February 5, 2023 - Episode 641

F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Video)

Description

This week, Apple's getting a little nervous, gamers are losing games, Bing wants to chat, and Paramount+ is getting a new name. Again.

Participants

Scott Ertz

Host

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 Piltch

Host

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.

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Biden admin wants Apple and Google to end gatekeeping their platforms

Over the past few years, we've seen a growing resentment against Apple and Google and the way they run their mobile platform businesses. People want more control over the way they use their phones and tablets, and these companies do a lot to eliminate some of that capability. As a result, companies and governments around the world have begun to act against Apple and Google in an effort to give more freedom to consumers. This week, a Biden administration report takes the most direct action to protect consumers yet.

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Piltch Point with Avram Piltch

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Extra Life

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Gaming danger: A lot of online games are being shut down permanently

One of the big dangers of online gaming is that a game can be killed off on a whim, leaving gamers without any access to the games that they purchased and put time into. In the old days, you could purchase a game and play it potentially forever. In our office, we've got an Atari 2600 and dozens of games, all of which are fully functional and playable. However, today you can make a $60 purchase and within a year, the game's back-end is disabled and the game becomes worthless. As developers and publishers become bored with a game, they decide to abandon it entirely. This week, a surprisingly large number of games announced their end dates.

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News From the Tubes

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Bing is coming for Google with GPT-4 integration, improving results

Last week on The Piltch Point, Avram Piltch discussed ChatGPT and the dangers of generative AI. While using AI to produce written content can be a questionable move, using AI to improve the way we understand the information on the internet is the logical place for the technology to exist. Microsoft has agreed with this sentiment, having invested several times in OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT. Now, we expect to see the fruits of those investments when Microsoft changes Bing search in the coming weeks.

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Paramount+ to get another name amid a corporate restructuring

Streaming media is a big business these days. Everyone has a streaming service, and some companies have more than one. As competition heats up in the space, we're beginning to see consolidation for companies that have more than one streaming platform. HBO Max and Discovery+ are about to become one service and Disney has said that Hulu and Disney+ will likely become a single offering. Now, Paramount has seemingly decided that it can no longer support more than one service and will merge them into a single offering.

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