WEBVTT - The Tech of 2014 to 2018 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.920 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.640 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:18.439 iHeart Radio and a love of all things tech, and 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.720 we are going to continue our retrospective look at how 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:25.479 technology has changed over the last ten years. Now. In 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.720 our last episode, I went from two thousand nine to 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.560 the end of two thousand thirteen, and we talked about 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:34.479 stuff like Apple launching the iPad, all the way up 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.680 to the emergence of Cambridge ANALYTICAM. And in this episode, 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:41.440 we'll keep on marching down the path of time to 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:45.000 see how tech has evolved and shaped our world in 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:48.520 the years since. Now, if you listen to the last episode, 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.080 you'll remember then two thousand thirteen, Steve Balmer, who was 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.360 at that point the CEO of Microsoft, had announced his retirement. 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.400 He would actually remain CEO until February of two thousand teen, 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.120 and that's when he would hand over the reins to 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.279 Satya Nadela. Nadela, who had been the executive vice president 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.560 of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise Group, had been working for 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:15.080 Microsoft since two so this was definitely a case of 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:19.400 a company promoting from within. Microsoft had been around nearly 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:23.119 forty years, and Nadela would mark only the third CEO 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:28.600 in the company's history. Nadella's first year wasn't exactly smooth, 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.520 partly due to his own actions. While at a conference 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:37.640 named after tech pioneer Grace Hopper, who many people referred 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.440 to as the person who invented the term computer bug, 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.120 Nadela made some comments that women in the tech industry 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.440 should rely on good karma rather than asking for a 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:50.440 pay raise, essentially saying if you were if your work 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.000 is good, it'll come back to you now. As you 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.080 might imagine, the response to this rather tone deaf statement 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:02.840 wasn't terribly positive of and he would subsequently apologize for 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.600 those comments, and he would later explain that he was 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.360 applying a personal philosophy that he followed that doing good 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.920 work leads to rewards to a broad environment, but he 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:17.000 did not take into account stuff like systemic bias, in 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.440 which an entire population of employees contends with lower salaries 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.760 among other problems, just as a matter of course, that 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.320 if you don't address that part, then this whole do 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:30.920 good work and you'll get rewarded thing ends up being 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:36.120 lips service. Nadela committed to continuing existing policies and enacting 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.040 new ones to help overcome this systemic bias in general, 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:46.040 including launching programs that would help expand diversity within Microsoft. Now. 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:49.240 On top of that scandal, Nadela also had to helm 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:54.079 Microsoft through some pretty tough layoffs throughout two thousand fourteen. 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:59.080 In July, he announced that the company would eliminate eighteen 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.839 thousand jobs. Yikes. Many of those, about twelve thousand, five 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:07.399 hundred of them, in fact, were employees who had previously 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.880 worked at Nokia. And here's the really rough thing. Microsoft 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:16.120 had just acquired Nokia in April two thousand fourteen. This 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.120 was all in an effort to create mobile devices, mainly 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:23.440 smartphones that could compete against Google, Android devices and the 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:28.280 Apple iPhone, and spoiler alert, this would not really pan 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.520 out so well. Microsoft would ultimately get out of the 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:35.920 smartphone market entirely, though it stuck around longer than a 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.840 lot of people thought was necessary. On the US government level, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.400 the FCC was forced to go back to the drawing 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.040 board in an effort to establish rules about the concept 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:48.800 of net neutrality. If they had been able to look 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.120 into the future, maybe they wouldn't have even bothered this. 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:54.520 A little commentary will come back by the end of 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.760 this episode, but essentially, the idea behind net neutrality is 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.640 that all data should be equal on the Internet. So 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.760 no service provider, that is, the company that actually allows 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.520 you to connect to the Internet, none of those should 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.440 be able to give preferential treatment to some data at 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.680 the expense of others, particularly for services or data provided 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.320 by the I s P itself or against competing services. So, 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.760 in other words, if you have an I s P, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.280 that I s P should not be able to prioritize 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.240 its own properties at the expense of others in an 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.360 effort to get you to subscribe to more of their stuff. 