Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and friends. It is
Speaker 1: the end of twenty and I have to admit I
Speaker 1: am very glad I did not do a tech Stuff
Speaker 1: Predicts twenty twenty episode at the end of last year.
Speaker 1: Long time listeners know that I used to do that.
Speaker 1: I used to make a predictions episode at the very
Speaker 1: end of one year, at the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: following year, to say what I thought was going to
Speaker 1: unfold over the course of the following twelve months. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't do it this time, because boy howdy,
Speaker 1: there was no way I could have predicted what this
Speaker 1: year turned out to be. But there's another tradition that
Speaker 1: we have at tech Stuff, which is that we take
Speaker 1: a look back at the year in tech and talk
Speaker 1: about some of the big stories that happened over the
Speaker 1: previous twelve months. And it's probably gonna take at least
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes. I've only got this one finished
Speaker 1: right now, transparency here, so I haven't written the rest
Speaker 1: of this, but I will give you a spoiler that
Speaker 1: this episode only gets through March, and uh, that's not
Speaker 1: a strong start. I think, however, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: sort of a cliffs notes approach to the news stories. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if I did a deep dive, that would probably get
Speaker 1: us well into the middle of next year before I
Speaker 1: finished out all of And also I should let you
Speaker 1: know I am recording these episodes a little early. It's
Speaker 1: not the end of December right now. It's fact it's
Speaker 1: mid December as I record this. So it is entirely
Speaker 1: possible that between the time I record this and the
Speaker 1: time you hear it, even more crazy stuff will have happened.
Speaker 1: But we gotta do what we can. Right So, before
Speaker 1: I started going more or less chronologically through the year,
Speaker 1: I think it only makes sense for us to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the viral elephant in the room. Coronavirus and COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: have had a devastating impact on the world and every
Speaker 1: aspect of our lives, and the tech industry was not
Speaker 1: excluded from this by a long shot. The pandemic has
Speaker 1: contributed to major issues from supply chain concerns to you know,
Speaker 1: offices closing down to companies teetering on the verge of bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: and so we should be ready for a lot of
Speaker 1: stories that I will cover to have you know, some
Speaker 1: element of the pandemic in it and how the pandemic
Speaker 1: affected the world of technology. It will come into play
Speaker 1: over time, you know, as we go further into the year,
Speaker 1: it will obviously become a bigger part of it um.
Speaker 1: But we should also remember that COVID nineteen that nineteen
Speaker 1: refers to the year two thousand nineteen, as it was
Speaker 1: first for order to the World Health Organization on December
Speaker 1: thirty one, two thousand nineteen. So even though we think
Speaker 1: of it, or at least I think of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: as a twenty twenty thing, we do have to remember
Speaker 1: that it all got started at the very tail end
Speaker 1: of two thousand nineteen. There are a few other big
Speaker 1: threads in tech. Stories of the elections in the United
Speaker 1: States were under intense scrutiny. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: stories in tech that intertwined with the elections and with
Speaker 1: politics in general, and there continues to be some serious
Speaker 1: discussion in governments around the world that revolve around big
Speaker 1: tech companies and whether they represent monopolies or are otherwise
Speaker 1: perpetuating anti competitive practices, and if they should be broken up.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure we'll touch on all of these stories
Speaker 1: several times as we go throughout the year. Early in January,
Speaker 1: we had c E S, also known as the Consumer
Speaker 1: Electronics Show. Though we've slowly seen the event drift further
Speaker 1: are away from a strictly consumer electronics focus, little do
Speaker 1: we know at the time that the cs FOR would
Speaker 1: be forced to shift to a virtual only event. Now.
Speaker 1: I didn't attend c E S, which is a little
Speaker 1: unusual for me, but I had just finished a year
Speaker 1: of intense travel for work, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: could probably cover most of the announcements from Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: the question is what did I miss out on? Well,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of examples of the sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff you expect at c S. For example, there were
Speaker 1: robots somewhere really just toys meant to divert someone for
Speaker 1: a little bit before you got tired of it and
Speaker 1: then it takes up space. Others purported to be, you know,
Speaker 1: actually a practical use in some way. Samsung showed off
Speaker 1: a rolling robot called Bali B A L l I
Speaker 1: E and has a little camera in it, and it
Speaker 1: allows the robot to roam around and follow people and
Speaker 1: potentially help out with various chores. For example, let's say
Speaker 1: you spill some salsa on the floor and Bali notices this,
Speaker 1: and after it judges you for being a slob. I
Speaker 1: might be projecting here. Bali would then alert, say, your
Speaker 1: robot mop and vacuum cleaner to swoop in and take
Speaker 1: care of that spicy mess. Well, you're left to think
Speaker 1: about your life choices. There were a lot of other
Speaker 1: robots too, but let's talk about some of the other
Speaker 1: gadgets that grabbed headlines at c e S. Samsung did
Speaker 1: it again with the unveiling of a display that can
Speaker 1: rotate horizontally or vertically so in landscape or portrait mode.
Speaker 1: CNN called it the vertical TV no one has asked for,
Speaker 1: but I beg to differ. Um, Maybe the CNN staff
Speaker 1: can't see a need for vertically oriented display, but I
Speaker 1: know plenty of video game streamers who have a vertically
Speaker 1: aligned monitor that they used to keep track of stuff
Speaker 1: like stream chat. The setup i've seen most freak only
Speaker 1: includes one monitor for the actual gameplay footage, one monitor
Speaker 1: to show the stream view for stuff like overlays and transitions,
Speaker 1: and even a third monitor, the vertically one to to
Speaker 1: follow chat and one day, my friends, I hope to
Speaker 1: have a setup like that. I don't currently, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: stuck with um Well, I've got three monitors in front
Speaker 1: of me, but therefore two different computers and they're not
Speaker 1: connected together. One gadget I heard about and kind of
Speaker 1: wish I had seen in person was the Julia smart
Speaker 1: processor from Cooking Pal. According to what I've read, it
Speaker 1: could chop, mix, need way and cook stuff, which kind
Speaker 1: of sounds magical to me. It looks a little bit
Speaker 1: like a coffee maker, I think, but apparently it cannot
Speaker 1: make coffee. Kitchen gadgets are always a huge category at CEES.
