October 19, 2021 - Episode 606 - Show Notes

October 19, 2021 - Episode 606

Tuesday Oct 19, 2021 (01:23:25)

Description

This week, HTC is going with the Flow, FIFA is looking for options, and DC Comics is bringing new entertainment.

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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Palm, the original smartphone brand, to switch to headphones?

Palm has had a long and complicated history. Palm was independent, then it became part of 3M, but its OS was used by Handspring, which was external and more popular than the 3M company. Eventually, they got their brand's focus back and launched webOS at CES 2009, but the sale to HP also screwed up that focus. But, that brand has been licensed in recent years for new products, most famously the poorly-named Palm Phone, a tiny 3.3" display Android phone. But a new tweet (with the image above), suggests a big change - to headphones. The company plans to announce what its been up to on October 26, 2021.

HTC launches new VIVE Flow VR headset with completely new design

Avram has been very open about his belief that the HTC VIVE hardware is his favorite. It has always had a solid screen system, the tracking is great, and the controllers are fairly natural to hold. But, while the insides have upgraded over the years, the look of the headset hasn't really changed. It's been really high-profile, fairly heavy, and not designed for portability. But, HTC has changed this with the addition of the new VIVE Flow, a headset designed for portability and focused on health and wellness. But, what a noticeable change in physical design.

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FIFA wants to see other people, ends exclusive EA Sports relationship

EA Sports has been the exclusive home of a lot of real-world gaming franchises for many years. The NFL, NCAA, and FIFA have been the high-profile relationships that the game publisher has been involved in over the past few decades. But, while EA has been happy in these multiple relationships, it seems no one else has been. The first to file a divorce is FIFA, which plans to shop its videogame experience around to other studios in hopes of finding a better spouse. But they might also just date around for a while, while still seeing EA on occasion.

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Google brings doomscrolling experience to mobile Search results

While the backend infrastructure of Google Search has changed significantly over the years, and even since yesterday, the frontend experience has remained relatively stable. The addition of Mobile Search is possibly the only major change that has happened in most people's memories. New experiences are added to the Search results, but the actual behavior stays the same. But, Google is about to unleash a new capability to Mobile Search: doomscrolling.

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Scott Ertz (00:00)

This week HTC is going with the flow. FIFA is looking for options. And DC Comics is bringing new entertainment. It's Tuesday, October 19th of 2021. And this is Episode 606 of F5 Live Refreshing Technology, a proud part of the Tech Podcast Network, if it's tech it's here Wherever you are and however you're watching our show, whether it be on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, through a Podcatcher like Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn or a myriad of other options through our live stream partners: livestream.com, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, or of course, on our website, plughitzlive.com. Thank you for making us a part of your day. There are two ways that you can do that. The first is, you can normally join us on Sunday nights at 9pm Eastern by going to F5live.tv/joinus. There you can chat with us in the studio, give us your feedback on the topics as we talk about them. If you're not able to join us live or we're doing a show on an unusual night. You can always go to plughitzlive.com/subscribe. There you'll see all of our shows, including F5 Live, Piltch Point, Plughitz Live Presents, First Looks and a whole lot more. And you can find all the ways to watch, listen and follow along. Alright, it seems like every week we're pushing one day a little further to the right. This week, we're here on a Tuesday. So it's been a little more than a week since we've seen each other. So how have you been?

Avram Piltch (01:57)

All right, not too bad. Next week, it'll be next week. Let's do Wednesday, to keep it going. Then we'll loop back around again to Sunday. So, I mean, it's been some interesting product announcements, which I'll talk about during the Piltch Point. It seems like in this mid October timeframe, there's a lot of new things being announced. Which is cool. That keeps life interesting and busy.

Scott Ertz (02:19)

It is Techtober. I saw that expression somewhere earlier this week, or over the weekend. And I'm like, alright, I'm gonna use that at some point- Techtober.

Avram Piltch (02:45)

Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the I mean, I guess we often get announcements around this time of year because if your company and you want to get stuff out there before the holiday season. At a certain point later, it might be too late. Right. So October is, I guess the end of the line, I normally would have thought maybe September, August. We would have seen up late August, early September, we would have seen more product announcements. But this-

Scott Ertz (03:22)

Seems like we get a lot of stuff in October now.

Avram Piltch (03:25)

Yeah, it seems to be so. So, exciting times. I mean, we like new products. It keeps life interesting.

Scott Ertz (03:35)

Yes, it does. And I appreciate everybody including you Avram, allowing the weird shifts that we've been doing because of Roboticon. Obviously, if you've been watching our coverage, Roboticon has owned my month. It is the most Techtober thing possible, I think, is spending every weekend with elementary, middle and high school students doing robotics. This past weekend, we got to show off our program, which I was super, super excited about. We created the idea for the next robotics in 2016. And we finally got to show it off this past weekend. I cannot tell you how excited I was to see the field put together and see half of an actual game field. And next year we get to play it and I'm super excited about that and hopefully we're gonna have a custom field built and everything it's gonna be super cool. I don't know if you got to see any of it but it's for adults. It is a robotics program for adults that's not BattleBots, something that's designed more around the, you know, the coopetition concept that first and vex focus on but for adults.

Avram Piltch (04:55)

That's great. That reminds me a little bit of Pi Wars in the UK. They have an annual event that I think was postponed this year called Pi Wars, where you have to make a Raspberry Pi powered robot, but it is what they call a non destructive competition. So they have different comp, it is competitive, but they have different competitions where you have to navigate through an obstacle field or have an autonomous thing that navigates. It's not like Battle Bots where you have where you create something to destroy, and a lot of it has to do with programming your bot to do something.

Scott Ertz (05:42)

Yeah, that's a lot of what we've what we've tried to build. We have created a game. This game will be played for a season and the next game next season, we'll have a different game this year. The game has these like giant wiffle balls. Like the grapefruit-sized wiffle balls, which are weird to me. But there's a high goal that you're scoring into the players put the balls back out on the field. There's a teeter totter in the middle with these little ramps. It's a pretty cool game. Roboticon.net for anybody who's interested. We've also got on our web on our YouTube on the Roboticon YouTube, we've got some demos, we were out on the field with the robot with the field elements doing a video. I did something interesting, a little inside baseball for people watching. We bought those new cameras, the one that is running for me right now. We bought three of them, one a couple months ago, right. And we were using them exclusively this past weekend. And I needed a microphone to be able to do interviews on the field. So I just took one of these $400 microphone or cameras and turned it into a microphone. Michelle's like, "Alright, I guess that works." That's a crazy idea. But it worked. So I was pretty impressed with these cameras and their mics normally, you know, the built in mics on cameras are usually-

Avram Piltch (07:21)

Yeah, not very good.

