F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, LG attempts to resurrect webOS once again, BitTorrent attempts to hide your conversations from the world and Aereo attempts to end their battle once and for all.

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.

I can't quite believe I am writing this article again, but here it is. After last year's rumors of an LG webOS Smart TV at CES 2013 didn't pan out exactly as expected, LG decided to one-up the rumors. Rather than licensing webOS for their Smart TV line, they decided to buy the former mobile operating system outright.

Another game release, another lawsuit. This really should just be EA's tagline at this point. From problems with the NCAA (and canceling the game) to suing Zynga for being a look-a-like, the company is always involved in some sort of legal matter. Now, a class-action lawsuit has been filed, with EA coming under fire for both the still-broken state of Battlefield 4, as well as alluding to false success of the game, with EA employees then selling off stock to the tune of over $12 million.

Since Snowden originally revealed that, through PRISM and other programs, the US government has been spying on, well, everything that everyone does, security has become a hot topic. From encrypted email services to on-site cloud platforms, the fear of government snooping on the Internet has never been higher, and never before have so many people been trying to solve said problem.

Court cases seem to be the popular way to keep Aereo in the news as of late. Whether or not the next round, a push from the broadcasters to bring Aereo to the Supreme Court, will bode successful or not doesn't really matter right now. This is because legal issues also take up Aereo's time and prevent the company from expanding, which is what the networks want to happen anyway. This week, CEO and founder Chet Kanojia explained why some of the 24 markets promised still haven't seen Aereo appear. I'm sure you can guess why.

This week, Microsoft brings original content to Xbox, Apple tries to track you with real nanobots and YouTube erroneously brings down videos.

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 stranger hurdles in the Nokia transition to Microsoft has been a handset factory in India. The factory in question was seized by the Indian government because of owed taxes from Nokia regarding software licenses. The seizure meant that Nokia did not technically own the facility, which was scheduled to change hands to Microsoft.

Anyone who produces regular content for YouTube has had a video flagged before. It can be for music, video, imagery and, sometimes, it can be for something outside of your control. For example, music playing very quietly in the background of a live event where you are conducting an interview.

It has been two years since we discussed Foot Path's customer tracking service and the inevitable consumer fallout that occurred as a result. In those two years more smartphones have been sold and consumers have become even more weary of being tracked, both online and in reality. The move away from cookies on the Internet has been the biggest recent indicator.

If you want more proof that Microsoft's Xbox One is truly meant for all walks of life, we have it this week. Microsoft announced that the company will be launching its first batch of original programming on the Xbox One and also the Xbox 360 sometime in early 2014. This would put the next-gen console in direct competition with Amazon Instant Video, Hulu and Netflix, which all currently offer original content on their services. The difference here is that both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One will have content on a platform that Microsoft has complete control over.

This week, Apple tries to track you with real nanobots, Beats looks to load up on beats and sales for the PS4 still await greatness.

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 has been two years since we discussed Foot Path's customer tracking service and the inevitable consumer fallout that occurred as a result. In those two years more smartphones have been sold and consumers have become even more weary of being tracked, both online and in reality. The move away from cookies on the Internet has been the biggest recent indicator.

I've always said that in the gaming industry, nothing matters until we see the sales numbers. This held especially true this past week, as Black Friday had customers shopping in stores across the country, from dusk to dawn, purchasing their favorite gadgets and other items. On their lists were video game consoles and, regardless of the initial Internet onslaught of negativity, you might be surprised at the console that came out on top.

Between the time Twitter filed its Initial Public Offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 12, 2013, and its official IPO announcement, an interesting conversation happened between the two organizations. In this time frame, it is fairly common for the filer and the SEC to discuss the details of the documents to clarify confusing or misleading information. In Twitter's case, however, the details in question were material to the valuation of the company.

Beats, arguably the most popular high-end headphone in the market today, is moving into the music-streaming service to compete with Pandora, Spotify and more. Jimmy Iovine, the company's co-founder and head of Interscope/Geffen Records, dove into details this week about Beats' decision to enter a new space.

