F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Disney invades your agenda, ads might retreat from your browser and Warner Bros. wants to explore a damaged universe.

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, the battle over personal digital assistants has really heated up. With Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google Home all vying to help you through your day, there is an important question to be asked: why do any of these companies care?

Console launches are usually really big for their manufacturers. For Nintendo, the launch of the Switch was far above expectations. In fact, the console sold out at many retailers before they officially opened on launch day. Initial numbers are in and it looks like they sold over 1.5 million units in the first week.

Around our offices, the idea The Free Web is an important one. In fact, it is so important we wrote a manifesto. While it is worth a read, the basis is that ad blockers are a false solution to a real problem. Everyone in the equation has responsibilities in maintaining The Free Web, and in the last few years, no one has been holding up their end of the deal.

In recent years, the idea of remakes and "exploration" have overtaken Hollywood. Rather than taking the time to produce exciting new Intellectual Properties, studios are going trolling through successful existing properties. The modern masters of repurposing older content is Disney. Between a constant barrage of Star Wars films and remaking Beauty and the Beast, Disney is constantly reusing content.

This week, Motorola is poised to make a comeback, Amazon needs to get their reputation back and Spotify is about to get some customers back.

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 iconic brands in mobile devices is Motorola. The brand made smartphones long before they were popular in the Q, they made a flip phone that was the envy of the entire industry in the RAZR and they even made a phone so popular that even Mercedes Benz built its accessories into their cars in the StarTAC.

It is no secret that Microsoft is expanding the reach of the Xbox brand. Steve Ballmer's idea was to make Xbox the all-inclusive media brand, but under Satya Nadella, Xbox has returned to its gaming roots, but in a big way. Rather than just being a gaming console, Xbox represents Microsoft's gaming ambitions across everything running the OneCore: Xbox One, Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Holographic.

Love it or hate it, the cloud is here to stay. It's hard to beat the capabilities and it's nearly impossible to beat the prices. While our site is hosted traditionally, all of our media files for all of our shows are hosted at Microsoft Azure. While it seems like a slam dunk, the growing popularity of cloud services does present an interesting new problem.

Over the last few years, streaming music services have kind of taken over the industry. Between services like Groove, Amazon Prime Music, Spotify and more running around $100 per year, it is hard to justify the cost of purchasing music, either on CD or MP3.

This week, Sprint once again wants T-Mobile, Valve isn't quite sure about VR and Google is going all-in on wireless internet.

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 7 years, one of the stories that just won't die is the possible partnership between T-Mobile and Sprint. In 2010, T-Mobile considered a technology switch, from their existing GSM platform to WiMAX for 4G. They were in talks with Clearwire, the company that was partially-owned by Sprint, and provided Sprint's WiMAX network. At the time, it was suggested that the move would have been intended to make it easier for Sprint and T-Mobile to become one network. In 2013, after acquiring Sprint, SoftBank opened discussions for T-Mobile.

Right now, for better or worse, the majority of the tech industry is focused on, and excited about, virtual reality. Even our CES coverage couldn't avoid it this year. With that said, one of the companies who should be the most optimistic about the technology is taking a decidedly different, and characteristically unusual, approach: Valve.

The future of Google Fiber has been in question for about 6 months. In August of last year, the company began the process of scaling down their operations, followed nearly immediately by pausing new rollouts entirely in October. This week, Alphabet is transitioning hundreds of employees from Access, the division responsible for Google Fiber, to other areas within the company.

If you don't know who PewDiePie is, that is alright. Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg is a YouTube star, whose channel has the largest subscriber count at 53 million subscribers and generated him an estimated $15 million in 2016. He has managed to accomplish this by consistently being surprising. He started off as a gaming channel and later began to fancy himself a comedian, and the content began to change.

This week, Google begins to take privacy seriously, Steam begins to take indie game development seriously and Prince's estate begins to take streaming music seriously.