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:34.680 And also, net neutrality states that you should be able 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.920 to access your data on whatever Internet capable device you're using, 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.320 so that a company would not be able to restrict 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.360 your access to certain content just because you were using 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.200 a device that was made by a competitor. For example, 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.599 the FCC had established regulations in two thousand eleven that 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.200 would require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally, but 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.799 the U S courts ultimately ruled that the FCC didn't 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:02.360 actually have the authority to enforce those rules, which means 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.240 the rules were meaningless. Right if you can't enforce them, 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:08.599 then the rules might as well not exist. So the 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.559 FCC changed tactics and began to argue that broadband should 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:17.039 be reclassified as a regulated utility, which FCC does have 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:21.400 the authority to oversee. Now, we'll revisit this issue again later, 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.799 because who boy, has it been a mess now? Over 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:29.080 in the European Union, a ruling made things pretty complicated 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.520 for a companies like Google. The EU passed a rule 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.839 that informally is referred to as the right to be forgotten. 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.520 That is, people should have some option to remove their 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.719 name and details from search results to protect their privacy, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.799 or to remove reference to something that really no longer 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.000 applies to them. For example, let's say that I grew 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.760 up in the era of the Internet, and as a 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.960 dumb teenager, I did some stupid act that got me 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.200 in legal trouble. Nothing too serious, but bad and off 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.560 to bring my judgment into question, and as a result, 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.360 someone wrote about it and perhaps my identity is known 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.040 as a result of that. Then, as an adult who 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.440 has grown up and supposedly matured, I would never do 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:16.840 such a thing again. But I still have this thing 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:19.080 that's in my past, that's in my record that people 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.320 can see, that follows me around everywhere. Then I might 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:24.320 find harmful and I might want to find a way 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.280 to wipe that off the Internet, because that's not really 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.160 who I am anymore. That was the whole purpose of 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.599 this rule, But critics of the rule pointed out that 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.240 this could allow someone to whitewash their own background. They 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.280 could erase records that have real meaning and are of 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.119 public importance. They could, in theory, demand that links leading 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:46.920 to factually correct articles about them be removed from search results. 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.520 So let's say you're a local business owner and you 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.280 want to run for a publicly elected office, but you 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.719 also have some dark skeletons in your closet, like illegal 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.880 stuff that people wrote about in the past. You could 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.600 manned any references to your past activities be removed from 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.520 search results, making it harder for the voting public to 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.000 know about the kind of terrible, nefarious person you actually 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.080 are when they go to vote. Now, as it stands, 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.960 the rule would require people to submit requests to Google 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:20.480 to have their search results removed from general search, and 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:23.880 Google would review the request before acting on it, and 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:28.240 so it's a pretty messy subject. Speaking of messy subjects, 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.000 two thousand fourteen was also when more hacking stories made 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.640 the news. Many people, including prominent celebrities, found their private 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:41.360 stuff that was stored in iCloud on public display. Apple 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.560 was quick to say that I cloud itself had not 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.960 been breached. This wasn't an example of hackers getting access 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:52.120 to Apple's servers. Rather, the people who were hacked were 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.520 hacked because their passwords and their security questions were compromised, 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.720 probably through guesswork and brute force attacks. Apple promised to 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.119 boost security in the wake of the hacks, but yeah, 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.960 this was pretty ugly stuff. On a much larger scale, 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.680 Sony Pictures was