Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from com
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today joining me in the studio is Joe McCormick. Joe,
Speaker 1: welcome back, Thanks for having me back. Thank thank you.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a last minute jump in. It
Speaker 1: was it was originally Lauren Vogelbaum was going to sit
Speaker 1: in on this one, but Lauren's feeling a little under
Speaker 1: the weather and we just wanted to look back at
Speaker 1: the year two thousand fourteen. Some of the big stories
Speaker 1: that happened, stuff that I didn't cover in the Predictions
Speaker 1: episode because we didn't know it's going to happen, and
Speaker 1: then it happened. That's kind of the way that tends
Speaker 1: to work. I think your crystal ball is faulty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out that I was actually just staring into
Speaker 1: a magic eight ball, and uh, that was it. I
Speaker 1: think the problem is that you're not actually using crystal
Speaker 1: You're you've been peering into a plutonium core. That would
Speaker 1: also explained the laws and teeth. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the big stories in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, some of the stuff that happened throughout
Speaker 1: the year. Now we're just going to be kind of
Speaker 1: covering some interesting things, not and not everything obviously the
Speaker 1: highlights in the low lights. Yeah, nothing, nothing like every
Speaker 1: story what happened in it would take us way too long,
Speaker 1: you know. I think has been a really interesting year
Speaker 1: for tech and one of the most interesting things about
Speaker 1: it to me is that it seems like this has
Speaker 1: really been the year of the hack. That is absolutely
Speaker 1: the way I would put it. Yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: have been big hacks and security breaches in the past.
Speaker 1: There were so many of them and with such far
Speaker 1: ranging impact that I think it was the year where
Speaker 1: the average person out there, the person who doesn't really
Speaker 1: follow technology news, is really starting to understand that a
Speaker 1: lot of the conflicts that are looming large in our
Speaker 1: future gonna be technology and cybersecurity related conflicts. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: we've heard stories in the past, everything from uh discovery
Speaker 1: of code in infrastructure things like utility infrastructure that that
Speaker 1: showed that there was possible Chinese incursions into our infrastructure.
Speaker 1: You know, those stories have come and gone, and but
Speaker 1: this year really has displayed it. I mean, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot that have directly impacted consumers of course, in
Speaker 1: there was the target um hack, the one that stole
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of credit card information as well as
Speaker 1: other stuff from Target, and the fallout of that continued
Speaker 1: into But there are a lot of other stories we're
Speaker 1: gonna touch on, some of them that involve hackers hitting
Speaker 1: different sites. Yeah. Well, in fact, maybe we should just
Speaker 1: go through all the stories of their chronologically, because it
Speaker 1: looks like in your notes, Jonathan, the very first thing
Speaker 1: you have is about a hack. No, it is, in fact,
Speaker 1: that was that hackers who posted data about Snapchat users
Speaker 1: claim they did so to show that Snapchat security wasn't sufficient.
Speaker 1: In January of this, Yeries, it was. This is the
Speaker 1: first story we have. So this the hack itself had
Speaker 1: happened towards the tail end of but this was where
Speaker 1: we started getting information about what the hackers say their
Speaker 1: motivation happened to be. So, you know, there are different
Speaker 1: types of hackers, and I've talked about this before. There
Speaker 1: are hackers who what they're interested in is just learning
Speaker 1: how a system works and then how to modify that system.
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with breaching security, right, It's just
Speaker 1: learning how something works being able to build it yourself.
Speaker 1: Maybe modify it, maybe make it do something it wasn't
Speaker 1: intended to do, but it has nothing necessarily nefarious about it.
Speaker 1: Then you've got things like white hack hat hackers versus
Speaker 1: black hat hackers. White hat hackers are the ones who
Speaker 1: work with companies to test their security, and they'll try
Speaker 1: to breach that security and then explain to the company
Speaker 1: how they were able to do it so that they
Speaker 1: can patch that vulnerar ability. Black hat had hackers are
Speaker 1: the ones that are trying to do it for some
Speaker 1: sort of gain, either an ideological gain where they are
Speaker 1: bringing down a company or organization that has a philosophy
Speaker 1: that doesn't agree with their own philosophy, or monetary gain
Speaker 1: where they're stealing stuff, either to directly benefit themselves or
Speaker 1: to sell off to other people. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the hackers were saying, we were just trying to prove
Speaker 1: that this company that says it has your privacy at
Speaker 1: heart doesn't really protect your privacy. That's all we were
Speaker 1: trying to do. But the way they did it was
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more on the black hat side than
Speaker 1: the white hack It's not like they alerted Snapchat and said, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, we discovered this vulnerability, you need to
Speaker 1: address it instead. They they actually attacked. So all related
Speaker 1: to the fact that Snapchat. I think it was Snapchat
Speaker 1: that they were claiming that they delete all of your messages,
Speaker 1: but they actually don't. Yeah, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: issues with that Snapchat because again, yet, like you were
Speaker 1: pointing out, snapchat is all about sending someone a message
Speaker 1: that's supposed to have kind of a self destruct element
Speaker 1: to it, so that that's supposed to be ephemeral and
Speaker 1: not leave a trail for future generations to come discover
Speaker 1: what you know, Grandma and Grandpa were sending to each
Speaker 1: other on their phones, right, And it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to be you know, salacious. It often is, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be. It could just be I don't
Speaker 1: want this to live anywhere because it's just a goofy
Speaker 1: picture and I just thought it was funny and that's all.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it turned out that they're they're promises of
Speaker 1: things being deleted exactly when you expected them to be
Speaker 1: were not completely true. The next story in January is
Speaker 1: that the US Appeals Court struck down the FCCS two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven regulations that demanded Internet providers treat all traffic
Speaker 1: equally because the court said the FCC lacked the authority
Speaker 1: to enact the regulations in the first place. It sounds
Speaker 1: like this is going to lead to some more net
Speaker 1: neutrality squabbles. Yeah, this was a big, big deal, I mean,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were pointing out that this
Speaker 1: was a potential issue at the very beginning, saying it's
Speaker 1: not that I like people were saying, I don't disagree
Speaker 1: that we need to have net neutrality rules in place.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the FCC is trying to uh
Speaker 1: to exert authority over something it doesn't have authority over,
Speaker 1: and it was because of the classification of Internet communications.
Speaker 1: Will come back to the story towards the end of
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. But yeah, that was a big,
Speaker 1: big news item early on. Also in January, Lenovo bought
Speaker 1: Motorola Mobility from Google for three billion dollars, and meanwhile
Speaker 1: Google bought Nest for three point two billion. Nest is
Speaker 1: the company that made yeah, also did smoke detectors, which
Speaker 1: in fourteen it ended up having to recall because of
Speaker 1: some issues. Wait, no, okay, one sentence explanation. How is
Speaker 1: the next thermostat actually special? Well, it It learns your behaviors.
