F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Google purges the Plus, AT&T and DirecTV finally join forces and China lets gamers game.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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 a series of layoffs and quarterly losses, BlackBerry hopes its darkest days are behind it. Key executives have left the company and Jabil Circuit stopped making BlackBerry devices. So what happens now? BlackBerry has started to get the wheels moving behind its turnaround plan in an effort to bring the company back from its dismal past two years.

China has had a ban on video game consoles for 15 years. The government claimed that it could cause "potential harm to the physical and mental development of the young" and have enforced this ban since 2000. This week, the console drought ended as China lifted the ban of video game console sales in the country.

Next week will see the end of a lot of content on Google's mostly abandoned social network Google+. Since mostly only Google employees seem to use the site, Friday will see the last day for of Google+ Photos, being replaced by Google Photos, a disconnected service more similar to Picasa than Google+. This is good news for people who actually want to use Google to store photos without having to deal with all of the annoyances of Google+.

See ya, Comcast - there's a new paid television king in town and its name is AT&T. This week, AT&T and DirecTV's $48.5 billion merger was approved by the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice. This massive combination will result in the largest television service in the country, as well as an absolute powerhouse in content distribution in general.

This week, Prime Day was sub-prime, Netflix' price raise may be past its prime and the Xbox One game streaming finally hits prime time!

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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 the past, we have written about the major security issues of the android platform. The company's "come one, come all" approach to application publishing and incredibly liberal access to data stored on your device by any and all applications created an environment that was very conducive to taking advantage of owners.

Since the announcement of Xbox One game streaming, the world has been waiting to try it out. We all knew that it would require a few things: a Windows 10 computer and an Xbox One running a version of the dashboard supporting the feature. All of these features have been available only in limited preview - available to those who were part of the Xbox One dashboard preview program and Windows 10 Insider program.

If you have watched any content, be it online or on the television, over the past few weeks, you have been inundated with ads for Amazon's Prime Day sale. The promotion was to celebrate Amazon's 15th anniversary, and promised more deals than Black Friday only for Prime subscribers. As with any promotion like this, the Internet was all abuzz with the excitement of deals on gadgets and nonsense.

It's been almost three years since Netflix' CEO Reed Hastings tried to split the company into two. Since the public outrage and reversal in decision, the company has seen record growths and a myriad of success, even after a price hike at the same time. Well, it appears that it may be time for another change in the company, so you might want to prepare your wallets for the second incoming price increase. This time it's for all you streamers out there.

This week, Microsoft yet again sends the tech world into a frenzy, Pluto is in the news for two reasons and the gaming world sadly lost a pioneer.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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 an email from CEO Satya Nadella stating that hard choices would need to be made, Microsoft has made a lot of announcements about changes to the structure of the company. Unfortunately, the details of those changes seem to have been misunderstood by many in the press. In some cases, the people writing about the topic seem to have not actually read the press releases from the company at all. Because of this, I feel it is important to set the record straight, so let's get started.

It is with great sadness that we have to even type these words. Nintendo has just issued a press release stating that President and CEO Satoru Iwata has passed away at the early age of 55. From the statement, Nintendo says it is due to a bile duct growth.

Last year, the last and final co-founder of The Pirate Bay was arrested in Thailand and transported back to Sweden to face criminal charges. The four were also being tried for criminal charges in Belgium, which is where our story takes us today. Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström have all been acquitted of criminal copyright infringement and electronic communications.

We have discussed many times that appointment television is likely coming to an end. With services like Netflix and Hulu, the idea of waiting for a specific time to watch a television show or movie is becoming more and more ridiculous to many. If you're like me, though, there is a problem with streaming services: it takes way too long to get going. Once you launch the website or application it seems like quite a chore to find content you're interested in.

This week, Minecraft goes into Story Mode, YouTube lets companies claim America's songs and Microsoft shoots off 4 updates for Windows 10.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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.

Microsoft's big day, July 29, is coming quickly. On that day, full-screen Windows 10 versions officially make it to the public. These versions are Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. Essentially, if it will normally run on a screen larger than 7", it will be available on that date. As the day comes closer, it is expected that incremental builds of the base will become more stable.

Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and Minecraft for $2.5 billion finally made sense to me this week at Minecon. At the game's convention in London, details were finally announced about how Microsoft will completely change the way you look at Minecraft with Minecraft: Story Mode, expected to be released later this year. Using the power of Microsoft, the Mojang team rang up Telltale Games to produce this new title.

