F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, gaming is getting better in Microsoft Edge, results are getting better in Brave Search, and ads are closer to reality on Netflix.

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 year or so, the App Store and Google Play have become a hot topic. While they once represented the next generation of application delivery, they have become the target of derision as Apple and Google have been viewed as greedy and taking advantage of their market positions. Now, Parallelz is trying to do the same for mobile platforms by taking apps to the web.

Microsoft has made it clear that Xbox Cloud Gaming is a big part of its corporate future. In fact, the company has been putting a lot of resources behind creating enhancements to other products and services in order to support that goal. This week, the company made good on a promise made 2 weeks ago, bringing a gaming focused home screen and visual enhancements to its Edge browser.

One of the aspects of the internet that raises the most concerns over privacy is search. Google seems to always be in the spotlight when it comes to what kind of data they collect, the methods with which they collect it, and how they use it for and against its users. Brave Search, a platform designed to add a layer of privacy on top of the search experience, is officially out of Beta and adding a great customization feature.

2022 has not been the best year for Netflix. The company saw subscriber loss for the first time in a decade. They are facing increased pressure as more companies get into the streaming business. They have created content-related controversies with some of the shows and movies they have aired. Many people find the offerings less interesting and compelling today than a few years ago. And, to add insult to injury, they are the most expensive streaming service in the industry. But the company has plans on how to attract potential subscribers who find the service too expensive.

This week, Insteon rises from the dead, Microsoft reveals the future, and Meta is investigating an executive.

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.

A few weeks ago, something very strange happened in the connected home world - Insteon vanished. The company made no public announcement and gave no warning - it just disappeared. Now, a small group of dedicated Insteon users have banded together and purchased the company, ousting the previous management and relaunching the service.

Rounding out the Summer Games Fest 2022, Microsoft showed off what they and Bethesda feel will be the biggest draws for the next 12 months at the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. There were a lot of major announcements from studios from Activision to Riot Games - and even Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland. However, the games were not the only major aspect of the presentation.

Last week, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg announced that she was leaving the company to focus on her other, external projects. Now it's been revealed that Sandberg has been under investigation at the company for several months related to using corporate resources for personal projects, possibly shedding new light on the highly public executive's departure from the company.

For several years now, many AT&T subscribers have been given access to HBO and/or DirecTV video subscriptions. But, since the company has moved away from its media ambitions, the company has announced that these promotions and any like it are over forever.

This week, New York protects the Right to Repair, Sony shows off upcoming PlayStation games, and Netflix struggles with password sharing rules.

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.

There has long been a battle between consumers and device manufacturers over whether or not they actually won their devices. Consumers believe that they own a phone or a tablet when they spend money on it. On the other hand, companies like Apple believe that your money does not give you full ownership over the device and they still control part or all of the experience. But that battle is beginning to wane as the government has gotten involved, taking the side of consumers - starting with New York State.

With the revelation that E3 2022 has been canceled (and likely E3 is over permanently), game companies are trying to figure out how to address gamers with their big news. Some have taken to Summer Games Fest, which is being called the "New E3" by some. Others, like Sony, have decided to hold their own events outside of any established schedules. Sony's State of Play occurred this week, and the company showed off a lot of games coming in the next few years.

Over the past few years, Americans have lost over $1 billion per year to cryptocurrency scams. Some of that loss has been to dating app scams, some to traditional phishing scams, while others have gotten more creative. One of the more creative, and therefore diabolical, scams comes to us from Clipminer, a clipboard hijacker that has stolen $1.7 million from unsuspecting victims.

Netflix has long had a policy against password sharing. Officially, an account is only to be used within a household. However, sharing passwords among friends has become a big thing. Now, Netflix is looking for ways to limit the amount of password sharing happening, but the tests in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru have not been going quite as well as the company had hoped.

This week, Insteon vanishes, ads could appear on Xbox and PlayStation games, and Netflix loses subscribers.

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.

While smart and connected home technology has become popular in just the past few years, the technology has existed for decades. Today, most connected home devices run over one of a few licensable protocols, the early ones worked on proprietary communications. One of the early leaders in the connected home industry was Insteon, but that lead has seemingly ended in a whimper, as the company seems to have vanished over the weekend.

Advertisements in games are far from a new concept. Many mobile games exclusively rely on full commercials to generate revenue, while others inject them with the opportunity to skip them for money. Console games have generally been able to avoid commercials, but have seen other in-game advertisements, such as logos and product placement. However, things might be changing, as Microsoft and Sony are looking to allow game companies to integrate advertisements into games on their platforms.