Speaker 1: So if you like to have your house nice and
Speaker 1: cool in the evening and warm and toasty in the morning,
Speaker 1: it learns that and then starts to preset things so
Speaker 1: you don't have to ever program it to do so.
Speaker 1: It just learns what you want and can even do
Speaker 1: things like when it realizes there's no one in the house,
Speaker 1: it can start to turn things off so that way
Speaker 1: you're not wasting energy heating a house that has no
Speaker 1: one in it. And the final story of January two
Speaker 1: thou fourteen was that the Apple Mac turned thirty. What
Speaker 1: year were you born, Joe? Oh? The old okay, so
Speaker 1: that mac is older than you are. Uh, the Apple Mac?
Speaker 1: I remember the I remember in night when the commercial
Speaker 1: for the Apple Mac came out. That was the Orwellian one.
Speaker 1: You probably have seen it even yea and chatters the
Speaker 1: screen right Whose faces it up on the screen? Is
Speaker 1: it like John Hurd or somebody? Uh yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, although it was John Hurt, it might not
Speaker 1: actually be a famous persons say if it was John Hurt,
Speaker 1: that John Hurt hasn't has has remained old man age
Speaker 1: since nineteen four and hasn't changed since it's not that
Speaker 1: he stayed young, he's just stayed just as old. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm thinking of him as the
Speaker 1: big totalitarian face on the screen in uh oh, what's
Speaker 1: the movie? Oh all right, yeah, John Hurt. I think
Speaker 1: you're right. And I have never seen the Vendetta. It's
Speaker 1: kind of odd, right, because I mean, that's well, it's
Speaker 1: got a from what I recall, it's got John Hurt
Speaker 1: talking into a big screen and you know, spittles coming
Speaker 1: out of his mouth. He looks very angry about something.
Speaker 1: He's being the big brother type character. Yeah. Well, in
Speaker 1: February two thousand and fourteen, that was when we got
Speaker 1: a big news item where Microsoft finally announced its new CEO.
Speaker 1: So Balmer had stepped down as CEO. No, yeah, that
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. Balmber stepped down the CEO Developers, Developers, I'm gone.
Speaker 1: And then Satya Nadela became the new CEO of Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and he was a veteran of the company. He had
Speaker 1: been there for twenty two years. Bill Gates meanwhile transition
Speaker 1: from chairman of the Microsoft Board to the role of
Speaker 1: technology advisor. UH. Microsoft's competitor Sony announced five thousand job
Speaker 1: cuts and that they were going to split the TV
Speaker 1: division into a wholly owned subsidiary and to sell off
Speaker 1: its PC business. So this was a big news and
Speaker 1: not the last time we'll talk about Sony in this podcast. Obviously,
Speaker 1: anyone who's aware of current news knows that we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to come back around to Sony by the end
Speaker 1: um Also in that month, February, the Lawrence Livermore National
Speaker 1: Laboratory an nounced they had produced fusion power using high
Speaker 1: powered lasers. And only that, but they got more energy
Speaker 1: out of the fusion fuel than was put into the
Speaker 1: fusion fuel. That's a big deal. Well, that would certainly
Speaker 1: be the goal if you're going to try to generate
Speaker 1: municipal energy of fusion exactly. And that was a tough goal, right.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where we can achieve fusion,
Speaker 1: but we're pouring so much energy to make the reaction
Speaker 1: happen that we're on a losing end of the proposition. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind, this does not mean
Speaker 1: that we're suddenly gonna have fusion power plants everywhere, because
Speaker 1: the laser only reached about one percent of the fuel.
Speaker 1: So this is still a long way from becoming a
Speaker 1: new way of generating electricity. You got more energy out
Speaker 1: of it, but you were only able to consume a
Speaker 1: tiny portion of the actual fuel. So it's not an
Speaker 1: efficient system yet, but it's very encouraging. Now in March
Speaker 1: two fourteen, we get some another hacking story. Uh, Mount
Speaker 1: Cox U g X. You know why it's called Mount Cox, right,
Speaker 1: you know what the story is behind that? So Mount Cox.
Speaker 1: If you were to spell out the first three letters,
Speaker 1: you've got MT for Mount and then big upper case
Speaker 1: G for Cox. Magic the Gathering. I know, I thought
Speaker 1: you would enjoy that, Joe. It's so magical. So wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, what does that have to do with bitcoin? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it was. It was the world's largest bitcoin exchange. Now, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, what does Magic the Gathering have to do
Speaker 1: with it? You can buy a crap ton of Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering Cards with some bitcoin. My friend, Um, are
Speaker 1: you going to tell me that Magic the Gathering Cards
Speaker 1: are going to be the successor to Bitcoin is the
Speaker 1: next cryptocurrency? I would say that there was definitely a
Speaker 1: bartering system with Magic the Gathering Cards for a good
Speaker 1: long while before bitcoin came around. But obviously Magic the
Speaker 1: gathering is not a digital format. Hold on, you were
Speaker 1: going to tell me an event what happened to Mount goss.
Speaker 1: It's got hacked, dude, another hack. Yeah, in this case,
Speaker 1: this was a true hack. This was not a d
Speaker 1: d O S attack. This was the real deal. And
Speaker 1: the exchange completely collapsed because seven hundred fifty thousand bitcoin
Speaker 1: belonging to mountdocs customers, as well as a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: bitcoins belonging to the exchange itself, we're stolen in that.
Speaker 1: I may be misremembering, but I thought that the idea
Speaker 1: of bitcoin was sold as an unhackable solution. You are correct, sir. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea was that it was it had security measures
Speaker 1: in place that would prevent you from being able to
Speaker 1: do something like spend the same bitcoin more than once,
Speaker 1: because that's obviously a concern with any digital format. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if I give you a digital file, let's say it's
Speaker 1: music file, and you think this the song is pretty awesome,
Speaker 1: I'd like to share this with all my friends. You
Speaker 1: could copy it as many times as you wanted and
Speaker 1: send as many copies as you wanted to everyone, or
Speaker 1: you could upload a copy and everyone else could end
Speaker 1: up grabbing that copy from the cloud, and they all
Speaker 1: have a copy of that song. What happens when your
Speaker 1: money is in this format? But bitcoin is supposed to
Speaker 1: be made in such a way that it's impossible to steal.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to to spend more than one bitcoin. Are
Speaker 1: it's impossible to spend the same bitcoin more than once
Speaker 1: at a time, I mean, unless it eventually made its
Speaker 1: way back to you. But it's a little complex the
Speaker 1: way the bitcoin transactions work at any rate. Um. The
Speaker 1: people behind bitcoin were saying this was due to faulty
Speaker 1: security at Mount Cox. It had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the format of the bitcoins themselves. They were it was
Speaker 1: like saying, you can't fault a dollar for being stolen
Speaker 1: from a bank. Like if if if thieves come into
Speaker 1: a bank and they breach a bank security, it's not
Speaker 1: the fault of the currency within it. Well then, I
Speaker 1: mean that doesn't really matter to the average person using bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Stuff can still be hacked. Yeah, that was the problem.