Speaker 1: I think kitchens and home entertainment systems are sort of
Speaker 1: the standard consumer electronics categories. Segue introduced a new personal
Speaker 1: motorized vehicle at ce S. It was a chair on
Speaker 1: two wheels, So other than standing on a on a
Speaker 1: wheeled scooter, you sit in a two wheeled contraption and
Speaker 1: those wheels are side by side. They're not front and back,
Speaker 1: it's left and right, so it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: classic Segue scooter and rather than leaning to control it
Speaker 1: the way you would a normal Segue, you use a
Speaker 1: joystick that's on the right side of the seat and
Speaker 1: it looks kind of cool. I would actually love to
Speaker 1: give one a spin. And before I talk about a
Speaker 1: few more ces gadgets, I do want to mention that
Speaker 1: Segue wasn't the news. Later in in June, the company
Speaker 1: announced that it was ending production on the original Segue
Speaker 1: PT scooter. This was the line of vehicles that put
Speaker 1: Segue on the map. I mean, I remember twenty years
Speaker 1: ago just before the Segue was unveiled, and now all
Speaker 1: the news channels had referred to it as it I
Speaker 1: think maybe one of the code words was ginger. I
Speaker 1: actually didn't look that up, but I want to say
Speaker 1: that it's in my brain. I could be wrong, but
Speaker 1: no one was really sure what it was. They only
Speaker 1: knew that Dean Cayman, a true engineering genius, was going
Speaker 1: to announce something interesting, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: speculation about what it could be, and some people were
Speaker 1: actually really good at guessing what it would end up being,
Speaker 1: which when it was unveiled, was this motorized scooter that
Speaker 1: could balance on two wheels uh, and when it was unveiled,
Speaker 1: the media went bonkers for it. There were talks about
Speaker 1: how it would lead to a complete redesign of cities
Speaker 1: and would become the future of personal transportation for short distances,
Speaker 1: which never quite happened. But we did see some elements
Speaker 1: of that vision come true many years later in a
Speaker 1: different form, and we saw the introduction of you know,
Speaker 1: scooter rental services, for example, all over the place using
Speaker 1: an app to unlock a scooter. I want to think
Speaker 1: of that as sort of sort of a branched pathway
Speaker 1: off of this vision of the segue, But I am
Speaker 1: still waiting for cities to get redesigned totally to make
Speaker 1: it easier to get around if you're not in a car.
Speaker 1: Back at CES, there were plenty of other gadgets, from
Speaker 1: smart watches, two drones, to flying car concepts to a
Speaker 1: kitty litter box outfitted with AI. Now, if you ever
Speaker 1: wondered if artificial intelligence was going to rebel against humans
Speaker 1: and try to eradicate us, I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say the answer is they definitely will, and it's because
Speaker 1: we made them stare at kitty litter in so we
Speaker 1: deserve it. There were smart speakers. There were thin and
Speaker 1: gorgeous television sets. There were led hexagon lights, which I
Speaker 1: have since seen in the background of various YouTuber videos.
Speaker 1: There were musical instruments. There were car gadgets and systems.
Speaker 1: There were new computers, There were new VR headsets, and
Speaker 1: then there were all the really weird devices that would
Speaker 1: prompt you to wonder why anyone ever thought it up
Speaker 1: in the first place, And often that thought is followed
Speaker 1: by when can I get one of those? So started
Speaker 1: off with a big splash of consumer tech, some of
Speaker 1: it awesome, some of it weird, some of it lame
Speaker 1: on the social networking side of things. Facebook continue you
Speaker 1: to field criticisms directed at the platform regarding misinformation, fake accounts,
Speaker 1: and politics, which would go throughout all of the company
Speaker 1: was under fire because executives had acknowledged that there were
Speaker 1: a lot of political ads on Facebook containing misinformation and
Speaker 1: sometimes outright lies, but that Facebook was not going to
Speaker 1: take any action to label or remove misleading political ads.
Speaker 1: While the company was bowing to pressure to remove other
Speaker 1: types of content uh that contained misinformation or hate speech,
Speaker 1: the political ads would stay up, and as was an
Speaker 1: election year here in the United states. This would become
Speaker 1: a bigger story over the following months, and it was
Speaker 1: exacerbated somewhat when a memo penned by a Facebook executive
Speaker 1: named Andrew Bosworth back at the end of twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: became public in and In that memo, Bosworth said he
Speaker 1: believed Facebook's advertising policies were a contributing factor in the
Speaker 1: outcome of the election, and that it might quote very
Speaker 1: well lead to the same result end quote. Now, Bosworth,
Speaker 1: I should point out, was a Clinton supporter, but his
Speaker 1: point was more about how the Trump campaign was able
Speaker 1: to run a really effective digital ad campaign using Facebook's approach,
Speaker 1: rather than arguing that there was some influence of Russian
Speaker 1: interference or misinformation campaigns. Bosworth also dismissed Cambridge Analytica's influence
Speaker 1: on the twenty sixteen election, something that I think is
Speaker 1: probably accurate for the most part, but I feel Bosworth
Speaker 1: was also dismissive of the very real, harmful impact Cambridge
Speaker 1: Analytica had and the role Facebook played in making that possible,
Speaker 1: namely through the company's terrible management of app permissions, But
Speaker 1: that's a matter for a different podcast. Facebook will pop
Speaker 1: up more than a few times in this retrospective look
Speaker 1: at the big stories, of which is no big surprise.