Since Elon Musk first went on the offensive purchasing Twitter stock, the company's Board of Directors has been doing everything in its power to retain its power. Initially, the Board offered Musk a seat, with the understanding that he would not purchase more than 15% of the company's outstanding stock. He rejected that offer and made one of his own - sell me the company and get out of the building. Now, the two are at odds about how to proceed.

When it comes to the media landscape, Netflix has seemed to be an unstoppable giant. However, their quarterly earnings report, which came out this week, shows that Goliath might just have met its David. For the first time in over a decade, the company had a net subscriber loss rather than net subscriber growth. The company has some ideas on why it happened, but the most obvious seems completely missing from the explanation. But, the response to the loss has been swift and severe.

This week, Samsung is eliminating waste, PlayStation is adding more to Plus, and Twitch is featuring inappropriate content.

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.

Samsung is one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world. And as a consumer electronics maker, it has a responsibility to safeguard the environment. Recently, Samsung announced plans to reduce the environmental impact of its business. This includes reducing e-waste and carbon emissions from manufacturing processes. Samsung also aims to increase transparency about how its products are made.

At the end of 2021, we heard tell of a project out of Sony called Spartacus. This new initiative was said to be a competitor to Microsoft's Game Pass, offering a subscription service that would give gamers access to games from an existing collection. This week, the company officially took the lid off of Spartacus, which is being wrapped into PlayStation Plus.

Ubiquiti Networks, a network-equipment maker, is suing journalist Brian Krebs for defamation over his coverage of a data breach which was eventually revealed to be the work of a company insider. Ubiquiti initially disclosed a data breach, telling customers that the breach was minor and had occurred at a "third-party cloud provider." But Krebs reported that an unidentified whistleblower told him the data breach was worse than Ubiquiti had said. Ubiquiti's lawsuit claims that these articles published by Krebs and others caused Ubiquiti's market cap to drop by $4 billion.

The past few years have not been kind to Twitch and its reputation. The brand has been plagued by problem after problem. Now, a new feature on the platform has added another issue to the already hurting reputation - featured pornography.

This week, Apple wants to rent you a phone, Netflix wants to give you more games, and YouTube is giving you free movies.

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.

Apple is reportedly planning to launch a new subscription service that would allow users to purchase iPhones as part of a subscription. This move comes as Apple is looking for new ways to increase recurring revenue, which has been a focus for the company in recent years. Apple is said to be considering launching the service as soon as this year, but it's also possible that it won't arrive until early 2023.

Netflix is on a gaming buying spree! The video streaming company has just announced that it has acquired Boss Fight Entertainment, an indie studio based in Allen, Texas. This is Netflix's third game studio purchase since it set its sights on the gaming industry last summer. It's clear that Netflix is serious about getting into the gaming market - and this acquisition could mean big things for mobile gamers, and Netflix Games users, everywhere.

On Thursday, the European Parliament and EU member states announced their agreement on the Digital Markets Act. This legislation amounts to an overhaul of antitrust rules in Europe and will give the EU more power to rein tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. One of the most important aspects of this new law is its approach to messaging apps.

If you're a fan of free movies and TV shows, YouTube has some good news for you. The video streaming service just announced that it has added thousands of new titles to its lineup, all of which are available for free. This includes hundreds of movies and over 4,000 episodes of various TV shows.

This week, cars can lose their steering wheels, Blizzard will test their PvP, and gamers can listen to Square Enix music.

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.

After years of development and anticipation, driverless cars are one step closer to hitting the road. On Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a rule change that updates Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to allow for fully autonomous vehicles without a traditional steering wheel or pedals. This is a major regulatory shift that paves the way for driverless cars to be mass-produced and widely used.

In a move that is sure to excite Overwatch fans, Blizzard has announced that it has kicked off the PvP alpha for its upcoming game, Overwatch 2. This comes in addition to the game's planned PvE mode, which will launch later. The alpha is currently only open to employees of Blizzard and professional players, but everyone else will have a chance to try out the beta in April.

It's been a confusing week for cryptocurrency investors in the US and UK. On Monday, President Biden issued a long-awaited executive order directing the federal government to evaluate the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency. It's the first executive order of its kind to focus exclusively on the growing popularity of digital assets like Bitcoin and Dogecoin, which put the crypto market on edge because of global regulatory concerns within the digital asset sector in recent years. Meanwhile, the UK has put an end to cryptocurrency ATMs.

Square Enix is known for creating some of the most popular video games in the world, such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. Now, they are launching their own music channel on YouTube. The SQUARE ENIX MUSIC Channel will act as a catalog of music-related videos from Square Enix's many properties. You can expect to find full game soundtracks, remixes, orchestra pieces, and more on the new channel.