hit with a massive hack attack, which 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:16.600 included everything from employee compensation records and benefits data to 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:21.440 unreleased movies. Suspicion turned to North Korea, with a possible 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.400 motivation for the hacks being the upcoming release of a 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.560 film titled The Interview, which was a comedy in which 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.520 two characters are charged with assassinating North Korea's leader Kim 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:36.080 Jong Un. Chinese e commerce company Ali Baba held its 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.360 i p O on the New York Stock Exchange in 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:42.120 September of two thousand fourteen, reaching a stock price of 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.400 two dollars and seventy cents per share, which was more 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:50.520 than thirty five percent higher than it's already pretty hefty 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.160 sixty eight dollars per share opening price. It was the 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:56.960 biggest I p O in tech up to that point 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.000 and helped show how the Chinese market was becoming an 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:05.160 increasingly powerful player in the tech space. Apple announced Apple Pay, 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.000 the company's mobile payment technology that has found its way 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.199 into multiple Apple products. To use it, you can tap 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:16.040 an NFC enabled device against a compatible payment terminal, and 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:18.760 after authorizing the payment on the device, you could be 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.960 on your way. Apple also announced, but did not launch, 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.280 the Apple Watch in two thousand fourteen, and would enter 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:27.920 into the wearables market in the hopes of succeeding where 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.199 many other companies had struggled. One other thing about the 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.800 Apple Pay thing that I just think is funny. When 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.760 I was on a trip to San Francisco, Tari was there. 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:41.120 We went past a girl scout group that was selling 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:45.040 cookies and they accepted Apple Pay, and I thought, well, 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:49.679 of course they do. It's San Francisco. Facebook shocked the 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:54.480 tech world with a sixteen billion dollar acquisition. This was 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.640 the messaging service WhatsApp. Since then, it's become clear that 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:02.880 the intent was team merge the features of Facebook, WhatsApp, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:07.240 and Instagram together, but that has come under recent scrutiny 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.360 as various government officials around the world have speculated that 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.559 breaking up Facebook might be a good idea, that perhaps 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.320 the company has gotten too big, too powerful, and people 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.760 were too dependent upon it. Uh And also that's just 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.360 anti competitive in general, so there's been some moves to 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.520 perhaps forced the company to break into separate companies again. 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:35.679 But yes, this was the massive acquisition Facebook made with WhatsApp, 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:37.640 and that was the first time a lot of people, 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.600 including myself, had heard of the app, despite the fact 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.720 that it was a very very popular and still is 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:47.520 a very popular text messaging service used by millions of 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.640 people around the world. I just hadn't heard of it 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:54.280 because I was ignorant. And two thousand fourteen would be 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.360 a bad year for Uber, but by far not the 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.440 worst year for Uber. The company did get hold of 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.880 an enormous amount of cash in the form of investments, 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.439 but it also faced increasing resistance and multiple markets around 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:11.160 the world as governments and taxi cab unions pushed back. 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.920 In addition, some pretty unethical corporate behavior became public knowledge 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.240 in two thousand fourteen, including the revelation that Uber corporate 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.960 employees could access writer logs without any type of consent, 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:28.200 opening up the possibility of extortion or blackmail. This wouldn't 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:30.880 be the low point for Uber, as we will see 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.160 later on. Hewitt Packard would announce in October two fourteen 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.320 that the company was going to split up, spinning off 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.520 the PC and printer operations from the corporate enterprise side 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:47.199 of the business, and Google acquired smart demstat company Nest 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.200 for three point to billion dollars, bolstering Google's smart home 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.240 technology strategy. Nest would operate as an independent company just 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.880 a year later, but would then rejoin Google into the 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.040 in eighteen. Two thousand fourteen was a busy year, all right, 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.880 Let's get on to now. One big thing to happen 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:12.120 in was a confusing series of corporate maneuvers over at 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:16.200 the aforementioned Google Now. The end result was that the 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.600 