F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, we collide with all of the announcements, news and interviews from Collision Conference 2015.

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.

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, we're building to a conference, Windows 10 could be just around the corner and can the Intel Compute Stick really compute?

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.

This week, we're live from Gulf Coast MakerCon 2015 in Tampa, FL.

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.

This week, BitTorrent launches a browser, Bitcoin loses money and YouTube goes ad-free.

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.

Many people are familiar with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but it is unlikely that most people have heard of the Bitcoin Foundation. This non-profit organization describes themselves saying, "We fund development of Bitcoin Core and create new avenues for people to participate in the Bitcoin project." The group has, in the past, organized a Bitcoin conference and hired lobbyists and developers.

I have discussed in the past my complex relationship with the Electronic Freedom Foundation. This week has made that relationship even more complex. The organization has invalidated a podcasting patent which has been used to bludgeon popular podcasters. That certainly adds a positive point for them, but that wasn't their only big story.

I am always surprised when a new web browser is launched, not because it is a crowded market in which competition is fierce, though that is true. It is not because trying to take on the likes of Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Apple is a game that is unlikely to be won, though it is true. The reason I am always surprised when a new web browser is launched is because I don't know why anyone makes a web browser at all.

At the end of last year, rumors started swirling that YouTube would launch an ad-free subscription model for its videos. Well, fast forward a handful of months and in my inbox is an email from YouTube about this exact thing. The bigger issue here is how the video platform is forcing content creators to accept the ad-free model.

This week, Sony rights the ship, the FTC distrusts Google but then doesn't and Nintendo teams up to make mobile games.

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.

For the past few years, we've covered the majority of Sony's downfalls and losses. That's not even counting the massive data breaches and the PSN attack. So it's only appropriate that we also report the good news, like we did last month. This week adds to the rare occurrence of a Sony positive, where the company actually posted a profit.

When Nintendo released their Nintendo DS handset in 2004, the smartphone and tablet markets represented a small enough portion of the overall mobile market that participating in it would have been insane for the company. In fact, ignoring that product segment did well for them, selling over 154 million units of the DS family. Today, however, mobile is a different space and smartphone and tablet gaming is challenging the 3DS family in a major way.

In early 2012, it was pretty clear that the Federal Trade Commission was preparing for a lawsuit against Google for anticompetitive practices through its search engine. There had been over a year of investigation that was leading the organization to believe that Google had misused its search dominance in ways that directly harmed consumers. In November of that year, after 17 months of investigation, a small excerpt of a memo leaked that recommended the lawsuit to the commission.

When you hear Snoop Dogg's name, there is never any telling what he might be attached to. While being most famous for his mega career in music, he has worked on a series of children's books, recently appeared on the season finale of Empire and even killed it at Comedy Central Roasts. Coming off his appearance on Fox, Snoop and HBO have announced a partnership to bring a new series to the network.

This week, we head to Orlando for the FIRST FRC Orlando Regional. We speak to team members and alumni about their experiences with the organization.

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, Maxis shuts its doors and its cities, HBO peaks out of its cable paywall and mobile payment systems run rampant in Barcelona.

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.

Within the week of Mobile World Congress, a major topic of conversation was mobile payments - both in and out of the show. Among the news was the revelation of two new services, one shutting down and one with major security issues. Let's talk about all the ups and downs for this new and emerging industry.

Maxis, the iconic studio behind megahits like SimCity and The Sims, is being officially shutdown by owner Electronic Arts. It is important to note that the brand and its intellectual property will not be going away, only their Emeryville headquarters. This site was the original location of the studio before becoming part of EA, and the location where most of its globally known brands started.

In a move that shouldn't surprise anyone but will almost certainly add more malware to unsuspecting users' smartphones Google is launching a new advertising platform for its Google Play Store. Be ready to call your parents and those you know who aren't so tech savvy to be careful what they start tapping on.

After months of speculation, HBO kind of announced a standalone streaming service, in which no details were given. This week, though, International Business Times got word that the new service would come around very soon. In fact, the new service, known as HBO Now, could launch as soon as April, giving us only a month to wait before being able to watch shows like Game of Thrones without having to have cable and HBO service.

This week, Twitter takes on the trolls, GameStop sets up Shack and Fable restores meaning in free to play.

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.

By now, everyone knows that RadioShack filed bankruptcy a few weeks ago. As part of the bankruptcy, the company is closing bunch of stores and selling others to Sprint. Some of the stores that are being abandoned will transition to new owners, including GameStop.

The term "free to play" has some pretty negative connotations. Casual and mobile games have certainly made the concept painful and expensive. Often, "free to play" games require large sums of money to actually play them, despite their name. That is why the decision to make new Fable free to play on Xbox One and PC initially sounds devastating to fans of the series. They have promised 3 tenants for the game.

It appears Twitter's move to better handle trolls and abuse on the site has quickly started to come to life. This week, Twitter launched a newly-streamlined reporting system that will allow users to submit those abusive tweets and trolls to the site staff. This also coincides with Twitter's promise in December to make it easier to report these problems.

The story of Aereo may not be long, but it is awfully sad. After losing their Supreme Court case and inevitably closing their offices, the company tried, unsuccessfully, to change directions. With the company out of business, it was just a matter of time before the assets of the defunct company would be sold off.

This week, Google stops being childish, Sling lets you take back TV and Evolve's DLC practices aren't very evolved from former DLC practices.

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.

Google's Project Zero has not been met with a lot of acceptance from the software community, but has received particular flack from Microsoft. It is a reasonable response from a company who seems to have been specifically damaged by Project Zero's 90 day release policy. That policy, which has been unalterable by the company, has unfortunately released information about Microsoft vulnerabilities before the company has had a chance to patch them. That is an incredibly unusual circumstance in the security world, where the normal policy is to inform the developer of their issue, allow them to patch it, then release the terms of the issue.

A lot of people were really excited for the release of Evolve. I was not counted among them, but I know several people on the team who were. I did, personally, hold a Mirror's Edge type curiosity for a relatively unknown game style from a relatively well-known studio. Unfortunately, publisher 2K was not doing anything to try and win me over - like release information about the game.

In what is one of the largest and intricate Internet attacks of all time, banks across the globe have been breached since 2013, allowing hackers to walk away with over $300 million in less than two years. Among the 100 banks from 30 countries that have been affected, Russia, Japan, Europe and the US are within that pool of nations.

Sling TV was announced back in January at the International CES in Vegas, and for about a month, the cord-cutter's alternative was open to those only with an invitation, and contained a select list of channels. Now, Dish has announced that its pay-TV service will be open to the public to sign up, and will have a lot more than what it initially offered in its closed testing.

This week, RadioShack closes its doors, Twitter says it sucks and Zelda gets real.

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 nearly 10 years of CEOs who were either shysters or morons, and a board of directors who may not have known what the company sold, the inevitable has happened: RadioShack has filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. This comes mere hours after the New York Stock Exchange delisted the company's stock because of corporate value.

A huge problem in the online gaming world, particularly within the streaming sector, is a phenomenon called swatting. In this, a person makes an illegal prank call to local emergency services for a game streamer. They then claim that, within the home of said streamer, a terrible crime has been committed or is in progress. A common claim is a murder or hostage situation. The home is then swarmed by the local SWAT team.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo finally admitted this week that Twitter sucks. Granted, he was specific about where exactly the sucking was occurring, but it still makes me feel good to begin an article with that sentence.

Nintendo just announced their best quarter in years, and they pulled it off, at least in part, through creative licensing. Our good friend Jason Michael Paul, who produced rePLAY: Symphony of Heroes, has begun touring with The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses, the latest Zelda-themed orchestration.