Speaker 1: Was that the issue. The bottom issue is that this
Speaker 1: exchange still collapsed, and another one, a smaller one called
Speaker 1: flex Coin, just a week later also went billy up
Speaker 1: after after being targeted and thieves attacked them and stole
Speaker 1: bitcoins from them. So for a while people were wondering
Speaker 1: if this was going to be the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of the cryptocurrency, but it's stuck around, So spoiler
Speaker 1: alert for later in the year. Also in March, Edwards
Speaker 1: Snowdon addressed the south By Southwest Interactive Conference via streaming
Speaker 1: because he's still a wanted man UH to talk about
Speaker 1: the need for better encryption systems in the era of
Speaker 1: digital surveillance. Yeah, he's saying, hey, look, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: People are spying on you one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a company, maybe it's a government, maybe it's hackers,
Speaker 1: but people are looking at your stuff. They might not
Speaker 1: be actively looking at your stuff. They might be gathering
Speaker 1: your stuff and then one day down the road they
Speaker 1: might look at exactly. It could be one of those
Speaker 1: things where someone gets this notion to search for a
Speaker 1: particular search term and it pulls up all interactions between
Speaker 1: people who use that search term in some way. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're one of those people. So maybe what we need
Speaker 1: to do is really look at some good ways to
Speaker 1: encrypt communications so only the person who who only the
Speaker 1: people communicating are the ones who have access to that info. Um,
Speaker 1: so it was a very interesting thing that he was
Speaker 1: actually virtually At south By Southwest also in March, IBM
Speaker 1: showed off the power of artificial intelligence at south By
Speaker 1: Southwest using a food truck in which the cooks prepared
Speaker 1: food based off recipes made by an artificially intelligent program.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, users would put in did not read about
Speaker 1: this at the time. It's kind of silly, but users
Speaker 1: would put in a few preferences about what they liked
Speaker 1: as food. The program would then essentially had a database
Speaker 1: of recipes and based upon your preferences, would suggest, uh,
Speaker 1: something interesting based on that, and then the cooks, the
Speaker 1: human cooks inside the food truck, would actually make your meals.
Speaker 1: So it's not like a robot was cooking your food.
Speaker 1: It was just choosing what it was you were going
Speaker 1: to eat, and obviously couldn't be I would love to
Speaker 1: see all the ways that went wrong. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how el why did you put cinnamon
Speaker 1: sticks on this piech Yeah? All right? Uh. There was
Speaker 1: certainly not an unlimited choice. Obviously, they were limited to
Speaker 1: whatever things they could prepare in that food truck. But
Speaker 1: it was an interesting approach um and you know, just
Speaker 1: showing that Watson can win at Jeopardy as well as
Speaker 1: cook you a decent meal. Uh. The United States government
Speaker 1: in March asked the Internet Corporation for assigned names numbers
Speaker 1: that's called I CAN to come up with a transition
Speaker 1: plan for the US to relinquish control of the Internet.
Speaker 1: So this was essentially saying, when I say control of
Speaker 1: the Internet, I really mean, uh, the whole naming convention
Speaker 1: being in charge of all that kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: all fell under the purview of the US. Does that
Speaker 1: originally go back to DARPA? Yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: know the Internet does, but the naming conventions, well, well yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was the it was the founders of Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was the people working on our ponnet who came
Speaker 1: up with the protocols that the Internet would end up following,
Speaker 1: and it was through their work that, uh, the rules
Speaker 1: were set like this is how we named things, and
Speaker 1: uh it kind of evolved from there. So it's more
Speaker 1: like the roots of this can be traced back to DARPA.
Speaker 1: Maybe not direct, not a direct line in the sense
Speaker 1: of it was exactly the same way, but yes, it
Speaker 1: certainly does go back there. Uh. And in March that's
Speaker 1: when Sony announced Project Morpheus, which is a VR headset
Speaker 1: kind of a competitor to the Oculus Rift, although the
Speaker 1: Oculus Rift has been uh is being developed just for
Speaker 1: computer systems, not for consoles, whereas the Morpheus would presumably
Speaker 1: work with the PlayStation. Now, wait a minute, did Sony
Speaker 1: by the Oculus Rift? No? Facebook did. Facebook. That's right.
Speaker 1: Facebook bought Oculus, which was a big you know, that's
Speaker 1: a big head scratcher for a lot of people saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of weird, and uh, it was one
Speaker 1: of those things that experienced three hundred and sixty degrees
Speaker 1: of annoying people on your news feed. It was also
Speaker 1: what caused uh the mo Yang found a Remojang founder, Notch,
Speaker 1: the guy who created Minecraft, to say, well, that means
Speaker 1: Minecraft is not coming to the Oculus Rift because he
Speaker 1: didn't like Facebook at all. He later said that maybe
Speaker 1: he was being a little reactionary, but he was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't like Facebook's privacy policies, I don't like how
Speaker 1: they make you know, they make people their product, and
Speaker 1: I'm not not crazy about developing Minecraft for them. So
Speaker 1: not that not that that matters, but we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So we've we've got another next generation VR headset in
Speaker 1: the works. Yeah, yeah, and uh, have you has anybody
Speaker 1: tried these out yet? I haven't read I've tried the
Speaker 1: Oculus No, no, no, I mean the Morpheus. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it hasn't it's still I think in the pro type stage.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been released yet. Have you tried a VR headset,
Speaker 1: like a recent one, not a recent one. I tried
Speaker 1: one in the nineties, which when they were pretty funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the polygon pterodactyls and stuff. Yeah, and I I
Speaker 1: did that too. I tried an Oculus Rift the first time.
