F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, hackers disabled most of Las Vegas, Unity destroyed its value, Microsoft had an AI nightmare, and the EU fined TikTok.

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 weeks, a seemingly powerful hacking scheme has been going on in the city of Las Vegas. Casinos from both Caesar's Entertainment and MGM have been brought to a standstill. And, while it would appear to be a sophisticated attack by a group of professionals, the reality is far less impressive. The team behind the attacks is surprisingly young and uses standard social engineering to achieve their goals.

It has been an interesting few weeks for the video game industry. Starfield released with ironic issues rendering a field of stars. The head of Fortnite has left Epic Games. But the one action that happened that has captivated the entirety of the industry is a very weird announcement from Unity Technologies that completely changes the way developers may use the gaming engine and how they will pay for its usage.

We know that AI-generated content is often garbage. The content is often garbled and incorrect, with boilerplate text and details of unrelated events. But an interesting new trend has emerged in recent weeks - purely insulting articles. These articles are beginning to find their way onto mainstream websites - particularly Microsoft Start (MSN News). This includes this week's article calling a former NBA player "useless" for having the audacity to die.

TikTok has often found itself in hot water - sometimes with consumers and sometimes with governments. It seems that nearly every major government in the world has taken an interest in the Chinese-owned company and its practices. Some are interested in the way the algorithm surfaces content, while others are interested in how they store data. The latter is what has led the EU, through Ireland's Data Protection Commission, to fine TikTok $368 million over the handling of children's privacy and data handling.

This week, Microsoft is defending Copilot users, ReedPop is abandoning E3, X wants to keep its secrets, and Sony sues a TV Museum for copyright violation.

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 recent months, AI technologies, especially Generative AI, have become a hot topic. It seems every company wants to provide the service, but consumers are worried about the ethical and legal position of the output. In particular, people are worried about prosecutable plagiarism coming from these systems. In order to help alleviate some of those fears, Microsoft has created the Copilot Copyright Commitment, a promise to take responsibility for any issues from its AI Copilot technologies.

The past decade or so has been rough for the former gaming behemoth: the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3. The managing organization, the ESA, has been a powder keg of chaos and general incompetence. The COVID-19 pandemic, or more specifically the lockdowns, created massive problems for the already struggling event. ReedPop jumped in to help try to right the ship, but this week, the company said it was ending its relationship with E3 and the ESA was on its own going forward.

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, things have been chaotic, to say the least. Between name changes, policy changes, and a nearly complete employee change, keeping up with what's going on can be a challenge. One thing that was promised upon takeover was that the new Twitter, which is now called X, would be open, transparent, and less regulated. That hasn't exactly been the reality, and California's content moderation law AB 587 looks to force open the doors revealing the way social networks, including X, work inside.

There is a fine line between what does and doesn't fall under fair use. That line came into clear view this week as the Museum of Classic Chicago TV received a series of copyright strikes from Sony Pictures Entertainment. The strikes revolve around episodes of Bewitched from the 1960s that had been posted to YouTube under the concept of preservation. The strikes would have terminated the channel had SPE followed through on the threat, but backed down when Chief Curator Rick Klein removed the content.

This week, Scientology fights Right to Repair, Lenovo is gaming on the Go, the FCC upholds broadband labels, and Spectrum customers are mad at Disney.

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.

Last week, something strange happened in the realm of Right to Repair - Apple changed its position. It was a shock to most people in the industry who have followed Apple's public attacks on users' ability to work on their own devices. This week, however, we've got an even bigger shock, but this time coming out against Right to Repair bill amendments. This new adversary is the always controversial Church of Scientology, or specifically one of its subsidiaries.

Over the past few years, portable gaming has become a big business. Nintendo got it started, but now everyone in the gaming industry wants to participate. From Valve to Sony, many gaming companies are creating their own portable gaming devices. The most recent company to announce is Lenovo, showing off the Legion Go.

Last year, the FCC announced upcoming labeling rules for internet service providers (ISPs). These rules require, among other things, that all fees added to the base service fee for internet service, be individually listed on the bill. ISPs didn't like the idea of these rules and said so. This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) responded to complaints by simply telling the companies, too bad, sad story.

If you're a Spectrum cable customer, you might have noticed a series of missing channels. This is because a contract negotiation between Disney and Charter broke down at the last moment. This left Charter without the rights to these channels. Both companies have blamed the other for the issue, and customers are left without access to those networks. Customers have responded negatively in favor of Charter, calling for a boycott of Disney+ in response.

This week, Cortana is dead, Netflix is bringing games to the TV, ChatGPT is crawling the web, and Disney is raising prices... again.

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.

Cortana was once one of Microsoft's biggest focuses. Starting as the spotlight feature of Windows Phone, she grew to live within and control everything in the Microsoft ecosystem. But now, Microsoft has changed course, renaming some of the former Cortana services and destroying the rest. And, like the company too often does, leaving the consumers to clean up the mess.