company formed a new umbrella corporation called Alphabet, which would 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.120 be at the top of the hierarchy of companies that 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.640 would include stuff like Google, and YouTube, and later on Weymo, 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:32.120 the automated driving company, as well as others. The logic 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.839 behind the move was that this would allow each individual 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.440 company in the family to operate independently of all the others, 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:41.520 giving each company the ability to make moves without having 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.480 to coordinate everything with everyone else. So you wouldn't have 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:46.760 one leader at the top of all of these having 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.240 to consider all these very different initiatives. Each one would 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.560 have its own leader and thus would be able to 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:56.520 move more nimbly. Larry Page moved up as CEO of 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:00.640 Alphabet and Sundar Pichai would take over as CEO of Google, 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.439 which at this point was a little more stripped down 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:09.840 but still an enormous company. So uh, Apple would officially 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.880 launch the Apple Watch. It received mixed reviews. A lot 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.040 of folks said that it was clearly the best smart 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.960 watch on the market. Others said, yes, it is, but 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:21.920 the bar is pretty darn low, so that's not a 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.240 big thing now. Generally speaking, the watch has a devoted 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.200 following among Apple fans, but it hasn't really moved on 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.679 to become a bigger success among a broader audience. That's 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.080 often looked at as something of a disappointment in tech 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.000 journalism circles. I'm not as sure that the owners find 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.240 it as disappointing, but reviewers kind of did. Microsoft launched 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:48.840 Windows ten in now this was a really big reversal 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.160 from Windows eight, and it also skipped right the heck 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.760 over Windows nine. There's no Windows nine goes from Windows 0:13:56.760 --> 0:14:00.000 eight to Windows ten, seeing how is how the iPhone 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:01.640 is going to do the exact same thing just a 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.240 little bit later. It starts to make you wonder if 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:07.760 the number nine holds any sort of dark significance in 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.000 the world of technology, like you just don't want to 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.120 have version nine, or maybe it's just people want to 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:15.680 create the perception of a fresh start and the number 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.720 ten gives you a fresh start that one zero. It 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.920 makes you think of it being a big leap forward 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:25.000 as opposed to a nine. In some cases it was 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.920 meant to mark not the tenth version of a property, 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.560 but rather the anniversary of a product launch. But whatever, 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.920 I hate it because it makes tracking versions a pain. 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:38.200 It just when you look over the history and you're 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:40.680 skipping over numbers, you start to think, did I miss something? 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.240 So I hate it. It's dumb. So we're gonna call 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.280 Windows ten Windows nine. Now everybody write it down the 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:53.040 year's and it's Windows nine. Anyway, Windows ten launched and 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.840 in general people liked it way more than Windows eight. However, 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.640 it didn't have a perfect launch. There were reports coming 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.520 out that the OS incorporated elements of data tracking, and 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:06.520 it had some troubling implications regarding user privacy. As a result, 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.880 eventually Microsoft was able to smooth this over, but initially 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:14.160 those were big concerns. In the US, the Federal Aviation 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.280 Administration or f a A released its set of guidelines 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.600 and rules for drone operation in the US airspace. So 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.600 generally speaking, the rules are not that much different from 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.920 the ones that govern stuff like the operation of model aircraft, 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.200 though they do require operators to get a permit if 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:34.200 the drone they are piloting is over a certain size. 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:40.200 Amazon launched its Echo smart speaker. In it incorporates a 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:44.680 personal digital assistant and not surprisingly deep integration and Amazon's 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.760 e commerce services. It introduced us to Alexa, the digital 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.480 voice that can do all sorts of stuff, though you 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:53.680 might have to ask her to do it for five 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.040 times if you have a particularly strong Southern accent. I 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.760 based that off listening to my mom tried to interact 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.560 with a LEXA, I love you, mom. Both SpaceX and 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.040 Blue Origin were able to launch and return to Earth 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.640 a reusable rocket that year. In Blue Origin actually did 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.640 it first, and then SpaceX followed suit a few weeks later. 