Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It is time for me to pay
Speaker 1: the piper. By that, I mean it's time. That's special
Speaker 1: time where I look back in an episode I recorded
Speaker 1: at the end of last year in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: in which I made predictions for what would happen in
Speaker 1: the world of tech this year in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Traditionally pretty shaky on these predictions, and it turns out
Speaker 1: making a really good prediction as hard. I never wanted
Speaker 1: to do a layup or anything like that, so sometimes
Speaker 1: I try and stick my neck out. But on top
Speaker 1: of that, weird stuff just keeps happening in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff I didn't see coming, and inevitably that
Speaker 1: has a really big impact on everything else. Like that
Speaker 1: pandemic thing a few years back, I didn't see that coming,
Speaker 1: and that shure as heck had a big impact on
Speaker 1: well everything but including the tech sector. Also, sometimes I
Speaker 1: make predictions not based on what I think is going
Speaker 1: to happen, but perhaps on what I hope will happen.
Speaker 1: So first up, the first prediction I made last year
Speaker 1: is that X formerly known as Twitter, would finally get
Speaker 1: it sack together and Elon Musk would step back from
Speaker 1: the service a little bit more, and Linda Yakarino, who's
Speaker 1: the actual CEO of X, would have a chance to
Speaker 1: define a new era at the company, because the perception
Speaker 1: at least is that anything she does as leader is
Speaker 1: immediately undermined and reversed by Elon Musk. But I would
Speaker 1: say that this prediction of mine was a big old
Speaker 1: swing and a miss. Now, in my own prediction, I
Speaker 1: admitted that I did not believe X would actually get better.
Speaker 1: I said that it's quote just going to be a
Speaker 1: bigger mess end quote. Now that is something we can check.
Speaker 1: Is X worse off at the end of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four than it was at the end of twenty twenty three. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, Elon Musk himself is on top of
Speaker 1: the world. He's the richest person on Earth. He's going
Speaker 1: to be part of Trump's administration. Once Trump takes office
Speaker 1: on January twentieth, twenty twenty five, he will be co
Speaker 1: leading a new governmental department on spending I would be
Speaker 1: shocked if he doesn't try to leverage his wealth and
Speaker 1: position to get things to turn around for him. For example,
Speaker 1: I could see him making a real go of punishing
Speaker 1: all those companies that decided to stop advertising on X,
Speaker 1: as if somehow there were some sort of mandate in
Speaker 1: place that requires companies to advertise at specific places. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know how you can make that argument that
Speaker 1: somehow deciding not to advertise on X is illegal. I
Speaker 1: would imagine it's a First Amendment issue. You know, companies
Speaker 1: have the right to advertise with whomever they want or
Speaker 1: not advertise. But what do I know. I'm not a
Speaker 1: constitutional expert. We also don't know if he will attempt
Speaker 1: to push through his controversial compensation package over at Tesla.
Speaker 1: That's something that's been denied him by a court in
Speaker 1: the past, but I can imagine him using his connections
Speaker 1: to kind of yeah, that reversed. We'll see. But how
Speaker 1: is X doing right now? Well, since X is a
Speaker 1: private company again once Elon purchased it, we don't have
Speaker 1: SEC filings that we can look at, right They're not
Speaker 1: obligated to file with the SEC, so analysts have had
Speaker 1: to make some guesses about this stuff, but they've been
Speaker 1: saying this year that X is heading toward another yearly loss.
Speaker 1: Fidelity estimates that the current value of X is somewhere
Speaker 1: around nine point four billion dollars. Now that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money, but do keep in mind that US paid
Speaker 1: forty four billion dollars for Twitter, so yikes. Performance Marketing
Speaker 1: World predicts that X will bring in around two billion
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue this year, and that's actually down from
Speaker 1: two point two billion dollars last year and four point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars in twenty twenty two. So you could
Speaker 1: argue X is a bigger mess than it was last year,
Speaker 1: but maybe not that much bigger. It's just still in decline.
Speaker 1: There were also stories of hundreds of thousands, or even
Speaker 1: millions of users ditching X for other platforms like blue
Speaker 1: Sky and Threads Plus. X changed how blocking users works
Speaker 1: late this past year. So it used to be that
Speaker 1: if you were on Twitter and you blocked somebody, that
Speaker 1: person would no longer be able to see your posts.
Speaker 1: It would be as if you had disappeared from Twitter
Speaker 1: to that person. Today, because of the changes that musks
Speaker 1: Ex has made, the blocked person can continue to see
Speaker 1: what you post. They just can't interact with it, at
Speaker 1: least not with the tools that are built into X.