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 is definitely not a company known for security or privacy. There have been privacy concerns with products like Google Wave and security issues with allowing unsafe ads in Adsense. The lack of interest, however, is most obvious in Google Play. The company has rules for what must be included to submit an app. However, those rules are not enforced and unsafe apps flood the marketplace. Malware numbers are in the millions in the Play Store.

If you're a common user of Steam, you're probably aware of Steam Greenlight. This is a service that allows independent developers to pitch their game ideas to the gaming community to potentially find a space in the Steam store. It has never been loved by developers or gamers as it requires a fee for developers to have a chance at publishing, and a strange amount of time for gamers to evaluate a game which you have not played.

Today, there seem to be 2 groups that are enamored with Twitter: President Donald Trump and the news, though the interest from the news tends to be in reporting on what Trump has tweeted. Despite the surge in usage because of the President, Twitter has not been able to capitalize on its usage gains.

Unless you're Taylor Swift, most modern musicians have their music available on streaming services. It's a move that makes sense as most consumers seem to be using the streaming model versus the purchase model to listen to music. One artist who made the decision not to participate in streaming is the late Prince.

This week, online bargains lead to bricked phones, hackers might have exposed themselves to the FBI and TIDAL finally finds a way to attract real new customers.

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.

Any time security is involved, there are certain sacrifices that must be made. For example, to prevent people from stealing your money at the ATM, you have both an identification card and a PIN that must be presented. It's not a massive inconvenience, but it does add a little annoyance to the process. The same can be said for mobile devices - if you want a truly secure phone, like a Blackphone, you are going to have to pay for it.

Since Facebook's $2 billion purchase of Oculus in 2014, the move has been questioned. What was Facebook's interest in getting into the VR market? Did they do their due diligence in researching the company? Would they be able to make anything out of Oculus or would they blunder the company's hype and lead?

When a data breach happens, the data that is collected does not just disappear. Often times, it is collected and sold to the highest bidder. Sometimes, that bidder can make the information publicly available, usually for a fee. One of the sites that collects and disseminates this information is LeakedSource, which makes the information searchable with a recurring membership. The site, and others like it, claim that they make the information available so that people can search to see what information is available about themselves.

Since Jay-Z bought TIDAL, and likely before, the company has had no end of issues. In fact, the purchase itself may have been an indication of issues, as the subscriber numbers that were reported and led to the purchase were incredibly inflated. Since then, artists have come and gone, as have customers. Last year, rumors suggested Apple was interested, which the company immediately denied. Why would they want another failing music service, anyway?

This week, California wants special behavior by Uber, gamers want additional gameplay from Nintendo and Facebook begrudgingly creates special processing for websites.

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 idea of self-driving cars is still a fairly new one, and governments all over are scrambling to both understand and regulate their existence. California, one of the earliest states to accept them as an inevitability, is one of the states having the hardest time creating their regulations and apply them evenly and fairly. For example, are driver-supported vehicles, like Tesla, the same as vehicles that have no human onboard, and if not, should they be treated differently?

After showing off Super Mario Run at Apple's iPhone event, the anticipation for the release of the game has been high. Being another Nintendo-related, though the first Nintendo owned and operated, mobile game brought about the obvious comparisons to Pokémon GO, the game thought to be the clear winner for most popular mobile game of 2016. With the game finally on the market, let's start with the games' comparisons.

After the election, a surprisingly high number of people blamed Trump's win on social media and what is currently being called "fake news" shared, particularly, on Facebook. The complaining has been enough that Facebook has been forced to respond to the issue, continuously reminding people that they neither create nor promote this content, and it is, instead, brought to them care of their friends.

The usage of live video has grown rapidly in the past 2 years. Between specialty services like Livestream and Twitch, and general services like Periscope and Facebook Live, consumers have encouraged the growth of the medium. The addition of professionally produced content, like NBC's Hairspray Live and FOX's Grease: Live on television have brought attention from producers and Rifftrax Live has brought the idea of live content to movie theaters.

This week, Microsoft revives Windows on ARM, a man stole from his employer to play a mobile game and Netflix is getting into reality shows.