This week, chips are getting harder to find, Steam Deck is getting easier to control, and Disney+ is getting cheaper to watch.

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.

Have you ever wondered what goes into making a microchip? It's a lot more complex than most people would imagine, and one of the essential ingredients is neon gas. You read that right - the same gas used to make those eye-catching store signs. Unfortunately, there's about to be a major shortage of neon gas, and it could have some serious consequences for the chip industry.

Last year, Valve surprised the gaming industry by announcing the unfortunately named Steam Deck after Gabe Newell teased the company's entrance into consoles[/url=. The device is a portable gaming computer designed to compete with the Nintendo Switch, while also allowing gamers to interact with their full Steam catalog. After a short delay, the console has launched to much acclaim. But, with most new products these days, there was a Day 1 issue, though Value has a patch to fix it.

The internet was created as a way to democratize information across the globe. In theory, no one would have the ability to censor the content that people had access to. Unfortunately, those days are far behind us. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube regularly decide what can and can't be seen by users in every region. Amazon, Google, and Apple can ensure that a popular platform is brought to its knees. But this week, we've seen a new side of Big Tech's power as they take sides in the Ukrainian conflict.

Disney+ has officially announced that it will be joining the growing list of ad-supported streaming services. This means that users will be able to watch all of the same content that is available on Disney+, but they will have to sit through a certain number of ads each month in order to make up for the lower cost. Disney has not yet released any details about how many ads viewers can expect or when this new plan will go into effect.

This week, Apple is charging for nothing, Nintendo is looking for 5 years, and RIAA is looking for a HitPiece.

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.

At the end of 2021, Apple was required to implement 3rd party payments for developers in their App Store policies. In the 2 months since Apple managed to get an extension on the implementation, a lot of questions have surrounded the new rules. The most important question, though, is how will Apple treat developers who decide to use payment systems that Apple does not have anything to do with. Some rumblings from the company suggested that they would attempt to charge a commission on external payments, but nothing was set in stone. Now, after a similar implementation in the Netherlands, we have some new fears.

Any time an ecosystem is locked, it creates an external ecosystem of pirated content. This is not to say that it's a good situation, but it has always happened. The music industry refused to adjust to digital players and Napster, Morpheus, and Kazaa were born. Apple refuses to allow an open mobile operating system and jailbreaking was born. One industry that has remained locked down to try and prevent cheating, however, has been gaming, and it is also a big target for piracy. One group of notorious gaming pirates, Team Xecutor, is facing some steep penalties for their activity.

One of the dominant features of Reddit is its users' ability to decide what is and is not important through the upvote and downvote feature. For every post on the site, users can mark it as up or down, thereby helping to determine what is the most valuable content on the site. Twitter has been testing a similar feature over the past few months, and now they are ready to turn it from a limited test into a "global experiment."

Over the past year, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have become both a hit and a miss, depending on how you look at them. Any time a new technology comes into the public consciousness, there are bound to be scams and new ways to take advantage of people who simply do not understand. For NFTs, the latest scam has been selling tokens for things that you do not own, and HitPiece has been the face of this nonsense.

This week, Activision is getting a new home at Microsoft, the IRS is getting biometric data, and YouTube is getting a little more original.

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.

One thing we have learned over the past few years is that people are not comfortable with the idea of public biometric information. Whether it's Disney collecting fingerprints for pass holders or law enforcement scanning faces, people are not about it. But, despite the very public and loud backlash over the topic, we still see biometric data being collected for a lot of systems. The most recent comes to us care of the US federal government, in particular the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), who will begin requiring the use of facial recognition systems soon.

In what was a big surprise to some in the industry, Microsoft announced this morning that they had entered into an agreement to purchase Activision Blizzard. The companies have agreed to a $68 billion sale that will see the entirety of Activision Blizzard reporting directly to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. The move is not a huge surprise considering the implosion that has been happening over at Activision thanks to a series of revelations about inappropriate behavior within the company.

Apple devices have been violating same origin policy for the past 4 months, exposing private data to potential hackers. This means that a hacker could track your browsing history and access additional information, depending on the way those sites store data in your browser. This bug has yet to be fixed, so it's important to be aware of the potential dangers and take steps to protect yourself.

Google has announced that it is killing off its YouTube Originals division. This team was responsible for programs like Scare PewDiePie and Cobra Kai, which eventually moved to Netflix. YouTube Kids and Black Voices will remain active brands under the YouTube umbrella. In a statement, YouTube said that it will be focusing on supporting creators instead of producing original content. This change in strategy comes after years of mixed messaging from Google about the importance of original programming.