Speaker 1: You can still directly do something like copy and paste
Speaker 1: someone's post and then post your own version of it
Speaker 1: and respond to it that way if you wanted to. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sad to report X did not transform into a
Speaker 1: decent platform this past year. I'm still not really sure
Speaker 1: what Yakarino is actually doing at this point. You don't
Speaker 1: see her mentioned in the news that much like there
Speaker 1: are articles about her work at X, but Elon Musk
Speaker 1: just dominates the news when it comes to stories about
Speaker 1: X and his other companies, which tells you a lot
Speaker 1: like it may not be that Elon Musk is essentially
Speaker 1: still controlling the company from behind Yakarino. It may not
Speaker 1: be the case, but it appears to be that case
Speaker 1: because of the way it's reported, and certainly the way
Speaker 1: that X has performed and the way Elon behaves it
Speaker 1: all seems to be aligned. But again, I don't know
Speaker 1: the truth of it now. My next prediction was definitely
Speaker 1: a GIMMI. I said that quote, We're going to see
Speaker 1: a lot more AI integration end quote, and we sure
Speaker 1: did see an awful lot of AI integration. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that there would be a lot of pressure on businesses
Speaker 1: to integrate AI into their operations, even if they don't
Speaker 1: have a fully thought out strategy as to how they
Speaker 1: should do that, that the whole fear of missing out
Speaker 1: would drive a lot of corporate implementations of AI, similar
Speaker 1: to what we saw when the metaverse was first being
Speaker 1: talked about, or NFTs emerged out of obscurity. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind NFTs had been around for a bit before the
Speaker 1: world went bonkers about them for a little less than
Speaker 1: a year. I said that I think there was an
Speaker 1: AI bubble and that it would likely collapse, possibly before
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty four. That has not happened.
Speaker 1: We have not had a total bubble collapse, or if
Speaker 1: it is happening, it's a slow enough collapse that's not
Speaker 1: been noteworthy yet. There have been several think pieces about
Speaker 1: the possibility of AI advancements kind of slowing down a
Speaker 1: bit like plateauing, particularly in the field of generative AI,
Speaker 1: that we might be hitting the limits of what large
Speaker 1: language models can do, and more folks are seeing AI
Speaker 1: as something that's interesting and potentially useful, but not quite
Speaker 1: there yet, that a lot of the hoopla around AI
Speaker 1: is perhaps ahead of its time, and that we're seeing
Speaker 1: progress in the field slow down a bit. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's entirely accurate. That just might be the
Speaker 1: perception of the industry. Certainly, we're seeing plenty of investors
Speaker 1: continue to pour truckloads of money into AI research and development.
Speaker 1: Open AI received more than six billion dollars and investments
Speaker 1: late this year. That helps stave off the situation in
Speaker 1: which the company would spend itself out of business because
Speaker 1: AI is also wicked expensive. I did warn in the
Speaker 1: Predictions episode that if the bubble burst, that would hurt
Speaker 1: AI across the board, and by that I meant if
Speaker 1: there's a collapse or a market adjustment, if you prefer
Speaker 1: those words, the investors might become a little more conservative
Speaker 1: with their investments, and the AI field in general would
Speaker 1: find it harder to get money to do research needed
Speaker 1: to advance the field. Because, keep in mind, I've said
Speaker 1: it over and over again, generative AI is not the
Speaker 1: only kind of AI out there. It is a kind
Speaker 1: of AI. But the fear is that if generative AI
Speaker 1: reaches a point where businesses say this is interesting, but
Speaker 1: it's just not where we need it to be. Like
Speaker 1: our expectations were at one level and reality is at
Speaker 1: a different level, and the rug gets pulled out from
Speaker 1: under generative AI. Figuratively speaking, the fear is that investors
Speaker 1: would shy away from any AI oriented endeavor, not just
Speaker 1: the generative AI. And we've seen this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: happen before. I always think back to the first VR
Speaker 1: bubble in the nineteen nineties, but so far that has
Speaker 1: not happened, and it may not happen. According to Ifosa
Speaker 1: Udenwin of tech Radar, while the hype might be dying
Speaker 1: down a bit around artificial intelligence, investments have not slacked
Speaker 1: off so far, so that's good news for all the
Speaker 1: AI companies out there. I also mentioned that we would
Speaker 1: see a lot more legislators and regulators attempt to wrap
Speaker 1: their heads around AI, but we would not get very
Speaker 1: many meaningful laws or regulations out of it by the
Speaker 1: end of the year. And hey, here in the United States,
Speaker 1: I was one hundred percent right. There is no comprehensive
Speaker 1: federal legislation regarding artificial intelligence here in the United States.
Speaker 1: There are some individual state laws across our union that
Speaker 1: do handle AI. But that just means there's no uniform
Speaker 1: set of rules in the country that companies have to
Speaker 1: abide by, which actually makes it really darn challenging if
Speaker 1: you are running an AI company. I mean, you might
Speaker 1: end up being perfectly in line with the laws of
Speaker 1: say Massachusetts, but it turns out those laws are not
Speaker 1: compatible with the laws in I don't know, Arizona, and
Speaker 1: so it literally becomes impossible to do business in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way across the country if that's the case, because
Speaker 1: you're never going to find a way to thread all
Speaker 1: of those needles. They're just not going to line up properly.