Speaker 1: It continues to play a big part, sometimes a disruptive
Speaker 1: part of people's lives, both online and offline. Over at Google,
Speaker 1: David Drummond, who was the chief legal officer of Alphabet,
Speaker 1: the holding company under which Google exists, he retired amid
Speaker 1: a growing concern at the company. Google, like a lot
Speaker 1: of other tech companies, was struggling with revelations that came
Speaker 1: to the public notice in the wake of the me
Speaker 1: too movement. According to former Googler Jennifer Blakely, she and
Speaker 1: Drummond had a year's long affair, and since Blakely reported
Speaker 1: to Drummond originally anyway, this was in direct violation of
Speaker 1: Google's HR policies, but Blakely would ultimately be moved to
Speaker 1: a different department, one that she claimed was unrelated to
Speaker 1: her background, her education, her work experience, and Drummond kept
Speaker 1: climbing the executive ladder, and the message was that if
Speaker 1: you were an executive, specifically a male executive at Google,
Speaker 1: you had a level of protection around you that would
Speaker 1: cushion you from stuff that what at the very least
Speaker 1: earn you a sanction from the company, if not worse.
Speaker 1: And this is a story we've seen happen again and
Speaker 1: again in multiple companies, from Uber to Ubisoft, and also
Speaker 1: in companies that you know, don't start with you. It
Speaker 1: had been a real blight in the business world in
Speaker 1: general for years and the tech world in particular. And
Speaker 1: I suspect it's going to take a lot more time
Speaker 1: and effort to uncover and address toxic work cultures and
Speaker 1: policies because we've only really just scratched the surface. Gosh,
Speaker 1: we're not even out of January yet. But um, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we'll come back and see
Speaker 1: if we can get out of that first month. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh see in a minute. Okay, January, Xerox initiated a
Speaker 1: hostile takeover attempt for HP. This would be the branch
Speaker 1: of HP that is the PC manufacturer, because if you remember,
Speaker 1: HP itself had split into two entities a few years earlier.
Speaker 1: So the way a hostile takeover typically works is that
Speaker 1: you've got company A in this case Xerox, buying up
Speaker 1: shares of company B in this case HP, and it's
Speaker 1: in an effort to gain enough leverage to force company
Speaker 1: b's board of directors to agree to a merger or
Speaker 1: acquisition deal, or to bypass the board of directors completely
Speaker 1: by forcing a shareholder vote on the matter. If you
Speaker 1: control enough shares, you can influence the vote and make
Speaker 1: it go your way, and then Company A takes over
Speaker 1: Company B. It is not always easy to do. It
Speaker 1: was huge in the eighties. This was like the go
Speaker 1: to method for one company to go after another company
Speaker 1: in the eighties. But it is really expensive and it
Speaker 1: can get really ugly. Xerox went hard after HP with
Speaker 1: a campaign that was a thirty five billion dollar acquisition
Speaker 1: campaign that is a princely sum. Ultimately, Xerox would end
Speaker 1: this attempt in March of citing the Coronavis virus pandemic
Speaker 1: as the main reason for dropping its pursuit. Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: Xerox CEO was himself a former HP executive, so he
Speaker 1: had worked at HP before, also worked at IBM before
Speaker 1: came over, leads Xerox and then tries to take HP,
Speaker 1: but it didn't work. In late January, Uber announced it
Speaker 1: was preparing a test of its self driving vehicles in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And I bring this up really to do
Speaker 1: a quick fast forward on Uber's self driving car strategy
Speaker 1: in t see. Uber has been incredibly bullish about pushing
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, mean very aggressive in developing self driving car technology.
Speaker 1: The pursuit has had more than a few bumps in
Speaker 1: the road. You could say there were allegations that Beer
Speaker 1: was benefiting from research that was stolen from Google's way
Speaker 1: Mo program. Uh. That is something that took a really
Speaker 1: ugly turn a few years ago and continues to be
Speaker 1: an issue today in various ways. And then you had
Speaker 1: the tragic incident of an Uber self driving vehicle colliding
Speaker 1: with a pedestrian. That was terrible, and the company has
Speaker 1: had a dark and questionable record with self driving technology
Speaker 1: while pushing it really hard. But despite all that, autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles remained a pillar of Uber's strategy, which in itself
Speaker 1: is rough because the message you're sending to your driver's
Speaker 1: is we need you right now, but eventually we won't
Speaker 1: need you, So don't get too comfy, not not super
Speaker 1: more like not a great way to raise morale among
Speaker 1: your employees or i should say contract workers. Anyway, later
Speaker 1: in circulated that Uber was looking to sell off the
Speaker 1: self driving division within the company, and it was pouring
Speaker 1: around twenty million dollars every month into its autonomous car
Speaker 1: research and development division. In an effort to move toward profitability,
Speaker 1: Uber has pulled the trigger and sold off the autonomous
Speaker 1: car division to a startup called Aurora. And Aurora itself
Speaker 1: is headed by a former way Mo executive, so someone
Speaker 1: who had worked on Google's self driving car company has
Speaker 1: now moved over and created their own startup. Now, this
Speaker 1: does not mean that Uber has actually given up on
Speaker 1: autonomous cars. They haven't. The company will have a significant
Speaker 1: ownership stake in Aurora, and this shift is likely more
Speaker 1: about freeing up Uber of those massive monthly costs while
Speaker 1: still eyeing the potential for a self driving fleet of
Speaker 1: Uber vehicles in the future. So it would be premature
Speaker 1: to say that Uber is done with autonomous vehicles. Really,
Speaker 1: it's just done pouring millions of dollars every month into
Speaker 1: the effort. Considering how far behind Uber is on its