Speaker 1: I've got a friend who works for Google and he
Speaker 1: had an Oculus Rift developer kit. So I went over
Speaker 1: to his house and tried it out and was almost
Speaker 1: immediately completely disoriented and feeling sick to my stife. So
Speaker 1: I said, all right, I'm done with this. He's like,
Speaker 1: don't you want to try? And this was this was
Speaker 1: the programming gaming was literally you're walking around a villa
Speaker 1: and like it's like a it's like a virtual villa
Speaker 1: in Italy, So so you think, like then there's nothing
Speaker 1: going on, It's just you're just just walking through a villa,
Speaker 1: like there's no mafia hits going on in the lawn,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. And um and so I did that,
Speaker 1: and just that alone was enough to make me feel
Speaker 1: a little like I'm feeling a little swimmy lucy goosey weird.
Speaker 1: And part of it was because the control scheme right,
Speaker 1: like I could move my head and that would change
Speaker 1: my perspective, but I still had to use a controller
Speaker 1: to move around, and it was that disconnect that was
Speaker 1: causing some issues. Maybe if you had it with a
Speaker 1: one of those in place treadmills, the gaming treadmill, sure
Speaker 1: that might that might have helped a little bit. But
Speaker 1: it was funny because he said, don't you want to
Speaker 1: try the space ship game that I have that you
Speaker 1: can run. I'm like, no, do you want your computer
Speaker 1: to be covered and my lunch? Because that's what's gonna
Speaker 1: happen if we try that. So but moving on, We've
Speaker 1: got another hacker story for April two thousand fourteen. That's
Speaker 1: when the heart bleed bug is discovered in certain versions
Speaker 1: of the open s s L software, which is a
Speaker 1: secure socket layer software. It's meant to provide that secure
Speaker 1: or what you assume is a secure connection between your
Speaker 1: browser and some other websites. So things like banking sites
Speaker 1: use this. Lots of sites use this. I mean you know,
Speaker 1: if you see like HTTPS, that's a type of the
Speaker 1: secure software. Not everyone uses the specific type to to
Speaker 1: do that, but it is one of the very popular ones.
Speaker 1: They discovered that in one version of it, there was
Speaker 1: this bug that could potentially allow attackers to access information
Speaker 1: that could include sensitive material. It all was information that
Speaker 1: was stored in UM random access memory, so it wasn't everything.
Speaker 1: It was just a certain number of characters in the
Speaker 1: way it worked was that, uh, if I send you
Speaker 1: let's let's say that that we're gonna represent Joe, you
Speaker 1: and I what happened with his heart lead bug. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm so I'm going to send out a message just
Speaker 1: to make sure you are listening to me, and you
Speaker 1: have to repeat back that message to me in order
Speaker 1: to prove that you are listening to me, and then
Speaker 1: everything's cool and we can keep on going. So when
Speaker 1: I send out that message to you, it is a
Speaker 1: certain number of characters long. Let's say it's twenty characters long.
Speaker 1: So you get it and you see this twenty characters long.
Speaker 1: So you know that's how long the message has to be.
Speaker 1: So you repeat the message, it's twenty characters long, send
Speaker 1: it back to me. Now, let's say I send you
Speaker 1: a message and it's twenty characters long, but the package
Speaker 1: says it's actually five characters long. Now, you, being a
Speaker 1: dumb dumb can't tell the difference between twenty and five hundred.
Speaker 1: You you see the twenty characters that are the beginning
Speaker 1: of this supposed character message. But now there's all this
Speaker 1: empty space, So panicking, you just grab whatever happens to
Speaker 1: be nearby and you shove it at the end of
Speaker 1: the message. This is whatever happens to me in your
Speaker 1: random acis memory. It's like short term memory for people. Now,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about a service like a bank transaction,
Speaker 1: that information might include my password because I had to
Speaker 1: enter it to get into the system. So you sent
Speaker 1: in plain text back to me a message that has
Speaker 1: twenty characters of whatever it was I I sent, plus
Speaker 1: all this other information. So it meant that a hacker,
Speaker 1: if that got in the middle of this, could end
Speaker 1: up getting sensitive information like login information or other account information.
Speaker 1: Obviously a huge vulnerability, but somewhat relying on the luck
Speaker 1: of the draw. Yeah, well it did in the end
Speaker 1: of me and that almost everybody on the internet had
Speaker 1: changed some password. Yeah, and well, the scary thing was
Speaker 1: that people were saying, it doesn't you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: wait until the service upgrades their version of open SSL,
Speaker 1: because if you just change your password before they've upgraded,
Speaker 1: the same thing can keep on happening to you. So
Speaker 1: it was it was truly scary. This is another one
Speaker 1: of those things that really drove it home to the consumer,
Speaker 1: at least people who are paying attention. It was truly
Speaker 1: scary because there wasn't a lot we as consumers could do.
Speaker 1: We had to depend upon other companies to do the
Speaker 1: right thing first, and then we could you know, end
Speaker 1: up changing our passwords as a result. Right, and things
Speaker 1: like this matter, I think because it's um it's something
Speaker 1: that the consumer cannot be blamed for. It's not something
Speaker 1: where it's just that the end user is not, you know,
Speaker 1: following best practices designing week passwords or something like this.
Speaker 1: You can be doing everything right and still have all
Speaker 1: of your information threatened. Yeah, it's one of the most
Speaker 1: frustrating parts about this kind of security vulnerability. It's that
Speaker 1: you know, we already know there are all these things
Speaker 1: that people don't do on on average, like they are
Speaker 1: not keeping enough strong passwords. But then they could look
Speaker 1: at these stories and say, look, it doesn't even matter
Speaker 1: if I do everything right. It is a little frustrating.
Speaker 1: Also in April, one week after assuming the position of
Speaker 1: CEO of Mozilla, Brendan I stepped down because they've been
Speaker 1: revealed that he had donated money to a California ballot
Speaker 1: measure that was anti gay marriage. And Mozilla's corporate values
Speaker 1: are focused on equal rights and free speech. So the
Speaker 1: corporate philosophy of the company and the personal philosophy of
Speaker 1: the new CEO we're not at all in alignment. And
Speaker 1: there was an intense amount of pressure and so as
Speaker 1: a result, one week after becoming CEO, he stepped down,
Speaker 1: Which you know that that that's an interesting story. Mozilla
Speaker 1: had a rough year overall in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: but uh, that one really opened up my eyes when
Speaker 1: it happened. And uh, the next one is probably the
Speaker 1: most dramatic story of the year. Beyond these hacking stories,
Speaker 1: this is the one that took place in a desert
Speaker 1: Alamo Alamo, Alama Gordo. I can say it eventually, Alama Gordo,
Speaker 1: New Mexico. It's when excavators we're digging and they discovered aliens. No, well,
Speaker 1: cartridge is of of of a game about an alien.
