F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Samsung won't pay the royalties, Twitch attracts some heat after its changes and Facebook surprisingly supports your privacy.

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 is a sad time when best friends needs to face off in legal battles, but when it comes to royalty payments, Microsoft doesn't play around. The software giant is suing Samsung after the South Korean hardware manufacturer did not pay its royalties in full last fall.

When Google purchased Twitch we all knew we were in for some changes. Twitch proves our point this week by announcing a number of policy changes. As you would expect, most of these changes do not make Twitch users happy.

Last year New York City Law enforcement asked Facebook to turn over information about 381 accounts. The information included photos, messages and personal information. The targets of the request range from "high schoolers to grandparents, from all over New York and across the United States."

It would appear that CBS is joining the Internet-first production concept, joining the ranks of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. The difference is, CBS does not own a distribution platform like these companies, but will, instead, take advantage of their already strong presence to distribute their content.

This week, the FDA embraces tech that scares the FTC, ESPN might expand beyond The International and ICANN says "You can't" to countries wanting to own their own top-level domains.

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.

Last week, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill stated that she was concerned about the nature of health tech, particularly health apps. She is afraid that the data collected by these apps, and their connected devices, might be used to predict future health conditions. Because of this fear, she believes that health tech should be regulated heavier, with her leading a charge to do just that.

Over the past few years, eSports have grown from a small niche following to a semi-major market. With games like Dota 2 and the Call of Duty gaining immense followings, it was mostly a matter of time before it became truly mainstream. That seems to have happened this week with ESPN's coverage of Valve's The International, a Dota 2 championship with almost $11 million in prizes.

A weird series of circumstances has led to a request to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet on behalf of the US government, to turn over ownership of the country code Top-Level Domains for Iran (.ir), North Korea (.kp) and Syria (.sy). The request comes as part of a financial judgment against the countries for sponsoring terrorism. Unfortunately for them, this might not be possible.

The process of dealing with a troll can be arduous. If you need proof, ask those involved in a Prenda Law suit. The company filed suit against thousands of individuals for illegally downloading pornography owned by Lightspeed Media. Soon after, it was alleged that they themselves planted the torrents with intent to file these suits. Shortly after, Comcast confirmed this theory, ending any chance they had of a legal success. Their appeals cases have not gone better, with even judges harassing them in court.

This week, Amazon is trying to do too much at once, Google is trying to buyout the competition and the FTC is trying to explain why health and Internet things are scary.

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.

One of the biggest trends in mobile right now is health. The category ranges from wearable technology to being able to talk to your doctor via mobile app. It is the perfect intersection between mobile and wearables, so much so that one of the largest marketplaces at CES is health tech.

NVIDIA really wants to make something of its SHIELD line of Android-powered gaming devices. First, the original handheld has received almost no consumer buy-in. Last week we learned about their plans for a television streaming device which will require a tremendous amount of costly hardware.

It might just be time for Amazon to begin focusing its offerings. Since the company was originally founded as an online bookstore, the company's product and service offerings has grown tremendously. Whether you're looking to purchase books, shoes or flour, you can probably find it on Amazon.com.

Back in May, Variety reported that Google was in talks to buy Twitch for $1 billion. Well, as it would turn out, the rumors and reports are shaping up to be true. Google and YouTube are lining up to shell out over $1 billion for the up-and-coming video game streaming service.

This week, nVIDIA tries again with Android, Russia tries again to cover things up and our government tries to look like it's being productive.

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.

This week, the US Senate passed a bill making the unlocking of personal cellular devices legal. This bill does not include any conditions that would allow for bulk unlocking, or the ability for someone else to unlock your personal device for you. This language, which was making passing the bill nearly impossible, was included in the House version of the bill, but removed to get it passed through the Senate. Once the bills are identical, it will be sent to the President.

