F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Google removes crypto from Android, EA adds extra games to Origin Access and MoviePass cuts its service for a while.

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.

Following in the footsteps of Apple and Chrome, Google Play has officially banned cryptocurrency mining apps from the store. This includes, but is not limited to, dedicated mining apps, apps and games that monetize through mining, and apps that mine without permission. This does not include apps that allow you to remotely manage mining operations, either on your own computer or on a cloud platform. It also does not prohibit apps that manage your cryptocurrencies themselves, like via wallets, etc.

At E3 2018, one of the most surprising announcements was from Electronics Arts in the form of a new tier for Origin Access. The service is a subscription which gives access to The Vault, which is a large collection of back catalog games, as well as discounts on all purchases made in the Origin Store. It also offers demos of games 5 days prior to launch, so that you can get a feel for the game to decide whether to purchase it or not.

It was only 2 weeks ago that the AT&T/Time Warner merger was placed in jeopardy when the Department of Justice appealed a court's decision that allowed the merger to be finalized a month ago. As of the appeal, AT&T had already worked Time Warner (now called WarnerMedia) into their corporate infrastructure, placing a new head over the brand and planning for some big changes at HBO.

In what is probably the least surprising news of the week, semi-popular service MoviePass is in financial trouble. The news broke on Thursday when the service unexpectedly shut down entirely, preventing people from purchasing tickets for movies through the platform. After discovering the issue, an SEC filing from the same day was uncovered, showing that the company had completely run out of cash. Because of the lack of money, the company was unable to purchase tickets from theaters, making the service entirely useless.

This week, Google is paying their dues, Facebook is suspending kids and everyone is looking for $8 per month.

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, Google's experience in Europe has not been positive. At every turn, the individual countries and the European Commision itself have continuously done things to make their business model nearly impossible. In 2014, the EU wanted to break up the company, while Spain passed a law that caused them to shut down Google News in Spain. The EU also fought to enforce pre-GDPR rules.

It is no secret that Battle Royale gameplay is taking over the gaming world right now. While the biggest players are PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and Epic's Fortnite, everyone seems to be getting onboard. Look into your favorite app store and search "battle royale" to see a nearly endless choice of off-brand titles. Even Activision is getting involved, adding Blackout mode to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, replacing the traditional single player campaign with the exact opposite of that.

In the US, we have a law called Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). Passed in 1998 and expanded in 2012, the law prevents online services from collecting any information from or about children under the age of 13. The law is the primary reason why online services require users to be 13 years old to sign up, mostly to prevent having to run multiple sets of signup rules. Recently, the law has caused legal issues for YouTube and privacy concerns for Google Play.

In the last year, there has been a lot of movement in the video streaming space, with new players wanting to participate in the industry to compete with Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. Last year, Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) bought into Hulu and Disney announced their intentions to launch Marvel and Lucas branded streaming services. In addition, CBS All Access made Star Trek: Discovery a streaming exclusive.

This week, PC shipments are on the rise, Nintendo is patching its exploits and the internet is obsessed with censorship.

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 no secret that PC sales have been on the decline for a while. In fact, it has been nearly 6 years since the industry saw its last increase in sales. That changed this quarter, according to a Gartner report, which shows that the industry saw an uptake in sales. This upward trend was spurred by enterprise spending worldwide, replacing older computers with newer Windows 10 machines. According to Mikako Kitagawa of Gartner,

Earlier in the year, it was reported that there was a flaw in the Nintendo Switch hardware which made bypassing the system protections fairly easy. These types of issues exist fairly often in modern hardware, as firmware developers reply on the ability to patch too heavily. The issue here is that the flaw was in the Tegra X1 chip provided by NVIDIA, meaning that software alone could not guarentee success in preventing owners from hacking the system.

Over the past year, one of the big topics on the internet has been about internet censorship. Some people believe that the internet should be a place for the free and open exchange of ideas. Others believe that it is the responsibility of platforms to censor the content that users publish, based on their own version of reality. A surprising percentage of people believe both of these things at once.

It was only a month ago that a federal judge rejected a governmental argument that AT&T's purchase of Time Warner would harm the industry. That rejection signaled the end of the fight for AT&T, who wrote their check and began the process of integrating the company into the AT&T business. The biggest immediate change was the name of the company; to prevent confusion with the former cable company, the company was renamed to WarnerMedia.

This week, Apple and Samsung finally settle their differences, regulations could be strangling the internet and Fox is ghosting Comcast.