This week, Twitch pulls impromptu PlayStation porn, Germany pulls contested content and Xbox pulls its quality on the web.

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 is a nice change of pace - for once, I get to write about a Flash exploit that is not related to Adobe screwing something up. Instead, this Flash vulnerability doesn't even have anything to do with Adobe's product, but instead a version of SMS called Flash SMS.

While the premise of The Playroom on the PlayStation 4 seems innocuous, it is officially the first title in the next generation console world to be banned from Twitch. The ban comes from a series of incidents that somehow Sony and Twitch were not prepared for, but anyone who has ever spent more than 5 minutes on the Internet knew was coming: porn.

Here in the US we have a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One of the many things this law brings about is a protection for a website against content provided by its users, so long as the site complies with takedown notices in a timely manner. This law is what makes it possible for sites like YouTube to allow users to upload content without checking it before publishing it.

Currently available through Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows Store, Microsoft has added Web to the places you can access their Xbox Video service. For those who have not used the service, it is similar in concept to iTunes Video, but with a significantly more customized content discovery system.

This week, the Xbox One pretends to be a chainsaw, Nokia workers in China pretend to have rights and Sony is pretending the media division isn't in much trouble.

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.

Nokia's devices and services division becoming part of Microsoft is a great thing for consumers. It streamlines the Nokia handsets that features Windows Phone 8 and gives Microsoft a dedicated partner for its flagship operating system. That being said, there's a large group of people who are less than thrilled with this deal, that being Nokia workers in one of the company's manufacturing plants in China.

It is not unexpected, but it is disappointing: Microsoft's Xbox One consoles seem to be experiencing a disc drive issue. Following last week's PlayStation 4 launch hardware issues, a small number of Xbox One owners are claiming to be experiencing a loud grinding noise when inserting discs into their new consoles.

Twitter is a great place to gather information. Throughout my week, I read about the top tech news and receive tips on what we should cover on the site. One of the problems with Twitter, however, is how easy it makes it for the big guys to steal content from the little guys.

Kaz Hirai has been at the head of the Sony ship for quite some time now, and has led the charge of turning around the company. His idea of a revival plan coupled with several purchases that were key to Sony's future success made everything appear like Hirai would be able to right the ship. However, after numbers were still in the red and Sony's board rejected the proposal to spin off its media division, Sony has taken to drastic measures to save the company. The solution? Slashing the budget for the media division.

This week, the government hates the cloud, email templates outsmart the new guy and Homer has a new home.

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, an interesting thing happened in the Linux community. Canonical, the owners of Ubuntu and one of the leaders of the open data movement, threatened a critical website over trademark issues. Something they either didn't expect or didn't research was that the website, Fix Ubuntu, is owned an operated by Micah Lee from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

It's time to talk about something nobody else is talking about: The PlayStation 4 launch. Wait, what I mean to say is that we're going to be talking about some of the major problems that have already plagued the console's launch successes, despite the units being in hands of consumers for less than a week. From the time we witnessed the announcement of the $400 price point at E3, we predicted that Sony was going to have to cut corners in order to not only stay competitive against Microsoft, but to not lose a tremendous amount of money on the console, like they did with the PS3. However, I wouldn't have imagined that the PS4, while feeling sturdy in the hands at 6.1 pounds, would fall apart like a cheaply made plastic box. I should point out though, that the lack of any disclosed improvement to the PlayStation Network servers does seem to correlate with the online and connectivity problems that the PS4 is already facing.

There has been an interesting trend lately within the enterprise to have concern over cloud solutions. It can certainly be understood, as we see services such as Adobe, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Blizzard all having data breeches recently. Of course, there is also the infamous PlayStation issue.