Scott Ertz (07:21)

Yeah, embarrassing, but I was using it, holding it like a mic and doing interviews on the field. It was a lot of fun. But anyway, that's out there. That's what I've been up to one more weekend. Avram, one more weekend. And then we can put Roboticon 2021 to rest. And I can go to rest. I'm so tired. But that's okay. It's been a ton of fun. And I look forward to our next weekend. But we've got more than a full week worth of news to cover. So let's get down to it. This week's nifty gifties and F5 Live is proudly powered by the Microsoft Store. Whether you're looking for a new laptop, a tablet, desperately seeking an Xbox, new games or a whole lot more, you can get them all at the Microsoft Store and remember, the current students, faculty, military and parents can save up to 10% of almost everything and to find out more about the deals that are going on. And those discounts you can go to F5 live.tv/microsoft. So I want to start with something weird. Then we're just gonna move on past it. The weird thing is that there's a tweet out there from Palm, which I think we all remember Palm, the kind of original smartphones from long ago. And then Web iOS and the HP debacle and then everything the weird little mini phone that came out that's now seemingly discontinued because you can't get it even from them. They are teasing wireless headphones. I don't even know what to do about that because they don't go in your palm. It's so, like even branding wise so it's confused.

Avram Piltch (09:31)

So here's the question "Who owns Palm now?" It's not the original people, right?

Scott Ertz (09:37)

TCL right.

Avram Piltch (09:38)

So companies buy brands all the time. And sometimes the product doesn't necessarily align with the brand name but hey, they think they'll get attention. Guess what? They got your attention. So it worked. It's true. TCL makes TVs and I think they probably make some other electronics, right? So-

Scott Ertz (10:00)

I got a pair of earbuds around here somewhere from them, true wireless earbuds that are truly the worst wireless earbuds that I have ever put on. I decided to abandon my product review. They're so bad.

Avram Piltch (10:14)

So they have a brand that people know. But they realize that they can't really succeed in the phone business. Because their previous idea was pretty bad. I mean, it was cute. But it wasn't practical, that you have like a mini smartphone that has, it wasn't just that like, okay, maybe some people will just want a smaller phone, right? No, no, it's that they had to have what it was like underpowered or something. So it wouldn't distract you. It's your non distraction, smartphone.

Scott Ertz (10:49)

And, originally, it was like, semi-tethered to an existing Verizon number. It was like a smartwatch in your hand. It was such a weird idea.

Avram Piltch (11:03)

Well, it's like-

Scott Ertz (11:05)

I want one. Don't get me wrong. I want one for my collection.

Avram Piltch (11:09)

But yeah, it's cute.

Scott Ertz (11:10)

Only because it's weird.

Avram Piltch (11:12)

It's cute, but it's not like, you know, you and I like eccentric and cute stuff. But it doesn't you know, that's not a business model for them to sell things, right?

Scott Ertz (11:22)

It was like super niche.

Avram Piltch (11:24)

It's like, you know, remember when netbooks first came out, and it was like, "Hey, wait a second, this isn't really good enough to be my laptop." And it's not good. But it's barely better. It's like this little niche between my regular laptop and my desktop and my phone or wherever. And these in between their devices. I mean, tablets have managed to make it.

Scott Ertz (11:50)

Obviously. Intel and Microsoft trying to figure out how to compete in the tablet space without being ready to compete in the tablet space is what it seems like to me.

Avram Piltch (12:00)

Right. So this is like you're in between your phone and I don't see it. I mean, smartwatches are only as successful as they are because people are using them for things like fitness. Like fitness tracking,

Scott Ertz (12:14)

Right. Yeah, it was a wild concept. And then when they untethered it, and they're like, "oh, yeah, you can use this as a whole phone now." And you're like, "ah, but can I? Because it's not really more powerful than my watch. So can I?" No, you can't.

Avram Piltch (12:32)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe they could sell it as- they're probably, I mean, somewhere there's a market for phones from people who really don't want to have too much functionality. But I don't think that's the phone.

Scott Ertz (12:48)

No, the Nokia brick phones coming back, it looks just like the original, but it's some sort of an Android hybrid type thing with physical buttons and everything. But it's some sort of Android device I saw when I think about it this week, that is the place to be. Take Android, kind of strip out all the things making a candy bar phone and just move on. But this tried to be both and didn't succeed at either. And the idea of them trying to put the headphone brand here. I'm hoping honestly. I know there's a 0% chance of it happening. But my hope is that the HP Pre 3 size and style phone with modern Android hardware and modern Android software, that they surprise us with the earbuds are some sort of weird tease.

Avram Piltch (13:42)

But I think this is more like this. I think this is more like the Sylvania netbook. Sylvania makes light bulbs, right. And it one time and then-

Scott Ertz (13:54)

And $79 kitchen televisions.

Avram Piltch (13:59)

Right, because they allow people to license the name. So there was some company that wanted to make its own netbook and it paid to license the good name of Sylvania. Now why you would think like this is a great brand equity for them. But you know, I mean, they've had, haven't there been like, things that were labeled Polaroid or whatever that were not cameras.

Scott Ertz (14:27)

There are Android phones that are Polaroid branded.

Avram Piltch (14:31)

Right. So there's a lot of things where companies. It's not that there's some big you know, it's not that there's some big Polaroid company that's assigned to make all these things I think it's their small companies are like, hey, I want to come out with a smartphone. I don't I can't invent a brand or I don't want to spend money and time inventing a brand so right I'll pay a little bit and I'll license a brand that's not really relevant to what I'm doing but people have heard of it.

Scott Ertz (15:01)

-but it's available.

Avram Piltch (15:03)

Yeah, but people you know, one could make, you know, an argument. They're like," Oh, well, if there's a Polaroid phone, that must mean it has a good camera, right?"

Scott Ertz (15:16)

In fairness,-

Avram Piltch (15:17)

-or probably or not, but okay.

Scott Ertz (15:22)

In the interest of full disclosure, the Polaroid phones are made by the same company that makes, like, targets these products. And I think the same company that does Altec Lansing, so they're a pretty big, safe company to license to. But yeah, you see that kind of thing all the time. Where you've got like, a brand with like, "Oh, why? Why are they making security products? Okay, whatever. " But you know the brand and so you lean into it.

Avram Piltch (16:02)

They got your attention. Right, exactly.

Scott Ertz (16:05)

So it'll be interesting to see. We'll find out on October 26. But the real thing we want to talk about is HTC. That was just so weird. I had to talk about it for a minute. Weird. Anyway, HTC announced their new VR headset, which is kind of a VR headset that's marketed very strangely, in my opinion, to like meditation, and serenity stuff. And if you look at all of their marketing, that's what's behind it. And it's so weird. But it looks like it has some internal smarts, looks like it has the ability to have stuff on it. It looks like there was even a music game now- a meditation style music game, as opposed to like Guitar Hero, but who is their target demo here? Do you have any idea?