Speaker 1: So there is a real need for federal rules and
Speaker 1: laws around AI. It will be interesting to see where
Speaker 1: laws and regulations around AI develop in the near future.
Speaker 1: With President Elect Trump back in office starting January twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Oddly enough, I actually briefly worked with
Speaker 1: his pick for AI policy advisor, shreerram Now. I say
Speaker 1: briefly because our working relationship only lasted a few months,
Speaker 1: but our contact with each other was pretty limited in
Speaker 1: that time as well. However, it's wild to me that
Speaker 1: my path crossed with someone who ends up being the
Speaker 1: Advisor to the President on an issue. It's also a
Speaker 1: little strange because last I heard, he had relocated to London,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand, that's where he still is.
Speaker 1: So for the US advisor to AI policy to be
Speaker 1: living in London now, grant he is an American citizen,
Speaker 1: but he's living in London, it's just kind of weird. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I know Shreroan is very pro AI. He's also very
Speaker 1: pro Elon Musk, So I suspect for the next few
Speaker 1: years we're not going to see any really restrictive laws
Speaker 1: around AI's development or deployment, assuming that his vision for
Speaker 1: how AI should develop moves forward. So I think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that my AI predictions for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four turned out to be just how I anticipated. Whether
Speaker 1: that changes next year will have to see. I think
Speaker 1: there's a good chance we will not get a bubble
Speaker 1: bursting situation considering how favorable the US government will likely
Speaker 1: be to the sector. So, in other words, maybe there
Speaker 1: would be a bubble burst if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: fact that you're going to have a very pro AI
Speaker 1: push from the government, is my guest. I mean, with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and with folks like Shum in charge of
Speaker 1: advising the president. It would shock me if the government
Speaker 1: became a little more critical or cautious around AI. But
Speaker 1: who knows, certainly not me. I also said that there
Speaker 1: would be a lot of misinformation campaigns last year or
Speaker 1: this past year because the United States was in an
Speaker 1: election cycle, and that a lot of those misinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: would be augmented or entirely powered by AI. And again
Speaker 1: that was a gimme. We've been seeing an increase in
Speaker 1: misinformation and disinformation campaign out of places like China and Russia,
Speaker 1: primarily Russia, if we're being honest, but also other regions
Speaker 1: of the world, and they aim to disrupt the normal
Speaker 1: democratic process and sow seeds of doubt and confusion, and
Speaker 1: generally either try to discourage people from participating in the
Speaker 1: democratic process at all, which a lot of that happened
Speaker 1: this past cycle, or trying to sway people to support
Speaker 1: particular candidates or policies that ultimately align with say Russia's
Speaker 1: own policies and philosophies, or the very least do not
Speaker 1: stand to be an impediment to the disruptor. Now, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that we'd likely see calls to put pressure on
Speaker 1: various online platforms out there to identify and remove cases
Speaker 1: of misinformation, which did happen a lot, but that the
Speaker 1: real issue that stopping the campaigns in the first place,
Speaker 1: would largely be ignored because it turns out it's very
Speaker 1: hard to enforce those kinds of rules because the people
Speaker 1: who are breaking them live in other countries. So this
Speaker 1: comes down to a shoot the messenger kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But then a lot of these platforms have been fairly
Speaker 1: laxed when it comes to acting quickly with regard to
Speaker 1: misinformation campaigns. One perspective on disinformation campaigns that you can
Speaker 1: read up on is Darryl M. West's piece on Brookings.
Speaker 1: It's titled how Disinformation to Find the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: election Narrative. Check that out if you have a few minutes.
Speaker 1: It's a great piece. Okay, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors. When we come back
Speaker 1: more predictions and how I did. We're back, and my
Speaker 1: next prediction is that we would see even more opposition
Speaker 1: to TikTok here in the United States, and golly, we
Speaker 1: sure did. Congress passed a bill this year that says
Speaker 1: TikTok's parent company, Byte Dance, which is located in China,
Speaker 1: must divest itself of TikTok, or else the app would
Speaker 1: be banned in the United States. And that bill passed
Speaker 1: into law. President Biden signed it into law, and now
Speaker 1: Byte Dance has a deadline of January nineteenth, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five to divest itself of the company or face this
Speaker 1: ban in the US. Currently, Byte Dance and TikTok are
Speaker 1: challenging the new law, or at least trying to get
Speaker 1: the deadline extended so that President elect Trump can weigh in,
Speaker 1: because again, Trump doesn't come into office until January twentieth,
Speaker 1: one day after the ban is supposed to take place.
Speaker 1: So far, there's been very little movement from the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court that would indicate that they will push back the deadline.
