Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works in I Love all Things Tech, and
Speaker 1: we are continuing our catch up episodes with Microsoft from
Speaker 1: the listener Rob who asked that we follow up, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what the company has been
Speaker 1: doing since. One thing I did not talk about in
Speaker 1: the last episode was Microsoft's work in mixed reality. Mixed
Speaker 1: reality is sort of a broad category of technologies that
Speaker 1: merge the real world and the digital world in various ways,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like a spectrum. So if you
Speaker 1: have a system that mostly relies on the real world
Speaker 1: and it has a very light touch with digital information,
Speaker 1: we would call that more of an augmented reality solution.
Speaker 1: You're augmenting the experience of being in the real world
Speaker 1: with some digital information. If you have one where most
Speaker 1: of the information a user will encounter comes from a computer,
Speaker 1: that would be virtual reality. The term mixed reality started
Speaker 1: to pop up when it became clear that there's a
Speaker 1: gradient between these extremes, and sometimes it's hard to classify
Speaker 1: a particular piece of technology as being augmented versus virtual
Speaker 1: or anything else, so we use mixed reality instead. Anyway.
Speaker 1: We first heard about Microsoft's work in this field in
Speaker 1: twenty with the introduction of the Windows Holographic later known
Speaker 1: as the Windows Mixed Reality and the Hollow Lens. This
Speaker 1: had the code name of Project Baraboo back when it
Speaker 1: was in development, and a lead developer on the technology
Speaker 1: was a guy named Alex Kipman, who had first proposed
Speaker 1: ideas that would become intrinsic in the Hollow Lens platform
Speaker 1: way back in two thousand seven or so. He worked
Speaker 1: on the technology that would become the Connect. And while
Speaker 1: the Connect, which was an Xbox peripheral, never really cut
Speaker 1: on in a big way with gamers, the technology itself
Speaker 1: was really impressive. It could sense depth through its camera systems,
Speaker 1: one of which was an infrared camera. It had this
Speaker 1: projector that would shoot out infrared dots, and by the
Speaker 1: deformation of the the UH infrared spectrum, like seeing how
Speaker 1: close or far away it was, it could determine how
Speaker 1: how deep the scene was and thus if you started
Speaker 1: walking toward it, then the Connect would detect that you
Speaker 1: were actually approaching it. So it used this to uh
Speaker 1: learn about just your controls, were to implement just your
Speaker 1: control so you would program just your controls in your game,
Speaker 1: and then through moving in front of this connect device
Speaker 1: of the user could actually command his or her Xbox
Speaker 1: and it could do some pretty cool stuff when paired
Speaker 1: with the right software and hardware. Hackers loved the connect
Speaker 1: because it let them do all sorts of stuff, like
Speaker 1: they could make a three D scanner, so you could
Speaker 1: put a real three dimensional object within view of the
Speaker 1: connects camera, slowly rotate the object and scan the entire thing,
Speaker 1: and then you would get a virtual representation of that object.
Speaker 1: Paired with a three D printer, you could actually make
Speaker 1: copies of stuff, or you can make a action figure
Speaker 1: of yourself if you really wanted to. Or you could
Speaker 1: use the connect to give robots a source of optical
Speaker 1: information helping with robotic vision. There were tons of different
Speaker 1: potential applications for the connect Sadly, most of them did
Speaker 1: not involve the Xbox, and since the connect was marketed
Speaker 1: as a console peripheral and not a device meant for
Speaker 1: makers and hackers, the company eventually withdrew all support for
Speaker 1: the hardware, but Kitman's worked with the company would continue,
Speaker 1: and he had been working seriously on the holographic goggles
Speaker 1: that would evolve into the Hollow Lens for at least
Speaker 1: five years. The vision Kitman has of augmented reality is
Speaker 1: a truly transformative one. So imagine a device that allows
Speaker 1: you to interact with the digital world through your interactions
Speaker 1: in the physical world. You could potentially turn any surface
Speaker 1: in the physical world into a computer display or an interface.
Speaker 1: You can control software with gestures or with voice. You
Speaker 1: can transform the world around you with digital overlays that
Speaker 1: only you can see through your holographic goggles, which is
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. The Hollow Lens demo video included doing things
Speaker 1: like snapping a virtual video display to a physical wall.