Avram Piltch (17:08)

This is a really good question. I mean, I guess they're giving it a shot. But it sounds soft. I mean, I don't know. But it sounds like you're not going to have a great gaming experience on it nor are they marketing it as such. And it's not. You can't see through it at all right? There's no, there's no camera, right. So there's no AR functionality for it either. So that, you know, I think the design is neat. I mean, it does sort of make you look like a fly but it also makes you look a little bit like a superhero that's trying to look like a bug, like Blue Beetle or something like that. So that's kind of cool. One thing I heard about this that really sparked my interest in it is that supposedly they have a feature for people who need glasses, like myself, where you can adjust the focal length of each eye. And so you don't need to wear your glasses. And you can get the effect of wearing your glasses.

Scott Ertz (18:20)

Okay, so I had seen the variable focal length, like from the inside, I saw the pictures of the adjusters and I hadn't considered that's what it would be for. Of course it is.

Avram Piltch (18:35)

Right. So to me, that's like, I wish all VR headsets had that that's fantastic. Because then sure, because that's my VR headset problem right there. I don't want to. You can put things over your glasses, but it's a pain. You know, they smashed your nice glasses, maybe starting to break them. It's uncomfortable having your glass smashed against your face and having to look through this thing to get through that thing. So, you know. Now, I don't know how well it works. That's why I'm eager to try it. But I like the idea. And the design seems nice. I mean all, here's what's killing VR, I think is talking about this with some folks at work. It's like what are two things that we thought would be really what a couple things we thought would be really big, like seven or eight years ago that are now kind of falling off the radar. And that's AR and VR. Now that doesn't mean that like they're VR and AR the future of the technologies is they're not going anywhere because they're very useful. But what we don't see is the uptake on the headsets has not been good. Obviously the idea of people walking around with AR glasses has not been widely accepted even though you do see attempts from time to time, like Facebook. Doesn't Facebook have a new set that they're working on?

Scott Ertz (20:07)

Yeah. Where it's like, with somebody weird, like Ray Ban or something like it's a weird to weird relationship.

Avram Piltch (20:15)

I still love the idea of having augmented reality glasses. But you know, and we've seen- I think there was a backlash against them with people with Google Glass, and we're still trying to get over that. And so, I don't know, but if they-

Scott Ertz (20:36)

-the Google Glass did. There might be some room for them. Like if they just looked like your glasses, right? You know? Well, if there was that.

Avram Piltch (20:49)

There was a company called North ,I think, that made ones that looked very much like glasses. And my coworker Sharon had actually tested them. And then Google bought them and shut it down. And I'm not really sure what Google is doing with that technology. But anyway, but on the bright side, the thing that's really holding back VR is the lack of killer games. People who want VR are still waiting for it ,but I think it's the Pokemon Go moment. Yeah, right. So where's the killer app, the game that people must play in VR? Once? If someone would take a chance on it? And maybe they see these are not great hardware sales, and they're not not excited about doing it. Yeah, if someone would take a chance on it, I think that could make or break the situation. So like, if you took a game that's, for example, very popular now and you port and create a VR version of it, that probably would be the killer app. Right? So if you took a Fortnight, and you made a Fortnight VR, or Minecraft, and you made a Minecraft VR, or whatever, Minecraft in the brain, because my son- But nevertheless, if you took those things, and if you took a popular game, and you brought it to to VR, then maybe people buy the hardware. This seems like another, like an interesting form factor and interesting design. But if they're sort of marketing it for like, I don't know, meditation, that is weird, or fitness? I don't know, maybe I'm just not the fittest person. So maybe I don't get it. But generally, if I'm exercising or something I kind of want to see around me. I mean, it seems like if I had to be doing some type of exercise, basically, with my eyes not on, you know, covered that I would feel like I would get nauseous from that. But I agree. But, you know, I don't know, maybe it works for somebody. I mean, certainly there are lots of attempts to gamify exercise. So I guess if you could feel like you were in a VR world, and you weren't, you know, doing something in that VR world, rather than just running on a treadmill? They might be more interesting to you, but I don't know, I'm not. I gotta see what the software is on that. Yeah. Cuz I feel like the design looks like it's lightweight and fairly comfortable and friendly to people who don't wear glasses. Those are interesting things to know.

Scott Ertz (23:57)

Yeah, I want to put my hands on one of these things. Like you said, they look super lightweight, which is nice. All the processing is done off the system from your phone, which is a little bit of a concern, not all of the processing, but at least some of it is phone powered. So I want to see this. It sounds like they've taken a similar approach to what we've heard about what Apple is up to with their, whether it be AR or VR glasses, because every time there's a report, it's what's the other one. And it all sounds like it's gonna be iPhone powered. So, you know, it sounds like they've taken a similar approach to that. It'll just be interesting to see what the end result of that is, you know, so I imagine one of us will put our hands on one shortly after they come out.

Avram Piltch (24:52)

I sure hope so. Our VR reviewer is in Canada, so he will probably get it and I will probably not get to see it. But it is possible because-

Scott Ertz (25:07)

She could have been at CES this year.

Avram Piltch (25:10)

That's true. It is also possible that we will be going back to the office soon. So some of our colleagues like Tom's guide or whatever makeup there's the office do. So we'll see.

Scott Ertz (25:24)

Fair enough. Well, I look forward to putting my hands on one because it's definitely weird. This week's Piltch Point with Avram Piltch is proudly powered by PureVPN. The best way to protect your privacy online is with PureVPN, you can hide your online activities, say goodbyes or regional restrictions and improve your streaming quality. Plus, it's available for almost all your devices. And you can get a special price and a 31 day money back guarantee by going to Piltchpoint.live/PureVPN. So I am this was a big week for product announcements like while-

Avram Piltch (26:19)

I could even start on Saturday, but not something that I normally covered. But Saturday was Minecraft Live and they announced some new Minecraft creatures.

Scott Ertz (26:29)

True true.

Avram Piltch (26:32)

My son was really big on that. So we end up watching it and theys are gonna get new update packs and things like that. But let's talk about the three major announcements. Really, two major announcements plus one that's kind of major to me. On Monday, Apple announced its new MacBook Pros. But take a step back, it announced new processors to power those. So as many of us know, Apple has been making its own arm-based processors and getting rid of Intel from its computers for a couple years now. Well really for a year now. And it just announced two more powerful processors, the original was the M1. And now there's the M1 Pro and M1 Max which are in the new 14 and 16 inch MacBooks that are coming out. And you can preorder, I think now or I think next week. So the M1 Max, the most powerful member of the family, has 57 billion transistors, which is a lot of transistors. It has 10 CPU cores, 24 or 32 GPU cores depending on which model you get, and can support up to 64 gigabytes of RAM. The M1 Pro which is the lower end of these two has 33.7 billion transistors, eight or 10 cores CPU cores depending on which model you get, and 14 or 16 GPU ports, and supports up to 32 gigabytes of RAM. So these are in the new M1 Pro and M1. These are the new Apple MacBook Pros, which are up for pre order and actually shipping on the 26th. The cheapest MacBook Pro you can get with it starts at 1999 and that is with a 14 core GPU. If you want the 10 core CPU and 16 core GPU, you need to spend at least 2500. And if you want the M1 Pro, the M1 Max, you need to spend at least 2099 on your laptop. So these are all Apple's ARM-based processors. But remember, they run Apple software pretty well because most of it has been ported to ARM or can run well through emulation. The new MacBook Pros are going to ship with the latest new Mac OS Monterey. And another cute little thing is that your macbook pros have seen a few major changes to them besides just the CPUs, no more touch bar so the function row is back with actual keys. There's no touch bar I realize there had been for several years. They have brought back a dedicated HDMI port, dedicated SD card slot and you can charge over USB-C but there will also be a MagSafe connector so you can charge via MagSafe if you prefer that, and it'll charge faster.

