This week, Amazon's exploring your home, GameStop is selling your stuff, DuckDuckGo is protecting your privacy, and DC is canceling Batgirl.
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'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.
One thing that appears to be inevitable in the modern technology world is large acquisitions. Whether it be Microsoft purchasing Activision or Google purchasing Raxium, we know that the big tech companies absolutely love to purchase other companies. This week, the newest addition to the list is iRobot, as Amazon has announced a deal to acquire the Roomba maker in a deal valued at $1.7 billion.
NFTs are a controversial topic any time they show up, but even more so in the gaming space. Usually, the controversy comes about because game developers are considering or announcing the inclusion of the technology into their games. However, this week, NFTs sparked problems within the gaming industry when GameStop's NFT marketplace facilitated the sale of stolen content in the form of NFTs.
The web is a dangerous place - whether it is hackers trying to take over your computer or Big Tech companies trying to track your every move, you've got to be cautious. There appear to be very few good actors on the internet today, but one of them is DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine that looks to make your online experience safer. The company announced this week that they would be extending their tracking script blocker to include those from certain Microsoft properties.
One of the film genres that have been nearly constantly successful over the past decade has been superhero films. Sure, some don't do well or are not well received, but for every Captain Marvel there are three Captain America movies, so it works out. The past few years have seen many films delayed in release, but MANY new titles have been announced to be released over the next few years. This week, however, it was announced that one superhero film would never see the light of day: Batgirl.