Speaker 1: You're talking about et for the the extraterrestrial for the Yes,
Speaker 1: I am yeah. This was the long held story, the
Speaker 1: belief that that that these cartridges had been taken out
Speaker 1: to the desert and unceremoniously dumped. Now, I think it
Speaker 1: was not just this game, right, There were a lot
Speaker 1: of poorly performing games that were taken out there and
Speaker 1: dumped because they just thought, we're never going to sell all. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: this was This was the the days of the crash
Speaker 1: of three of video games, the home gaming um market,
Speaker 1: when everyone suddenly realized home gaming is never gonna be big.
Speaker 1: That was well, the problem was it got too big
Speaker 1: too fast, right. The The issue was that they had
Speaker 1: all these games that didn't have to go through any
Speaker 1: kind of quality check before they hit stores, and the
Speaker 1: market was flooded with a lot of crappy games, some
Speaker 1: of which came from big name companies Because of one
Speaker 1: reason or another. The guy who created the guy who programmed.
Speaker 1: ET the Extraterrestrial also created one of the most um
Speaker 1: uh well criticized games for the ad yards, Revenge. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that he was you know, they
Speaker 1: gave him a very short timeline and a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and he says, all right, and so he made He
Speaker 1: made a game that the game he could make in
Speaker 1: that small amount of time. And as a result, uh.
Speaker 1: It is largely pointed at as one of the reasons
Speaker 1: for the video game crash. Truly, you want to get
Speaker 1: more are specific. The problem was way more widespread than
Speaker 1: one bad title, or even two if you point to
Speaker 1: pac Man, which was another one that everyone cited as
Speaker 1: being a reason for the crash. But they were good
Speaker 1: examples of the problems that existed that caused the crash
Speaker 1: to happen. Quick question, Yeah, did you ever actually play
Speaker 1: a T I owned E T D Extraterrestrial For of
Speaker 1: course I did. Well, well, there was no hard but
Speaker 1: yes I did beat it. Uh did you get all
Speaker 1: the DLC Joe? You might have an unrealistic view of
Speaker 1: what the video game market was like back in Uh No,
Speaker 1: there was no downloadable content. Okay, well, what's the next item?
Speaker 1: So also in April, the FCC announced it was developing
Speaker 1: new rules for the Internet now that you know their
Speaker 1: last ones again and struck down. But these rules would
Speaker 1: essentially say that carriers could charge content providers for premium speeds.
Speaker 1: Now that neutrality advocates were protesting those rules because they
Speaker 1: were say, and here's the problem. You've got carriers service
Speaker 1: carriers that are also content providers, and that's a conflict
Speaker 1: of interest. If if you are providing content as well
Speaker 1: as the service to deliver that content, then what stops
Speaker 1: you from giving your content preferential treatment and slowing down
Speaker 1: everybody else? So anyone who's your customer is clearly going
Speaker 1: to go with your content because they can't get anyone else's. Like,
Speaker 1: that's a That's one of the big arguments about that
Speaker 1: neutrality is that without it, you have the cards stacked
Speaker 1: against you, especially for service carriers that also have either
Speaker 1: relationships with content providers or they themselves are a content provider.
Speaker 1: They opened up everybody watching Comcast Tube instead of YouTube. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that was that's legitimately, or Comcast instead of Netflix or
Speaker 1: Hulu whatever. Um, yeah, that's a big issue. And in fact,
Speaker 1: uh recently it was revealed that there were some lots
Speaker 1: of people left comments on this, like they have CC
Speaker 1: opened it up to comments on the internet. Um, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: But recently it was revealed that more than three thousand
Speaker 1: comments against this proposal were mysteriously lost or not counted,
Speaker 1: and that a huge number that some argue we're generated
Speaker 1: from special interest groups that were pro let's tear the
Speaker 1: Internet and charge these different ways on accounts that had
Speaker 1: just been created and it was their only post essentially
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. But anyway, that we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that in a bit.
Speaker 1: Moving on to may Target CEO Greg Steinhoffel's that stepped
Speaker 1: down in response to the two thousand thirteen data security breached.
Speaker 1: The compromise the personal information of seventy million customers. So yeah, another,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it was a half year after
Speaker 1: that had happened, the it was the damages were still
Speaker 1: rolling out, and so he he accepted responsibility stepped down. Um.
Speaker 1: This again is one of those things where in hindsight,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to say, well, clearly their security was
Speaker 1: not not sufficient at the time. It's a lot harder
Speaker 1: to say no, oh, well, we need to we need
Speaker 1: to shore this up because we're vulnerable. Unless you are
Speaker 1: actively using white hat hackers to test your security and
Speaker 1: everything is being really put to a rigorous test, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say how unless you're just being incredibly lax.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that anyone was arguing that. But
Speaker 1: still real world repercussions for that, beyond the the seventy
Speaker 1: million customers who had their data stolen. Also in May,
Speaker 1: a European court ruled that Google must delete personal data
Speaker 1: when asked, and by personal data, they specifically meant links
Speaker 1: to other existing sites in the Internet, because Google doesn't
Speaker 1: own the pages that it links to in most cases,
Speaker 1: it just it's a search engine. It pulls up links
Speaker 1: in response to a query. So the argument here was that,
Speaker 1: in fact, it was brought up by a guy who
Speaker 1: when you searched his name, uh, I think it was
Speaker 1: like an old court case from the nineties was popping
Speaker 1: up as the top result, and I think it was
Speaker 1: something about him not making a payment or something along
Speaker 1: those lines. And he said, this happened a very long
Speaker 1: time ago, it's completely resolved, it has no bearing on
Speaker 1: my life anymore. And yet if people search my name,
Speaker 1: this is what pops up, so it can still negatively
Speaker 1: impact me, even though I've resolved this many years ago.
Speaker 1: So this is this brought up this concept, the right
Speaker 1: to be forgotten, the right to have things in your
Speaker 1: past you fade away if you if you have done
Speaker 1: your work in paying off whatever that thing was. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you know you had to go to jail
Speaker 1: or something, but you did, you served out your sentence,
Speaker 1: You did everything you were supposed to do. You come
Speaker 1: out reformed, you are trying to start a new life,
Speaker 1: and yet if people search your name, that's the thing
Speaker 1: that pops up. It's obviously going to continue to impact you.
Speaker 1: So there's something to be said about that. The problem
Speaker 1: is that the European court system said, well, Google, you now,
Speaker 1: if you ever get a notice saying I want this
Speaker 1: removed from your search results, you have to respond to it,
Speaker 1: which opens up the doors for a couple of things. One,
Speaker 1: Google will never not be doing that. That will be
Speaker 1: the only thing Google does, like there will be a
Speaker 1: department dedicated to it because it's just a huge undertaking.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine most of these requests also will be without merit.