Scott Ertz (30:04)

MagSafe 3 is what I think I heard it called. So it looks visually looks just like two. But I imagine that more power.

Avram Piltch (30:14)

Yeah, I think it's faster charging for MagSafe 3 And besides that the webcam, mirroring what we've seen on phones is in a notch. So the webcam is now taking up part of your screen real estate on your screen. And I guess because Apple has most apps, unless they're full screen, they have the menu bar on the top. Well, now the middle of that menu bar is going to be a black box where the webcam lives. Fortunately, I think they are upgrading the webcam to a better webcam. So that's good.

Scott Ertz (30:18)

And since we know that the notch is the favorite feature on the iPhones. No, wait, strike that, the opposite. It's one of the most hated features of the iPhone, it makes sense that they would bring it. Nope, not that either. I don't understand the move, it seems really silly. And, for full screen mode, developers now have to choose their behavior, whether whether they will sit below the notch in full screen mode, or whether they will deal with the notch, which-

Avram Piltch (31:30)

I don't like this. You know, companies being ashamed of the front facing cameras on their devices, whether it's a phone or a laptop. You need a good webcam, if any, if we haven't learned anything in the last year and a half of people doing remote work, it's that you need a good webcam. Everybody needs a good webcam. And most laptop webcams are still terrible. So you know what, I would rather have a slightly thicker space above my screen to give me a good quality webcam and not have to obstruct my workspace than look cool by having it integrated into a notch. So that is really frustrating. Now, on the flip side of all this, Google just had a product announcement too. But Google's announcement is about phones. So this one is more up my alley because it sounds really cool. So the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are coming out. The Pixel 6 is only going to be 599, which is a great price and the 6 Pro is 899. So that's much better than what you normally pay for high end Samsung phones, right? They also have a new processor, Google's tensor processor, with TITAN M2. They claim that it is faster than a Snapdragon processor but beyond all of that, it has built in AI optimization for doing things like real time translation and computational photography. Speaking of photography, the most distinctive feature of the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro is that they have a big black bar on the back where all the cameras live. And you know, you could think that it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb or you could think it's like sunglasses for your phone. Anyway, the mean camera is now 50 megapixels. Now it is ,I think, the pictures are actually stored at 12 megapixels, but that means it's got a huge field of view. Huge, you know lets in a ton of light as an f-stop of 1.85 so absolutely sounds like it's gonna be absolutely fantastic for photography. It also comes with a 12 megapixel ultra wide lens that's F 2.2 And then if you buy the 6 Pro, you also get a 48 megapixel telephoto lens. The Pixel 6 has a 6.4 inch display that is 1080x2400 and the 6 Pro is 6.7 inches at 1440x3120 resolution. Both of these screens have a somewhat high refresh rate the Pixel 6 is 90 hertz and 6 Pro is 120 hertz They're both rated for up to 24 hours of battery life ,granted, you know, that obviously remains to be seen. They both have pretty interesting front cameras, the 6 has an 8 megapixel front camera with 84 degrees field of view. And the 6 Pro has an 11.1 megapixel front camera with a 94 degree field of view. Good for those like cell group selfies. I also understand that the rear camera has a really, really wide field of view. So phones, especially the six, come in some really interesting colors. It comes in like a seafoam color and sort of a pinkish color. Granted, I probably want to put a case on these anyway. But it sounds really fascinating, especially for what you get for the price.

Scott Ertz (35:58)

Yeah, for sure. And it sounds obvious, I always have to make this joke. They've finally caught up with the Nokia camera from, like 10 years ago.

Avram Piltch (36:12)

Yes, yes. But I have some interesting features

Scott Ertz (36:17)

-those poor PureView cameras, they just never. Nokia - those things away.

Avram Piltch (36:23)

I know I keep waiting for people to get back to those 5000 megapixel cameras. So here we are, we have 50, which is great.

Scott Ertz (36:30)

Got one of those Lumia 1020's around here somewhere.

Avram Piltch (36:33)

But this might be you know, this has some interesting features because of the AI. So , these sound like things Samsung would do. So they have something where you can remove people from the background. So if there's someone in the background behind you in a picture, you can edit them out. There is a motion mode that lets you capture, like, action. It makes it look like a subject is moving because of the blur in the background, or a long exposure that adds blurred and moving subjects. There's also a face unblurred for capturing sharper images of moving people and real tone for capturing skin tones accurately. So I, you know, often have- first of all, I have a Pixel 4a 5g here. And I got it for the camera. I love the camera on this. But it could be even better. Fantastic. You know, the-

Scott Ertz (37:42)

Are you saying it would be even better?

Avram Piltch (37:45)

Yeah, I mean, yes. If we were even better I would be even happier. Because, I mean, there's a need for it to be even better, right? Especially if you've got young children as I do. You want to kick out and want to catch them doing something cute. And inevitably, it'll be like, their face will blur because they're doing something right. So if this could deal with that, fantastic. You know, or they're doing something really cute, but you don't have all the lights on in the room. So it's a little dark. Or you know, they're doing something really cute and running around and wouldn't it be neat if you could capture the motion of it? So all those things sound really good to me.

Scott Ertz (38:32)

Yeah, for sure. It's been a while since I've been excited about Google hardware. But this one actually sounds exciting. I think our listeners and viewers are aware that I tend to go for weird devices, right? Hence my obsession with Palm and then you know I've got a surface duo out in the office but this one sounds like it would be a great like the phone that that we carry for live blogging from CES because we can take great pictures without having to worry about you know so much clutter and so much somebody says another thing that. We've talked about having one of those for the team for a while. We've got a couple of corporate lines you know we could throw a SIM card in and put it out into the wild. Sounds like the perfect device for that.