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.240 The achievement was a significant step in the effort to 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.960 reduce the cost of getting stuff out into space. By 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.160 using the same launch vehicle for multiple launches, the price 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:29.240 tag drops significantly. Now. It's still not exactly cheap, mind you, 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.720 but it lowers the price tag enough to allow parties 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.480 that had previously never been able to launch a payload 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.480 into space potentially piggyback on a launch, which is pretty cool. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.240 Over at Twitter, Dick Costolo, the CEO back at that point, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.200 was forced to essentially step out of that role, and 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.040 Jack Dorsey, the co founder of Twitter, became the interim 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.600 CEO and then full time CEO of the company. One 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.480 of his first big moves was to oversee an eight 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.440 percent cut of the workforce, staying that it was a 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.920 tough move, he viewed it as absolutely necessary for the 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.199 company's success. Oh and hey, in Twitter got rid of 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.639 favorites in which you would mark tweets you liked with 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:15.200 a star, and they replaced it with likes and which 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.320 you marked tweets you like with a heart. Not. At 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:22.200 the time, this was considered a big deal and some 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:26.119 people really hated it, And now I think most people 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.040 don't even remember when it was different, which kind of 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.199 sums up a lot about Internet culture in general. We 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:34.480 all have memories like a goldfish when it comes to 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.239 these things. All right, well, I have a little bit 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.879 more about a lot of stuff happened in these years, 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:43.800 must have been making up for that recession. But I'll 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:45.800 get to it in just a second after we take 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:57.360 this quick break. Okay, some more stuff From two thousand fifteen, 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.760 Volkswagen had to deal within an enormous scandal. It was 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.560 discovered that the company had installed devices in diesel vehicles 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.480 being sold in the United States. The purpose for these 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:11.480 devices was to detect when the vehicle was going through 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.760 emissions testing, something that many places in the United States 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:17.399 require in order for a vehicle to be registered in 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.000 that region. So during testing, the device would cause the 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:25.600 vehicle to underperform, which would reduce the emissions the vehicle 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.200 would give off in the process. Once the cars systems 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.959 detected that the test was over, it would switch itself 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.800 off and the car would go into full performance mode. 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.760 But that also meant the car was emitting more pollution. So, 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.040 in other words, Volkswagen had installed gadgets that allowed its 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:47.320 cars to cheat on official tests, and as you can imagine, 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.960 that's a big no no and it cost the company 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:55.840 dearly HP. After announcing the intent to split its company 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.800 into two businesses, went forward with that plan, and in 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:04.760 the process the company eliminated thirty three thousand jobs. Yikes. 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:09.440 Meg Whitman would remain CEO of the enterprise unit of 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:13.960 the company. The other side, the PC and UH and 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.520 consumer facing approach would go to someone else. Now. Tesla 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.800 introduced the autopilot feature in its vehicles in two thousand fifteen. 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.360 The feature has been the news several times since then 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.640 due to crashes, including crashes with fatalities that happened while 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:35.200 Tesla cars were allegedly in autopilot mode. Now, the company 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.679 has repeatedly stated that this feature is not meant to 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.240 be an autonomous car mode and it requires drivers to 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:46.480 acknowledge as much before they can enact the feature, But 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:51.200 many people, including myself, still criticized the company for calling 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:55.040 the darned thing autopilot in the first place. Now, not 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.560 to go off on too much of a tangent, but 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:00.000 I think the company bears at least a little response 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.199 stability for setting unrealistic expectations with that name, though I 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:08.120 also agree that ultimately the majority of accountability should fall 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.760 on the shoulders of the drivers, not on just Tesla. 