Speaker 1: But we'll see. Maybe by the time you hear this
Speaker 1: that will have changed. I don't think anything is off
Speaker 1: the table at this point anyway. In my prediction, I
Speaker 1: said what I always say that I'm not a fan
Speaker 1: of TikTok, but I think going after TikTok is a
Speaker 1: myopic move that doesn't really address the underlying problem. If
Speaker 1: you're concerned about China, siphoning data from the US. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of ways the country is doing that without
Speaker 1: using an app like TikTok. I mean, China's got infiltrated
Speaker 1: systems like in the United States, a lot of our
Speaker 1: our infrastructure has been infiltrated by Chinese espionage agents over
Speaker 1: the course of years. They didn't use TikTok to do it,
Speaker 1: So that problem's there. There are data brokers out there
Speaker 1: that you can buy information from that have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with TikTok. And as far as propaganda goes, there
Speaker 1: are lots of other platforms out there that have served
Speaker 1: very well as being a way to get propaganda in
Speaker 1: front of US viewers, like you know, things like Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram have done that, or x for that matter.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is that getting rid of TikTok
Speaker 1: doesn't actually address the underlying problem. It's like a symptom
Speaker 1: of a disease. It's not dealing with the actual disease.
Speaker 1: So I think lawmakers are going to have a lot
Speaker 1: to answer for if they ban TikTok and suddenly China
Speaker 1: is not magically cut out from all that information and
Speaker 1: propaganda stuff. But what do I know, Maybe they won't
Speaker 1: face any consequences at all, apart from all the young
Speaker 1: people being really ticked off that the government has banned TikTok.
Speaker 1: As for Trump, he's the one who got this started.
Speaker 1: He's the one who argued that we should ban TikTok
Speaker 1: years ago, back in like twenty twenty. He even signed
Speaker 1: an executive order to that effect. But in subsequent years
Speaker 1: he has reversed his position for reasons I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go into here, or at least his reasons that
Speaker 1: he stated is that young people seem to really like
Speaker 1: the platform, which doesn't seem like it's an actual reason
Speaker 1: young people like it, so why should we get rid
Speaker 1: of it? That doesn't make any sense at all. What
Speaker 1: might make more sense is that someone who has invested
Speaker 1: literally billions of dollars in companies, including stuff like ByteDance,
Speaker 1: also happened to be a big campaign contributor to Trump.
Speaker 1: But hey, maybe I'm just way off base. My next
Speaker 1: prediction was that the Apple Vision Pro, the mixed reality
Speaker 1: headset from Apple, would be a commercial failure in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. It had not yet launched in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three when I made these predictions, and I said, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be the runaway success that
Speaker 1: it needs to be, and I'm pretty much right on
Speaker 1: about that. The vision Pro headset cost thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars upon launch, crazy expensive. Moreover, there were a limited
Speaker 1: number of experiences and applications for the technology, so it
Speaker 1: was a really huge request to get customers to dole
Speaker 1: out thirty five hundred dollars for something that only had
Speaker 1: limited applicability. In June, Jonathan Reichenthall of Forbes had an
Speaker 1: article that's titled Apple's Vision Pro is amazing, but nobody
Speaker 1: wants one. So In that piece, he said that Apple's
Speaker 1: target for the year was to sell around eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand units by the end of twenty twenty four. However,
Speaker 1: by midyear, Apple had adjusted that to four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand units. That's a big wolf, you know, going
Speaker 1: down to a little more than than half of what
Speaker 1: you had originally anticipated. That's tough. As Reichenthall pointed out,
Speaker 1: it's a rough comparison to the iPad, which sold seventy
Speaker 1: three million units in its first year. What a huge contrast.
Speaker 1: There are rumors that Apple will stop offering the Vision
Speaker 1: Pro entirely and instead focus on a slimmed down model
Speaker 1: that would cost somewhere in the one thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollar neighborhood in the new year. That might help the
Speaker 1: technology gained subtraction, though I imagine the people who tried
Speaker 1: out the vision Pro model may end up being disappointed
Speaker 1: that some of their favorite features are not there in
Speaker 1: the slimmed down version. Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly
Speaker 1: stated that the Vision Pro is not and was never
Speaker 1: intended to be a mass market product. It was rather
Speaker 1: an early adopter product, and I believe him. I think
Speaker 1: that's true. But I think it's also true that Apple
Speaker 1: nearly had its expectations on how many units it would
Speaker 1: sell then, and that's a discouraging message. Like if you
Speaker 1: are in Apple and you're told, hey, we were hoping
Speaker 1: to sell eight hundred thousand units, but now we're marking
Speaker 1: it down to four hundred and fifty thousand, that's not
Speaker 1: great news. Like that's telling you, Okay, well, the demand
Speaker 1: for this particular technology is not as high as what
Speaker 1: we had hoped, and the price tag is probably too
Speaker 1: high for more people to jump on board. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that Apple's journey into mixed reality is over
Speaker 1: just yet. Okay, next up, we have predictions about quantum computing.
