F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Google's adding some Fuchsia to its home, Valve is bringing Linux to your palm, and a lion roars at Amazon HQ.

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.

Google's development philosophy has long been, "If one of something is good, three is better." One great example of this has been the company's confused messaging strategy, which neither consumers nor analysts can understand. Another three is better than one division of Google is in operating systems. Everyone knows Android and Chrome OS, but a third one has been lurking in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to strike - and that opportunity is now for Fuchsia.

A few weeks ago, Valve CEO Gabe Newell was asked about the company's console ambitions. He answered saying that we would learn about that later in the year. It's slightly later, and it appears we know more about what the company is up to - a handheld, portable gaming PC, which is currently referred to internally as SteamPal.

If you were around in the late 90s and early 2000s, you'll remember that it seemed ordinary people were being sued every day by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for downloading music from Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa, and BitTorrent. Later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) got in on the act. The problem was that these suits were often mistargeted. One of the best examples was a suit against an older woman who did not own a computer capable of running any of the file-sharing services. Now, we are seeing similar situations happening with the DMCA, but these are mistargeted on purpose.

Over the past few years, we have seen companies branch outside of their core competencies. It seems like everyone in the tech industry, whether it be retail sales or telecommunications, wants to be in the content game. AT&T purchased Time Warner, forming WarnerMedia. Verizon purchased AOL, as well as Yahoo. Now, Amazon has agreed to purchase MGM for $8.45 billion.

This week, Zigbee makes the IoT Matter, Discord is playing fewer videogames, and Apple is trying to bring back the 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.

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 many smarthome owners have interacted with Zigbee technology, not everyone has heard of it. For those who have missed out on the Zigbee Alliance, the organization has been dedicated to creating a communication standard that allows unrelated brands of smart devices to speak to and work with one another over a special wireless technology. This alliance has produced unique and interesting products from big brands, including Philips Hue. The technology is so popular that it is even running on Mars, with the popular Ingenuity helicopter communicating with Perseverance over Zigbee.

For many years, Steam has been the go-to store for PC gaming - although Epic Games Store is slowly trying to come for that crown. However, if you've been around the gaming space for a while, you might remember that Steam tried to get into the "console" business with the mostly disastrous Steam Machines. Fortunately, the company abandoned that concept (after most of the partners turned them into Windows computers anyway). However, Valve CEO Gabe Newell says that console news is coming soon.

Discord has long been known as a platform for videogame communications. However, over the past year or so, people who used Discord for gaming have begun expanding its uses for other topics. A lot of podcast communities have Discord servers. Even some businesses have attempted to use the platform for their in-house communications (though many revert back to Slack or Teams). Rather than fighting this trend, the company has announced that it is expanding its own focus to include all communities.

One of the most loved and iconic Android hardware designs was the HTC One. It was such a popular design that HTC made a Windows Phone variant of the hardware. The designer responsible for that phone was Scott Croyle. That phone also included a technology that few mobile devices had at its disposal: Beats Audio. This tech allowed for deeper bass controls and a higher bitrate for digital audio. While today the underlying technology is available on almost all phones, it was unique to HTC at the time (and HP before that). Now, Croyle will take his design chops, and his experience with the Beats brand, and combine them to lead the Beats team at Apple.

This week, Apple's giving up billions, Microsoft is giving up commissions, and Roku is giving up YouTube TV.

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 is no question that Apple's App Store policies are causing them a ton of trouble. They have been investigated by the European Union, The US Government, and more. There is a high-profile lawsuit against the company and a trade organization that has formed around changing Apple's policies. While Apple has continually argued that it's their store, their platform, and no one is required to participate, but many companies have disagreed - from Epic to Spotify, and that is where we pick up this week.

While Apple fights in court to retain their policies, other stores are changing their policies in order to attract users and developers alike. Epic Games, the most vocal opponent of Apple's App Store rules, started the trend by reducing commissions to 12%, while most other stores remained at 30%. Now, Microsoft is doing the same for game developers in the Microsoft Store on Windows.

Over the past few years, a lot of companies have attempted to prove the game streaming is a possibility. And, many companies have failed - until recently. Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA each have a successful game streaming service that allows players to run the games remotely on a powerful gaming computer and only output the video to your computer. This concept was inevitably going to lead to other parts of the industry running similar experiments. The newest entry in this space is Mighty, a browser that runs remotely.

In the early days of Roku, one of its big selling points was that there was no editorial control. Basically, anyone could develop an app for the platform and deploy it without interference from Roku, so long as very minimal rules were obeyed (no adult or pirated content). However, that has all changed in the past few years, with Roku requiring big platforms to agree to additional terms, and sign special publishing agreements. That makes Roku more like a cable provider than a content-agnostic platform. This week, YouTube TV fell victim to these contract disputes.

This week, chips are in short supply, Twitch is reducing the bots, and Google is pushing away the rest of 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.

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 global chip shortage has been affecting product production and availability for nearly a year now. For those who had hoped that perhaps the fabrication plants might be getting close to having a handle on the problem, we've got some bad news. According to executives at all of the major foundries, we can expect these shortages to stay around for years.