Avram Piltch (39:33)

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, this is my camera for work, right? So people send me a laptop to review. I try to find a nice clean space in my office which is hard to do. But when I do, I can take pictures of it and those are what we use. So you know, the better quality phone camera I have, the better I can do my job so it's definitely the main thing I get excited about the phones these days as if the camera gets better. Because honestly, I don't think the screen has to get that much better. The screens are really good at this point unless you really care about variable rate. Getting a high refresh rate for your phone gaming, but I don't really care that much about phone gaming personally. I mean, that's when you're doing something major with a camera. That's really impressive. Finally, speaking of other things that are impressive, at least to me, is something that was announced today, the Raspberry Pi build. As longtime viewers know, I'm a big Raspberry Pi fan. I have a lot of Raspberry Pi stuff hanging around. Here's one of the cases that's sitting here. But this new thing that's coming out, it's called The Build Hat. A hat is an add-on board. So with a Raspberry Pi, you have these 40 pins here, they are called the GPIO pins. And then you can buy boards that attach them. And those are called HATs. Because HAT stands for Hardware Attached on Top. And the build HAT for $25 is something that is made in partnership between Raspberry Pi and Lego. And it has four or they are called LPF2 connectors. Those are the little connectors that come in the modern era, the last like three or four or five years. Lego electronics. So if you have a Lego boost set, if you have a Lego power up set, if you have some other new education and STEM sets that are used in the classroom. There are lots of lights and motors and sensors that have this connector. And with this, you can connect them directly to a Raspberry Pi, where you can then use the Python programming language to control them. So you can use this in your Lego robots, you can use the Lego color sensors, you can do all kinds of cool stuff. And then you can stack another HAT on top of that. So if you want to do something else, like add different kinds of sensors, add different kinds of motors, add RGB LEDs, all the different kinds of electronics that you can use with Raspberry Pi and with the intelligence of Raspberry Pi, you can do things like object recognition. And you can also use a Raspberry Pi camera with this. So it's really neat to build HAT. It's right now I think you can preorder it on SparkFun and Pimoroni. It's not available yet, I think unless you go to the physical Raspberry Pi store in Cambridge, UK. But it will be available for $25. And then to power it you will need either batteries or a barrel connector that can emit 8 volts. So there's an official $15 power supply for it as well. But I think the really neat thing is that Lego and Raspberry Pi worked on this together so that you can really like the superpower your Lego builds. It's great for kids who are learning to program. It's great for adults who want to build robots and things and use Legos instead of trying to 3D print or otherwise fabricate the pieces that they need. They can use Lego for serious projects. So it's really cool.

Scott Ertz (43:42)

Yeah, I can see it being used for kids that are coming out of the First Lego League, right who have been working with Lego hardware and the Lego platform. They know the components, they know the sensors. And then this gives them the ability to continue to use all of that and bring it forward into Raspberry Pi to add some more. Complex isn't quite the word I'm looking for. But you know what I mean, more full-featured programming capabilities to it. I love this idea.

Avram Piltch (44:22)

Yeah, so I mean, you can program some of the newer Lego education kits that do have their own programming language, but their programming language is their own. It is a proprietary block-based language, right? So what you can do with Raspberry Pi is now you can use standard Python. You can also use just a whole other world of electronics. And Lego is actually supporting this in another way, which is if you buy one of their education kits, which is really expensive, so it's really for the classroom. It's like $300 or $400 . It comes with a plate that you can screw your Raspberry Pi into, and use that to attach it to your Lego build. Now, that's their official solution to attaching the Raspberry Pi to a build. But there's a lot of unofficial solutions for doing 3D printed plates that you can get things like that. So you don't have to necessarily buy their expensive kit to be able to physically attach your Raspberry Pi. Or I've seen lots of people just build Legos around the Raspberry Pi and hold it in place so that way it doesn't necessarily have to be screwed in.

Scott Ertz (45:37)

That'll make sense. And I'm still wrapping my head around this. I love this. I bought one already. I want to use it over at Amarok now.

Avram Piltch (45:51)

Yeah, one word of caution. It does not work with the Mindstorm EB3. It works with I think the new Mindstorm that's been out for a year or two for whatever it is, but it does not work with the EB 3 connectors that have been around for many years. It does work with Lego boosts power up. And I think the education kits and I think the newest Mindstorm so it's the current connectors.

Scott Ertz (46:22)

Gotcha. And obviously we've talked about a lot of stuff here. And I imagine you guys have gotten stuff on all of this.

Avram Piltch (46:30)

Yes, yes. So if you go to Tom's Hardware you can learn all about the Lego the Raspberry Pi Build HAT, including a tutorial on how to use it even though you probably don't have it yet. You can learn all about the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. We didn't really do a lot of coverage of the Google Pixels. We don't cover phones, but our colleagues at Tom's Guide not to be confused with Tom's Hardware. They're kind of the Best Buy for our new egg. Have covered that really well. So yeah, there's a lot you know, there's a lot to read about there's a lot of exciting stuff and who knows the week is only half old and the month is only a little more than half old. So we may be seeing some more cool products by the time we talk next time.

Scott Ertz (47:26)

It does seem likely as always Avram, I appreciate you bringing this stuff to our attention because like I always say we don't have time to see all of this and I appreciate that you are able to introduce us to it and I cannot wait to see what we talk about next. This week's Extra Life and F5 live is proudly powered by Loot Crate. Whether you're a gamer, anime fan or pop culture aficionado, Loot Crate has got a crate for you. They curate a bundle of collectibles, apparel, figures and more that you can't find anywhere else. Crates get delivered to your door. It's like getting an awesome birthday present from yourself every single month and to learn more about the crates that are available and the deals that are going on, you can go to F5live.tv/lootcrate. So this is no secret in the gaming industry. Gamers hate sports they have had the exclusive on several major franchises for a long time including Madden which was theirs to be fair. They played in the NCAA for a long time. They've had FIFA for years. And gamers feel like it's getting stale. That no real changes happen season to season and in fact, FIFA in particular, gamers said There appeared to be no changes except players from 2020 to 2021. And with that information, FIFA put out a statement saying that they are ready to start seeing other people. They will consider an open marriage in that they don't necessarily have to say goodbye to EA entirely. They're willing to continue to work with them if things change, but they're ready to get more serious about the eSports capabilities that have their title. And they don't feel that what EA has been doing lives up to that. They also would like to explore the idea of some sort of a mobile title in FIFA. And they are ready for a non exclusive deal. And they are starting their search now. This is the big shake up, because these exclusivities have been in EA Sports hands for so long. And like I said, gamers are seemingly tired of it. I know. You know, when Nick was on the show, he was a big Matt Madden fan. And he always said that every game seemed less unique than the one before it to the point where it seemed just repetitious at some point. So, you know, some new blood would probably be good for some of these franchises. And FIFA seems to agree.

Avram Piltch (51:01)

Yeah, I mean, look, this is probably based on sales. Are we? Right? I mean, I'm sure FIFA sees a cut of sales. So if sales were great, they would probably be happy. So they're probably my guess that FIFA is looking at the bottom line and thinking they can make more money. I don't think that they're thinking about Wow, these games are artistically as good as we would like them to be.

Scott Ertz (51:30)

No, but the gamers are. The players. Right? And that's why they're not buying them. And that's affecting FIFA's bottom line.