Speaker 1: That's the other issue. That's the other one is that
Speaker 1: if the request is for someone who doesn't want a
Speaker 1: negative thing, that is possibly still very much relevant to
Speaker 1: show up. What what's the criteria? How can let's say
Speaker 1: a company that's being criticized for some sort of perceived
Speaker 1: or otherwise malfeasance, like, how can how can they you know,
Speaker 1: how can Google determine whether or not a request as
Speaker 1: legitimate or if it is something that's just trying to
Speaker 1: whitewash the background. That also seems like you'd have people
Speaker 1: who would be very against this because they might own
Speaker 1: the content. So you could have somebody petition Google to
Speaker 1: undercut tremendously their traffic. Yeah, which then impacts the bottom
Speaker 1: line of whatever that site is. So, if you're let's
Speaker 1: say you're a whistleblower site and you know you are,
Speaker 1: you're providing an actual valuable service. You're not You're not
Speaker 1: trying to publish things that are unfounded. You're doing your
Speaker 1: due diligence as a journalist to make sure that the
Speaker 1: things you cover are as reliable as you can possibly
Speaker 1: be expected to prove before publishing. And then you get
Speaker 1: the links removed, and then that could mean that people
Speaker 1: one they don't see it, So there's important information that's
Speaker 1: not getting out there, and too, you are no longer
Speaker 1: able to make a living, and now you know you're
Speaker 1: you're effectively being censored at that point. So this is
Speaker 1: still an issue that's going on right now where they
Speaker 1: have not really resolved the problems around the demand. So
Speaker 1: everyone has some valid arguments. The question is what's the
Speaker 1: implementation going to be so that it doesn't cause more
Speaker 1: harm than good. Yeah, it's tough. I kind of think
Speaker 1: we're just kinda I mean, it's not nice, but we
Speaker 1: are past the age where we can expect things to
Speaker 1: be forgotten. We're an unfortunate transitional generation who did not
Speaker 1: grow up with the expectation that everything we did would
Speaker 1: always be remembered. But that's kind of the reality now.
Speaker 1: Although you could argue also that that we're very fickle
Speaker 1: as well, and things that probably should stick with us
Speaker 1: longer can very easily get dropped in favor of other things.
Speaker 1: That's some common terry about like some hacks, some reveals,
Speaker 1: some leaks of information that were big, big deals that
Speaker 1: then got eclipsed by other stories later on. That has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with any active censorship or anything it's
Speaker 1: just human nature, the way we can very quickly, uh
Speaker 1: change our focus from one thing to another. Now that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that in posterity, like we won't like years
Speaker 1: down the road, say look we need to really look
Speaker 1: at this. That's still a possibility. But in the twenty
Speaker 1: four hour news cycle world, we very quickly leap from
Speaker 1: one big story to another. So sometimes the best way
Speaker 1: to make people forget is just done. But don't bring
Speaker 1: it up. Just let it go and it will be forgotten. Well,
Speaker 1: it's been a full story since I talked about hacking,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about hacking. Hack eBay announced it was
Speaker 1: hacked and that users should change their passwords. In May. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: also May, Google unveiled a prototype driverless car that essentially
Speaker 1: just has a start button and a stop button for controls,
Speaker 1: with a top speed of twenty five miles hour. There
Speaker 1: was like a little bit, I think a few more
Speaker 1: than a hundred prototypes that they were going to build
Speaker 1: from scratch. Like these were not converted vehicles, these were
Speaker 1: little tiny smart car looking things. And uh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: I guess you pair it with a Google device like
Speaker 1: an Android phone, and you tell it where you want
Speaker 1: it to go. And it takes you there at a
Speaker 1: top speed of twenty Pretty awesome. Yeah, but no break,
Speaker 1: no accelerator, no steering wheel, You completely hand over control
Speaker 1: to the car. Wow. Well that's so that kind of
Speaker 1: contradicts something I know I've heard you say before, which
Speaker 1: is that you think cars like this are always going
Speaker 1: to have manual override. I think, I think when they
Speaker 1: come to market, because obviously these are prototype cars that
Speaker 1: are being tested internally, when I think when they come
Speaker 1: to market, they'll have to I think that, uh, and
Speaker 1: I have to for two reasons. One, I think that
Speaker 1: consumers are and demanded, They're only gonna be there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a very small population of consumers who are going
Speaker 1: to feel comfortable completely handing over control of a vehicle
Speaker 1: to a computer. And then two, I think legally, I
Speaker 1: think I think legislation will be passed where it will
Speaker 1: still require manual control to be a possibility. I don't
Speaker 1: think you will ever get to a point, at least
Speaker 1: not probably not within my lifetime where um cars can
Speaker 1: be sold that do not have a manual option at all. So,
Speaker 1: but that's a guess. So I got a couple of
Speaker 1: Apple stories, right, Yeah, one at the end of May.
Speaker 1: That's when Apple bought Beats Electronics for three billion dollars. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess they decided that was a correct amount of
Speaker 1: money to pay. Yeah, I mean that's about the price
Speaker 1: of what like three of their headphones. So right, Um,
Speaker 1: did your headphones ever worked? Joe? You gotta beat right
Speaker 1: to full. But beat beats may be beautiful, but my
Speaker 1: beats there are no beats. That's terrible. See, mine works
Speaker 1: so well that I've been We we got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch in our office when our office moved to where
Speaker 1: it currently is but won't be for much longer. We
Speaker 1: moved into a big, open office environment, which meant that
Speaker 1: we're all sitting right, you know, elbow to elbow with
Speaker 1: each other, and so we all got The company bought
Speaker 1: us Beats headphones to kind of help us have our
Speaker 1: own like little sound space and hatchets to keep in
Speaker 1: our death stowers. Yeah, which is very worrisome because I
Speaker 1: sit right next to Robert Lamb and he's hatchett happy.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, Uh, my beats were great. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that cheers never did. What color did you end
Speaker 1: up picking? I got red color of cash. Well, moving
Speaker 1: to June two thousand and fourteen and another Apple story.
Speaker 1: Apple Actually a couple of things that happened in June.