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 story has been a long time in the works. In 2011, Apple sued Samsung, claiming that Samsung had violated a number of Apple's patents. While some revolved around interaction and OS design, which was mostly Google's doing, the most memorable aspect of the suit was definitely the design patent. It is one of the most mocked suits in technology history because Apple claimed that Samsung had violated a patent involving rounded corners on a rectangle.

The topic of cross-console play has been huge in the gaming industry for over a year. Microsoft committed to allowing Xbox owners to play their games with players on other consoles. Their first major project was allowing cross-play on Minecraft, a game that is all about interaction with others. As of this moment, the game can be played on every major platform, and players can all play with one another - almost. If you have an Xbox, PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or even Switch, you can play together. Unfortunately, PlayStation players are still forced to play in the Sony walled garden. Microsoft and Nintendo have gone so far as to run cross-branded ads promoting their cross-play capabilities.

2018 might just be the year of bad internet regulations being passed globally. A little over a month ago we had the implementation of GDPR, which requires that a citizen of the European Union can request that a company delete all personal data they have collected about that person. Conceptually, the law makes sense: you may not want a company like Facebook to know everything that you have ever done. And when you delete your account, you would like to know that it is actually gone.

What happens when two different companies, both bent on owning everything, bid on the same company? You end up with the epic three-way that is Fox-Disney-Comcast. It all started when Disney bid to purchase Twentieth-Century Fox. Their bid, which was the only one, was $52.4 billion, which seemed like a clear decision for Fox.

This week, Samsung might have lost their edge, Microsoft is trying new things and YouTube rebrands their services.

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.

2018 hasn't been a great year for Samsung. It's not been the PR disaster that was 2016, but it's not been smooth sailing. In 2016, Samsung famously had the Galaxy Note7 devices explode under a variety of scenarios. Even after ending sales, a product recall and "fixing the issue," devices kept sacrificing themselves to the gods of battery technology. The company also had a recall on certain washing machines because the appliances were... wait for it: exploding.

It is no secret that Microsoft has been taking some wide swings lately with their product offerings. They've been looking to appeal to a wider range of customers, with products like Outlook for iPhone and Microsoft Pix, both of which are rated higher than Apple's included email client and camera app, respectively. They've even been enhancing their Cortana offerings, including the Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker, with an Alexa partnership.

A little over a year ago, the FCC voted not to implement guidelines intended to re-establish a guarantee for an open internet in the United States. There were problems with the original intent, of course, with the most important being a lack of legal jurisdiction for the FCC to have drafted the guidelines in the first place. The FCC belongs to the Executive branch, which cannot create new law - it can only enforce existing laws.

Over the past year, YouTube has infrequently made headlines for something positive. Between illegally collecting children's information and continually stricter guidelines on content, combined with advertising issues and a creator exodus, the company seems to be in a downward spiral. It was inevitable that Google would step in at some point and look for ways to deal with viewership and revenue losses caused by these issues.

This week, mobile messaging gets more confusing, Capcom shows why free-to-play is annoying and AT&T announces a new streaming service under oath.

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, it has been nearly impossible to understand what Google is up to when it comes to messaging. They have rolled out several services, all with a similar and tragic fate: abandonment. When the service isn't abandoned entirely, it has features stolen for another platform, as was the case with Google Hangouts, which lost features to Google Allo. Google Allo, the not quite WhatsApp clone, is the most recent service to be abandoned by the company. The service was never widely accepted, possibly because at launch the service didn't really work - at least not how anyone would have wanted.

At this point, many of us have been burned by the modern concept of games-as-a-service. For example, our team raged at the random cancelation of Sim City Social, an early big-budget entry into genre. This week, the now rather large graveyard GaaS titles grew a little larger with the announcement of the end of Puzzle Fighter.

Last week, it was revealed that YouTube might be knowingly violating COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. This law, which was enacted in 1998 and expanded in 2012, ensures that online services are not allowed to collect information about children or their activities online without the consent of their parents or guardians. It is the reason why many sites require a person to be 13 years old to sign up - to keep themselves far away from the issue.

New product and service announcements happen all the time. Often, they are made at trade shows like CES or Collision, at announcement events like Microsoft, Apple and Google, or in a press release. One place where we don't expect to hear about a new product is in a court testimony, though that's exactly what happened this week.

This week, Apple wants employees to stop talking, Google wants to stop forgetting and the FTC wants YouTube to stop tracking.

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, Apple has had a problem keeping its secrets. Long before a product is officially announced, the market knows the name, the looks and most of the features. In the case of the iPhone X, everyone even knew as early as July that Apple was having design issues with the iPhone, both with the Apple AirPower Qi charging pad (which has still not launched) and the TrueDepth sensor, which ultimately delayed the iPhone X by months.