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 Microsoft introduced Windows 8, it came with another operating system: Windows RT. The poorly named offshoot of the prime Windows product was designed to run on ARM processors with the intention of creating a market for less expensive Windows tablets. Windows RT had one limitation that was outside of the control of Microsoft, and that was adaptation of Windows Store apps. Windows RT could not run traditional desktop apps, but was limited to the new style of distribution.

The most expensive television ads of the year happen during the Super Bowl. Usually, only the biggest of the big can afford to run even a short ad during this period, as it would likely drain a smaller company's entire marketing budget for the year. Which is why I was confused when, in 2015, I saw an ad for mobile game Game of War during the game. How could a game like this afford to run an ad during the Super Bowl?

Several months ago, Microsoft and LinkedIn entered into an agreement in which LinkedIn would become part of Microsoft, with a price tag of $26 billion. After months of regulatory hurdles around the world, the acquisition has been approved and completed. This means that Microsoft finally has a successfully social network in its list of properties.

Since Netflix announced its intentions to offer 50% original content, we have seen some big, but sometimes confusing, moves from their original content divisions. Just a couple of weeks ago, the company gave $40 million to Chris Rock to return to the stage after a long absence, bringing 2 new specials to the platform.

This week, Symantec comes for your wallet, Xbox comes for your eyes and Reddit comes crashing down.

Also, watch or listen to find the secret phrase to enter to win a new Vinci headphone before they are available to the public.

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 a deal valued at $2.3 billion, Symantec has agreed to purchase personal identity protection service LifeLock, Inc. The service rose to fame when, in 2007, they began traveling the country with a large vehicle on which was printed the social security number of co-founder, Todd Davis. The stunt was done to demonstrate Davis's confidence in his company's service, which promises to protect people from identity theft, even if all of the information is made public. As a result of the campaign, Davis was the victim of 13 cases of identity theft.

One of the most exciting additions to Windows 10 was the ability to stream games and content from an Xbox One to your PC. When this feature was announced, most of the industry had hoped that this would be a sign of things to come, and Microsoft has not disappointed. Expanding on their partnership with Facebook's Oculus VR division, in December, Microsoft will bring this feature to the Oculus Rift.

If you are anything like me, Reddit is a bit of a mystery to you. The online community is known for both their open exchange of ideas and their complete hatred of those who disagree with them, and no one on the site seems to see the irony in that. One thing that you can be sure of, though, is that everyone will band together when the upper management makes any moves, positive or negative. You can also be sure that management's response to their actions will be glib and dismissive.

In July of this year, we tested 1080p Netflix streaming in-browser, confirming that only Microsoft browsers were capable of doing it. Both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer were capable of streaming from the service in 1080p, while Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera all were limited to 720p. As it turns out, that is not the only limitation that those browsers will face.

This week, we discuss some of the products we have reviewed this year, which ones would make great gifts and which ones to avoid completely.

Also, watch or listen to find the secret phrase to enter to win a new Vinci headphone before they are available to the public.

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, Nintendo is updating their lineup, Twitter is losing an executive and AT&T doesn't quite know how to treat video.

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 has changed their policies on how OEMs can interact with Android. The most notable policy change came in 2014, when they limited access to the Play Store for OEMs that don't give preferential treatment to Google services.

This has been an interesting month for Nintendo. It was just a few weeks ago that the company let the lid off of the Nintendo Switch, the production name of their next console. The console has added a new twist to their current hardware, combining the Wii U and 3DS into a unique single device. This week, however, Nintendo both added and removed a product from their lineup.

Twitter has been in a bit of a freefall as of late. Poor earnings, layoffs and shutdowns have plagued the company, following an unsuccessful attempt to find a new owner for the company. This comes within a year in which executives have been leaving, including product head Kevin Weil, who left earlier this year.

There is nothing in the mobile world that uses data faster that streaming video. If you are on a limited data plan, streaming video over cellular can eat up your data allotment with just a single episode of a television show. The wireless carriers have tried to come up with solutions to this problem and this week AT&T is working with both of the popular choices.