Speaker 1: But Apple introduced Swift, which is a new programming language
Speaker 1: for iOS and O s X development. UM, I should
Speaker 1: say OS ten development, not OSX, but yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: was a new era of programming here. And this was
Speaker 1: the time June's win. Apple holds the developers conference and
Speaker 1: Google holds the io event. So I didn't write down
Speaker 1: all the news that came out from that because a
Speaker 1: lot of it doesn't have a direct impact on listeners necessarily,
Speaker 1: at least not yet. And they tend to, you know,
Speaker 1: we tend to look at the product releases more than
Speaker 1: just the corporate announcements of here's some new, you know,
Speaker 1: developers stuff. Um. Also in June, the FCC opened up
Speaker 1: the discussion. This is when they specifically asked for public comment,
Speaker 1: and John Oliver did the segment about net neutrality. It
Speaker 1: was fantastic, wasn't it. He mean, he does a really
Speaker 1: good job of laying out what the issue is and
Speaker 1: why people should care about it. I love John Oliver's segments, UM,
Speaker 1: and he urged people to leave comments on the FCC
Speaker 1: site more than people did, so some that had actually
Speaker 1: brought the site down for a little bit. Uh And
Speaker 1: that was just the beginning. There were there'd be hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of comments left over the next couple of months.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were thinking, if only we could give
Speaker 1: preferential treatment to traffic going to the right right like
Speaker 1: you know, in a year, this wouldn't have been a problem. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: also in June, despite facing resistance and lots of markets,
Speaker 1: something that's still going on today, the car service Uber
Speaker 1: was valued at seventeen billion dollars, part of the sharing economy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we also in June had the computer chat program
Speaker 1: that emulated a thirteen year old boy from the Ukraine.
Speaker 1: What was his name, Eugene Goostman. I believe so. I
Speaker 1: think you're right it was, but it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a thirteen year old boy from the Ukraine. It
Speaker 1: was actually a software artificial intelligence program fooling one third
Speaker 1: of the judges at the Allen Touring Festival, which led
Speaker 1: lots of people to say it past the touring test,
Speaker 1: although others were quick to criticize that that claim, saying
Speaker 1: that it caused people to set their expectations lower. Than
Speaker 1: perhaps otherwise because it was had a lot of qualifiers, right.
Speaker 1: I on one hand, I think, obviously this is very
Speaker 1: smart piece of software. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: what I read about it suggested it's kind of tricks
Speaker 1: ee like it it uses some very clever tricks on
Speaker 1: the part of the designers, but it's not really It
Speaker 1: was tricks that actually helped them avoid the necessity to
Speaker 1: create really super robust AI. Well. Yeah, because it's a
Speaker 1: non native English speaker communicating in English. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: age of their team, meaning that there is a limited
Speaker 1: experience of the world, didn't get all kinds of cultural
Speaker 1: references and stuff right. So by by limiting the references
Speaker 1: that it would understand and the context that it could understand, Uh,
Speaker 1: they end up set the questioner's expectations lower, and therefore
Speaker 1: the bar is lower. Uh. This is different than if
Speaker 1: you had an artificially intelligent program that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a native speaker in whatever language you're using and
Speaker 1: to be relatively aware of most things. You're at the
Speaker 1: same sort of stuff the average person of that culture
Speaker 1: would be aware of, and to have a conversation, a
Speaker 1: meaningful conversation with that. It also raised a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting discussion about alternatives to the Turing test, Right, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea that the Turing test is not necessarily a
Speaker 1: great test for artificial intelligence. We did a podcast about
Speaker 1: that over it Forward Thinking. Yeah, you should definitely go
Speaker 1: check that out if you're interested in this subject. That
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking episode was a lot of fun. Uh, And
Speaker 1: all of our podcasts are are gathered at f W
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. So if you like that kind of discussion,
Speaker 1: definitely go check that out because that was a blast
Speaker 1: to talk about. Also, in June, Amazon introduced the fire Phone,
Speaker 1: which was which I kind of pretend I care about. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you'd you'd be joining the millions of people who did
Speaker 1: not flock to the Amazon Fire Phone. I think I
Speaker 1: just failed at pretending. You know. It was one of
Speaker 1: those that like the idea is interesting. It's it really
Speaker 1: is supposed to appeal to the Amazon Prime members, people
Speaker 1: who buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. The process
Speaker 1: of buying things would have been a lot smoother on
Speaker 1: this phone than on other devices. It had a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting innovations as far as like um, so much
Speaker 1: easier to just pour the money out of your wallet.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much what every mobile device is all about Joe. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this this one was supposed to also have
Speaker 1: like a lot of cool features in it that would
Speaker 1: allow for um better depth sensing with the camera, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But yeah, it just never really made
Speaker 1: a big impression. Also, just an interesting little note, Harley
Speaker 1: Davidson introduced a prototype electric motorcycle, which kind of I
Speaker 1: guess defeats the purpose of buying a Harley if you
Speaker 1: can't revet and make that really obnoxious noise. I say
Speaker 1: this as someone who really would love to own a
Speaker 1: Harley Davidson. That's true. I did not know that about you.
Speaker 1: There's a world we have seen you in black leather jackets.
Speaker 1: But I also believe you don't drive vehicles. I don't drive. No,
Speaker 1: I don't drive cars. I don't drive cars. But you
Speaker 1: would drive a motorcycle, absolutely, I would. What a strange person.