If you've ever seen the documentary The King of Kong, you'll recognize the name Billy Mitchell. He is the focus of the film, as he theoretically goes for 2 separate 1 million + point scores on the game Donkey Kong. For over a decade, Mitchell has been recognized as the first player ever to achieve the 1 million point barrier on the game. His scores have been recognized by Donkey King Forum, Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records.

If you're unaware that the internet is having a renewed interest in privacy, then you have not been following the news. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent part of the week in front of Congress because another company violated Facebook's terms of service. It has reminded people that many people regularly give personal information to a small number of companies, particularly Facebook and Twitter.

It's no secret that YouTube repeatedly finds themselves in trouble with one problem or another. Whether it be drive-by cryptominers in advertising or racism from its young comedians, there always seems to be a controversy going on with the network.

This week, Siri might finally get smarter, Valve finally gives up on Steam Machines and Verizon gives up a recently acquired brand.

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 bought Siri in 2010, they showed that they were interested in competing with Google on the search front, or at least in the way search looked. Google had recently purchased Aardvark to create their own mobile assistant, after all. The company nearly immediately discontinued the BlackBerry app for Siri and began building the technology directly into iOS. This move began a war for assistant supremacy, which today is hotter than it has ever been.

In 2012, rumors began about a "Steam Box" project. Gabe Newell confirmed the project, claiming that it was intended to compete with consoles while running like a computer. In 2013, the company officially unveiled SteamOS, the Linux-based system that would power Steam Machines, the final name of the product line. While the hardware was supposed to launch in early 2014, by the end of the year, Alienware gave up waiting, installing Windows on the computers and shipping them.

When Verizon purchased AOL and created their nostalgia unit, formally called Oath, the company was looking for content production. It was just one of many examples of "line owners" looking to get into the content production market. AT&T purchased DirecTV, intending to enhance their distribution, and wants Time Warner for the content.

This week, Google brings life to wearables, EA removes microstransactions from Star Wars: Battlefront II and streaming music has its ups and downs.

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, Google made an announcement that was not expected: Android Wear is no more. The product is not being shuttered, but instead it has been rebranded as Wear OS by Google. Google claims that the reason for the change is related to a change in their customer base.

Lately it would seem that no videogame company is farther away from understanding their customers than EA. When the company was preparing to release Star Wars: Battlefront II, they made the decision to include microtransactions in the game. This was far from the first AAA title to do this, but it was certainly the most pervasive. Certain parts of the game required so much in-game currency that it would take over 4,500 hours of gameplay to unlock; that is unless you paid for it. That same currency would cost about $2,100 to achieve.

In the last year, some of the most distressing stories in technology have come from the cryptocurrency industry. From fraudulent ICOs (initial coin offerings) to exchange heists, getting into cryptocurrencies has never been more dangerous. Because of all of the bad blood in the market, a major player has decided to move away from it: Google Ads.

There's no doubt that the battle over streaming music is getting heated. As the companies involved get more focused, it is inevitable that the industry will see ups and downs. At the end of 2017, we saw Microsoft exit the market after nearly a decade, shuttering their Groove Music service (previously Zune Music and Xbox Music) and transitioning the customers to the market leader, Spotify.

This week, Android is following Apple's bad lead, the ESRB wants to warn you about in-app purchases and NBC plans to show you less advertising in primetime.

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.

The most distinguishable feature of Apple's iPhone X was not the one they had hoped. Rather than the "all screen" design, which is definitely a wishful thinking marketing campaign, the most noticeable feature is the notch at the top of the screen. This design element makes the screen look bizarre and makes the OS strange to use. It is also the phone's most hated feature.

It all began with the free-to-play titles: a game that is theoretically free to play, but that involves in-game purchases to either enhance the experience or to get past a certain level. The model existed on PC, but was never a major player. It wasn't until mobile gaming that we saw a rather constant implementation of free-to-play. Nearly ever successful mobile game, from Candy Crush to Pokémon GO has implemented the free-to-play concept well.

There is no secret that in the age of the internet, the reach of our power of speech has grown to a level unimaginable just a few decades ago. While it used to require a printing press and funds to get your opinion to more than your small circle of friends, today it only requires a phone and a social network. The lowering of the barrier to entry to speak to a wide audience has meant that more people can be heard, but it also means that more people can be heard.

While large parts of the internet rely on advertising to make their services work, certain paid subscription services have made a name for themselves. Streaming services, such as Netflix and Hulu, have had a particular influence on how people consume media. The biggest change comes in the fact that Netflix features no advertising, and Hulu features few ads with the option to remove them entirely.