Twitch has always had a love/hate relationship with bots. Some are welcomed and encouraged, such as those that maintain decorum in chat. Others, however, are against the service's terms of service - such as those that create false conversation and false viewership. This week, the company has announced that it has rooted out over 7.5 million of these bots and removed them from the service entirely.

Google has been working to remove third-party tracking cookies from Chrome. The company has received a lot of negative feedback, including from the advertising industry, which does not feel confident in the company's new approach to the Privacy Sandbox. Now, additional criticism is coming in for Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), the approach to tracking users' interests, and it comes from a scary place: browsers and search engines.

In 2018, Google began the transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. While the Play brand stuck around for a while, it was clear that its days were numbered. This week, Google began the next version of the Google Play brand shift by announcing that Google Play Movies & TV would be leaving most smart TVs this year (Roku, LG, Vizio, and Samsung). In the announcement email sent to customers, the company said,

This week, LG might leave the smartphone market, Xbox Live is now the Xbox network, and Twitch is scoring your stream.

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.

LG has a lot of product categories that might be in your home. Refrigerators, ranges, and microwaves are everywhere. Their smart TVs are also one of the big categories for the company. However, one category that people don't currently think of when they think of LG is smartphones. Because of this shift in market share, the company is thinking about abandoning the market entirely.

In the console wars, one of the biggest arguments against Xbox has been the requirement for Xbox Live Gold for online gaming. In the early days, Gold for all games was an easy argument because the cost of managing XBL was high, and all communication ran through Microsoft's system. But, in recent years, more of the communication has happened off-network because of cross-platform gameplay. So, as times are changing, so is Xbox Live.

Data breaches happen all the time, companies misuse the data they have access to, and hackers want access to everything you do. Because of all of these threats, personal privacy and security should be a major focus of people online. However, a lot of people don't put any thought into their security or privacy online, and those who do, leave major holes in their plan. This has been made even more apparent thanks to the Kaspersky Consumer IT Security Risks Report 2021.

Twitch has had some issues over the past year or so. Most notably, the brand has had trouble being open with its community of content creators about what they are working on behind the scenes. Most notably, they came under fire when they deleted videos with little to no explanation. Later, the company apologized for how poorly they handled the situation, which surrounded a large influx of DMCA requests. Now, a new feature is coming, for which there was once again no communication - Brand Safety Score.

This week, NFTs are all the rage, EVO Championship Series is joining Sony, and the NFL has found some funding.

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

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

In the past few weeks, the concept of NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, have become mainstream. With high-profile sales of digital assets, including some weird and others fairly normal, the term NFT has become one that many people have heard of. However, not everyone knows exactly what they are - in fact, few people really seem to know what the term really means.

If you have had any interaction within the esports community, you have likely heard of EVO. This competition is famous within the fighting game culture and is by far the biggest competition in that part of the industry. It brings in tens of thousands of viewers, partially because of its place in the culture and partially because of its lack of focus on a single game. The popularity of the event has drawn enough attention that Sony has purchased the company. There are, of course, a number of important questions about this acquisition.

Ever since Apple announced that iOS 14 would eventually add a new feature called App Tracking Transparency (ATT), Facebook has fought the change. The feature allows users to deny an app's request to track their behavior on and off of the app. Facebook, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in particular, have argued that the feature will be bad for Facebook and its users, since day 1.

2020 was a bad year for most of us, but the National Football League (NFL) had a particularly difficult season. Despite people being at home nearly 24/7, the league saw a significant drop in viewership. The slump culminated in a Super Bowl whose ratings were the lowest in almost 15 years. Even with these issues, the NFL has managed to address them at least with broadcasters, as the company has reached a major broadcast deal for the next decade.

This week, Big Tech is in the crosshairs, Fall Guys is entering the Metaverse, and Sony is out of video sales.

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

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

The Biden Administration is in the process of nominating and campaigning for confirmation to positions across the Federal government. However, not all positions require confirmation, and those tend to go to people who might not have a chance at confirmation. This could be because they have ruffled the feathers of those who confirmation they need, like Neera Tanden. Others may be because their ultimate goals go against the party. That is more where Tim Wu falls.

Mediatonic is a name that 2 years ago, no one would have recognized, and had little public value. However, last year they took the gaming world by storm with the release of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. This game is especially popular among online streamers, attracting 3.5 million followers on Twitch. The game is also known for its memes, many of which start on the game's official Twitter account. Epic Games recognized the value of the game and its developer, bringing them into the fold.

As Google's deadline to retire third-party tracking cookies approaches, many industries have asked what the future holds. Will Google come up with another way to create a unique tracking ID, or does it have another plan up its sleeve? The company addressed the elephant in the room this week, claiming that its days of tracking individuals are over thanks to Privacy Sandbox.