It is unusual for a new cable network to land a major syndication deal, especially for a show that technically cannot be syndicated to cable. It is also unusual for a new cable network to make history with the biggest off-network deal in history. Both of those things came together as a brand new network has landed an exclusive cable broadcast and Video-On-Demand and streaming deal for The Simpsons.

This week, Nintendo turns off being turned on by your 3DS, Sony's movies aren't busting any blocks and Qualcomm might compete with itself by going with BlackBerry.

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.

Six weeks ago rumors began to circulate about another bidder for BlackBerry, led by founder Mike Lazaridis. Since then, the plans seem to have gotten more detailed. The addition of co-founder Doug Fregin brings the current holdings of the equity group to 8%, making a buyout a little easier. Adding Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, into the mix brings guaranteed money to the table.

Mama Nintendo has announced this week that her children have disappointed her and shall be punished. In this instance, she has discovered that some of her children, particularly the minors, have been using their devices for naughty purposes, so she has taken away that capability.

In 2011, a group of companies came together to purchase the patent portfolio of the failed Nortel. The group, called Rockstar Consortium, was formed by some major players, including Apple, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Sony. Despite being asked, Google declined the offer, instead deciding to bid solo, losing to Rockstar.

While Kaz Hirai might be certain of his revival plan, the numbers are not looking to be in his favor. After a rebound last quarter, Sony is back in its comfort zone, having lost nearly $200 million this quarter.

Scott and Nick host a one-hour broadcast live from ROBOCON Tampa Bay, an off-season FIRST Robotics competition at the University of Tampa.

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!

This week, Watch Dogs gets a pushback, Apple's iPhone gets a reduction and Facebook gets more public posts.

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

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

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

In the past, we've talked about the flurry of problems Apple has had with iPhone launches but nobody else seems to talk about. Fortunately, we're here to break the conformity barrier, and with the iPhone 5s and 5c launches, we covered the sensor issues of the 5s and sales failure of the 5c. This week it continues, as it's been reported that Apple has requested a cut in production on the iPhone 5c.

One of the most anticipated titles announced at E3 was Watch Dogs. Every two weeks or so, the developers at Ubisoft have leaked a bit more information to the masses, including a website, real-time gameplay clips, trailers and more. It felt like the holiday season could have been saved from the unimpressive new consoles with a great title like this. Unfortunately, Watch Dogs will now be pushed back to the first quarter of 2014.

Facebook has made what might seem like a trivial change to their sharing policy, but one that has drawn a lot of fire from various advocacy groups. The change, described by Facebook,

In an attempt to partially merge with the classic television industry they have been helping to redefine, Netflix has announced a partnership with Samsung to make its streaming service available on Samsung Smart Cable Boxes. With the combined interface, users will be able to search for movies and television on Netflix the same way they do in their standard guide.

This week, Google looks to Android for TV, Foxconn turns a blind eye to student labor laws and the FBI sees a lot of trolling for just a Bit of Coin.

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 has struggled to get adoption on their Google TV brand of television-based operating system. They have had trouble getting content owners to produce platform-specific applications, with some producers specifically blocking the devices. On top of that, Google hasn't had a lot of success convincing manufacturers to produce devices based on the platform, even canceling some of their own announced, and one time paid for, hardware.

Foxconn is back in the news for yet another unfortunate story. The Chinese production facility just wrapped up a labor investigation and it seems that "fair labor" is not in Foxconn's vocabulary. This time, it has to do with college interns. It is being reported that student interns have been voluntarily forced into working overtime to meet the increasing demands of the Sony PlayStation 4.

By now we probably all know about Silk Road, but for those who do not, let me give you a quick overview. The site, founded by Ross Ulbricht, was a notorious hotbed of illegal drug activity. Aided by Bitcoin, the semi-legitimate online currency of underground activities, Ulbricht was able to keep his sales and clientele anonymous, amassing over 600,000 Bitcoins, valued at over $80 million.

Writing about Hulu is an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes you get to write about great new comedies available before premiere, and sometimes you have to write about selling the company (twice) and then abandoning that sale (twice).