Speaker 1: original plans, that's probably for the best because the company
Speaker 1: had hoped to have thousands of self driving taxis active
Speaker 1: in a few different markets by the end of twenty
Speaker 1: and that just hasn't happened. So I expect Uber's overall
Speaker 1: plans haven't really changed. That much. It's just how the
Speaker 1: company hopes to achieve them. That's what's changed. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons Uber is looking forward to a future
Speaker 1: with robot drivers is that the company has really resisted
Speaker 1: treating its human drivers as company employees. As I alluded
Speaker 1: to just a minute ago, Uber, along with Lift, classifies
Speaker 1: drivers as contract workers, not employees, and that gets around
Speaker 1: some pesky issues like providing benefits to people. In California,
Speaker 1: legal cases challenging this had gone as far as the
Speaker 1: California Appeals Court, and in fact that court ruled that
Speaker 1: Lift and Uber should classify drivers as employees, or really
Speaker 1: they should prepare to do that. Because some legislation was
Speaker 1: being laid out for California voters. It was called Proposition
Speaker 1: twenty two, and that proposition would create the legal standing
Speaker 1: to call gig workers contract workers rather than employees if
Speaker 1: it passed. So, in other words, if you vote yes
Speaker 1: on Proposition twenty two, what you're saying is that people
Speaker 1: who work for companies like Uber or Lift can be
Speaker 1: called contract workers, they are not employees. That that legislation
Speaker 1: passed with fifty eight percent of the vote. So Lift
Speaker 1: and Uber and a few other similar companies had collectively
Speaker 1: contributed more than two hundred million dollars to various ad
Speaker 1: campaigns in California to convince voters to support that proposition,
Speaker 1: and it totally worked. So workers will be contract workers.
Speaker 1: They are not employees, and thus they are not entitled
Speaker 1: to employee benefits the way other employees are within the
Speaker 1: state of California. They did get a few additional benefits
Speaker 1: from that proposition, but not to the extent that they
Speaker 1: would if they actually were granted full employee status. We
Speaker 1: learned in January that a string of hotels branded with
Speaker 1: a licensing agreement from Atari will be here at some
Speaker 1: point in the future. I think the plan is to
Speaker 1: have hotels in eight different cities and places like Las Vegas, Nevada, Nevada.
Speaker 1: I should say, I apologize, and I imagine those plans
Speaker 1: in particular hit a pretty big snag with the pandemic,
Speaker 1: which has really affected everything from the hospitality industry in
Speaker 1: general because fewer people are traveling and staying in hotels
Speaker 1: to construction. A lot of construction projects are progressing very
Speaker 1: lowly or not at all at the moment. But these hotels,
Speaker 1: when they are completed, will cater to fans of video
Speaker 1: games with a retro design and immersive experiences built into
Speaker 1: the structures themselves, which sounds pretty nifty. I kind of
Speaker 1: dig the idea of staying at a hotel that has
Speaker 1: that sort of retro eighties style to it, especially if
Speaker 1: it's very, very subtly influenced by specific video games. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that could be a lot of fun. And
Speaker 1: if if every room has its own arcade cabinet, that's
Speaker 1: even better. I mean, I don't think that will happen,
Speaker 1: but that would be cool. So I think now we
Speaker 1: are finally ready to move into February. So that was
Speaker 1: a lot. But we went through several stories as they
Speaker 1: played out throughout the year, and we will continue to
Speaker 1: do that in this episode. So while I might start
Speaker 1: a story that began in February, some of those stories
Speaker 1: do play out throughout the year. So let's see what
Speaker 1: we have in store. Keeping in mind is also a
Speaker 1: leap year, so we have an extra day in February, because,
Speaker 1: of course we do, because twenties determined to get us down,
Speaker 1: but dang it, I'm not gonna let that happen. February
Speaker 1: was when we started seeing tech companies start to shut
Speaker 1: down store fronts, and then a little later after that
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities that were located in China. While the coronavirus
Speaker 1: had already spread outside of China, at this point, most
Speaker 1: people in the United States weren't really concerned about it yet.
Speaker 1: It was a very few number of cases in the
Speaker 1: United States, and I think a lot of people, I
Speaker 1: think even myself, thought, oh, you know, this is bad,
Speaker 1: but at least it's containable. Little did I know. I
Speaker 1: was so naive. But tech companies were already starting to
Speaker 1: take a bit of a preventive approach, with Apple closing
Speaker 1: all forty two of its stores in China. By early February, Facebook, Google,
Speaker 1: and Twitter all announced that they were cracking down on
Speaker 1: misinformation about the coronavirus, which I mean, I guess they
Speaker 1: did do that, but holy cats, I think information and
Speaker 1: baseless conspiracy theories about coronavirus can go toe to toe
Speaker 1: with the misinformation and such regarding the U S election,
Speaker 1: and to be fair, a lot of that stuff is
Speaker 1: actually tied up together. The company said they were on
Speaker 1: top of all of that, but it would turn out
Speaker 1: that the tidal wave of misinformation was just too great
Speaker 1: for the services to really handle. It. It just was
Speaker 1: too tall of an order, I would argue. It is
Speaker 1: interesting to me though, that as early as February they
Speaker 1: were talking about this. We saw an escalation of the U.
Speaker 1: S government's stance against Chinese manufacturing company Huawei in twenty
Speaker 1: In February twenty uh Whahwei makes a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: including infrastructure components for five G networks, and I covered
Speaker 1: a lot about five G myths in a recent episode,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to dive into that too much here.