Speaker 1: So imagine you put on a headset, you know, special
Speaker 1: hollow goggles, and in this headset you can see this
Speaker 1: virtual screen. It's floating in front of you, and you
Speaker 1: can resize the screen however you like, so it takes
Speaker 1: up as much or as little of your field of
Speaker 1: view as you like. And you position the virtual screen
Speaker 1: within the physical room that you are occupying, so you
Speaker 1: can still see the room because you're looking through goggles, right,
Speaker 1: You're not looking at a headset that has a closed
Speaker 1: off section. Now you're still looking at the world around you,
Speaker 1: but this pair of goggles can also generate images itself,
Speaker 1: creating things that appear to be in your room but aren't.
Speaker 1: Like that video screen. So you choose to place the
Speaker 1: screen on a wall in front of you. Right, you're
Speaker 1: looking at a blank wall. You put this virtual screen
Speaker 1: on that wall. It locks into place, and you look
Speaker 1: away to something else, like to your right or to
Speaker 1: your left. The screen stays put. It stays where you
Speaker 1: locked it in the physical location. So it's acting like
Speaker 1: it's a physical television screen that's been mounted to the
Speaker 1: wall and maintains persistence even when it's not inside your
Speaker 1: frame of you. So if you started playing a video
Speaker 1: on that screen and then you are to look away,
Speaker 1: the video continues just as it would on a physical television,
Speaker 1: and if you glance back at the wall, you would
Speaker 1: see the video still playing out on that virtual screen. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say you want to lie down and you decide
Speaker 1: for the heck of it that you're gonna move the
Speaker 1: screen from the wall to your ceiling, so you lock
Speaker 1: it into place into your ceiling overhead. So now you're
Speaker 1: laying on your back and you're watching the video playing
Speaker 1: out directly above you. That's a simple implementation of augmented reality,
Speaker 1: which is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: but it gives you an idea of what was possible.
Speaker 1: Other applications could be much more serious. Imagine putting on
Speaker 1: a pair of these goggles and looking at a complicated
Speaker 1: piece of machinery that has broken down, and the goggles,
Speaker 1: which have external cameras on them so it can see
Speaker 1: what you are seeing, can process all the information that
Speaker 1: they're taking in. They can identify the machinery based on
Speaker 1: the shape and the configuration. They know what the problem
Speaker 1: is because they can see if there's a missing piece
Speaker 1: or whatever that might be, and then it can display
Speaker 1: instructions on top of your field of view to guide
Speaker 1: you step by step on how to remove or replace
Speaker 1: pieces and what you need to avoid doing. It highlights
Speaker 1: the relevant parts of the machine for every step. So
Speaker 1: let's say that there's a particular gear that you need
Speaker 1: to remove. It actually creates a highlight on top of
Speaker 1: the physical gear you're looking at, so that way you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the piece I need to take off next.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an expert guide you the entire time.
Speaker 1: The implementation for augmented reality I would love to see
Speaker 1: would involve having the chance to view an area as
Speaker 1: if it were a different era of history. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you are walking down the streets of London and
Speaker 1: then you take a virtual look at what the city
Speaker 1: would have looked like back in the time of Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth or Oliver Cromwell. But then, I'm a history geek,
Speaker 1: so that's not necessarily something that everybody wants. It's just
Speaker 1: the version that I always think about. The Hollow Lens
Speaker 1: had three different processing units. You had your typical CPU,
Speaker 1: your central processing unit. You had your graphics processing unit
Speaker 1: or GPU, but then you also had the HPU or
Speaker 1: holographic processing unit. The original Hollow Lens got a lot
Speaker 1: of positive press coverage, but it never came out for consumers.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had determined the device was important, but wanted to
Speaker 1: keep refining it before trying to enter a consumer marketplace
Speaker 1: with it, because users would need the vice to be
Speaker 1: incredibly intuitive so that they could learn how to use
Speaker 1: it and interact with it in a seamless way, and
Speaker 1: it would need a lot of content as well, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff to do. Once you bought it without applications, it
Speaker 1: would just be a nifty piece of hardware, a very
Speaker 1: expensive one, and you would just put it on your
Speaker 1: head and that would be it. So instead, Microsoft chose
Speaker 1: to focus primarily on enterprise uses of the Hollow Lens,
Speaker 1: which created a much more narrowly focused set of parameters
Speaker 1: for the goggles, and that meant developers didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about all the crazy stuff that happens out in
Speaker 1: the wide world in general. They could concentrate on specific
Speaker 1: use cases, like in manufacturing or in medicine. If you
Speaker 1: reduce your variables, it becomes way easier to develop software applications.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, but Microsoft is reportedly working on
Speaker 1: the successor to the Hollow lens. Reports have leaked that
Speaker 1: the Hollow lens too, will have a better battery life
Speaker 1: and improved features, as well as being lighter and cheaper
Speaker 1: than the original Hollow lens. I'm recording this episode in June,
Speaker 1: and later this year the company is likely to give
Speaker 1: more details about the successor of the Hollow lens. The
Speaker 1: code name for it is the Sydney, like the Australian city.