While T-Mobile might still be trying to merge with Dish Network, an approval for AT&T and DirecTV to join forces might come through as early as next week. The rapid progress behind the $48.5 billion merger will result in an OK from the FCC as by Friday according to sources inside the negotiation room.

Anyone who has ever interacted with YouTube knows about copyright notices. Whether you are a content producer who has had a video muted because there was music playing in a room during an interview with a company that sells speakers, a musician whose music is being used without permission or a user who has encountered ads for music in the video, you likely have some experience.

This week, Apple issues a confusing policy about Civil War games, the NFL meets VR and Google goes into Chromium and pulls right back out.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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

It's pretty cool when the sports world and the tech world combine. Usually it means we see great strides in progression for sports and see new ways to integrate tech into that. The Dallas Cowboys, along with their monstrous new stadium, has now brought virtual reality to the gridiron with a new VR training regimen.

This week has been a very weird one for flags. The strangest has certainly been the national outcry over the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee. This flag, easily identified by its rectangular design, red field and blue X with 13 stars, was used by one of the several state-sponsored armies during the American Civil War while in battle. For whatever reason, many have associated it with the Confederate States of America, which is an odd association.

If you are not an open-sourcer, you are unlikely to know about Chromium. Chromium is Google's open-source basis for their Chrome browser. The parts of the browser that Google does not necessarily care about get included into the base, and that code is released to the world for whatever purposes. I'm not sure why anyone would want it, but there it is in case you do.

SoundCloud has proven useful for a lot of unknown artists to get their music out there and seen by the world. It's also been a place for podcast storage and a venue for commercial artists to release music that may or may not appear on their albums. SoundCloud is so popular that even music labels are putting music on the site, accompanied with ads, of course. The success has been so high for SoundCloud that the company has been exploring offering a paid service on the site to compete with Spotify, Apple Music and the like. Cue the expected infringement lawsuit, this time from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

This week, the head of Twitter is out, the MLB really is America's past-time and YouTube goes for a headshot on Twitch.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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.

Toshiba made an interesting announcement this week that, on its face, seems like a minor change, but in reality is a major decision. The announcement is that, "across the board, top to bottom," all Toshiba Windows 10 computers will have a dedicated Cortana button. Cortana is one of the killer new features in Windows 10, but some have concerns that her initial listening skills are problematic. For some, saying "Hey Cortana" has not triggered her to listen, forcing a manual approach. For many, though, this requires leaving the keyboard and switching to the mouse, slowing down typing progress. This is where the new Cortana button comes in.

The battle for game-streaming supremacy has raged on for a while now, with armies increasing for all parties. After Amazon acquired Twitch for almost $1 billion, it was made known that YouTube tried to pick up the company but Twitch wouldn't go for it. Not long after, YouTube threw money at creators for exclusive rights and deals in the gaming space, and we knew then that it wouldn't be the end of the saga just yet. Now, Google has fired a warning shot from its bow with news of a new gaming app on the horizon.

Dick Costolo has been the CEO for the last 5 years, making his the longest-term CEO in the company's history. That fact is a strange one in a town that reveres company founders, often times to a fault. Twitter's founders have had varying degrees of involvement in the company since its early days, leaving the daily activities to Costolo instead. He has had his ups and downs, but recently his new programs have begun to see some early returns.

Major League Baseball is breaking the mold for sports leagues in many ways. They were the first to launch their streaming service on all major devices, they were the first to offer a full MLB package at an affordable rate and now they are the first to offer their 24/7 sports news channel, via MLB.tv. There is one caveat though, and it's that you must be a cable or satellite subscriber in order to view it.

This week, Showtime shows off with Apple, Marissa Mayer keeps shrinking Yahoo's portfolio and T-Mobile tries again, but this time it's with Dish.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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 telecom world has always been an incestuous one, filled with partner swapping and friends quickly becoming enemies. The best proof of this comes from a report this week from The Wall Street Journal that suggests that T-Mobile and Dish Network have begun talks about a possible merger. The talks are said to be very early and might not ever be finalized. The combined company would be led by CEO John Legere (T-Mobile CEO) and board chairman Charlie Ergen (Dish CEO).

