Google+ has been the butt of nearly every joke in the tech industry. A favorite is the idea that the only people who use Google+ are Google employees, being forced to do so to try and show some sort of usage. Of course, there are more users than employees, but not by a huge margin. Over the years Google has done a lot to try and force people to interact with Google+. The most famous of which was forcing YouTube integration, making users have a Google+ account to comment on videos. None of these tricks worked.

After AT&T won its bid to purchase Time Warner and got government approval to do so, the company has quickly been making changes around their acquisition. The company quickly made changes at HBO, even while the Department of Justice was renewing their fight against the merger. They have also been offering bundles of their combined services, like DirecTV and wireless service, along with HBO streaming.

This week, Apple wasn't completely honest in their presentation, Nintendo isn't completely in sync with their customers and Netflix wants to recommend a complete solution for producers.

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 week was Apple's annual iPhone announcement event and the company did what it does best - talk about their products like there's never been anything like them in the history of man. Of course, everyone knows that it's simply hyperbole because almost all phones on the market are exactly like it - often times better than it. While hyperbole involves a small level of misinformation, or at the very least a rewriting of the scale of information, Apple took it to a new level this year.

Last week, Nintendo scheduled their latest Nintendo Direct presentation. Unfortunately, there was an earthquake in Japan, delaying the event, and it was rescheduled for this week. During the presentation, little to no new information was presented about the imminent Nintendo Switch Online service, instead detailing the information we already know about the $20 per year subscription service. Following the presentation, however, Nintendo published some new information to their website, giving us a better look at some of the rules and regulations surrounding the service.

Since the European Parliament began working on one of many conflicting regulations for online behavior, there has been nothing but negative comments. This particular package is designed to change the way copyrights are enforced in the EU, but the idea is poorly considered and creates an environment that makes doing business online within the European Union difficult for some and impossible for most. With all of the negative response to the regulations, it seemed nearly impossible that it would actually pass the European Parliament.

There is no denying that Netflix is a top content producer. Between shows like Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt and Stranger Things, they have established themselves as an absolute powerhouse. As they expand their catalog of Netflix exclusive content, they are looking for ways to ensure that all of the content that is created for the services maintains that high level of quality. One of the ways they hope to accomplish this is by certifying production equipment for quality.

This week, Sprint and T-Mobile are finally coming together, Sony is keeping PlayStation apart, and the Federal Trade Commission might be going down a familiar road.

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.

Whenever a merger is proposed, there will always be opposition, no matter how innocuous the transaction seems. Whether it be the federal government questioning the validity of the merger, local government unhappy with the results, competitors afraid of the competition or interest groups who fear change, you can be certain that someone will object. The important question is always, how many of these oppositions will have an effect on the proposal.

It was only 2 months ago when it looked like Sony was changing their cross-platform strategy. President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden said,

Another day, another example of a government official questioning Google. The week started with President Trump making accusations that Google's search results were prioritizing certain content over others. This is an accusation that has been made many times by people all over the world. It has varied from claiming the company prioritizes its own content over more relevant results to filtering content that Google's corporate leadership disagrees with.

Amazon has had a lot of success with Prime Video, the video streaming service that comes included with an Amazon Prime subscription. They have expanded the service from licensed video to original content, including big budget content like Jack Ryan, which released this weekend. The company may be looking to expand their video offering once again with a new service.

This week, Apple reveals their private thoughts, Valve reveals they're cloning again and Amazon reveals it wants to expand its media reach.

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.

A teen in Australia pleaded guilty this week in Children's Court to hacking into Apple's secure network several times across the past year and accessing various systems. Among his intrusions, he downloaded over 90GB of secure data and accessed customer account information. His lawyer told the court that his client, 16, had hacked into the network because he is a fan of the company and dreamed of working there.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that Valve introduced their Discord clone into the Steam ecosystem. Discord shot back by introducing their own game store last week. This week, it would appear that Valve is not finished challenging their competitors with new services, either to directly compete or drive customers away from those companies.