Speaker 1: I said quantum computing was going to be much bigger
Speaker 1: news in twenty twenty four, But considering all that did
Speaker 1: happen in twenty twenty four and how much stuff took
Speaker 1: up space in the news cycle, I think calling it
Speaker 1: big news in the sense of a lot of people
Speaker 1: hearing about quantum computing that was a bit off. That's
Speaker 1: not to say there weren't really important advancements and big
Speaker 1: news within the quantum computing world this past year. There
Speaker 1: certainly were. I just don't think it broke through to
Speaker 1: the headlines for a lot of other people outside the
Speaker 1: field to really learn about it. So, for example, recently
Speaker 1: Google announced a new quantum chip called Willow, and the
Speaker 1: hope is that this will allow for more real world
Speaker 1: applications of quantum computing in the near future. So quantum
Speaker 1: computing has been a revolutionary field of research, but the
Speaker 1: practical applications have been limited, partly because of the power
Speaker 1: limitations of quantum computing, because it's just hard to build
Speaker 1: a really powerful one. Quantum computers are extremely delicate, if
Speaker 1: you like to think of it, that way, like the
Speaker 1: quantum nature can collapse easily if not handled properly. On
Speaker 1: top of that, the algorithms you need to build, the
Speaker 1: programs you need to build to run on quantum computers
Speaker 1: are really complicated. So we've had a lot of progress
Speaker 1: on the hardware front, and often the progress on the
Speaker 1: software side is not mentioned nearly as frequently. But the
Speaker 1: potential for quantum computing is absolutely incredible. Quantum computing has
Speaker 1: the potential to tackle certain subsets of computational problems in
Speaker 1: a fraction of a fraction of the amount of time
Speaker 1: it takes a classical computer to do it. Like, there's
Speaker 1: some computational problems that are so difficult that a classical
Speaker 1: computer could take billions or trillions of years before it
Speaker 1: could complete it, whereas a quantum computer of sufficient power
Speaker 1: and with the right algorithm could potentially solve it in
Speaker 1: just a few minutes. I like the analogy that Tam Hallabeek,
Speaker 1: who is a strategist with the company Digi Sert, has said.
Speaker 1: He says, imagine that you have a typical maze puzzle.
Speaker 1: Now your classical computer will try to solve this puzzle
Speaker 1: by taking each path in turn, like all right, Well,
Speaker 1: let me follow this path. Okay, that led to a
Speaker 1: dead end. So let me now follow this path that
Speaker 1: led to a dead end. Let me follow this path,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Now imagine if the computer were
Speaker 1: able to take every path at the same time and
Speaker 1: then come back with the answer as to which path
Speaker 1: was the best one. That speeds up the solution considerably.
Speaker 1: And that's how quantum computers work from a very abstract level. So,
Speaker 1: in compaired with the right algorithms and you have sufficient
Speaker 1: cubits or quantum bits in your quantum computer, the computer
Speaker 1: could potentially make previously safe encryption methods a breeze to decrypt.
Speaker 1: That's because the quantum computer, assuming it's powerful enough and
Speaker 1: the algorithm works, can solve for all potential pathways that
Speaker 1: led to the encryption at the same time and then
Speaker 1: reverse it. So assuming you've got the right program to
Speaker 1: run with the right quantum computer, decrypting stuff would be
Speaker 1: a breeze. That also means that potentially you could tackle
Speaker 1: the tough challenge of bitcoin mining and break proof of
Speaker 1: work systems, which is what bitcoin is. It's a proof
Speaker 1: of work system, So a proof of work cryptocurrency system
Speaker 1: essentially creates a really tough math problem for computers to solve.
Speaker 1: And this is the mining part of bitcoin mining. So
Speaker 1: you've got a block of transactions bitcoin transactions, and they
Speaker 1: need to be verified. So the verification process involves solving
Speaker 1: a really challenging math problem, or kind of guessing at
Speaker 1: the solution of a math problem. So the way this
Speaker 1: typically works with bitcoin is you have a really huge number.
Speaker 1: This really huge number was generated by multiplying two other
Speaker 1: really huge prime numbers together. So in order to solve
Speaker 1: the problem, you have to come up with what those
Speaker 1: two prime numbers were. Your classical computer is the way
Speaker 1: they do this as they start going through every potential
Speaker 1: prime number and saying, hey, is this it? Hey? Is
Speaker 1: this it? Hey? Is this it? Until they get to
Speaker 1: the right one. Whereas a quantum computer could solve for
Speaker 1: all the potential prime number factors that are used to
Speaker 1: create this number and find the right pair much faster
Speaker 1: in theory, which could be an incredible disrupt for bitcoin mining.