Speaker 1: But the overt reason for the concern about Whahwei was
Speaker 1: that the Chinese government could deceivably forced Huahwei to serve
Speaker 1: as a gateway for surveillance activities and you know, essentially leverage.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible power to force Hahwei to have secret
Speaker 1: backdoor access to various communications networks. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the full story gets way more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Involves things like trade disputes and stuff, and a lot
Speaker 1: of posturing as well, so it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: the way I've laid it out. In February, the government
Speaker 1: added a few more charges at Huawei's door. They said
Speaker 1: that the company was guilty of racketeering and conspiracy to
Speaker 1: steal intellectual property in the battle between Huawei and the
Speaker 1: US government continues to this very day, as I record
Speaker 1: this in February as well, Amazon would argue in court successfully.
Speaker 1: I might add that a planned project to create a
Speaker 1: cloud computing infrastructure for the Pentagon should go on hold
Speaker 1: and not just move forward. So at the heart of
Speaker 1: the issue was that the Pentagon had this huge contract
Speaker 1: and they awarded it to Microsoft. But Jeff Bezos and
Speaker 1: Amazon alleged that President Trump had leaned on the Pentagon
Speaker 1: to award the contract to Microsoft, even if that that
Speaker 1: contract wasn't as competitive as what Amazon was putting forward,
Speaker 1: and that it was all because the President had bad
Speaker 1: blood with Bezos and Amazon and the Washington Post, which
Speaker 1: Bezos owns. This mess stretched on for several months until
Speaker 1: on early September, the Pentagon would say, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're still gonna go with Microsoft, where we've heard your complaints,
Speaker 1: but we're going to move forward. Amazon is still trying
Speaker 1: to stop that from happening. Uh, they're trying to have
Speaker 1: depositions with people like President Trump, in fact, all for
Speaker 1: the purposes of supporting their argument. But that's not really
Speaker 1: going anywhere. Right now. Can't imagine why, but there's a
Speaker 1: real chance that we're not done with this story yet
Speaker 1: and that it might stretch well into Gamers in the
Speaker 1: United States likely breathed a sigh of relief. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they noticed that in February the i r S
Speaker 1: very quietly deleted a statement that had previously said the
Speaker 1: virtual currency of Fortnite could possibly be subjected to federal taxes. Now,
Speaker 1: my guess is most gamers weren't even aware that that
Speaker 1: was a possibility in the first place, because it wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly displayed prominently. But this is more than just a
Speaker 1: curious story. If the I r S had kept that policy,
Speaker 1: it might have said a precedent for all sorts of
Speaker 1: virtual currencies, which so far have been largely exempt from
Speaker 1: taxable income. For its part, and I r S leaders
Speaker 1: said that the whole thing was a mistake in the
Speaker 1: first place and was never meant to have been published.
Speaker 1: So who's to say it was in mid February when
Speaker 1: we first started hearing about the possibility of shortages in
Speaker 1: various electronics. As tech companies and supply chains and manufacturing
Speaker 1: got more and more affected by the pandemic, we weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily calling it a pandemic, yet that's obviously what it
Speaker 1: turned out to be. Apple warned its investors that its
Speaker 1: revenue numbers would be impacted because the coronavirus was affecting
Speaker 1: iPhone production, which would lead to a shortage in stores,
Speaker 1: so fewer sales than had been predicted at that point,
Speaker 1: So that was an early indicator that things were serious.
Speaker 1: February is also when Larry Tesler passed away. Now that
Speaker 1: name might not be familiar to you, but his work
Speaker 1: definitely is because he was the guy who created the copy,
Speaker 1: cut and paste functions in computers, which have been basic
Speaker 1: commands in all these various systems ever since. And another
Speaker 1: person whom we lost in February was Kazuhisha Hashimoto, who
Speaker 1: was the genius behind the Konami code. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the Konami code, it is a sequence
Speaker 1: you can enter on a game pad to activate some
Speaker 1: sort of cheat code or easter egg in numerous games,
Speaker 1: and technically it is up, up, down, down, left, right,
Speaker 1: left right b A. Sometimes there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other steps, but that is the basic code, and the
Speaker 1: first game to feature this code was Gratis or Gradius
Speaker 1: if you prefer. But I first became aware of it
Speaker 1: in a game called Contra. Since then, it's appeared in
Speaker 1: numerous games, including games that were not made by Konami.
Speaker 1: So a lot of gamers when they get a new game,
Speaker 1: if they've got a game pad or some other controller
Speaker 1: like that attached, they will just try it just for
Speaker 1: the heck of it to see if anything happens. You'll
Speaker 1: be surprised at how often something does happen because so
Speaker 1: many people who developed games grew up playing stuff like Contra,
Speaker 1: and they're paying tribute in a way by including that
Speaker 1: code in their own games. Frequently it does something very silly,
Speaker 1: and uh, I really appreciate that. By the end of February,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus concerns were starting to really grow. Facebook canceled
Speaker 1: its scheduled conference and we would see many other planned
Speaker 1: events follow suit. South By Southwest held on until the
Speaker 1: very last minute. They canceled for the first time in
Speaker 1: thirty four years after the conference received a directive from
Speaker 1: the city of Austin to shut down. So that happened
Speaker 1: in March uh and south By Southwest happens at the
Speaker 1: end of the March e three actually canceled before south
Speaker 1: By Southwest did. E three is the big video game
Speaker 1: conference that happens in early June, so E three was
Speaker 1: being much more proactive than south By Southwest. Other events
Speaker 1: that either canceled or pivoted to a digital experience included
Speaker 1: TED twenty twenty, the New York Auto Show, the Minecraft Festival,
Speaker 1: the First Robotics Competition, the IBM Think Conference, the Adobe Summit,
Speaker 1: Apple w w d C, def Con China, Google Io,
Speaker 1: Mobile World Congress, Red Hat Summit twenty and tons more.