Speaker 1: I know that it's gonna be less expensive than the
Speaker 1: original Hollow lens, at least according to all the rumors.
Speaker 1: But I suspect it's still not going to be marketed
Speaker 1: to the average consumer just yet. I think it's still
Speaker 1: going to be an enterprise level device, not something that
Speaker 1: the average person would go out and buy. And while
Speaker 1: the Hollow Lens was not offered up to consumers, Microsoft
Speaker 1: did partner with a lot of hardware manufacturers to provide
Speaker 1: the platform for mixed reality applications, which was that Windows
Speaker 1: Mixed Reality originally called Windows Holographic. It's part of the
Speaker 1: Windows TIN operating system, and it's compatible with head mounted displays,
Speaker 1: so you can go out and buy one of a
Speaker 1: half dozen or so headsets that run on Windows Mixed Reality.
Speaker 1: Those headsets range and price from about two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: to about five dollars, and they require a connection to
Speaker 1: a PC that's running Windows tents, So the Hollow Lens
Speaker 1: itself is its own computer. You don't need a separate
Speaker 1: computer to run the Hollow lens, which is why it's
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive. The developer kit version of the Hollow Lens
Speaker 1: cost about three thousand dollars, but the headsets that you
Speaker 1: can go out and buy those would be tethered to
Speaker 1: a PC, which limits their usefulness because you can't just
Speaker 1: go out into the world wearing these things and have
Speaker 1: an augmented experience everywhere you go. I've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to say about what Microsoft has been up to
Speaker 1: over the last few years, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. So while we're on
Speaker 1: the subject of mixed reality, I should also mention that
Speaker 1: Microsoft has backed off of plans that it had made
Speaker 1: to create VR support on the Xbox platform. Back in sixteen,
Speaker 1: Phil Spencer, the chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, had said
Speaker 1: that the code named Project Scorpio Xbox platform would end
Speaker 1: up supporting high end virtual reality experiences similar to what
Speaker 1: you could get with a PC. Since then, Microsoft has
Speaker 1: seemed to kind of reconsider this, and I don't really
Speaker 1: blame the company, because virtual reality has not taken off
Speaker 1: in the consumer space like people thought that it might.
Speaker 1: Part of that is probably due to a very high
Speaker 1: cost of entry into the platform, because you have to
Speaker 1: have a pretty good PC, and then you have to
Speaker 1: have the headset, and then there's all the applications or
Speaker 1: software for it. It gets really expensive, really fast. Another
Speaker 1: good reason might be that there's there's a lack of
Speaker 1: compelling content and experiences out there. Now. There are several
Speaker 1: developers who have created really fun or really interesting VR
Speaker 1: games and other applications, but there's not a very large
Speaker 1: library that is convincing enough to enough people to buy
Speaker 1: into the tech anology. Mike Nichols, the chief marketing officer
Speaker 1: of Gaming, said in a two thousand eighteen interview that
Speaker 1: the company has no plans specific to Xbox consoles in
Speaker 1: virtual reality or mixed reality, so we're looking at pure
Speaker 1: PC experience for that sort of stuff. Now. I'm recording
Speaker 1: this episode a little less than a month after E Threeen,
Speaker 1: the big video game industry event that happens every June
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, California, and during that event, Microsoft announced
Speaker 1: a few things about its future in the world of gaming,
Speaker 1: specifically console gaming. It sounds like the next generation of
Speaker 1: Xbox will have at least a couple of different versions
Speaker 1: upon launch. Phil Spencer referred to consoles in the plural,
Speaker 1: and other company communications seem to indicate that the successor
Speaker 1: to the Xbox One will likely have more than one version,
Speaker 1: so there might be an entry level and then maybe
Speaker 1: a more expensive one with more bells and whistles on it.
