DescriptionThis week, Philadelphia is staying in the present, EA is skipping their presentation, and Disney is releasing their past.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 StorePhiladelphia is first city to ban cashless stores, preventing Amazon GoOne of the trends we've seen in the past year or so is the trend away from cash. The move makes a lot of sense for certain businesses, such as Amazon Go, the automated convenience store. These stores are designed to be functional with little to no employee interaction, making it easy to pick up what you want and just walk out. When you do, the card on your Amazon account is automatically charged. Because of that, cash is not really an option for the business model. However, thanks to a new law in Philadelphia, Amazon Go is not permitted.read full articlePiltch Point with Avram PiltchPowered by Newegg.comExtra LifePowered by RazerElectronic Arts joins Sony in skipping E3 2019 press conferencesIf you are a fan of the big, splashy press conferences at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, then 2019 might be a disappointment. As was announced in November, Sony will not participate in the E3 2019 press conferences. Sony marks the first of the Big 3 platforms to not participate this year, but will not be the only ones sitting it out. This week, EA announced that they, too, will skip their traditional E3 press conference in favor of smaller, online-only streams. It will also continue to hold its EA Play fan festival, which started in 2016 in LA.read full articleNews From the TubesPowered by RiffTraxElizabeth Warren pitches splitting Amazon, Google, and FacebookOver the past decade, a few companies have emerged as the strongest players in the technology field. The biggest of those faces have been Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Their moves tend to change the direction of the industry, whether or not they are the first ones there. Amazon was far from the first e-commerce platform, but without them, online shopping would be a very different experience. They were also far from the first to have cloud offerings (I think we all remember the Microsoft ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld at the mall), but they made the term popular and brought the prices down significantly.read full article* DRM Not IncludedPowered by Amazon PrimeDisney+ to usher in the death of the infamous "Disney Vault"Disney has been hard at work preparing for the launch of their streaming service Disney+. Last month we learned a little about their content plans, in particular, that they would offer licensed content in addition to their own. This week, more information about the type and amount of content that Disney+ will offer was made public, in the form of a report about an investor meeting. According to CEO Bob Iger,read full articleClosingPowered