November 13, 2022 - Episode 636

F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Video)

Description

This week, Amazon is losing its robotics, Stadia is returning purchases, FTX is running away with customer assets, and Netflix is getting ready to go live.

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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Amazon lays off entire robotics division after purchasing iRobot

This week has not been a great one for employees in Big Tech. Twitter laid off half of its staff, Meta laid off 13% of its workforce (though a larger number of people than Twitter, which only had 7500 when Elon purchased the company). Now, Amazon has reportedly begun its own round of layoffs. Among these layoffs was the Robotics Team, which has been responsible for the company's robotic ambitions, according to Jamie Zhang, a former member of the team.

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Google Stadia refunds begin now, starting the shutdown process

Google recently announced that Stadia was dead - or at least that they were finally going to stop artificially animating the corpse. As part of the announcement, the company also said that they would be refunding most user purchases, including game purchases and hardware. This week, Google has begun the process of refunding those fees - a process that will take months and cause headaches for Google and users.

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News From the Tubes

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Crypto exchange FTX has collapsed, taking money and trust with it

This week, a major crypto crash happened, and the industry got to watch it in real-time. The US-based exchange FTX collapsed in spectacular fashion. With its collapse went billions of dollars in customer assets, an entire cryptocurrency, the security of the infrastructure, and some of the trust in the industry.

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Netflix wants to add live sports events to its subscription offerings

Netflix may have started out as a service to send DVDs to subscribers in the mail, but streaming those movies and TV shows is what really put the company on the map. Today, they are a household name, providing licensed content and even original series, such as the new Blockbuster series about its former rival. But, as subscriber growth wanes and competition increases, the company is always looking for ways to cut costs and increase subscription numbers. The newest idea is to wade into the murky waters of live-streamed sporting events.

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