Netflix has been trying to differentiate itself from the competition. Since Netflix created its streaming business, the industry has become incredibly crowded. Everyone needs a hook, and Netflix has gone all in on gaming as that differentiator. But, the mobile game business has not been the company's only intention, and the next phase of Netflix Games hit the App Store this week with a mobile game controller.

Over the past few months, AI, or the falsely named artificial intelligence, has been the topic du jour in the tech world and across all of the media. There have been positive advancements, like the ability to use language processing to summarize an audio file or to create more accurate subtitles for content. But, the majority of the "advancements" have fallen on the dark side of tech. Now, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT has a web crawler to help it index more of the internet, and publishers are panicked.

When the streaming services first launched, everything was too good to be true. The price per month versus what you got was absolutely in the consumer's favor. Companies were spending more than they were making in an attempt to attract new users. But now, with intense competition, streaming companies are changing the equation to try to be profitable and that means consistent price increases. Disney's streaming services are just the beginning.

This week, iOS 17 Public Beta is coming to your phone, Larry Hryb is leaving Xbox, Threads is out of the EU, and Miranda Sings into controversy.

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've got a modern iPhone, you now have the opportunity to try out an early build of the next version of Apple's mobile operating system: iOS 17. When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it could be an incremental improvement, or it could be a major step forward. This year is mostly an incremental upgrade, but there are a few really cool tricks that you can try out.

If you are at all involved in gaming, you'll likely recognize the name and even the full introduction, "Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson." He was the man that was usually out front for Microsoft when it came to the Xbox brand. He was at E3. He was at CES. He was on stage. He was on streams. Everywhere that mattered, Major Nelson was there. That will no longer be the case, as Larry Hryb has announced his departure from Microsoft.

Threads is Meta's new Twitter-like social media platform. It's only been out a short while, but usage has already dropped significantly, partially because of a loss of the new factor, but also because of a change made by Meta. Because of the platform's privacy and data policies, the company has had to block the EU, but not VPN access from the EU has had to be blocked as well in an attempt to avoid the wrath of the European Union regulators.

The internet can be a dangerous place. Even when you think you're in a safe place, it can turn out to be dangerous. Take, for example, the seemingly innocuous YouTube channel Miranda Sings. The channel, run by Colleen Ballinger, publishes awkward songs and videos, popular with all ages. However, it turns out that Ballinger might have been a danger to fans, especially younger fans who messaged her. And that was just the beginning of the story.

This week, Apple's wall is coming down, Robot Cache is growing up, Threads is confusing everyone, and Reddit is protecting users. Again.

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 concept of Apple's "walled garden" has long been a contentious topic. For some users, the idea of a completely contained ecosystem controlled in all aspects by Apple is attractive because it makes the experience more unified. For others, however, the lack of choice and customization is a major turn-off. While Apple fans are happy with their lot in life, the rest of the world is looking to shrink Apple's walled garden one square foot at a time.

The history of video games is one of owning the game forever or until you decide to sell it. This was possible because games came on physical media. But, the switch from physical media to digital distribution as the primary method has rendered this reality almost impossible. That is until now, with the impending release of Robot Cache out of beta and into the public limelight.

For some, the past few months of Twitter have been a challenge. Some had gotten accustomed to Twitter being a safe space where they didn't have to see things they didn't want to read. Since Elon Musk took over and told the internet to "let that sink in," things have changed pretty significantly. With blood in the water, several platforms have been created in order to challenge the blue bird, but none have really had success. That is until Meta's Instagram got involved, launching Threads - a Meta-esque take on Twitter.

This year has been a strange one for Reddit. The company has had to fight legal challenges that didn't involve them but has also created its own mess by changing the way the site's API works. Now, the Reddit team is back on the defensive as a new request for user identities has come from a very familiar source.

This week, Logitech G is taking over, Twitch is backing down, Instagram is planning a Thread, and Netflix is gaining new users.

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, Logitech has been on a buying spree. Sometimes the purchases have been of previously powerful brands, like Blue Microphones. Sometimes it has been of growing brands, like Mevo cameras. But, the one thing Logitech has done universally is maintain the existing brands. Blue, Mevo, and ASTRO Gaming have all continued to exist under various Logitech departments. But, it appears that is coming to an end as Logitech is pulling its various brands together under the single Logitech G banner.

This week, Twitch updated its Branded Content Guidelines for streamers. Updating policies is not unusual, but in this case, the company completely took the knees out from under its own creators. This change was so large and so controversial that it risked content creators across the world, including ourselves, leaving the platform for good. Fortunately, the company heard the response and addressed it quickly- though not necessarily quickly enough.

Since Elon Musk first announced his intention to purchase Twitter, there has been no end to the controversies. Despite the chaos and major changes in policy, usage of the platform is still high. Some companies have tried to take on the success of Twitter, giving people who want to use something else a similar experience. So far, other services have failed to gain enough traction to matter. However, Meta is hoping to be the outlier with a planned service called Threads.