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.480 Over on the data security side, one of the big 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:19.920 stories of that prompted more than a little schadenfreude affected 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.359 the site Ashley Madison, which is a sort of dating 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.280 website for people who want to have extramarital affairs. The 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.760 hackers demanded that the site's owner, Avid Life Media, shut 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.040 down the website or else they were going to release 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.080 the data to the world. Well, the site stayed up, 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.359 and the info got leaked onto the dark web, where 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.560 it quickly circulated and people hurriedly did searches to make 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:49.639 sure they weren't showing up on any lists. Two thousand 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:52.800 fifteen was also when so called hoverboards, which is a 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.959 terrible name for what's essentially a variant of a motorized scooter, 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:59.560 started bursting into flames. Do you remember when that happened? 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.560 Airline said you can't take them on board because they 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:07.639 were catching on fire so much. Yikes. Okay, finally let's 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:11.280 move on into twenty six and twenty sixteen, we had 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.760 to say goodbye to something beloved. I am, of course, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.040 referring to the three and a half millimeter headphone jack, 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.879 the wired headphone jack on phones. The iPhone seven got 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:24.400 rid of it, and so did a lot of other smartphones. 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.639 The industry was pushing a move towards bluetooth headphones or 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:31.640 this was even worse, the use of a dongle adapter 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.880 so you could plug your old wired headsets into new 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.879 smartphone devices. And there were a lot of jokes about 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:42.919 the word dongle back in two thousand sixteen, because we 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:48.000 are all very mature. Over at Samsung, there was smoke, 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.719 and where there's smoke, there's fire, you know. Well, in 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:56.760 this case, the Galaxy Note seven, a flagship smartphone from Samsung, 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:01.280 began to have a pretty disastrous year as reports surfaced 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:06.640 of Notes seven handsets exploding into flames. At fault were 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.400 the batteries that prompted a global recall of the device. 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:13.960 Airlines made announcements the passengers with a Note seven would 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:17.160 have to surrender their phone before being allowed on a plane. 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.760 It was really bad press, a huge mess, so Samsung 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.680 recalled them and replaced the faulty batteries with new ones 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.680 that didn't seem to do much better than the original ones. 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.800 There were more reports of accidents flooding the news, and 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:38.480 eventually Samsung was forced to discontinue the handset entirely. Yeah. 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:42.600 In early twenty sixteen, a Google engineer named Anthony Lewandowski 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.560 left the company and he went on to found a 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:49.480 new self driving car company called Auto O T t O. 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:54.520 Lewandowski had previously founded other companies related to autonomous cars 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.200 that had later been acquired by Google. That would actually 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:01.000 lead to some people questioning the ethic behind those moves. 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.199 Some people said that it seemed like he was specifically 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:08.480 creating companies with the intent for Google to acquire them later, 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:11.680 so essentially printing his own money. That was the implication 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.840 that some people had made against him. In late twenty sixteen, 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:19.879 Uber acquired Auto and Lewandowski would move on over to 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.800 Uber and become the head of their attempts to develop 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:26.560 self driving cars. Now. The following year, Google mostly in 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.600 the form of Weymo that was the self driving startup 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.560 under Google's parent company, Alphabet. It didn't really exist when 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.400 Lewandowski was there. The division that would become Weymo existed, 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:38.560 but Weymo as a thing didn't exist till a little 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.080 bit later. But Weymo would allege that Lewandowski had downloaded 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:46.840 nearly ten gigs of confidential information, including trade secrets, from 0:23:46.840 --> 0:23:52.680 Google before he left the company. Lewandowski, when met with 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:56.160 questions about this at a trial, exercised his Fifth Amendment rights. 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:00.000 The Fifth Amendment protects US citizens from having to increase 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:03.480 emanate themselves in a court of law. Uber would subsequently 0:24:03.720 --> 0:24:07.960 fire Lewandowski for not cooperating with the investigation. Google and 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:11.200 Uber would have ultimately settled the lawsuit in two thousand eighteen, 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:14.760 and Lewandowski would go on to found another self driving 0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:19.320 car company. Google would bring another charge against Lewandowski personally 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:23.080 for theft of trade secrets, and after being indicted, the 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:26.520 board of directors of his new startup, called Pronto, announced 0:24:26.520 --> 0:24:29.640 that Lewandowski was no longer CEO and appointed a new 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:33.159