Digital video has become a big business, spurred on by the 356 days of "15 days to slow the spread" here in the US. We have seen companies that were not previously in the space enter, and others that were in the space change the way they offer their content. One company that is trying to finish off that transition is Sony, which has announced the end of sales and rentals in the PlayStation Store.

This week, Epic and Apple are ramping up tensions, Comcast is extending its data cap deadline, and Facebook is proving it is serious in Australia.

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

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

Last week, we learned that Maryland was about to tax digital ads. The state senator who sponsored the bill said that the companies that run online ads don't contribute, and this bill would force them to. It was clear that this attempt was going to be closely watched, both by other states who might be interested in similar legislation, and by tech companies about to be affected by it.

Since the Epic Games versus Apple battle began, I think we all knew that it was going to balloon out of control. Both companies have a vested interest in the outcome of the case. Apple's whole business model is dependent upon taking a large cut from app and game developers and publishers. Epic Games, on the other hand, maintains a smaller profit margin on its digital goods, and the Apple Tax prevented them from offering in-app purchases before the big move. This week, the lawsuit is growing in size and scope.

Last year, Comcast announced new data caps would be rolling out to all of their customers. Previously, only certain markets were saddled by the data cap policy, and that policy had been suspended because of the lockdowns. The rollout was intended to begin, with the return for existing customers, starting in March. However, that date was slightly delayed, as the lockdowns continue in many areas. This week, the extension was made longer for some, heading into 2022.

When talking about the disasterous publishing law in Australia, we tend to focus on the impact on Google. However, the other major player in this battle has been Facebook. Last Summer, when the country first published its draft for comment, Facebook was possibly the loudest opponent. The company said that, if the draft were made law, it would force the company to shut down sharing of local and international news on both Facebook and Instagram. This week, the company pulled the trigger, shutting down all news sharing in Australia.

This week, North Dakota wants to ruin the iPhone, Maryland is taxing advertisements, and Australia still wants a piece of Google.

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

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

Over the past few years, Apple has done a lot of marketing around the idea of privacy. This is likely because they have begun to lose their perceiver authority in security, which only existed because no one used their products, making them a worthless target. These days, however, Apple devices (at least the mobile kind) can be found everywhere, so there's value in attacking them now. So, the company's public perception of a focus on privacy has become its driving goal. However, there is a point where privacy, usability, and ownership collide, and iOS is that place.

We have said many times that malware, including ransomware, can affect anyone, so everyone should be vigilant. Late last year, SolarWinds was hacked. This company makes network management software, and yet they were hit. Last month, malware detection company Malwarebytes was hit by the same group. The latest high-profile company to fall victim to malware is CD Projekt Red, the publisher for Cyberpunk 2077.

Over the years, many new technologies online have managed to go untaxed for long periods of time. In fact, even sales of physical goods managed to go untaxed for years. With time, states changed their laws requiring online sellers to tax any purchases made from stores doing business within those states. Early on, companies like Amazon avoided having warehouses, distribution centers, and offices within states that had implemented online sales taxes. Today, however, that is a thing of the past, as there is no avoiding it. The next online tax battleground has been chosen, and it is advertising.

Last month, we learned that Australia wants to charge Google for news. The country's proposition stands in stark contrast to what Google recently agreed to pay in France. In France, Google will pay for access to republish some or all of a news article in its Google News app. In Australia, the proposition is to charge Google to LINK to a news article, including in Search.

This week, Apple's driving mobile privacy, Nvidia's expanding GeForce Now, and what in the world happened with GameStop?

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 lot of attention has been put on Big Tech lately. In some cases, it seems the entire industry agrees, whether correctly or incorrectly. But, in other instances, the industry is entirely split. One of the best examples has been privacy. Some companies have taken a neutral stance, some have taken a public stance in favor of user privacy, and some have built their business around violating that privacy. In this week's battle over privacy, Apple has taken the pro-user stance while Facebook and Google have taken a stance against it.

Videogame streaming services have become the gaming industry's version of video streaming subscriptions. There are a lot of companies getting involved, and not everyone is having a good go of it. While Microsoft and Google's services have been met with mostly positive responses, other companies have not been quite as lucky. Every service has to go out of its way to separate itself from the pack. Microsoft has its Xbox game catalog and Xbox Game Pass to draw gamers in. Google has a strong ecosystem, and the ability to create bundles. Nvidia's GeForce Now service set itself apart by allowing you to play any PC game you already own through the service.

This week has been an absolutely fascinating one for the stock market, and everything that surrounds it. A stock that was significantly overpriced went through the roof instead of falling. A company called Robinhood, which bills itself as the democratization of investing, prevented people from investing. Reddit and Discord closed servers over racial discrimination. Google deleted thousands of app reviews. And, weirdest of all, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz agreed on something. But, what exactly happened?

YouTube is currently testing a new feature inspired by Twitch - clips. This concept allows users to create small, sharable pieces of video from larger videos already available on the platform. Viewers will be able to hit a button and be presented with a sliding timeline editor. Users will be able to select up to 60 seconds, give the clip a name, and receive a unique URL to share wherever and however.