DescriptionThis week, mobile messaging gets more confusing, Capcom shows why free-to-play is annoying and AT&T announces a new streaming service under oath.ParticipantsScott ErtzHostScott 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 DDR community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bar 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 judging engineering notebooks at competitions. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors.Avram PiltchHostAvram'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.OpeningPowered by TeknoAXENifty GiftiesPowered by Microsoft StoreGoogle Doubles Down on Unbelievably Confusing Messaging StrategyOver the past few years, it has been nearly impossible to understand what Google is up to when it comes to messaging. They have rolled out several services, all with a similar and tragic fate: abandonment. When the service isn't abandoned entirely, it has features stolen for another platform, as was the case with Google Hangouts, which lost features to Google Allo. Google Allo, the not quite WhatsApp clone, is the most recent service to be abandoned by the company. The service was never widely accepted, possibly because at launch the service didn't really work - at least not how anyone would have wanted.read full articlePiltch Point with Avram PiltchPowered by Monster ProductsExtra LifePowered by RazerGames-as-a-Service Gets More Annoying as Puzzle Fighter to be TerminatedAt this point, many of us have been burned by the modern concept of games-as-a-service. For example, our team raged at the random cancelation of Sim City Social, an early big-budget entry into genre. This week, the now rather large graveyard GaaS titles grew a little larger with the announcement of the end of Puzzle Fighter.read full articleNews From the TubesPowered by RiffTraxA Staggering Number of Child Privacy Violations in Google Play StoreLast week, it was revealed that YouTube might be knowingly violating COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. This law, which was enacted in 1998 and expanded in 2012, ensures that online services are not allowed to collect information about children or their activities online without the consent of their parents or guardians. It is the reason why many sites require a person to be 13 years old to sign up - to keep themselves far away from the issue.read full article* DRM Not IncludedPowered by Amazon PrimeA New TV Streaming Service Announced in Court by AT&T CEONew product and service announcements happen all the time. Often, they are made at trade shows like CES or Collision, at announcement events like Microsoft, Apple and Google, or in a press release. One place where we don't expect to hear about a new product is in a court testimony, though that's exactly what happened this week.read full articleClosingPowered by Tech Podcast Network