Speaker 1: It may, but it's not. It's not definitive. But it
Speaker 1: may support backwards compatibility, which is something Microsoft has been
Speaker 1: trying to do with its various consoles. That means that
Speaker 1: you should be able to run older Xbox games on
Speaker 1: the new hardware, which may mean that the new hardware
Speaker 1: will have similar chip architecture to the existing consoles, or
Speaker 1: it could mean that it will run a virtual console
Speaker 1: to emulate the older hardware. Microsoft also hinted at a
Speaker 1: future video game streaming service. This service would let you
Speaker 1: access video games over a device running a thin client,
Speaker 1: meaning the device itself is not doing the heavy lifting. Instead,
Speaker 1: Microsoft's computers would run all the games and stream the
Speaker 1: experience to you. So technically, I mean, from a very
Speaker 1: high level, what is going on is when you press
Speaker 1: a button on your controller or your mouth or your
Speaker 1: phone or whatever it may be, the command shoots through
Speaker 1: the Internet, gets to Microsoft's hardware that then executes that command,
Speaker 1: and then that shoots the results back to you. So
Speaker 1: let's say you're playing a game where a is jump,
Speaker 1: you press a the command goes through the Internet to
Speaker 1: the machine, the machine executes the command to jump, The
Speaker 1: result gets shot back to you, and you see your
Speaker 1: little character jump, hopefully with very little latency, or else
Speaker 1: you're gonna feel like there's something lagging every time you play.
Speaker 1: This is not the first time anyone's tried to do this.
Speaker 1: Lots of companies have tried this, but very few have
Speaker 1: managed to make it succeed. On Live, which is no
Speaker 1: longer a thing. Tried to do this years ago. But
Speaker 1: Microsoft's goal is to create a streaming experience that will
Speaker 1: let you play a video game on a lot of
Speaker 1: different potential platforms without having to worry about having the
Speaker 1: latest hardware to run the game. So you could potentially
Speaker 1: run this on a PC, on a console, maybe even
Speaker 1: on a phone. So Microsoft might not jump head first
Speaker 1: back into the mobile market, but it may make a
Speaker 1: service that runs on smartphone platforms and brings console style
Speaker 1: gaming two phones. Something else Microsoft has been backing away
Speaker 1: from is supporting the Windows seven build of its operating system.
Speaker 1: Windows seven launched in July two thousand nine, so we're
Speaker 1: coming up on its ninth anniversary. Microsoft has committed to
Speaker 1: providing extended support for the operating system until twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but the company recently announced that Microsoft staffers would no
Speaker 1: longer be answering Microsoft Community forum questions about Windows seven.
Speaker 1: And you might think, Hey, that operating system is nine
Speaker 1: years old. Why should we expect Microsoft to spend time
Speaker 1: answering questions about an antiquated operating system. Well, first, the
Speaker 1: company's commitment to supporting the OS until January would be
Speaker 1: one reason. If you say you're gonna do something, you
Speaker 1: should probably do it. But another is that Windows seven
Speaker 1: is still a very popular operating system. In fact, according
Speaker 1: to stat Counter in May, Windows seven an accounted for
Speaker 1: nearly forty percent of all Windows based machines worldwide. Windows ten,
Speaker 1: which is the current operating system from Microsoft, makes up
Speaker 1: So in other words, Windows seven, just two versions back,
Speaker 1: is on almost as many machines as the current operating
Speaker 1: system as for Windows eight, which is sandwiched between Windows
Speaker 1: seven and Windows ten, it only makes up a little
Speaker 1: less than eight percent of the market share of all
Speaker 1: Windows machines. And I'll remind you there is no Windows nine.
Speaker 1: They went from eight to ten. So with Windows seven
Speaker 1: being second place only to Windows ten and still having
Speaker 1: a year and a half left of support on its
Speaker 1: agreement with Microsoft, or Microsoft's agreement with the public. I
Speaker 1: should say it seems premature to me to pull staffers
Speaker 1: from answering questions about the platform. If you know that
Speaker 1: almost half of your users are still on Windows seven
Speaker 1: and that you've said you're going to continue supporting until
Speaker 1: twenty I think it's a little weird to pull staffers
Speaker 1: from answering those questions. On While I'm on the subject, Yep,
Speaker 1: there are still people out there running Windows XP as
Speaker 1: their operating system. Windows XP came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: one and its last service pack was released in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, so that was a decade ago. Stat Counter
Speaker 1: estimates that nearly three percent of all Windows machines out
Speaker 1: there are running Windows XP, which sounds like it's a
Speaker 1: small amount, but when you think three percent of all
Speaker 1: the Windows machines out there and there are millions of them,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. It's amazing to me that there are
Speaker 1: still people running Windows XP. Recently, Microsoft announced that it
Speaker 1: intended to acquire the company get hub. So what is
