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Facebook has probably become one of the most suspected, even hated, tech companies of late. It may have even managed to surpass Google to some extent. But the infamy and exodus that Facebook is now being subjected to is really just the height of a trend that has been happening lately. YouTube stars are burning out or exploding in spectacularly distasteful ways. Twitter’s 280-character expansion got the cold shoulder reception. Tumblr dug its own grave in trying to impress Apple. And Instagram and Snapchat seem to be locked into copying each other. The fire that drove social media’s growth has seemingly been reduced to smoldering embers and users are either jumping ship to other networks or quitting outright. But it’s not for the reasons that you might think.

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If, at the beginning of the year, you were worried that the new God of War title was just a cynical money grab from Sony, you definitely weren’t alone. After all, the God of War series had a pretty good run back in the days of the PS2 and PS3, but it overstayed its welcome and ended up going out with the whimper that was God of War: Ascension. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Sony was simply tapping a dormant franchise to squeeze more money out of fans of the series, with no real intention of returning the franchise to its former glory. That’s just what big publishers do.

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What is a computer? Apple asked this soul-searching when it launched the iPad Pro line. Since then, arguments have been thrown back and forth for and against the iPad as a laptop replacement. Then along came the Microsoft Surface Go, calling attention to itself, shouting that it's a real computer. With the holiday shopping period fast approaching both companies have stepped up the rhetoric and the marketing. Which leaves us wondering which is really the real computer?

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I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Pokemon Let’s Go isn’t quite what I was expecting - or even hoping for - out of the series’ home console debut. We Pokemon fans have been waiting more than 20 years for the mainline Pokemon series to come to consoles, but Pokemon Let’s Go only gets part way there. It gets closer than other any of the console spin-offs have, but it isn’t quite the Pokemon that many of us have been looking forward to since the day the Switch was first announced.

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There is no stopping the 5G revolution, especially since everyone seems to be on board. From network operators to smartphone manufacturers to silicon makers, everyone seems to be hellbent on pushing the fifth generation cellular technology to businesses and consumers. With all the marketing and hype, there’s bound to be some confusion and questions. What is 5G, what is it for, and will really make our lives better? Here are some answers to those questions and more.

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It has not been a friendly console cycle for Microsoft and the Xbox One. Microsoft’s troubles began from the second it revealed the Xbox One back in 2013 - not only did the company reveal a console that seemed to put gaming last, but it also took a heavy-handed approach to digital rights management that immediately received a lot of blowback. Though Microsoft reversed many of these controversial decisions before the console launched, the damage was done.

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Almost everyone has a smartphone these days，perhaps more than a PC. That means almost everyone uses Android or iOS. Linux runs the tech world behind the scenes and macOS still enjoys the prestige of being the creatives' OS. But like it or not, Windows is still the operating system on computers, from desktops to laptops to hybrids to even some PoS and ATMs, regrettably. With that many users and installs, you’d think Microsoft would exercise great care and caution to ensure its updates don’t break computers terribly. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that isn’t the case lately.

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Another day, another Android malware sighted on Google Play Store. Countless pieces and analyses have been written up regarding Google’s mostly hands-off approach to screening apps and it’s a bitter pill to swallow for Android fans and believers. But while there’s no denying that too many such Potentially Harmful Apps or PHAs have slipped through the cracks, there is also one thing that seems to escape notice: the hundreds of thousands of users that should have all been compromised by these malware-laden Android apps.

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Imagine this scenario. You arrive at work and very gracefully place your smartphone on a specially marked area of your desk. Almost immediately, your desk screen lights up, showing you today's tasks. Before you know it, it's lunch time and you quickly pick up your phone and head to the office cafeteria and use your phone to catch up on your social networks. Later that night at home, you dock your phone to add some finishing touches to your presentation tomorrow before finally plopping down on the couch to stream your favorite nighttime show. That was pretty much the idyllic scenario that companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and even Ubuntu maker Canonical tried to sell the public. But despite that enticing vision, it failed to take hold in the market because, like many future visions, it failed to take into account the hurdles of the present.

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Japan is famous for a lot of things, from sakura blossoms in Spring to its unique cuisine to, of course, anime and manga. There is also this perception of the country being a technological superpower, especially in the fields of manufacturing, robotics, and computing. Those perceptions, however, may have been based partly on fantasy and romanticized fiction as the country is slowly proving itself to be lagging behind its peers, especially in the computing industry where cybersecurity has not only become an important topic, it has sometimes become a matter of life or death for both businesses and governments.

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Kitchen conversations usually consist of "what time is dinner ready?" and "it's your turn to load the dishwasher," but Amazon's Alexa-powered microwave hopes to change all that. It's easy to joke at the idea of a voice-controlled appliance, certainly one which counts proactively reordering popcorn among its key talents, but the AmazonBasics Microwave is more important than you might think. For $60, it's Amazon's cunning Trojan horse for Alexa.

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Google seems to be pushing Chrome OS as the one platform to rule them all. Samsung now seems to be singing a slightly different tune, but one that, unsurprisingly requires buying and playing its instruments. After promising and teasing it last year, Samsung has finally started the beta of its Linux on DeX experience to the interested few that own a Galaxy Note 9 or a Galaxy Tab S4. Even while still in beta form, the experience is already impressive and can really let you get almost anything accomplished just using your phone with one important and very obvious caveat. You have to be comfortable using Linux.

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