Speaker 1: Right now, you have these massive computer networks that are
Speaker 1: running in places like defunct power plants that are just
Speaker 1: churning and churning and churning all these numbers trying to
Speaker 1: be the first one to get to the correct one
Speaker 1: in order to mine the next block of bitcoin. So
Speaker 1: if you were able to do this in a fraction
Speaker 1: of the amount of time, you would completely upset that
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem, which would not necessarily be a bad thing
Speaker 1: because these computer networks are often drawing huge amounts of
Speaker 1: electricity from fossil fuel sources, so they can have a
Speaker 1: big impact on climate and other issues like pollution and
Speaker 1: things like that. So being able to do so much
Speaker 1: faster with much less power would be a game changer,
Speaker 1: but it would totally upset the way bitcoin works. Right now, however,
Speaker 1: we are years away from that becoming a thing because
Speaker 1: it's all theoretical. You need to have the quantum computer
Speaker 1: be powerful enough, and as I said, like creating a
Speaker 1: quantum computer that has sufficient number of cubits to do
Speaker 1: these kind of things is a non trivial challenge, and
Speaker 1: you need the right algorithm to be able to go
Speaker 1: about this as well, and that's just not something that
Speaker 1: we have access to and probably won't for several years,
Speaker 1: maybe many years. It may be quite some time before
Speaker 1: this is a reality, but it's a possibility. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: cryptography world has been hard at work designing new methods
Speaker 1: that will confound quantum computers so that stuff like security
Speaker 1: and privacy can still be a thing in a post
Speaker 1: traditional encryption world. So that's good because you would hate
Speaker 1: to find out, like you'd wake up one morning and
Speaker 1: just say, hey, no more secrets, because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: this quantum computer can decrypt anything that's been encrypted. Ever,
Speaker 1: that would be terrifying because think of all the stuff
Speaker 1: out there. It could be your personal finances, it could
Speaker 1: be medical records, it could be state secrets, it could
Speaker 1: be all sorts of stuff, and being able to suddenly
Speaker 1: get access to all of that would be pretty terrifying.
Speaker 1: But Yeah, while there were impressive developments in quantum computing
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, I think those achievements were largely
Speaker 1: overshadowed by all the other chaotic stuff on fire going
Speaker 1: on around the world this past year. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to say I was not right about this one, only
Speaker 1: because I don't think we saw enough news about quantum
Speaker 1: computing hit the mainstream to justify a check mark for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: one prediction I did not make because at the time
Speaker 1: I thought it was a sure thing was that Nintendo
Speaker 1: would announce its next console before the end of the year.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not going to predict that that's definitely
Speaker 1: going to happen. Nintendo will say it, so there's not
Speaker 1: even a prediction here, and that was a big old
Speaker 1: whoop see because that did not happen. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of rumors and leaks about the next Nintendo console.
Speaker 1: Most of those are calling it the Switch to and
Speaker 1: apparently some leaked images back that up, saying that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what Nintendo's calling it too, and it suggests that
Speaker 1: it'll just be an upgrade to the Switch, but it'll
Speaker 1: have some serious new features in it, such as potentially
Speaker 1: the ability to create four K visuals when docked with
Speaker 1: the television. That's not announced, so maybe it'll happen. We
Speaker 1: are still waiting on that official announcement, which Nintendo said
Speaker 1: is going to happen before the end of its current
Speaker 1: fiscal year. Nintendo's fiscal years end in March and then
Speaker 1: the new one starts in April, so it's possible we
Speaker 1: won't hear anything until Spring twenty twenty five, or who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe Nintendo has announced something between when I recorded this
Speaker 1: on December twenty third, and when you hear it, that
Speaker 1: would be fun. You know what's also fun If we
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsors, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. We're back. And you know another thing I
Speaker 1: said I would not bother making a prediction about was
Speaker 1: that electric vehicles would have a really big year in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And the reason why I said that
Speaker 1: was because so many different parts of the world have
Speaker 1: been passing laws that are looking into phasing out internal
Speaker 1: combustion engines over the next few years. But then Trump
Speaker 1: won the election this year and he is not that
Speaker 1: keen on electric vehicles. He seems to be far more
Speaker 1: interested in fossil fuels for some reason. Whether Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: presence on Trump's team will change that, at least for Tesla,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's possible that we will actually
Speaker 1: see electric vehicle support in the United States lag behind
Speaker 1: other parts of the world for the next few years now.
Speaker 1: I also predicted another chaotic year for streaming services in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. I mentioned that the streaming business is
Speaker 1: a really tough one or to make a profit, right,
Speaker 1: you're competing for customers, so you've got all these other
Speaker 1: competitors on the market. That means you have to market
Speaker 1: aggressively to your customers or your potential customers, and you
Speaker 1: have to pour a lot of money into original content
Speaker 1: or purchase lots of exclusive media libraries or both. That's
Speaker 1: really expensive, so your operating costs are incredibly high. You
Speaker 1: can't charge too much for your service or else no
Speaker 1: one's going to sign up for it. And you need
Speaker 1: to get to a certain number of subscribers in order
Speaker 1: for it to be sustainable, and your revenue streams tend
Speaker 1: to be pretty limited. Usually we're talking about subscriptions and
Speaker 1: maybe advertising, right you might get some ad support in
Speaker 1: there too, And consumers are absolutely flooded with different options.
Speaker 1: I mean you've got your netflixes, your Hulus, your Amazon Primes,
Speaker 1: your Maxes, your Disney pluses, your Paramount pluses, your Peacocks,
Speaker 1: et cetera, the Apple TV pluses. I mean, there's so many.