Over the past few years, cryptography has been a big topic of conversation. First, cryptocurrencies have brought the topic into the mainstream, with the blockchains that most cryptocurrencies run on top of using various encryption methods to protect the blockchain data. Second, most major messaging systems have implemented encrypted messaging, with some (like Signal) using it always, and others (Facebook Messenger) enabling it as a setting. Third, most of the operating systems encrpt data with built-in technology, including Windows 10 and Android.

Amazon has a fairly large presence in the media market even if they do lag behind in all of their markets. Prime Video doesn't quite compete with Netflix or Hulu. Amazon Music doesn't quite compete with Spotify or Apple Music. Even Fire TV doesn't quite compete with Chromecast. If Amazon has their way, that might be about to change.

This week, TCL is bringing back Palm, Discord is selling indie games and Spotify makes a big partnership with Samsung.

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.

Over the past few years, phones have definitely gotten larger. In fact, since the beginning of the consumer smartphone market, phone screen sizes have nearly doubled. The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen, while the original Android phone, the HTC Dream (known as the T-Mobile G1 in the US), had a 3.2-inch screen. Compare that to the iPhone X's 5.8-inch screen and Samsung Note 9, announced officially this week, with its 6.4-inch screen, and you can see a big change in the market.

Less than a month ago, Valve launched Steam Chat to all of its users. The feature is a near exact clone of Discord, the leading chat platform for gamers. The services had a small chance of success, being as it is built into the most popular gaming distribution client for PC games, but it had a big uphill battle against the existing platform. It is always difficult to challenge an established and beloved brand, especially in an industry that is overpopulated with brand loyalty.

Facebook Page integrity leaves something to be desired. There's never any telling if a Page represents who they say they do, or if they are even related to the topic they claim. It's also possible for pages to merge, bringing an unsuspecting audience to a new type of content. In an effort to bring transparency to Pages, Facebook is implementing some new policies for Pages that have a large following. Facebook explained the decision in a post, saying,

Ever since entering the US market, Spotify has owned the music streaming business. Apple has made some inroads since purchasing and rebranding Beats Music, but they still trail in music selection and userbase. Spotify has gained a bigger foothold in the industry thanks to their newly announced partnership with Samsung. As part of the relationship, Samsung will tightly integrate Spotify service into their devices, including phones, televisions and new Galaxy Home.

This week, Apple is tightening its grip on the App Store, Google is losing their grip on Google Play and YouTube plans a better Music experience.

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.

Since the beginning, one of the top ways that people discovered new apps for iPhone, iPad, and macOS has been through the Affiliate Program. Through the program, websites and influencers alike could promote one or more apps and make a small commission on sales. The program is what has made app review websites possible, which makes finding new apps easier while giving a consistent view of these new apps.

There is no question that Fortnite is currently owning the gaming industry as well as determining its current direction. Many of the biggest gaming studios want a piece of the Battle Royale pie, except maybe Microsoft, as do the gaming platforms. Like Minecraft, Fortnite is available just about everywhere: from the more traditional PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch, to macOS, iPhone, and iPad, almost everyone can play the game wherever they are, though not with one another if you're on PlayStation.

In 2010, Google was offended by the Chinese government forcing them to censor search results. The government had demanded that Google remove any search results containing references to topics such as freedom, democracy, human rights and peaceful protest. As a result, the company turned off censorship and awaited the country's response, which came within hours. YouTube and other Google properties were blocked nearly immediately, with the rest of Google going away shortly after. At the time, Google's chief legal officer, Senior Vice President David Drummond, said,

Ever since YouTube released YouTube Music in May, users have been less than pleased with the experience. The large collection of music has not been enough to compensate for the terrible user experience or the complete lack of common music streaming service features. Many users have been so disenchanted that they switched back to services like Spotify.