Speaker 1: get hub. Well, it's a hosting service for get g
Speaker 1: I T, which is probably not that helpful if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with what get is. So here goes get
Speaker 1: is a way to keep track of changes in files
Speaker 1: in an effort to make collaboration and coordination not become
Speaker 1: nightmare fuel because if you've got a team of developers
Speaker 1: working on code, then you've got people making changes to
Speaker 1: this code and you need to track that. But digital
Speaker 1: files are really tricksy because you can make copies of them,
Speaker 1: and then you can end up with conflicting versions, or
Speaker 1: you might find that some changes you made in one
Speaker 1: version are breaking the code somewhere. So maybe something that
Speaker 1: was working in a previous build is no longer working,
Speaker 1: and you may need to work backward and find a
Speaker 1: version of the software that was working just fine before
Speaker 1: you implemented changes, and then see what happened so that
Speaker 1: you can try to repair it or maybe build out
Speaker 1: the new code without breaking the older stuff. Now, keeping
Speaker 1: track of these different versions is incredibly important, but it's
Speaker 1: also time consuming it's not much fun. So get is
Speaker 1: a system that does the tracking on behalf of developers,
Speaker 1: and it's frequently used to manage source code, although not
Speaker 1: exclusively anyway. Get hub is a hosting service with the
Speaker 1: functionality of get, along with some other additional features like
Speaker 1: access control, so you can make certain that only people
Speaker 1: who are authorized to access a particular type of code
Speaker 1: can do that. The service has millions of users, some
Speaker 1: of whom are working on open source projects on public
Speaker 1: project pages, so anyone can go in there and see
Speaker 1: the source code and make changes to it and that way.
Speaker 1: You know, again, tracking those changes is very important, So
Speaker 1: you know what has happened. Microsoft's announcement prompted a mixed
Speaker 1: reaction from developers, which is to be expected. Some worry
Speaker 1: that Microsoft is going to change things up in a
Speaker 1: way that will discourage open source code development. Others see
Speaker 1: it as a positive event and that Microsoft will bring
Speaker 1: support and development to the hub as a whole. Nat Friedman,
Speaker 1: who will head up get hub under the Microsoft deal,
Speaker 1: has said that the company intends to operate get hub
Speaker 1: as its own entity, helping it do what it does
Speaker 1: on an even larger scale, and possible lee actually using
Speaker 1: get hub as something of a model for the rest
Speaker 1: of Microsoft rather than the other way around. Microsoft has
Speaker 1: also been working on uh more serious moves into the
Speaker 1: world of artificial intelligence. AI has been a big area
Speaker 1: of research and development for more than a decade, but
Speaker 1: we're starting to see a growing number of implementations and
Speaker 1: stuff that the average person actually has a chance of
Speaker 1: encountering in day to day life. Because for years, AI
Speaker 1: applications were largely the realm of research labs and industrial applications.
Speaker 1: It wasn't something that the average consumer typically would encounter.
Speaker 1: But today we see AI, or at least aspects of
Speaker 1: AI narrow AI incorporated into stuff like thermostats, personal assistants
Speaker 1: like Siri or Alexa, and car systems, among other things.
Speaker 1: So in twenty sixteen, Microsoft created an Artificial Intelligence and
Speaker 1: Research Group, employing around five thousand people in fields like
Speaker 1: computer science and engineering to work on AI developments and
Speaker 1: practical applications like their own AI assistant, also known as Cortana. Today,
Speaker 1: more than eight thousand people work in that same area
Speaker 1: at Microsoft and investors investors are are watching with interest
Speaker 1: because AI could help transform Microsoft yet again. More on
Speaker 1: how that could happen in just a second, but first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So
Speaker 1: Microsoft is incorporating AI into products like Office three sixty five,
Speaker 1: which is the cloud based suite of productivity software the
Speaker 1: company offers. There's a feature called inc analysis, which can
Speaker 1: look at handwritten notes in something like a power point
Speaker 1: presentation and interpret it, converting it into text. Or you
Speaker 1: could use the Stylus input device to write in the
Speaker 1: margins of a virtual document and the AI could interpret
Speaker 1: those notes and incorporate them into the document itself, or
Speaker 1: possibly even make the change using natural language processing, which
Speaker 1: is a very simple phrase that describes the fiendishly complicated
Speaker 1: task of teaching computers what we mean when we speak plainly.
Speaker 1: Microsoft uses this to analyze information and an effort to
Speaker 1: create greater value for users, though this can also get
Speaker 1: a little creepy at times. It's similar to what companies
Speaker 1: like Google and Apple are doing, and that these companies
Speaker 1: are creating AI processes that can analyze your work and
Speaker 1: your email messages in an effort to proactively make things
Speaker 1: easier for you. So and a simple example might be.