Speaker 1: In slightly more lighthearted news, Twitter got a bit of
Speaker 1: egg on its proverbial face after the service verified the
Speaker 1: account of a businessman and politician named Andrew Waltz who
Speaker 1: was running for Congress, except that Andrew Waltz wasn't a
Speaker 1: real person. He was made up seas as my quister
Speaker 1: compatriot would say. A seventeen year old high school student
Speaker 1: in New York created the profile of Andrew Waltz and
Speaker 1: submitted it to Twitter for verification and got it, which
Speaker 1: raises the question of exactly what Twitter's process involves for verification.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a verified check mark next to
Speaker 1: my name on Twitter. Am I real? Because some days
Speaker 1: I just don't know. But seriously, it brought to light
Speaker 1: the extremely not transparent process that Twitter uses to determine
Speaker 1: if someone warrants a verified tag or not, and it
Speaker 1: also pointed out how the service appeared to be very
Speaker 1: much not ready for the types of shenanigans that we
Speaker 1: expected to see leading up to the election in the
Speaker 1: United States. Alright, moving on to March, there weren't nearly
Speaker 1: as many February stories as the word January stories, partly
Speaker 1: because it's a short month, even with the extra day,
Speaker 1: but also mostly because it's just rare to hear about
Speaker 1: a lot about tech in February in general. The big
Speaker 1: story by now in March was definitely coronavirus, as we
Speaker 1: were starting to get the first serious indications of how
Speaker 1: dangerous and viral COVID nineteen really was. On the tech side,
Speaker 1: there was a growing effort to fight against misinformation and
Speaker 1: to create tools that people could use to see where
Speaker 1: the virus was is, you know where it was most concentrated,
Speaker 1: what you should be doing, you know what the hospitalization
Speaker 1: rates and so on were. And this was largely gathered
Speaker 1: out of the data from various health organizations that would
Speaker 1: become more complicated as the US administration made it more
Speaker 1: challenging to access that kind of information. News outlets reported
Speaker 1: in March that a major investor in Twitter, a hedge
Speaker 1: fund company called Elliott Management Corporation, was trying to push
Speaker 1: for big changes at Twitter, including replacing the CEO and
Speaker 1: co founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. And part of the
Speaker 1: issue was a concern that Dorsey is also the CEO
Speaker 1: of another company, Square, that's the payments technology company. And
Speaker 1: I've seen some recent pieces that dive into this trend
Speaker 1: for leaders in Silicon Valley to sit the head of
Speaker 1: more than one company, and it seems to me that
Speaker 1: more people are kind of growing uncomfortable with the idea
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons. And one is that if a CEO
Speaker 1: isn't focusing all of their attention on one business, than
Speaker 1: the businesses they oversee can suffer. Another is that there's
Speaker 1: a fear that these leaders are more likely to do
Speaker 1: what's best for themselves rather than what's best for the
Speaker 1: ventures that they lead. But in any case, the efforts
Speaker 1: so far have not paid off. Dorsey is still the
Speaker 1: CEO of both Square and Twitter as of this recording.
Speaker 1: Apple would settle a big lawsuit in March, paying five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to do so. At the heart of
Speaker 1: the matter was the charge that the company was purposefully
Speaker 1: slowing down older iPhones over time, presumably as a means
Speaker 1: of convincing phone owners that it was time to upgrade
Speaker 1: to a new iPhone. And this is a big problem
Speaker 1: in tech in general. Every company wants to make that
Speaker 1: next must have device, But what happens when all the
Speaker 1: people who must have it um have it? When you
Speaker 1: hit market saturation, you're not going to sell more of
Speaker 1: those devices because there are no more customers left. So
Speaker 1: you can create the next generation of that thing, but
Speaker 1: unless that next generation is really spectacular, you're not likely
Speaker 1: to get a significant percentage of your earlier customers to
Speaker 1: buy in. The more affluent of them might do that,
Speaker 1: but you've got to build in some sort of need
Speaker 1: or desire to upgrade every year or every two years,
Speaker 1: And after a while, it gets harder to make the
Speaker 1: next version of whatever it is that much better than
Speaker 1: the previous one. So if it's hard to make an
Speaker 1: even better version, why not work backward and make the
Speaker 1: older versions worse. It's planned obsolescence in action. Anyway, Apple
Speaker 1: would pay half a billion dollars to settle that lawsuit,
Speaker 1: which for Apple, I guess is probably what you can
Speaker 1: find if you search the couch cushions in the break room.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot more to cover since we're still
Speaker 1: in Mark, but let's take another quick break. The battle
Speaker 1: against misinformation regarding the coronavirus continued in March, with some
Speaker 1: of the source of that misinformation coming from pretty darn
Speaker 1: high up on the chain. For example, President Trump made
Speaker 1: some rather grandiose statements about a coronavirus information site that
Speaker 1: Google was developing, claims that Google CEO Sandar Picha I
Speaker 1: was quick to walk back quite a bit. While Trump
Speaker 1: claimed that the site was going to give people a
Speaker 1: chance to assess their symptoms, kind of like get an
Speaker 1: idea how likely it is that they actually had COVID
Speaker 1: and then find the best place to go and be tested,
Speaker 1: which I adjusted expectations, he said, No, the site is
Speaker 1: really going to be more about educating people about the
Speaker 1: virus and include best practices for prevention, not treatment or testing.