Avram Piltch (51:38)

Right, right. Yes, yes. So it is filtering down. I'm just saying, if the gamers were fine. If the games were selling, then free to the level that they expect, then they wouldn't care. So yes, they want to make more money. On the other hand, it probably is really easy for these things to get in a rut, because there's only so I don't know, maybe there's only so much you can do with a sports game, like, the rules of the game don't change, right? So you make the graphics better. You change the controls up, whatever. But then people also want to see consistency in the game. It's not like you can change the plot. So you know, how many things can you do? There's probably some greater room for innovation. But maybe that maybe there's not a lot of room for innovation. So it might stay a long way since-

Scott Ertz (52:39)

But staying in the same hands, certainly, is going to be preventing any of that innovation. You know, when Activision started to mix up, you know, Call of Duty between three different studios, you started to get some interesting stuff back into the Call of Duty franchise instead of the same thing every release. So,-

Avram Piltch (52:58)

Yeah, I mean, maybe change for change's sake is called for here. Right? Because, you know, when I was playing Atari, which I know, you know a lot about right? It was a really common sports game, you couldn't do very much right. Like you had the Atari football, you know, you just kind of run down the field, right? It was a step above the Radio Shack thing with a red light on it that you used to play football now. Right?

Scott Ertz (53:30)

You know, talk those back at some point.

Avram Piltch (53:34)

You know, but now the games are really good. Like, all the sports games are really good quality. They have real players in them. They're realistic. So, you know,it's not necessarily obvious what the next step is, maybe it's not so obvious what the next step is when you've gotten it to be this good. But nevertheless, they have to figure that one out. Because people don't want to keep buying the same old thing. So. So yeah, I understand why FIFA would want to do this. Let's see what happens? Because EA has been getting by on its licensing, rather than actually doing the work to really make those licenses to do a good job with the licenses.

Scott Ertz (54:25)

Right? And if you look at ,you know, other parts of the industry, Disney's Star Wars contract with EA, the exclusive contract is up, and it does not look like Disney has renewed that either, possibly because under EA only two good Star Wars titles were released. But a lot of Star Wars titles were released. There was a lot of pasta that didn't stick to that wall. And so, it looks like Disney is moving on from that EA relationship too. Now granted, they made that agreement when they made the purchase. And there didn't seem to be any quality check conditions in that agreement, either. So EA may just be in a rut, and they may need to go back to some, you know, in house IP to, to get out of it. Because, you know, when Ubisoft was having trouble, they started doing their own IP and to the licensing stuff and boom, they played Assassin's Creed. So maybe, that's what EA needs. Maybe EA needs to, to not rely so heavily at this point on licensed stuff or purchase stuff like Max's, and I actually have to do something outright. So we'll definitely see what happens here. I know feet one a thief has big things is the eSports side of things. And you know, a lot of the things that you need for a title to be eSports compatible, aren't there or aren't good within the FIFA titles. So it'll be interesting to see what comes of this, especially in that space. But I'd also like to see what they think is going to come out of mobile because that part kind of shocked me. It seems like soccer on a tiny screen may not be quite as engaging. But maybe it will become the breakout of VR that we were talking about earlier. Who knows?

Avram Piltch (56:45)

Yeah, I mean, via I mean, obviously, these games in VR would be great. But yeah, so yeah, tiny screen. You know what, though, people are playing more things on mobile, the screens are getting a lot bigger. So-

Scott Ertz (56:56)

It's true. And I mean, I compare my Xbox controller to it and play actual Xbox titles on my phone. So you know, there definitely is a lot more capability today than there was even two years ago. So we'll see what comes out of this new research for them. In addition to things powered by Malwarebytes whether you use a PC, a MAC, or a mobile device, Malwarebytes premium is the company's strongest protection ever. It fights threats that traditional antivirus software can't stop like worms, robes, dialers, Trojans, and a lot more allows you to use your computer and mobile device with confidence and peace of mind. And to learn more. And to get a special price. You get to F5live.tv/malwarebytes. So we talked to Google in the Piltchpoint. Let's talk about the other side of it. Google Search, and in particular, on mobile. Google Search has mostly worked about the same. Always , the Google at the bottom went away. Mostly at some point and it went to more standard pagination. But as the rest of the industry has moved away from hard pagination into soft pagination, and what the tech industry likes to call continuous scrolling? And what we like to call Doom Scrolling. Mobile Search from Google will be implementing that as well. So no longer will you have just, you know, say 10 items. I know you never know how many items are actually on a page. Let's say 10 items on a page.

Avram Piltch (59:03)

And then it's supposed to be 10. But then they keep messing with the search where they're putting like other things in the search result that are not necessarily 10 organic results like the answer box.

Scott Ertz (59:20)

Right, exactly. So 10-ish.

Avram Piltch (59:26)

Reason also set it to more than you can use due to personal settings to set it to more to write-

Scott Ertz (59:30)

-but now it's going to mobile search and is in fact rolling out now. We have not received it on any of our devices yet. We've been checking since this blog post was published. But it's coming to everybody. So when you get to the end of the page that will just automatically load the next batch of results and allow you to continue to scroll, no more pagination, but also no more knowing where you are on the search results, which has positives and negatives, right? There's no longer that, that quite that same fear of being on the first page, because moving to page two is kind of a seamless behind the scenes thing. Whereas today, you know, you get to the bottom, you're like, Well, that wasn't it. And he goes, you change your Search. I mean, it's gonna change the way people use Google Search, I think.

Avram Piltch (1:00:26)

Yes, yes. So I have a mixed mind about this as a user account, I like pagination. It just provides I don't like continuous scrolling, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like a disorienting sort of like, "Hey, wait, how do I get back to the top? It's further up?" I mean, it seems a little disorienting. However, as someone who lives and dies by Google Search placement. This actually sounds good to me. Well, I don't know. It could have plus, it is. Good ash. Right. The plus is if you're on page two now, which, you know, being on page two is a great mark of shame, I should say I forget for me, I have one of my important articles on page two, it's like not existing. But it happens, right? So if I was ranked 12, or something now, that actually wouldn't be as bad because people might really see it. On the other hand, because it's not paginated I feel like people may, users may actually be more likely to click the lower results than they were, you know, because maybe they're scrolling down to see if something's better than the top. Right. So as it keeps scrolling, they're not like, oh, yeah, this was the first page, this is the best stuff. Right? So they may be more likely to click wherever it is they decided to stop scrolling.

Scott Ertz (1:01:52)

Right? Yeah, it's definitely going to change a lot of things. I have a meeting with my marketing team tomorrow. And this is going to be one of my topics of conversation. Is this change? Because it's definitely an interesting change.

Avram Piltch (1:02:13)

I'm sure it's still better to be in the top spot or near the top? Sure. So because probably most people, if they see the headline of the metadata that they're interested in, they're just going to click or tap right on the thing that they're looking for, they're not going to go and see if something's better. Now, coincidentally, whether people click it or not ends up being part of I'm sure ends up being part of Google's algorithm. So if you were in the top spot, and people weren't, like weren't clicking on you, you won't be in the top spot for long anyway, right? Because I'm sure that Google looks at bouncing. So if you were in the top spot for a search result, and somebody clicks through, because they liked the headline that they saw, but then they see that this isn't the content that they were looking for, and they hit the back button and go back to the search result page, then, then, you know, hey, wait a second, this person didn't really get what they were looking for either. Right. So that's another issue too. So I mean, I think this could be a net positive for people who are trying to get traffic to their websites and have maybe fallen onto the dreaded second page.