Speaker 1: Let's say you purchase tickets to go to a sporting event,
Speaker 1: and you buy them online. You get an email about it.
Speaker 1: The AI identifies the email. It identifies that the email
Speaker 1: is about these this sporting event. It looks at the ticket,
Speaker 1: It knows when the sporting event happens, it knows where
Speaker 1: it happens. It knows where that is in relation to
Speaker 1: where you are because you're holding some sort of device
Speaker 1: that has your GPS coordinates as part of it. There's
Speaker 1: a location element to this, and so on the day
Speaker 1: of the sporting event, you get a notification and it
Speaker 1: tells you, hey, traffic is unusually heavy today and based
Speaker 1: upon where you are and where the sporting arena is,
Speaker 1: you need to leave in the next forty five minutes
Speaker 1: in order to make it on time. That's the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that AI can do, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it can get really a little creepy if you think
Speaker 1: about it too much. Um it can be helpful, but
Speaker 1: there's also very real concerns about privacy issues and safety. Clearly,
Speaker 1: it has to be implemented in a responsible way. And
Speaker 1: AI has tons of other narrow use cases. I've only
Speaker 1: given a tiny, tiny glimpse into it. You can see
Speaker 1: stuff like image recognition or machine learning, or pulling relevant
Speaker 1: information from enormous data sets. These are all different aspects
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence. Recently, Microsoft signed a deal with Britain's
Speaker 1: Marks and Spencer retailer to test and AI implementation in
Speaker 1: stores and corporate operations. But that's about all the information
Speaker 1: I have on this partnership right now. I'm not certain
Speaker 1: how the AI is going to be incorporated or what
Speaker 1: it will be meant to do right now, but it
Speaker 1: is another example of how Microsoft is moving ahead with
Speaker 1: its work in AI. And another technology that has a
Speaker 1: lot of buzz around it I wish it would stop
Speaker 1: getting exhausting is blockchain. And I've talked about blockchain a
Speaker 1: lot over the last year, but here's a quick refresher.
Speaker 1: Blockchain is a process that groups together bundles of records
Speaker 1: into blocks. So those records could be transactions of some sort,
Speaker 1: but it puts these all into a block, and then
Speaker 1: the blocks form a chain, so you've got a linear
Speaker 1: block or linear chain of blocks. I should say. That's
Speaker 1: where it gets his name blockchain. So each block in
Speaker 1: the chain contains a history of all the previous blocks
Speaker 1: in the chain, so not just the blocks, but the
Speaker 1: actual transactions that have happened to create those blocks. They
Speaker 1: become part of the shared history. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like looking almost like a fan only tree, being able
Speaker 1: to trace ancestry from one person all the way back,
Speaker 1: say twelve generations. Same sort of thing is that we're
Speaker 1: talking about an actual record of transactions. Uh, when someone
Speaker 1: updates a record that updated record joins a new block,
Speaker 1: and all future blocks will have a history of that update,
Speaker 1: but they'll also have the history of the versions of
Speaker 1: the record before the update happened. Blockchain is most frequently
Speaker 1: associated with the digital currency Bitcoin in the media because
Speaker 1: Bitcoin relies upon blockchain technology to track and verify all
Speaker 1: transactions that use the currency, which keeps anyone from trying
Speaker 1: to spend a virtual unit of currency twice. Because the
Speaker 1: entire bitcoin community has access to the shared ledger of
Speaker 1: transactions and they can see when a unit has been spent.
Speaker 1: It's also how new bitcoins are distributed. But never mind,
Speaker 1: I've talked about bitcoin in another episode, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to go into it here. The important thing is
Speaker 1: blockchain can be used for all sorts of applications, not
Speaker 1: just currency. Microsoft has partnered with a firm called Ernst
Speaker 1: and Young to launch a blockchain system that would track
Speaker 1: content rights and royalties management for creators, with video game
Speaker 1: creators being among the first to take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to streamline the process of tracking and collecting
Speaker 1: royalties payments, something that traditionally has involved a lot of
Speaker 1: third parties and middlemen, so video games present a particularly
Speaker 1: complicated problem for royalties. Take a game like Grand Theft
Speaker 1: Auto five, because it's not just the game. That game
Speaker 1: happens to have a lot of licensed music in it,
Speaker 1: and some of those licenses that have been agreed upon
Speaker 1: might also involve paying royalties to the copyright holders of
Speaker 1: the songs that were included in the game, So royalty
Speaker 1: payments may not just go to the software developer. They
Speaker 1: also might have to go to the copyright holders of
Speaker 1: various songs. And sometimes one entity will buy the rights
Speaker 1: to a piece of content, so royalty payments should go
Speaker 1: to them instead of to the original holder of the rights,
Speaker 1: because now the rights have shifted, and then that person
Speaker 1: might end up selling the rights later on. This makes
Speaker 1: the process of figuring out who you owe money to
Speaker 1: really complicated, so the idea is that the blockchain approach
Speaker 1: would simplify this. However, this is not the first time
Speaker 1: someone has tried to use blockchain for this specific purpose,
Speaker 1: and one of the big challenges of blockchain is that's
Speaker 1: difficult to scale up to larger too larger scales, so
Speaker 1: there's some question as to whether or not Ernst and
Speaker 1: Young and Microsoft can pull this off. So it's too
Speaker 1: early to say at the moment, one future product that
Speaker 1: will come out of Microsoft is the Surface Hub too.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the surface earlier in the last episode. Microsoft's
Speaker 1: touch and gesture controlled smart white board is the hub.