When Netflix first announced the coming of a crackdown on password sharing, there were a lot of questions about how it would go over. Customers were unhappy with the idea, as they had long exploited this loophole to save money on the service. Industry experts were split on how customers would ultimately respond. Some thought it would drive subscribers and others thought it would finally slay the beast that is Netflix. It appears the first group was correct, as Netflix has seen the biggest increase in new subscribers in years.

This week, Gigabyte is at your back door, Street Fighter is breaking records, Amazon is paying for privacy, and Hollywood is not breaking the strike.

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.

Back doors are a common, yet controversial part of the tech industry. Sometimes, they are innocuous ways for the software to transfer data in the background, like doing updates without bothering the user. Other times, they are intended to allow outsiders to access data on your computer or bypass security settings. What is not common is leaving a back door open on hardware, especially something as core to the operation of the world as computer motherboards. However, that is exactly what happened with Gigabyte motherboards.

If you're a fan of the fighting game genre, this week was a big deal for you. The highly anticipated release of the newest edition of the long-running Street Fighter franchise was released and, before the first 24 hours had elapsed, the game had broken a major record on Steam. In fact, it didn't just break it - the game shattered to a point that it will be a challenge to be surpassed.

Reversing a trend leading up to 2018, internet users have begun to really care about their privacy online. As such, the FTC has been investigating potential privacy violations at a higher rate. We've seen them go after Tiktok and YouTube for child privacy violations, the latter changing the way YouTube does business. This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have taken aim at Amazon, costing the company over $30 million.

For the second time in 15 years, we find ourselves in the midst of a serious writer's strike in Hollywood. During the 2007/2008 strike, the entertainment landscape was turned on its head. A combination of that and sabotage from another union brought the strike to an end without the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) getting anything it wanted and being set up for failure in modern times. The latest strike, however, is set to end differently, according to the WGA itself.

This week, Asus brings down the internet, Nvidia is bringing in Microsoft Game Studios, domains will cause problems, and YouTube videos are safe, for now.

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's always a rough day for users when an internet-connected device unexpectedly goes offline. We remember just a few months ago when Insteon devices went dark without any warning or communication. Customers had no idea what was going on or if there was a way to recover any of the devices they had built their smart homes upon. What rises above this in terms of internet issues is having your router go offline with seemingly no issue or recognition of the problem. This is exactly what Asus router owners experienced this week.

Microsoft has announced another new partnership for its Microsoft Studios games, both current and future: Nvidia. This new partnership will bring Xbox Studios games to another Microsoft competitor, GeForce Now. The partnership will bolster the cloud gaming platform whose business model was forced to change after launch, while also giving Microsoft another outlet for sales of games. Plus, it will look good across the globe - especially in the UK.

A group petitions the ICANN every few years to introduce new Top Level Domains (TLD). These are the last part of a website we're familiar with and use daily. The most common, and the longest-lasting, are .com, .net, and .org. Recently, a new petition to add 8 new TLDs was submitted by Google. 6 of these TLDs are mostly innocuous, but 2 of them will make it easier for scammers to ruin your day (or more likely your parents).

This week, Google announced a new policy surrounding inactive Google accounts. The plan, according to a blog post is to purge accounts that have not been active for at least 2 years. The company has its reasons for the purge, but one concern remained: what would happen to YouTube videos for inactive accounts? Google has clarified and it did not go the way we expected.

This week, Siri's future is in trouble, Microsoft's Activision acquisition is blocked, AI regulation is coming together, and Black Mirror is coming 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.

Over the past few months, the topic of artificial intelligence, and particularly generative AI, have become a significant topic. We've even talked about the past few episodes of Piltch Pointt because of how important it has become. We've seen companies like Microsoft and Google begin integrating the technology into their search tools and in Microsoft's case all of their tools. But, for Apple, there has been essentially zero discussion about the technology, despite the company's existing position with Siri, and it might be because the company has no direction for Siri at all.

It has been just over a year since Microsoft announced its intention to purchase gaming company, Activision Blizzard. The merged company would have brought a ton of games from Activision and Blizzard's catalog to the Game Pass subscription service, making it an even better deal for gamers. The companies even committed to keeping high-profile franchises on competitors' hardware. Despite all of this, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decided to block the acquisition, but that doesn't mean this is the end.

As the interest in and usage of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased, so has concern over its safety and future. People ranging from Elon Musk to the engineers at Google have been speaking out over fears about what could happen if AI goes unchecked. Some governments have just begun to think about the future of AI in the world, but the European Union was ahead of the curve and has passed a draft version of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.

If you are a fan of dystopian sci-fi series, then there's some really good news for you. Netflix has announced that Black Mirror season 6 is finally coming this June. The series has managed to address many traditional sci-fi tropes through a lens of the near future, making it ultra-realistic to viewers. And producers are bringing back the same feeling but with changes to the overall themes.