Scott Ertz (1:03:31)

Right.

Avram Piltch (1:03:33)

So because there's probably a better chance of being seen now. Nevertheless, you still want to be one, two or three, preferably widely. And, you know, the things that Google does Google's mean, see, the thing is here, a lot of a lot of businesses depend on Google, and Google doesn't really care about your business. Right? Well, only unless, of course, you're an advertiser that cares about you paying them an advertising fee. But, you know, as far as doing things like Google continues to do things that are kind of like, promote your site, but not in a way that brings people to your site. So like the answer box, right? That's a really mixed bag, right? Because right, you know, I could write a story about what time the World Series started? Great. I'm going to write a story, and then the answer box is just going to pull that answer out. So now people didn't have to click through. And so did that help me? I mean, I got the hang of the top link, but the nugget that people wanted was right there anyway. So obviously, Google is not doing this to deliberately help or hurt sites, websites that are trying to get people to visit them. It's just purely, I think that there's going to be, people are more likely to find a result. But they're looking for if they don't have to click pagination. And, you know, I think that is the maxim in all of the UI computers. UI is more with less clicks. Right? Don't make me click. A click is just dreaded. You don't want me to do that. Scrolling is okay. Clicking is not, right. So, ever since the scroll wheel was invented, it seems like scrolling is okay. Do you find this in web design? I remember years back people saying things like "I got to be above the fold. I got to make sure that people see this above the fold". You have to make sure that people see a lot of stuff above the fold. And above the fold was really difficult. For those who don't know, meaning. The first thing you see in a webpage before you scroll it all right, and above the fold became more harder and harder to hit. Because you had a 1366x768 resolution screen. So you have really, really very little screen real estate above the fold. But after a while, it seems like the zeitgeist nobody cares about above the fold or below the fold. Right? What do we care about? I mean, it does if you put something several screens down, then you're less likely to be seen. But what, but what people do care about is don't make some click. So yeah, don't I think Google is going by that fall, it's the fee.

Scott Ertz (1:06:37)

The less visual change, visual shift, the better. So clicking is one way that you have a major visual shift.

Avram Piltch (1:06:49)

Which is why I don't like Windows 11's new UI, which we were talking about on the last show. Because it makes you do these visual shifts. And these clicks more often like with a great example, Windows 10. You can see all of your apps, if you just keep scrolling down the alphabetical Start Menu, right. Windows 11, you have to click and all apps button then go to a small scroll.

Scott Ertz (1:07:18)

So small hypnotics and you have to hit it, and then you still have to scroll.

Avram Piltch (1:07:24)

Right? So yes, it is just one click. But it's a click. Every click is sacred.

Scott Ertz (1:07:31)

It's a click, and it's a visual transition. It's hidden information. That's hidden behind a click is different from a click hidden behind a scroll, whether it be swiping or rolling or whatever. People don't like that, that big context shift. Whereas with a doom scroll or something like that, there's no context shift until you decide it's time. And you click your app and it opens your app or you click your search result. And it goes to a thing. As opposed to with paginated search results where you get to the bottom you hit a button. And there's a context shift. You go back to the top and do it again.

Avram Piltch (1:08:11)

Right, yeah. And also you have to wait for something to load, right? So if you decided that you really liked result one and you were on page two, you have to reload page one.

Scott Ertz (1:08:20)

Verse. Vinod, still there, scroll up.

Avram Piltch (1:08:24)

As a user, I don't like endless scrolls because I expect something to be at the bottom. So you know, like you're on a website. And you're like "oh, man, I want to get to the find that like About Us link. So I can see who works here."

Scott Ertz (1:08:35)

My favorite is when you can see the footer. And you can see that there are links in the footer. And it is possible to get to-

Avram Piltch (1:08:46)

Yes, the Promised Land. You can't just keep scrolling. So I do find that frustrating. On the other hand, Google Search results. The only thing I'm really looking for down there is the next page. So I think this is okay. It'll take a little getting used to but yeah, for me, but I think it's probably overall good and probably overall good for people who run websites because they do have a better shot. If you're number 11 or 12. Now you do have a better shot of being seen. It's not as hard of a break as being on the second page is like death. Now. It's right.

Scott Ertz (1:09:31)

Not seen at all. Absolutely. So I look forward to seeing how this affects things. And whether or not they end up bringing it to the desktop. Because Facebook on the desktop does do some scrolling. So I could see Twitter. I could see Google implementing it there too. All the time. I think they do well.

Avram Piltch (1:09:51)

I think they will-

Scott Ertz (1:09:52)

Unless it's a huge failure. I don't imagine failure. I imagine they have done some AB Testing already and decided that they liked it. So,-

Avram Piltch (1:10:05)

I mean, unless Google's goal is that they want another page view, but I don't think Google's about that.

Scott Ertz (1:10:11)

Yeah. So, as long as they can, you know, slightly put in the paid results with the soft pagination, and they should be fine. But we'll see if anybody, if anybody has the UI already, definitely let us know. Hit us up on YouTube or social media or something, let us know. Because so far we don't have it. And we'd like to hear people's experiences. This week's DRM is not included in F5 Live, it's probably powered by Amazon Prime, you know, you get free shipping, but you get a whole lot more. You get free music with Amazon Prime music, free TV, movies and documentaries, Amazon Prime video, you get free games and a free Twitch subscription, which you can use to support the content creator of your choice with Amazon Prime gaming, and a whole lot more. Plus, we've got some links to these features, information about them. And the 30 day free trial if you're not already a subscriber all by going to F5live.tv/prime. All right, in addition to Techtober and all of the product announcements we also had media announcements because of DC Fandome which was this weekend and lots of interesting stuff came out of that too. I know Avram you're a big DC fan. So out of the stuff that was announced, what was your favorite? Let's start with that.

Avram Piltch (1:12:00)

Hmm, so much interesting stuff. I definitely like the sneak peek at Black Adam. Because I've been a big JSA fan and followed all the storylines of Black Adam and them. So this will be of course, it's not coming for a long time. But it was nice that they showed us a little bit of a sneak peek at that. Sure. We obviously see that there's going to be this. I mean, I appreciate it.

Scott Ertz (1:12:33)

For people who don't know Black Adam is a Shazam. Like, offshoot right. With the rock playing. Yes. So he the main character he is

Avram Piltch (1:12:48)

Yes, he has similar powers to Shazam. He was sort of an anti sort of an antihero, right. So it'll be interesting to see how they play him. I'll be interested to see that I-

Scott Ertz (1:13:03)

Referring to him as a ruthless, unstoppable villain.

