DescriptionThis week, Malwarebytes is hit by malware, Valve is hit with a giant fine, and AT&T TV Now's hits finally knocked it out.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 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 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 StoreMalwarebytes software suffered same attack as SolarWinds, remains safeNear the end of 2020, a massive hack was uncovered in the network management system, SolarWinds. The attack came from a Russian state-sponsored organization, named Cozy Bear, and was administered via a compromised update. Through this update process, Cozy Bear was about to distribute code allowing them backdoor access to the systems of those who installed it. We recognized at the time that the full implications of the attack were unknown, though we did learn some of the many companies and organizations affected. Malwarebytes was not one of those companies, but Microsoft was. However, Malwarebytes has announced that it was breached by Cozy Bear as well.read full articlePiltch Point with Avram PiltchPowered by PureVPNExtra LifePowered by RazerEU fines Valve, publishers €7.8 million for anticompetitive behaviorValve, through its Steam Store, and five major PC game publishers - Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home Interactive, Koch Media, and ZeniMax - have been fined by the European Commission for anticompetitive behavior. The total fine is €7.8 million (or about $9.5 million) and revolves around pricing and game availability within the European Union.read full articleNews From the TubesPowered by RiffTraxGoogle's competing policies on paying for access to news contentFor many years, Google has had a complicated relationship with data access. The company generally believes that all data should be available to them in order to present the most complete search results. However, they have also gotten directly involved in the content aggregation and display space, often taking content from other companies and displaying it without ever requiring the user to visit the site from which the data came. Without that visit to the site, the companies cannot generate revenue, meaning creating the content is less valuable.read full article* DRM Not IncludedPowered by Amazon PrimeAT&T finally shutters disastrous DirecTV Now, AT&T TV Now serviceSince AT&T purchased DirecTV, they have made a lot of questionable decisions. The struggles have been so severe that AT&T is already considering selling the brand. However, one of the more disastrous decisions for the DirecTV brand has got to be the streaming cable service, DirecTV Now. Now, the company is shuttering the service and moving customers to its own competitor, AT&T TV.read full articleClosingPowered by Tech Podcast Network