Speaker 1: It would not be the last time that would we
Speaker 1: would see one narrative emerge from US leadership, only to
Speaker 1: be contradicted by the companies that were actually working on
Speaker 1: the purported solutions. As the first stages of panic began
Speaker 1: to really grip the United States, we started seeing the
Speaker 1: run on staples here in the U S the main
Speaker 1: one being toilet paper, and companies like Amazon tried to
Speaker 1: ramp up to meet demand as stores were pretty much
Speaker 1: gutted of their supplies. Amazon also hired around one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand new employees to work in distribution centers to prepare
Speaker 1: for the new demand as people did more shopping online
Speaker 1: because of the coronavirus, that's something that we would see
Speaker 1: continue throughout most of Around this time, we also started
Speaker 1: getting some of the earliest details for the next generation
Speaker 1: and video game consoles, namely the Xbox Series S and
Speaker 1: Series X and the two versions of the PlayStation five.
Speaker 1: Over the following weeks, we would slowly learn more like
Speaker 1: the fact that both companies were going to offer two
Speaker 1: versions of these consoles. Sony's was an interesting approach. They
Speaker 1: had a version of the PS five that included an
Speaker 1: optical drive capable of playing back four K Blu Ray discs,
Speaker 1: and then they had one that did not have an
Speaker 1: optical drive. It was digital only. Other than that, the
Speaker 1: two versions are identical well, with one important distinction, which
Speaker 1: is that the PS five that does not have a
Speaker 1: drive is one dollars cheaper, but we didn't know the
Speaker 1: prices for a really long time that that was held
Speaker 1: back for quite some bit. In Microsoft's approach was different.
Speaker 1: It offered up a digital only version of the Xbox console,
Speaker 1: but unlike Sony, this version did not pack as much
Speaker 1: as the flagship Series X console, which includes the optical drive.
Speaker 1: There's a larger gap between the two Xbox consoles, both
Speaker 1: in terms of specs and in terms of price. The
Speaker 1: Series S costs two hundred dollars less than the Series X.
Speaker 1: As the year would go on, the planned launch of
Speaker 1: those consoles had to deal with the same realities the
Speaker 1: rest of us were grappling with, namely how the pandemic
Speaker 1: was making things harder. Perhaps the biggest challenge for Microsoft
Speaker 1: was that the pandemic caused massive delays in game development,
Speaker 1: which meant the Series X and the Series S consoles
Speaker 1: launched without any real exclusive titles to show off how
Speaker 1: powerful these news systems actually were. Sony fared a little
Speaker 1: better on that front, but shortages in PlayStation five consoles
Speaker 1: meant that it was devilishly hard to get hold of
Speaker 1: the PS five, even as late as the recording of
Speaker 1: this episode. As I sit here recording, there are news
Speaker 1: reports of stores like Walmart selling out of their restock
Speaker 1: in a matter of minutes. The supply just doesn't meet
Speaker 1: the demand so far with the PS five, while the
Speaker 1: poor Xbox consoles are just waiting for the killer app
Speaker 1: to convince gamers to fork over the cash to buy
Speaker 1: a new system. As for my own take on the consoles,
Speaker 1: I think they're both really impressive. If I were to
Speaker 1: buy one right now, and I haven't, I would probably
Speaker 1: be staking out stores as they restock the PS five,
Speaker 1: staking out online, I should add, not in person, but
Speaker 1: that's really because of the lack of really compelling exclusives
Speaker 1: for the series X so far. But honestly, I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for a while for either of them both so that
Speaker 1: any bugs or flaws can be ironed out in the
Speaker 1: next batch of hardware, because we've already heard about issues
Speaker 1: both for the Xbox and the PS five. There have
Speaker 1: been problems with production models so far. I would rather
Speaker 1: wait for those to get worked out for version you know,
Speaker 1: one point one. And also I want to wait until
Speaker 1: there are more games to play in the various libraries.
Speaker 1: I love consoles, I also love PC games as well.
Speaker 1: I am currently way behind in that the PCs I
Speaker 1: have right now are underpowered when it comes to the
Speaker 1: most recent Triple A titles. I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: play any recent Triple A title on anything but like
Speaker 1: the lower settings on my hardware as it stands. And
Speaker 1: then the consoles I have are from the previous generation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got the p S four and I've
Speaker 1: got the Xbox One, and they're from the early point
Speaker 1: of those generations. They're not the the more powerful versions
Speaker 1: that were released later in the life cycles. So I'm
Speaker 1: well behind, but I can be patient because I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that when I spend that kind of money,
Speaker 1: I'm getting the most for it. Let's move on. So
Speaker 1: SpaceX and March was rushing to try and push forward
Speaker 1: its Starlink satellite business. Starlink is a network of communications
Speaker 1: satellites that will deliver or broadband satellite internet to customers
Speaker 1: here on Earth, and so far SpaceX has put up
Speaker 1: about around a thousand satellites up into orbit as part
Speaker 1: of this network, with plans to push that up to
Speaker 1: around anywhere from twelve thousand to maybe more than forty
Speaker 1: thousand satellites in the future. Uh. There's a beta test
Speaker 1: right now where people are testing out the connectivity and
Speaker 1: that seems to be going pretty well, but it's still
Speaker 1: in beta as of this recording. SpaceX has had a
Speaker 1: pretty eventful twenty The company laid the groundwork, so to speak,
Speaker 1: for space tourism operations in the future, which could potentially
Speaker 1: see private citizens making trips up to the International Space
Speaker 1: Station in the future. That's something that hasn't happened for
Speaker 1: several years now. It did happen a few times in
Speaker 1: the past. Only a few private citizens ever did it.