Speaker 1: You can have a way more situational awareness and not
Speaker 1: on a motorcycle than you can in the car. But
Speaker 1: but you do have to worry a lot more about
Speaker 1: your safety. You have to, as as motorcyclist will say,
Speaker 1: you have to imagine that you are invisible, so you
Speaker 1: have to be hyper aware of the cars around you obviously,
Speaker 1: but but there's a World War two era Harley Davidson
Speaker 1: that I absolutely would love to own. And I wrote
Speaker 1: the article on how stuff Works dot Com on how
Speaker 1: choppers work, and that was fantastic. I loved it. UM Anyway,
Speaker 1: last story for June often we found out that in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, Facebook changed how the news feed displayed
Speaker 1: to UM users as part of the psychological experiment, and
Speaker 1: people got upset about it. You remember that story. Did
Speaker 1: you hear anything about it? Yeah, this idea that they
Speaker 1: wanted to see what the psychological impact was if they
Speaker 1: if they tweaked the news feed so that certain types
Speaker 1: of stories would show more than other types. Can they
Speaker 1: make you more depressed? Yeah? And people got really mad
Speaker 1: that they became unwitting getting pigs to uh this this
Speaker 1: psychological state that happened two years previously. I was hoping
Speaker 1: that my news feed would make me depressed in random ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were directing this. I thought you were just I
Speaker 1: thought all my friends were emo, and it turns out
Speaker 1: you were just making me think that. Well, I mean it,
Speaker 1: anytime Facebook makes any sort of change, it's guaranteed to
Speaker 1: upset people. But this in particular with people not feeling
Speaker 1: like they were uninformed, that they were unwilling participants really
Speaker 1: got to it psychologically. There was some big tech company
Speaker 1: news in July. Wasn't oh gosh, so remember Only had
Speaker 1: announced earlier in the year that they were going to
Speaker 1: cut five thousand jobs, and everyone's like, oh, well, that's
Speaker 1: when in July Microsoft announced plans to layoff eighteen thousand employees. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was the largest number of layoffs in company history
Speaker 1: for a single layoff at any rate. Uh. And Nadella,
Speaker 1: the CEO, said that the plan was to streamline the engineering,
Speaker 1: operations and management processes and reduce the levels of management
Speaker 1: to quote accelerate the flow of information and decision making
Speaker 1: end quote. And most of those jobs were in the
Speaker 1: Nokia division they had Microsoft had acquired Nokia, and now
Speaker 1: they were getting rid of a lot of middle management largely. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not not a great not a great day
Speaker 1: to be at Microsoft. I think, I'm sure, I'm sure
Speaker 1: anyone working there on that day was very much on
Speaker 1: on the edge of their seat. And not all those
Speaker 1: layoffs happened at once, obviously they rolled out over time. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there was this new story that that ended up
Speaker 1: getting passed around became a little viral that I thought
Speaker 1: was hilarious, largely because I knew the people involved. So
Speaker 1: I've got a friend. Her name is Veronica. Veronica has
Speaker 1: a husband named Ryan, and Veronica had gotten on the
Speaker 1: phone with Comcast, a Comcast representative, and she wanted to
Speaker 1: cancel her her service with Comcast. Hold on, let me
Speaker 1: transfer you to somebody else. Yeah, it wasn't even that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even that. It got worse than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she she handed After she got frustrated, Ryan, her husband,
Speaker 1: took over the phone call and at that point started
Speaker 1: to record the conversation he had with the Comcast representative,
Speaker 1: and which and which the Comcast representative took every opportunity
Speaker 1: to try and stop them from canceling their service, and um,
Speaker 1: it ended up getting pretty absurd. It was hard to
Speaker 1: believe it was real. Yeah, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people were saying, like, this is stage. It's got to
Speaker 1: be it's got to be some sort of because every
Speaker 1: single time the guy would just say, oh, I want
Speaker 1: to proceed, can we just please in my service, he
Speaker 1: would come back at him with something else, like, you know,
Speaker 1: can't you just tell me why yeah, you know it was.
Speaker 1: It was like a really needy breakup. Yeah right right,
Speaker 1: I swear it could change. So this ended up leading
Speaker 1: to Comcast uh delivering an apology to Ryan and Veronica
Speaker 1: um saying that that was not the way customer representatives
Speaker 1: were supposed to respond to calls. Then later there were
Speaker 1: other customer representatives, mostly anonymous ones, claiming that no, they're
Speaker 1: pretty much, you know, encouraged to take every opportunity to
Speaker 1: discourage you from ending your service, Like that guy was
Speaker 1: doing an awesome job, right like that guy, Like that
Speaker 1: guy was essentially doing what he had been told to do,
Speaker 1: or all the incentives point you toward doing like you
Speaker 1: would get incentive of that would be based on uh,
Speaker 1: customer retention, that kind of thing. And so anyway, it
Speaker 1: became this whole story about corporate culture and the way
Speaker 1: that companies handle customers. And it was interesting to me
Speaker 1: just because I knew the people who were involved, and
Speaker 1: I was actually chatted with Veronica about it later and
Speaker 1: she's like, yeah, I didn't expect that end up snowballing
Speaker 1: the way it did. Any rate. Also, in July, four
Speaker 1: Square would split into two services, one that would remain
Speaker 1: named four Square and one that was called Swarm and
Speaker 1: the check in ability where you would go to a
Speaker 1: place and you know, you normally would go to four
Speaker 1: square and check in. That went with Swarm, which left
Speaker 1: a lot of people asking what the heck is four square? Now? Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that I always thought what the heck
Speaker 1: is four square? Now? I mean, I understand what it does,
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. Yeah, I don't understand that.
Speaker 1: I totally I totally understand your confusion. I loved four
Speaker 1: square for two reasons. I love the idea of that
Speaker 1: one other friends who used four square would be able
Speaker 1: to see if I was nearby, and maybe we could
Speaker 1: end up hanging out. Never worked out, but that says
Speaker 1: more about me than four square. Uh. The other was
Speaker 1: that four square you know some places that that would
Speaker 1: allow you to check or some places that had a
Speaker 1: presence on four square would have specials, like special deals
Speaker 1: like check in three times, get a free appetizer at
Speaker 1: this restaurant, that kind of thing. And my wife and
Speaker 1: I go to enough of the same places where that
Speaker 1: ended up being something cool and we like doing it.
Speaker 1: But neither my wife nor I used Swarm. We both
Speaker 1: I tried it. She didn't even bother She just deleted
Speaker 1: four square and was done. I tried it and then
Speaker 1: deleted it. I didn't did no one. Not enough people
Speaker 1: were using it for me to care at the time.
Speaker 1: It may be different now, um, and four square became
Speaker 1: more of a recommendation engine, like you are in this neighborhood,
Speaker 1: maybe you would like to have coffee here, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But I don't know how their numbers are
Speaker 1: doing right now, but I do know the initial response
Speaker 1: was negative. I think four squares should have done a
Speaker 1: thing where only four people can check in at a time,
Speaker 1: and then there's a line of other people waiting, and
Speaker 1: one of them is king and manufactured exclusivity has become
Speaker 1: an incredibly popular tool. So you joke, but that could
Speaker 1: probably work, Jonathan. I just realized we've been talking for
Speaker 1: more than fifty minutes and we've only made it halfway through. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who would have thought that boilaying a whole year down
Speaker 1: to an hour would be a hard thing to do? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know if you make a good point, though, Joe,
Speaker 1: if we were to continue on this pace, obviously, this
Speaker 1: would be one the longest episode text Up has ever done,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure you've had some long ones. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think we should just make the second half of
Speaker 1: the year another podcast. That sounds good to me. So
Speaker 1: we are going to wrap up here and in our
Speaker 1: next episode we'll pick up in August two thousan fourteen
Speaker 1: and talk about what happened during the second half of
Speaker 1: the year. So, guys, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: at your topics for tech stuff, let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me an email that addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler to handle it. All three of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff H s W. And we'll finish out
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it has stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com