This week, we say goodbye to Windows Live Messenger, we say hello to a new owner of Twitch and Netflix says "thank you" to one of Hulu's owners for a hit show.
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.
With the onslaught of data breaches happening lately, both online and in-store, it almost feels like nothing is safe anymore. You might be feeling a bit skeptical about even stepping foot outside or on the Web, and you might have good reason for feeling that way. This week, a report has come out that could make your palms sweat a little more. Even if you have a secure Wi-Fi password or PIN code for your one-touch WPS option, hackers can still crack the code in under a second.
So it turns out the entire Internet was wrong, including us, and Google didn't actually buy Twitch. All the changes just seemed to be coincidence, as it was announced this week that Amazon stepped in and laid out $970 million for the video game streaming service.
In 2012, Microsoft announced that it was closing Windows Live Messenger, also known as MSN Messenger, worldwide in favor of its then recently acquired Skype. There was only a single exception: mainland China. While there was no real explanation at the time as to why China was keeping the outdated service which, obviously, would no longer allow out-of-country communication, it was accepted as just another China thing.
I often wonder if Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC) and News Corp. (FOX) remember that they jointly own Hulu. It is usually when a company makes an odd decision that helps a service that they are not involved with in a way that hurts Hulu. This week, we discover that Netflix has purchased the rights to stream NBC's 2013 top-rated new series The Blacklist.