Avram Piltch (1:13:08)

Okay, well, he depends where he really is. He's either a villain or sort of a sympathetic villain. So I'm, I'm curious. I'm eager to see that one. I'm eager to see and I really like the original she said in the first shazam movie. I thought that was actually like the best DC. Wow, maybe wonder one was the best DC movie. I like the first Wonder Woman. But really like she's really like Shazam. So I thought that was good. I appreciated that they had been really enjoying Titans on HBO max. And they announced that Titans is coming back for season four. So I was psyched to see that. Obviously they have some interesting cartoons as well coming up. I'm not as big into the DC animation but right they have that new series that's coming up that's going to be sort of like the Batman Batman cartoon from the 90s. But yeah, but with I guess less censorship. I'm not excited about Batman because I feel like there's been so much Batman.

Scott Ertz (1:14:24)

Yeah.

Avram Piltch (1:14:27)

I mean, I watched pretty much all the DC all the CW DC shows too. So I mean, I gotta watch that woman so that man and bat and Baton girl I wasn't as excited by I mean I thought the trailer for the Batman was okay. But you know, we have had a lot of Batman movies so,-

Scott Ertz (1:14:55)

Not to evidence that The Flash movie is going to have another Batman. I don't know how you Pluraleyes that it's going to have Batfleck and Oh, who's the other one?

Avram Piltch (1:15:17)

Michael Keaton.

Scott Ertz (1:15:18)

Yeah Michael Keaton

Avram Piltch (1:15:20)

I'll see that I'm interested to see frankly though sure. It really really shows you that people don't care that much about seeing the you know seeing the fat version of The Flash himself. They really just want to see they really want to see Michael Keaton Batman back again so which I bet he'll be in the movie for like five minutes max so-

Scott Ertz (1:15:49)

I don't know we definitely we definitely saw his Batmobile in the trailer under the under the cloth-

Avram Piltch (1:15:57)

My guess is see my guess is he's it's a it's a bit of a cameo because after all, it's The Flash movie which is like the rumor-

Scott Ertz (1:16:05)

IMDb has him credited pretty high up the list.

Avram Piltch (1:16:10)

Well, it's important right? I mean, his participation is very important. It's sort of like all the rooms you know, by the way, whatever. Whatever Marvel DC does, Marvel does and whatever Marvel does DC does. Sure one way or the other, although to be honest, Marvel has been much better at the movies and DC has been in my opinion better at the TV but you know Spider Man. No way home that's coming out in December. It is going to have other Spider Man and other villains and villains from like other Spider Man universes coming in. So now we're going to have The Flash with another Batman coming in.

Scott Ertz (1:16:58)

Right? You know Marvel with with Dr. Strange is, you know the multiverse-

Avram Piltch (1:17:07)

Multiverse of madness. By the way, all those copies were just that. We just pushed back.

Scott Ertz (1:17:13)

Yes, they were all pushed back one release cycle.

Avram Piltch (1:17:16)

Yes. Yes. Except for Indiana Jones where Harrison Ford will be at when the movie comes out. And pretty much in very close to 80 or 81. Probably to turn 81 in the theater, man. That's great. Hey, listen. I'm all for it.

Scott Ertz (1:17:38)

iYou can do it great.

Avram Piltch (1:17:41)

But I mean, he'll have been done filming by then. Oh, yeah. But he bought it anyway. I'm pretty excited by some of these things. I mean, I'd like it, you know. I would have liked to have I mean, I guess there's not really much more you can hear about Wonder Woman or whatever. I thought they did a good job with the game being like three hours long and I was sort of intermittently tuning into it on my phone while my son was watching Minecraft live on the TV. Cuz he was really super excited about Minecraft. And so I had to like," oh, yeah, just see this could be a new Batman thing. Okay, whatever." He doesn't really care about that. But yeah. By the way, is it fandome or fandom? I always think of it as like a dome like-

Scott Ertz (1:18:35)

I don't know how it's pronounced. I know it's spelled dome. But I do not know how it's pronounced.

Avram Piltch (1:18:46)

What did you find interesting?

Scott Ertz (1:18:48)

For me it's Gotham Knights. Getting to see more of Gotham knights. It's the continuation of the Arkham series. But post Bruce Wayne's death, which may or may not have actually happened. And so, you know, you're going to be playing the role of the rest of the crew, right? Nightwing, Robin. Batgirl, Red Hood. So that's interesting. It's going to continue that storyline and I like that. Like, they've really kind of shown in this in this series of games. It's been surprising because you know, comic book and movie/TV adaptations into video games tend to be painful. But this has not been this whole series. has been pretty tight. And this one looks like it's going to continue that. So that's pretty exciting.

Avram Piltch (1:20:06)

That's great. I mean, it's amazing how now, companies just decide to make news by holding like three hour live streams, which by the way, we're probably not live. I mean, how do you know that they were actually there broadcasting? It's probably recorded in the stream at that time. Probably at least with the Minecraft one there was an online vote so they had to tell you which character one so that, that there was some level of real time ness to that. But Netflix did this with what was called the DOM or whatever?

Scott Ertz (1:20:43)

Uh huh. Yeah.

Avram Piltch (1:20:47)

Netflix did this and DC has done this. Minecraft did this. What's next?

Scott Ertz (1:20:53)

Apple's been doing it for the last couple of years. Where do you know that they're taped? Microsoft has been doing these live taped things. So.

Avram Piltch (1:21:01)

So I don't know. Is there going to be a Marvel one or Disney one soon? Who knows?

Scott Ertz (1:21:07)

I don't know. But there was some Star Wars stuff this weekend as well.

Avram Piltch (1:21:15)

It just keeps coming in-

Scott Ertz (1:21:17)

Data does. And we definitely are live. It's 1042. So just

Avram Piltch (1:21:25)

Yes, yes, that is a fact.

Scott Ertz (1:21:29)

So I just thought that was a funny thing.

Avram Piltch (1:21:36)

Because we're definitely live when the camera cuts out and things freezing unexpectedly that we were live because otherwise we would have been.

Scott Ertz (1:21:43)

Absolutely a good point. Well, that is our show. Thank you to those of you who joined us live. We always appreciate our live viewers. If you're not able to join us live in the future. Normally, Sunday nights at 9pm. Eastern, you can go to F5Live.tv/joinus or when we're having special events like this, the best thing to do is follow us on Facebook F5 Live Refreshing Technology, because that's when you'll definitely see an announcement and when we're going live. Next week, we will also have an altered schedule, hopefully Monday, unless things go weird. So then Roboticon will be over and we can go back to normal. But that's where we are for right now. Definitely check us out doing that. This Saturday will be the First Tech Challenge and Closing Ceremony. You can find us on Roboticon TV on Twitch the best place to watch because we know YouTube made for kids content you can't comment on so find us on Roboticon TV or here on our Twitch Channel cuz we host it as well. I guess with that, on behalf of the staff that's not here, I'm Scott, and Avram, and we'll see you back next week. Ciao.

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