In 2013, Microsoft gave up on Games for Windows Live, their attempt at a unified gaming experience on the PC. It was originally billed as a PC companion to their ultra successful Xbox platform, but never quite got there. The two tried to meet in the middle near the end, with PC game listings showing up on Xbox.com, but it didn't seem to help, and the service was shuttered.

This week, Charter tries again with Time Warner, Microsoft slims up the cloud and the FBI accidentally promotes sex and drugs.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

The battle over mobile payments got a little more awkward this week in a way that only Google can accomplish. At the company's annual developer event, Google announced not one but two new mobile payment platforms. Yes, you read that right: Google appears to have launched two competing payment systems on the same day.

Microsoft, in its persistent effort to push the boundaries of cloud computing and gaming, have teamed up with a Duke University researcher to continue to do just that. The pair will be collaborating on reducing the bandwidth required to stream games from the cloud.

In the original days of the Internet, domain registrations did not auto-renew. This meant that at the end of your year, you had to remember to renew it manually or face losing the domain to someone else. This was especially bad when you had a popular domain, as hijackers would just wait for you to make a mistake and swoop in and steal the domain away from you. I lost my personal domain name years ago to exactly this type of mistake.

As you may have heard, the Comcast-Time Warner merger was nixed by the government, with Comcast simply walking away from the deal without much damage. As the dust has begun to settle, it appears a new contender has entered the arena, on the heels of the company already acquiring Brighthouse Networks last month. Charter is now looking to acquire Time Warner Cable for $55 billion, and this deal is a bit different than the previous attempt by Comcast.

Hosted by Scott Ertz and Nicholas DiMeo, F5 Live is a livecast covering the worlds of gadgets, gaming, Internet and media.

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.

Daniele is a student at Florida Polytechnic University who is studying Computer Science with a concentration in Cyber Security. In High School, she was introduced to the science and technology world through the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), a robotics foundation where students of varying ages can compete through tasks that their robots perform. With help from mentors she met through FIRST, she became interested in programming and developing. Today, Daniele is a special events host for F5 Live: Refreshing Technology and PLuGHiTz Live Special Events and a co-host for both The New Product Launchpad and FIRST Looks.

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.

Apparently finally turning a profit was not enough to save employees at struggling BlackBerry. The company announced they would be laying off an unspecified number of employees. It is expected that the majority of those layoffs will come from the devices business, including jobs in hardware, software and applications for the BlackBerry platform.

The BBC is planning, and in early production, of a TV movie entitled Game Changer, a dramatic telling of the early days of Grand Theft Auto. The story will be told in similar fashion to the Ashton Kutcher movie about Steve Jobs, complete with skipping the whole "getting authorization" thing. The movie will feature Bill Paxton as "butt-of-the-joke" former attorney Jack Thompson and Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe as Rockstar co-founder Sam Hauser.

There is a terrible trend happening in the online gaming world called Swatting. In case you have not heard of this practice, it involves one person finding the home information of another and calling in a fake emergency call. Usually the caller claims to be within the house of the victim (the other person) and is either holding the family hostage or that they have killed everyone in the house. Because of this call, the local SWAT team shows up and kicks down the door, often barging in on a Twitch broadcast.

Apple has had some insanely ambitious goals in regards to television. In fact, there have been two separate plans within the company involving strengthening their position in the television and broadcast worlds. Unfortunately for Apple, it turns out that this market might just be outside of their reach.

This week, TiVo tries to make Aereo legal, Nintendo goes Universal and Verizon says you've still got mail.

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.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

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.

2015 has been an interesting year for Nintendo. They have finally begun to recover from last year's profit issues and they have broken from corporate tradition on more than one occasion. The rumored Zelda series would certainly have been a departure for the company, as is their newly formed mobile gaming partnership with studio DeNA.

Verizon shocked the world this week, announcing that America Online (AOL) was still in business. Even more shocking was the fact that Verizon valued the company at approximately $4.4 billion. This is the amount the company has agreed to pay to acquire the company and all of its assets.

After Aereo's Supreme Court loss and corporate shutdown, the company's trademarks and customer list were purchased by TiVo out of bankruptcy. At the time, it seemed odd that TiVo, an established brand, would be interested in the trademarks of a defunct startup, but TigerDirect bought the trademarks of both Circuit City and CompUSA out of bankruptcy, so who were we to argue?