Speaker 1: There was some consolidation this year, but mostly in the
Speaker 1: form of companies entering into partnerships to offer bundled services,
Speaker 1: where for a flat subscription fee you get access to
Speaker 1: multiple services. So like with Disney Plus, it's Disney Plus,
Speaker 1: ESPN Plus and Hulu, right, I have the Disney Plus
Speaker 1: and Hulu one. I didn't bother with ESPN because there
Speaker 1: are only two sports that I really follow, and I
Speaker 1: don't even follow them. There are only two sports that
Speaker 1: I actually like to see, and only then if I'm
Speaker 1: there in person, and those are baseball and hockey, and
Speaker 1: otherwise I just don't have any interests, so I don't
Speaker 1: bother subscribing to ESPN. But yeah, there wasn't that many
Speaker 1: cases of companies going like belly up or getting out
Speaker 1: of streaming entirely in this past year. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of talks of mergers and acquisitions that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: and lots of movement that mostly was involved with shuffling
Speaker 1: things around, so things didn't really get upset too much.
Speaker 1: So I don't think things got as messy as I
Speaker 1: had anticipated last year. There's still lots of stories about
Speaker 1: companies struggling to find a path toward profitability, so that's
Speaker 1: still a thing. But in a large part, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four I feel has been a year of treading water
Speaker 1: in the streaming media space. Maybe we'll see it change
Speaker 1: more in the next couple of years, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like this wasn't as chaotic as I was anticipating,
Speaker 1: all right. Also, last year I predicted that Google would
Speaker 1: come out of the anti trust case more or less okay.
Speaker 1: I thought that they wouldn't get away scott free. I
Speaker 1: thought they would be found guilty of engaging in anti
Speaker 1: competitive behaviors, And in fact they did. A court did
Speaker 1: find Google guilty of practicing anti competitive policies. But I
Speaker 1: thought Google wouldn't be punished too hard. It would kind
Speaker 1: of get the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.
Speaker 1: It might get a really big fine, but that's not
Speaker 1: nearly as intense as, say, being forced to break up. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't know what's actually going to happen with Google's
Speaker 1: anti trust case. Like it has been found. The company's
Speaker 1: been found guilty of practicing this anti trust behaviors, but
Speaker 1: a judge next year will actually decide what the punishment
Speaker 1: is going to be. So the question of what happens
Speaker 1: to Google technically remains unanswered. The Department of Justice right
Speaker 1: now has sent a list of suggestions that include Google
Speaker 1: having to sell off its Chrome business, that's the browser.
Speaker 1: But you know, Google obviously has protested that saying no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fix any problems.
Speaker 1: That's not the issue it any way. And plus you
Speaker 1: will ruin the world economy if you do this, among
Speaker 1: other things. I am paraphrasing, and I'm being a little
Speaker 1: facetious here, So that's not exactly what Google's saying. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of how I walk away feeling about it.
Speaker 1: But we don't know what's going to actually happen with
Speaker 1: this judge next year. It could be that the judge
Speaker 1: does command Google to sell off some of its businesses.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see, but we don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the Department of Justice itself is going
Speaker 1: to be different once Trump takes office, and so there's
Speaker 1: some question as to whether or not the DOJ will
Speaker 1: back off a bit once that happens. However, Trump has
Speaker 1: also had a really contentious relationship with big tech companies,
Speaker 1: particularly Google, but also some other ones as well, and
Speaker 1: he seems to feel like there's a perceived bias in
Speaker 1: these different platforms against him like him personally, and at
Speaker 1: least that seems to be the case. Again, this is
Speaker 1: all me kind of drawing conclusions based on what I
Speaker 1: have read and what I've seen, But yeah, there seems
Speaker 1: to be at least some speculation that the DOJ will
Speaker 1: still be going after Google, it just may not be
Speaker 1: at the same level. Like the anti competitive stuff. May
Speaker 1: be one of the arguments the DOJ makes against big tech,
Speaker 1: but not because of a renewed interest in trust breaking
Speaker 1: in the government, but rather it's a tactic that might
Speaker 1: work in order to punish companies that have been perceived
Speaker 1: to be anti Trump. We'll see that that might be
Speaker 1: an unfair assessment. I don't want to just be hardheaded
Speaker 1: and say this is definitely the way it is. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know, but uh yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: Google is going to be forced to sell anything off.
Speaker 1: I think that my prediction from twenty twenty three is
Speaker 1: going to hold for twenty twenty five. But we'll see.
