December 2, 2020 - Episode 580 - Show Notes

December 2, 2020 - Episode 580

Wednesday Dec 2, 2020 (01:19:02)

Description

This week, Samsung's in the uncanny valley, Sony's canning PlayStation users, and Google TV can no longer show Netflix content.

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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Samsung's NEON virtual assistants are heading to mobile devices

At CES this year, Samsung showed off an impressive yet bizarre product from its Star Labs subsidiary - NEON. This service uses AI to produce a digital assistant that is convincingly human in both vocal capabilities as well as in visual. The second aspect was the real shock - a moving, talking, interacting virtual human being on a screen. In the demo, these virtual people were on large screens on a wall at a distance. According to reports, this reality might be about to change in Samsung's device future.

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PlayStation Network accounts are getting banned over PS5 shortage

Before the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, we all knew that pre-orders were going to be rough. Between limited stock and pre-order bots taking a large percentage of what is available, availability was going to be a problem. While on the Microsoft side, it's only been an inconvenience, but on the Sony side, it's caused a different issue around PlayStation Plus.

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Amazon wants all of your neighbors to be able to use your internet

One of the biggest fears for a connected home is when that connection disappears. We've all experienced internet outages, causing our connected devices to become suddenly useless. For the most part, this is merely an inconvenience. But, what if someone is trying to get into your home and cuts your internet connection - killing your connected devices, such as security cameras? That is exactly the problem that Amazon is hoping to eliminate with its new Sidewalk feature.

Amid work from home, Comcast plans to expand data caps nationwide

Recently, a report showed that the number of internet power users has grown over the past year. This was no surprise, as much of the world has begun working from home. In addition, school is now from home, the majority of entertainment is from home. Add to that, the number of devices in our homes that are connected to the internet has expanded. With all of these changes, the amount of data being used is bound to increase as well.

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Google TV is no longer showing Netflix content in search and tools

Over the years, Google's inability to pick a business strategy, articulate it to its partners and customers, and execute it to perfection has caused the company problems. Take, for example, the company's messaging strategy with products like Allo coming and going, more than one text app for Android, and more. But messaging hasn't been the only place where the company's lack of focus has caused problems, with the latest being video, and particularly Google TV.

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