NVIDIA is slated to launch another gaming device based around Android. Luckily, it is nothing like its previous endeavor, SHIELD. Instead, the gaming company looks to create a machine that can connect to a computer's graphics card to juice up the device to be used with a TV or other monitor.

As the world recovers from the shock of the attack on the Malaysian passenger flight, the race to create the history of the event is already underway. Building on the @CongressEdits Wikipedia monitor software, @RuGovEdits detected an edit made to a Wikipedia article by the Russian government. Someone within the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), the state-owned "news" agency, edited the Russian language article List of aircraft accidents in civil aviation.

If you didn't catch the memo from earlier in the week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid out a plan to cut 18,000 jobs from the corporation. Most of the layoffs, of which is the largest in tech history, will be from the Nokia merger. However, not specifically listed in the note was the purge that will unfortunately be coming out of the Xbox Entertainment Studio.

This week, Aereo tries to fit in with the cable companies, China says the most popular device the country manufactures is a national security threat and Curse throws a curveball to the PC gaming industry.

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.

Every country has a different way of focusing its economy. Some, like the United States, focus on knowledge work. Others, like China, focus on manufacturing. No matter your focus, though, one good rule of thumb is to not insult the companies that make your economy possible.

In-game communication is not a new concept. PC gamers have been using services like Ventrilo for years. Xbox and PlayStation both have game communication built into their platforms. However, while communication on the consoles has continued to improve the PC has not kept up.

Combining data sources to produce interesting results has become a popular trend in software lately. It is a great way to experiment with development without having to create your own data. There have been lots of mobile apps created, some by talented developers and others by hacks, that take advantage of other people's data to produce unique results.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court essentially killed Aereo, at least in its current business state. CEO Chet Kanojia said that the company was going to find a way to continue to operate and it appears Aereo has found that way. Now, Aereo is going to try to become a cable operator.

This week, the feds protect Facebook from a scammer, Cliff Bleszinski launches an epic new studio and Samsung forgets about media to work on hardware.

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 no secret that smartphone cameras are getting better. It's also no secret that stand alone point and shoot camera demand is down. So what do you do if you're a company with a lot of photography patents? Why, team up with a smartphone maker that's known for its cameras of course. That's exactly what happened this week when Microsoft and Canon agreed to share intellectual property. The companies said in a joint statement,

Have you wondered what Cliff Bleszinski has been up to lately? So has the rest of the gaming world. The man who spent 20 years working at Epic Games as a director and designer has been exploring the world since his departure back in 2012. However when pressed, he never really got into detail on what the future held for him. That is until June 30th, when he said on Twitter, "I'm officially coming out of retirement to make video games again." Well, the Internet got busy like it usually does and found out within days what he was up to.

Since 2010, Mark Zuckerberg has been fighting allegations that he owes half of Facebook's worth to a guy named Paul Ceglia. Ceglia claims that the contract he presented police officers and judges is in fact real. The man is being prosecuted by New York federal attorneys on allegations that the contract is forged. And in November, Ceglia will be defending himself as the case will be making its way to trial.

The digital media distribution business is a tough one. While many companies have tried to sell digital goods, only a few have been successful. In the videos space there's really only been four: iTunes, Xbox Video, Amazon and Google Play. Because of this, Samsung has decided to leave the industry to the big boys.

This week, the Supreme Court takes a stance on both your privacy and your entertainment, Mario Kart takes the Wii U to another level and Alibaba takes on the other exchange.

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.

This week was a big one for the Supreme Court and technology. In addition to stepping on streaming service Aereo, they tackled personal privacy concerns in the smartphone age. Before the ruling for whatever reason cell phones were not covered under the Fourth Amendment. This meant that police could search your phone without a warrant.

Nintendo has not been doing well in this generation's console battle and has suffered huge financial losses as a result. Even last week the company lost a huge patent battle overseas that will likely have Nintendo further in the hole. Many people asked what Nintendo could do to bring itself back into better times and apparently the answer was Mario Kart.