Speaker 1: So the Surface Hub to you, is something you can
Speaker 1: mount on a wall and it has a base that
Speaker 1: allows you to rotate the board from portrait mode into
Speaker 1: landscape mode, so you can turn it ninety degrees just
Speaker 1: like you would with a phone. Like if you're holding
Speaker 1: a phone upright and then turn it to its side,
Speaker 1: you can switch from portrait to landscape. Same sort of
Speaker 1: thing with this. It's so it's much much larger. The
Speaker 1: screen of the Hub two is fifty and a half
Speaker 1: inches on the diagonal. It's got a three to two
Speaker 1: aspect ratio, and the rate the resolution on this is
Speaker 1: greater than four K. It's higher resolution than four K.
Speaker 1: It also comes with a four K webcam that plugs
Speaker 1: in via USBC that allows for video conferencing. UH. There's
Speaker 1: a concept video of this thing that shows people using
Speaker 1: the video chat while working with shared documents on the
Speaker 1: same screen, using touch controls to send commands and make
Speaker 1: changes in real time. In addition, you can link up
Speaker 1: to four of the hubs together, plugging them in through
Speaker 1: this USBC approach and putting them side by side and
Speaker 1: create a truly enormous display. There's no telling right now
Speaker 1: how much it's gonna cost when it debuts. The original
Speaker 1: fifty five in surface hub whiteboard would set you back
Speaker 1: a cool nine thousand dollars or so. Today an eighty
Speaker 1: four inch one, the really big one would cost more
Speaker 1: like seventeen thousand dollars. So this is not something I
Speaker 1: would expect to see in the average home. Microsoft has
Speaker 1: also been trying to make a bigger move into the
Speaker 1: educational world. It recently acquired a startup company called flip
Speaker 1: Grid that's a video app company. They create an app
Speaker 1: that let's let's students record and share educational videos with
Speaker 1: each other. Microsoft had been working with flip grid for
Speaker 1: more than a year before they made this acquisition. Google
Speaker 1: has been dominating in the educational space, largely due to
Speaker 1: the relatively low cost of Google Chromebook devices compared to
Speaker 1: Windows based computers, and Microsoft has recently contributed money to
Speaker 1: a group that is fighting against a California proposal called
Speaker 1: the California Consumer Privacy Act. Now the act would require
Speaker 1: companies to reveal what data they collect from users and
Speaker 1: how they make use of that data, specifically in using
Speaker 1: that data to sell to people to make money from ads,
Speaker 1: and it would require those companies to allow users to
Speaker 1: opt out of having their information sold. Several companies, including Microsoft,
Speaker 1: do not like this idea at all, and have paid
Speaker 1: money into lobbying against it and to make a campaign
Speaker 1: against the policy. Other companies that have also contributed include Uber, Google, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and for a while Facebook, although Facebook has since withdrawn
Speaker 1: its support from the group. Supporters of the proposal argue
Speaker 1: that people should have a say in how their information
Speaker 1: is used. The opposition, however, mostly in the form of
Speaker 1: company statements, argue that the proposal itself is flawed and
Speaker 1: that while reputable companies should always treat customer privacy as
Speaker 1: a top priority, the the implementation of the proposal as
Speaker 1: it is written would hinder innovation. How true is that?
