April 17, 2023 - Episode 644

F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Video)

Description

This week, SwiftKey can search and chat, Xbox can use Ubisoft Plus, FTX found a lot of money, and HBO Max is losing the HBO.

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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SwiftKey: From iPhone darling to dead product and back again

If you've never used SwiftKey, you should definitely give it a try. SwiftKey is a keyboard for iOS and Android that replaces the native keyboard. But, more importantly, it gives easy access to a number of features - some unique to the product. Microsoft, who acquired the product in 2016, disappointed many users (including myself) when they announced that October 5, 2022, would be the end of support on iOS. But, after reversing course, it has become yet another target of Microsoft's newest focus feature: Bing.

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Extra Life

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Ubisoft Plus subscription service now available on Xbox consoles

The past few years have been defined by a couple of trends, with one of the most prominent being subscriptions. It seems like every company wants to offer a subscription service, from media streaming services to regular shipments of razers, you can subscribe to anything. The gaming industry has begun to embrace the concept in earnest, with game subscription services becoming a norm. Ubisoft Plus has brought hundreds of games to PC, and now it is bringing those games to Xbox as well.

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News From the Tubes

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New FTX owners have recovered billions of dollars in lost assets

It's been nearly 6 months since the complete collapse of FTX, formerly one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The company failed because the owner, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), had been essentially stealing money from the exchange in order to prop up his other project - Alameda. Since filing bankruptcy, the company's assets have been sold and the new owners have been looking for and sometimes finding some of the missing assets, which has created a positive environment within the company.

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HBO Max and Discovery+ to be Max with lots of new content coming

Since the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc., the future of HBO Max and Discovery+ seemed obvious. There was no way that the new Warner Bros. Discovery would maintain two competing platforms - they were always destined to become one. Now we know the name of the future service, its launch date, and some of the new content to expect.

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