It's no secret Nintendo is in some trouble. Their last fiscal year was the first time they ever lost money. The Wii U is their first home console to ever have sales trouble. They also just lost a patent suit over the Wiimote. With the trend like that you expect the company to make somebody pay for it.

Alibaba is not a name you've probably heard unless you're a big fan of Disney's Aladdin. That's about to change, though, as the Chinese tech giant is preparing for its IPO. And that IPO is going to take place on the New York Stock Exchange.

So, Aereo is dead. Yes, the innovative over-the-air video-streaming service that won us over with its edgy, boundary-pushing business model has been ruled illegal in the Supreme Court hearing this week. The decision, which was split 6-3 and overturned a lower court's decision, says that Aereo's business practices infringe on copyright law because the company acts almost identical to a cable company but Aereo hasn't been subjected to the same broadcaster fees as said cable companies.

Fox is pretty excited about their Supreme Court win over Aereo. They're so excited in fact that they've taken the ruling on the road, trying to apply it to their case against Dish Network.

This week, T-Mobile's CEO goes on another profane-ridden attack, Spotify might be streaming video and Nintendo doesn't win in World 1-UK.

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.

T-Mobile is on a rampage lately. CEO John Legere, known for his very "out there" personality and as someone who isn't afraid to just say what's on his mind, has taken things to a whole new level at the recent T-Mobile press conference. In what was a direct attack at the competition during the announcement of T-Mobile's new Music Freedom program, Legere went on record to drop more than a few F-bombs and even say the other carriers are "raping you" with their policies.

Philips and Nintendo have had an interesting relationship for more than 2 decades. In the early 90s, Philips released a computer system that was mostly marketed as a videogame console. As part of a development agreement between the two companies, the CD-i featured 4 games which were based on Nintendo franchises: 1 Mario and 3 Zelda games. The device was a massive commercial failure.

Over the past few months, there has been a conversation online about the value of open source software, especially security software. This, this course, was spawned by the disaster caused by OpenSSL and their two security issues over just a few weeks, followed by the troubles of an open source hard drive encryption program.

What's Spotify doing lately? Well, after trying to single-handedly revolutionize the music industry, a little service called Beats Music came along and put some pressure on the music-streaming service space, Spotify included. So, to go one-up on Beats, the company might be looking to get into the video-streaming space to take on the Netflix' and Amazons of the world.

This week, we talk about tech from Taipei, and we get really excited and really let down from the same event about video 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.

It is no secret that Android has seen a lot of commercial success over the past few years. A big part of that success has come from the perceived low cost of manufacturing an Android-powered device. Unfortunately, Google's mistreatment of others' patents has made the per-device cost pretty steep. For some manufacturers, they could pay upwards of $15 per device to license patents that Google has violated.

This week, EA shuts down another studio, Samsung hates the Droids they found and whoa...Beats.

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.

This week Samsung made a move to bring it one step closer to its ultimate goal of being Android-free. The move will see the original Galaxy Gear smartwatch replace Android with Samsung's own Tizen operating system. This will bring the original hardware in line with the newer Galaxy 2 and Galaxy 2 Neo.

Electronic Arts is working to streamline its mobile development by closing another studio. This time, instead of closing social-focused Playfish, EA is ending a studio that has been involved in a lot of big titles. Mythic Entertainment, creators of Dungeon Keeper and Warhammer Online and MMO pioneers of The Dark Age of Camelot, is closed.

This is a guest post by Mark Lauter, president of Sumo Software.

After about two weeks of rumors, the news officially dropped this week. Apple has acquired Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the tune of $3 billion. Both co-founders of Beats, actor, six-time Grammy Award-winning rapper, producer and all-around hip hop mogul Dr. Dre, and CEO of Interscope Geffen Jimmy Iovine, will move over to Apple. The cash breaks down at $2.6 billion upfront and $400 million paid over time, making Dr. Dre hip hop's first billionaire.