Speaker 1: I don't you know, I could be wrong. I also
Speaker 1: said that startups would find it harder to get funding
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, which is kind of true. Crunch
Speaker 1: Base found that the big five tech companies, which are Meta, Amazon, Apple, Google,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft, invested at least a million dollars into one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty nine different startups this year. I was like,
Speaker 1: I mean a million apiece right, like saying a million
Speaker 1: dollars or more into one hundred forty nine startups. That's
Speaker 1: actually slightly up from twenty twenty three. Back that year,
Speaker 1: it was just one hundred and thirty one startups. However,
Speaker 1: even with one hundred and forty nine, that's still the
Speaker 1: second lowest number in the last five years for these
Speaker 1: companies to invest in. So I would say it wasn't
Speaker 1: harder than twenty twenty three, at least by going by
Speaker 1: what the Big five were doing, But it wasn't that
Speaker 1: much easier either. Joe Procopio of ink as An Incorporated,
Speaker 1: not as in Tattoos wrote a piece that's titled The
Speaker 1: Future of Starting a Business Looks drastically Different in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and it goes over some of the challenges
Speaker 1: that startups face these days, and it mentions that a
Speaker 1: lot of investors are far more cautious about pouring money
Speaker 1: into companies than they used to be. AI has been
Speaker 1: going fairly strong, though Procopia argues that expectations and reality
Speaker 1: aren't exactly matching up, and that investors may find themselves
Speaker 1: reluctant to risk money in those ventures before too long.
Speaker 1: So I think This is sort of a partial correct
Speaker 1: answer for yours. Truly, It's not like a solid win,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I was more right than wrong. Oh.
Speaker 1: I also predicted that we would see a slow down
Speaker 1: in podcasting, with fewer new shows premiering in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: particularly at the network level. I got that wrong. That's
Speaker 1: just flat wrong. Podcasting has been year over year at increase,
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, whether that's a number
Speaker 1: of listeners, number of shows, number of new shows, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Video podcasting has also made a huge impact.
Speaker 1: There are more video podcasts out there. That has changed things,
Speaker 1: not just in how podcasts are produced, but also how
Speaker 1: they're monetized. Because if you're hosting your video podcast on
Speaker 1: something like YouTube, well then you're kind of beholden to
Speaker 1: YouTube's monetization approach unless you're doing like sponsored episodes or
Speaker 1: something that's slightly different, right, But if you're doing ad
Speaker 1: supported shows, then you don't have nearly the same level
Speaker 1: of control as you would on other platforms. But YouTube
Speaker 1: is kind of the place for online video for the
Speaker 1: most part. So yeah, things did not slow down the
Speaker 1: way I anticipated. I thought we would enter into kind
Speaker 1: of a more conservative year for new shows, simply because
Speaker 1: the shows that exist they're all bad for listeners. And
Speaker 1: it's not a zero sum game. Lots of people listen
Speaker 1: to lots of different shows, but it's hard, it's very challenging,
Speaker 1: and you spend a lot of money developing these shows,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's like a prestige show, if it's a
Speaker 1: show that has recognizable names on it, you're probably spending
Speaker 1: a guaranteed amount of money just to make the show,
Speaker 1: and whether that show actually makes its money back or not,
Speaker 1: that's a totally different thing. And if you're competing against
Speaker 1: everybody else, My thought was that we would see companies
Speaker 1: kind of ease off a little bit on that and
Speaker 1: try and not spend quite so much money in development.
Speaker 1: But that's not been the case. It has continued to
Speaker 1: be very competitive, with big companies spending lots of money
Speaker 1: to get different shows on their networks or developed on
Speaker 1: their networks. So I was wrong about that. I will say, however,
Speaker 1: that both twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two in fact saw a huge dip from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty twenty one, but that shouldn't be a surprise,
Speaker 1: right twenty twenty, everybody was stuck at home, so lots
Speaker 1: of people turned to making podcasts because it was one
Speaker 1: way to try and stay sane and stay busy. For
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the entertainment industry, it was
Speaker 1: a way to stay creative, to stay in front of fans,
Speaker 1: to stay busy when the rest of the industry was
Speaker 1: shut down due to COVID. So, yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: huge dip after that, but that's no surprise, right that
Speaker 1: was bound to happen, just like all the other boom
Speaker 1: moments we saw out of COVID kind of went bust
Speaker 1: after a couple of years. Thus we have really sad
Speaker 1: stories about like massive layoffs in the tech sector and
Speaker 1: in other industries as well. But yeah, that's it. That's
Speaker 1: how I did in my predictions for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I actually think I did better this year than i'd
Speaker 1: most years. I think that I was pretty on track
Speaker 1: for a lot of these, with the exception of notable
Speaker 1: outliers like X getting its act together, but again that
Speaker 1: was more aspirational than based in reality. I hope all
Speaker 1: of you out there have had an amazing twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I hope you have an even better twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: I am not making predictions about twenty twenty five this year, because,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure most of you know, I am stepping
Speaker 1: down from Tech Stuff on January tenth. You'll have a
Speaker 1: brand new episode with your brand new hosts, whom you'll
Speaker 1: going to meet very soon, and that will be exciting.
Speaker 1: It'll be an all new year of tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: really eager to listen to that and to hear what happens.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be an amazing year for
Speaker 1: the show and for all of you listeners out there.
Speaker 1: And I'll miss doing this. I got a couple more
Speaker 1: in me before I head off into the sunset. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been a real treat. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: doing sixteen and a half years. You figure I'm gonna
Speaker 1: miss it. But in the meantime, you'all take care of yourselves,
Speaker 1: hold your loved ones close, have the happiest of New years,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.