F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Microsoft and Apple present their visions for the future, Twitter presents the results of their past and Hello Games didn't present the sins of their past.

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, Microsoft and Apple, two of the big three in the technology industry, held announcement events to show off their vision for the future of computing. While many seem to have taken away the idea that both of these companies are innovating in the space, what most seem to have missed is how both companies have taken incredibly different paths. While the hardware from both companies is aimed primarily at creators, both see different ways that those creators will want to use their computers.

The developer behind game No Man's Sky, Hello Games, is certainly having more than their fair share of trouble. After seeing sales of the game tank, the company is now facing a false advertising suit in the UK. Following all of these issues, this week, the company's Twitter account announced,

2016 has not been Twitter's year. The company is seeing almost zero user growth and has shown continual profit loss. This has led to a recent round of conversations with potential buyers for the service, which ended in disappointment, after all potential buyers backed out.

Apple may have focused their Thursday presentation on a MacBook Pro refresh, they also discussed a new app for video consumption, helpfully titled TV. The app accesses your video streaming services and presents information based on your current streaming habits, as well as recommendations from Apple itself.

This week, Bill Belichick confuses the internet, hackers take down part of the internet and AT&T wants to own television and the 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.

If you have spent any time online this week, you have likely seen at least one incredibly misleading headline about New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and comments he made on a conference call. Unfortunately, the internet can be a place filed with misinformation, as seems to be the case here. I'm not sure if this is a case of an industry looking for an opportunity to make Microsoft look bad, or simply a case of not understanding the man's comments, but I'm here to try and clear up what happened.

It has been quite a while since we heard the first rumblings about Nintendo's next console. Nintendo has been surprisingly open about the existence of the project, including referring to it by its codename: Nintendo NX. Over time, we have learned new information - both officially and unofficially - about Nintendo's intentions, including being cartridge-based. Before this week, the most detail we had was a release target of March 2017.

This week, two major stories that have been building for several weeks seem to have come together to create an Internet Perfect Storm, resulting in many major websites and services coming to their knees on Friday. The first of these stories we have been following here in the office for over a month: a report that a botnet made up of infected IoT devices could be ready to activate a massive DDoS attack at any moment.

Over the past couple of years, the nature and role of telecom companies has changed dramatically. In the past, a telecom was expected to provide wireline access to the premises, or wireless access over a cellular network. In the past few years, though, these telecoms have begun to make some big purchases to change the game.

This week, we are at Pinellas Comic and Maker Con in Seminole, Florida. The event is organized by Chad Mairn and his planning committee and is hosted at the library at Saint Petersburg College. While only a few years old, this free event has become very well attended by the public and vendors. During our broadcast, we interviewed makers, cosplayers, writers, crafters and more.

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.

This week, Verizon tests a feature you don't need, Valve shows off a controller you can't have and Netflix pays a lot of money to a comedian you might not remember.

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 was only 2 weeks ago that Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said on an investor call,

Valve has put a lot of time and effort into its SteamVR program, and its partnership with HTC on the Vive headset. While headset hardware can set the platform apart from the Oculus to a certain degree, the idea of a headset with video playing is a pretty solved problem at this point, Where Valve can really set itself apart is in controller hardware, something that has been a bit of an overall loss in the industry.

Since word broke of Twitter's interest in a sale, suitors have come, and suitors have gone. 3 weeks ago, the list was a who's who of companies interested in social and data. Today, the list appears to be empty, with the 5 major rumored suitors all backing away from the discussions.

As Netflix moves towards 50% original content, the company has begun approaching unlikely people for new projects. One such unexpected content producer is Chris Rock, a comedian who hasn't toured in almost a decade and hasn't been comically relevant in even longer.

This week, BlackBerry gives up devices, Microsoft announces protections and Twitch changes up advertising.

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 era of BlackBerry's hardware dominance ended quite a while ago, but the company has continued to struggle to recapture what it believes to be its glory days. CEOs have changed, executive management has changed, even their platform strategy has changed. The one thing that has stayed consistent, however, is their slumping hardware sales.

In my time in the industry, I've seen a lot of videogames launch, and I have seen a number of games stumble at launch. Either the game isn't what it was advertised to be, the graphics aren't as soon as the trailers or the play isn't fun. Niantic struggled with server issues with the release of Pokémon GO. Maxis nearly destroyed the SimCity franchise with their launch.

The Internet is a scary and dangerous place. Ads served by networks like Google appear to be legitimate, but take you to downloads to steal your information or destroy your computer. Links shared on Facebook and Twitter appear to be news articles, but are actually serving malicious content. If you aren't paying attention, it can be easy to screw up your machine, and web browsers are the source of all of that turmoil.

Since before Twitch was its own platform, the service has been advertising-based. Either you could be a free member and watch ads occasionally, or you could be a premium member for $9 per month and have the ads removed. This has been a winning feature, adopted by services like Hulu and YouTube. That concept is coming to an end for Twitch, however, at least as it is known today.

This week, Verizon doesn't think you need unlimited data, Twitter's popularity grows and Netflix wants to make a lot of what you watch.

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.

As Sprint and T-Mobile have moved back to offering unlimited data, Verizon's CFO has taken a different route. At an investor conference, Fran Shammo said,

Just shy of 20 years ago, when online multiplayer games were a fairly new concept to the public, Blizzard created a website and a brand around their gaming platform: Battle.net. It became the foundation for all future Blizzard games, including their blockbuster franchises: Diablo and Warcraft. The name appeared front-and-center throughout many games, being added later to Warcraft 2 and included in the original Diablo.