Speaker 1: I don't know? I do know that companies do not
Speaker 1: want to their business models impacted by having this policy
Speaker 1: UH brought to fruition because it would mean that an
Speaker 1: extremely lucrative stream of revenue could potentially get cut off,
Speaker 1: and that is terrifying to these companies. I keep telling
Speaker 1: people Google is not a search company. Google is an
Speaker 1: advertising company, and we are the product. It is. It
Speaker 1: is you and I generating the information that Google can
Speaker 1: then use to sell stuff to advertisers. So if that
Speaker 1: were changed through this law, if this law got enacted
Speaker 1: and then people could opt out, it could severely hinder
Speaker 1: the way Google makes money, at least in California. And
Speaker 1: depending upon how Google has been built out its systems,
Speaker 1: and this is true for all these companies, not just Google,
Speaker 1: but Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, depending on how they've built out
Speaker 1: their systems, it might mean that they would have to
Speaker 1: completely rebuild their systems in such a way that it
Speaker 1: did not gather that in for nation, Um, it's not.
Speaker 1: You could just argue, just don't sell it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's gonna be an ugly fight in California.
Speaker 1: Microsoft has been the news recently in the United States
Speaker 1: because well by recently, I mean June two, eighteen, because
Speaker 1: the companies work with the United States Immigration and Customs
Speaker 1: Enforcement Division or ICE. In ICE became famous for being
Speaker 1: responsible for separating migrant families as they attempted to enter
Speaker 1: the United States, even those that were seeking asylum and
Speaker 1: particularly famous for placing children in separate camps from their parents.
Speaker 1: The practice was widely called out as being inhumane and cruel,
Speaker 1: and this had a ripple effect on companies that had
Speaker 1: accepted contracts from ICE to provide various services in hardware,
Speaker 1: including Microsoft. There were calls for Microsoft to cancel those
Speaker 1: contracts that came from both internal and external sources. Is
Speaker 1: Late in June two eighteen, Donald Trump signed an executive
Speaker 1: order calling for an end to the separation policy, though
Speaker 1: by that time thousands of families had already been affected,
Speaker 1: with no immediate solution as to how to reunite them.
Speaker 1: So Microsoft CEO Nadella said that they were absolutely opposed
Speaker 1: to the the process of separating families. He said it
Speaker 1: was abhorrent. However, he also said Microsoft's contracts in no
Speaker 1: way related to the practice of separating families. Rather, they
Speaker 1: were for stuff like handling email service, or messaging systems
Speaker 1: or document management. I don't know that that necessarily satisfied
Speaker 1: the critics who said you shouldn't do business with this
Speaker 1: group at all, but it seemed to be his approach
Speaker 1: to saying, look, we're not responsible for tearing those families apart.
Speaker 1: While not saying out loud, that's a big contract and
Speaker 1: it's a lot of money, So your mileage may vary
Speaker 1: on how you view that particular approach. One final bit
Speaker 1: of information, I don't want to end on that particularly
Speaker 1: distasteful notes. So on June twenty, geek wire published an
Speaker 1: article stating that Microsoft had bought an office complex in Washington,
Speaker 1: not too far from its headquarters campus, and they spent
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty million dollars buying this thing. In addition,
Speaker 1: the company is in the process of renovating its home
Speaker 1: campus and replacing old buildings with new, larger ones, and
Speaker 1: the new layout will allow for eight thousand additional employees.
Speaker 1: So it looks like Microsoft is gearing up to grow
Speaker 1: some more, which might be encouraging news after hearing about
Speaker 1: all those layoffs that it had been doing over the
Speaker 1: past several years. Now, where's Microsoft going next? It's hard
Speaker 1: to say. I imagine I'm going to see a lot
Speaker 1: more information about cloud services and artificial intelligence. And it
Speaker 1: is really interesting to think of the fact that maybe
Speaker 1: in five year years when you say the company name Microsoft,
Speaker 1: you'll be thinking of a very different company than the
Speaker 1: one that was creating, operating systems and productivity software suites.
Speaker 1: That's the company I always associate with the name Microsoft.
Speaker 1: I think of ms DOSS, I think of Windows, I
Speaker 1: think of Word and Excel and power Point. But in
Speaker 1: another five years we might be thinking about artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and we might be thinking of blockchain. If they can
Speaker 1: get that working properly for their various applications, it may
Speaker 1: be a very different world. I'm excited to see. And
Speaker 1: besides which that means that in five years I can
Speaker 1: do another update episode, So that's something to look forward to.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, why not write me and let me know
Speaker 1: about them, because otherwise I'm just gonna pick what I
Speaker 1: want and we all know where that goes. So send
Speaker 1: me an email the addresses tech Stuff at how stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com or draw me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle it both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: Don't forget. You can follow me on Instagram and I'll
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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works
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