Since Twitter first got started, it was never clear how the service planned on making enough money to keep its lights on. Even Twitter didn't know what they were doing. After rounds of investment and an IPO, they are still working that concept out. While Twitter might not know how to generate profit, some other companies have some ideas how it might be valuable.

Original content is the future for streaming video services. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon may have started their lives streaming licensed content, but today, their most popular content is content they create themselves. Amazon crowdsources what they make, while Netflix and Hulu create large amounts of content. No one can argue that Netflix in particular loves original content, and viewers love Netflix's original content.

This week, Google might have to pay for content, Apple is unlikely to purchase Tidal and Niantic breathes new life into Pokémon GO.

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 March of this year, an FBI employee made a mistake while interacting with the iPhone of San Bernardino attacker Syed Farook Rizwan. It locked the device, requiring a long delay between PIN attempts to open the device in an attempt to retrieve important information. The FBI asked Apple to help them unlock the device, but the company refused. A case was scheduled to attempt to force the company to comply, but before it happened, the FBI dropped the case.

Google and Europe do not have the best relationship most of the time. The EU has fought to breakup the company, as well as creating a special tax, or more accurately collection of taxes, aimed directly at them. Those taxes have created some problems within Europe already, with Google shutting down Google News in Spain.

A few weeks ago, rumors began circulating that Apple wanted to purchase Tidal, the troubled music streaming service purchased by Jay Z. The company has had trouble since it began, and padded its numbers when Jay Z showed interest, in order to get a higher purchase price. Despite constant work, the service has not had any luck in turning around.

This week, we team up with The 3000 Brigade to talk to the cast about their latest show: Smash-a-Thon.

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.

Erin Hurst has been cosplaying for almost 20 years, but don't call her out on it. It just makes her feel old. As a complete and total drama nerd she found a way to bring her passion for theater and cosplay together forming the 3000 Brigade, aka 3KB. Erin has been writing, directing, and acting in what has become the largest active cosplay performance troupe in the country. The troupe began in 2007 and this year marks a decade worth of 3KB performances. She is extremely grateful for her stage manager/costume coordinator Jessica Koesters and technical director JoAnn Minieri.

Trey was born into a tech career. Instead of going to summer camp as a child, Trey spent summers working at the local news station with his father, an Emmy award winning news director. He honed his audio skills singing in a band, and later worked as a lighting and audio technician for a theme park. Within two years he became the lead technician for the entire park, which included a fully operational CNN sponsored TV station, a full theater and a circus. Later, he became the lead lighting and audio tech for one of the Ringling Bros. circuses, with a stint as a clown for the pure joy of performing. It was at Ringling that he met his wife, who he calls the most beautiful, loving, and funny person he has ever met, and who is also the creator of the 3000 Brigade. Trey was a performer with the 3000 Brigade for nine shows, as well as hosting the 3000 Brigade Podcast, while still doing media on the side. Trey currently edits and cleans audio for PLuGHiTz shows and has also been a special events host.

This week, Google scales back again, Nintendo might be returning to its roots and YouTube claims it's not censoring 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.

When Google began work on Project Ara in 2013, the idea seemed like the kind that people would get excited about for a while, but would never make it to market, at least not in the form Google promised. The idea was that Ara would be an entirely customizable phone. You'd be able to replace any independent component, from the camera and screen to the RAM and processor. The purpose, of course, would be to allow for incredibly niche-style phones without the need to manufacture a small number, making the devices less expensive.

Little is known about Nintendo's next hardware project: NX. The company has been surprisingly tight lipped on the topic, something that is unusual for them. Traditionally, Nintendo has been more than willing to discuss hardware specs, features and plans up to a year from launch. This time, though, all we know for sure is that the NX will release in March 2017.

Last week it was revealed that Google Fiber might be scaling down, both in number of new cities and in staff size. It is not a surprising move for a brand that has never managed to gain marketshare even close to what they had predicted. This lack of customer acceptance would, naturally, have led to financial troubles for the brand.

Early in the week, a video showed up in my Facebook feed from a couple of different sources. The video was from popular YouTube news commentator Philip DeFranco. In it, he talked about an issue he had recently discovered on YouTube: he received an email saying that a few of his videos had been removed from monetization because they were not advertiser-friendly. The first video he investigated had no inappropriate language, tags or content. The only thing that could have been in question was the actual topic of the video, which was the news.

This week, WhatsApp shares data, PlayStation shares games and artists share space on Spotify.

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.

After Facebook bought WhatsApp for way too much money, the company reiterated a promise to its users: It would never allow its service to be used by advertisers to message users. Founder Jan Koum once said,

When Microsoft and Sony announced their modern consoles, we knew this new generation would bring enhanced gameplay. What we didn't expect was that it would also bring a decrease in reliance on consoles. Over the past few years, PC gaming has increased dramatically, fueled by services like Steam and EA Origin, as well as Xbox arriving on PC through Windows 10.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Google Fiber announced expansion into 3 new cities. Here we are a year later, and Alphabet CEO Larry Page has reportedly begun to scale back the size of Google Fiber, cutting half of its employees. This would leave the division at only about 500 employees, down from around 1,000 today.

Spotify has been one of the largest and longest players in the streaming music service. They brought the idea of controlled streaming to the United States market, inspiring brands like Groove Music and Beats Music. While Spotify may not be the most successful of the brands, it is certainly one of the louder ones. Representatives have said multiple times that album exclusives are bad for everyone, but mostly for consumers. Being a fan of an artist should not be punished for not subscribing to a particular service.