Speaker 1: Richard Garriot, the creator of The Ultimate Series of Games,
Speaker 1: is one of them. But we might see that happen
Speaker 1: again in the future due to what SpaceX is trying
Speaker 1: to do and um in late May, SpaceX would supply
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle and spacecraft that NASA would need need
Speaker 1: to uh deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. It
Speaker 1: made it the first time that astronauts would launch from
Speaker 1: American soil since the US discontinued the Space Shuttle program.
Speaker 1: In the Dragon spacecraft brought Douglas Hurley and Robert Benkon
Speaker 1: to the I S S, and the mission emphasized how
Speaker 1: important the private space industry is to America's space strategy,
Speaker 1: at least in the near future. And in a test
Speaker 1: late in the year, space x is Starship s N
Speaker 1: eight vehicle exploded while executing a belly flop maneuver. The
Speaker 1: maneuver was going as planned at least for a while,
Speaker 1: but then one of the spacecraft's engines shut down unexpectedly
Speaker 1: and the vehicle crashed in a fiery explosion. Now, fortunately
Speaker 1: this was an unmanned test. No one was hurt. There
Speaker 1: were there's no one aboard, there was no one on
Speaker 1: the ground that was hurt, and it was generally understood
Speaker 1: that this maneuver was going to be really difficult to
Speaker 1: pull off, and it was likely that some sort of
Speaker 1: failure would occur. In other words, they had pretty much
Speaker 1: thought that this was a possibility, and the goal of
Speaker 1: the test was really to gather more information about the
Speaker 1: launch and the apogee of the flight path, so the
Speaker 1: mission overall was not a failure. The spacecraft is a
Speaker 1: prototype of the class of vehicles that SpaceX intends to
Speaker 1: use for missions that would go to places like Mars
Speaker 1: in the future, which is pretty exciting stuff. In late March,
Speaker 1: the video game Animal Crossing New Horizons launched on the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Switch, and it became an instant hit. The franchise
Speaker 1: of games has been popular for years, but the unique
Speaker 1: circumstances of a world going into lockdown gave the game
Speaker 1: a considerable boost. As people were searching for ways to
Speaker 1: interact with friends without you know, having to leave the house. Soon,
Speaker 1: having your little avatar visit the virtual islands of your
Speaker 1: friends became a really popular pastime. It wasn't long before
Speaker 1: people were talking about it being a Game of the
Speaker 1: Year contender. And I think the game is a good one,
Speaker 1: but I think the experience of the game was heightened
Speaker 1: largely because it helped people cope with being alone. I
Speaker 1: think in a world without the pandemic, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it would have Game of the Year contender status.
Speaker 1: And Animal Crossing wasn't the only game to help people
Speaker 1: find a distraction during the pandemic. Several games became really
Speaker 1: popular in including some that had escaped attention. Chief among
Speaker 1: those was the game among Us, a hidden role game
Speaker 1: that puts players into an environment where at least one
Speaker 1: of the players is attempting to sabotage everyone else. Most
Speaker 1: players are scurrying around the map to complete various tasks,
Speaker 1: and those tasks involved usually pretty simple actions on the
Speaker 1: layers part, like dragging a marker on the screen with
Speaker 1: your mouse or with a touch screen to a certain location. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the trader or traders imposters in other words, try to
Speaker 1: pick off the good guys without getting caught, or otherwise
Speaker 1: find a way to sabotage the game so they win
Speaker 1: if they kill enough of the good guys so that
Speaker 1: they can't get voted off. The good guys win if
Speaker 1: either they finish all their tasks or they vote off
Speaker 1: the traders, assuming they can suss out who the bad
Speaker 1: guys are. The game first came out in but it
Speaker 1: was when it would explode in popularity and inspired various
Speaker 1: memes like red as Look and kind of Suss, and
Speaker 1: it even served as a means to raise money for
Speaker 1: various causes. We even saw US representatives like Alexandria Casio
Speaker 1: Cortez joined the game and let me tell you AOC
Speaker 1: was cleaning house. She was really impressive. Her her kill
Speaker 1: of Pokemone was brutal. Other games that were really popular
Speaker 1: in included Phasma Phobia, a game in which players investigated
Speaker 1: haunted houses in an attempt to identify the type of
Speaker 1: spirit that was lingering behind, hopefully without angering the ghost
Speaker 1: too much, because those ghosts could get pretty violent. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's Fall, guys, and that's the game in which players
Speaker 1: compete against one another in a series of funny little
Speaker 1: obstacle courses and challenges and you're trying to be the
Speaker 1: one victorious, little jelly bean like figure among all the others.
Speaker 1: That was a big hit, and there were some big
Speaker 1: Triple A titles that got a lot of attension as well.
Speaker 1: Not all of the attention was positive. The Last of
Speaker 1: Us Part two, a long anticipated sequel to an incredible
Speaker 1: PS three game, ticked off some players with its narrative twists. Cyberpunk,
Speaker 1: which launched after several delays, has been the subject of
Speaker 1: ongoing criticism as players encounter very bugs in different versions
Speaker 1: of the game on different platforms, But generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: pandemic has had a big impact on game development and
Speaker 1: release schedules, and it also drove more people to play
Speaker 1: and stream games. Twitch saw a big uptick and use,
Speaker 1: including a big boost in November of people watching just
Speaker 1: chatting streams, meaning streams that weren't necessarily about even streaming
Speaker 1: a video game. We even saw video games being used
Speaker 1: to address the very real problem that people can no
Speaker 1: longer gather together in person without risking their health or
Speaker 1: in some cases breaking an ordinance. This all dependent upon
Speaker 1: whether or not you lived in a place that was
Speaker 1: instituting and enforcing restrictions due to the coronavirus. Here in
Speaker 1: Georgia not so much, but that's a matter for a
Speaker 1: totally different show. We saw people create virtual events using
Speaker 1: games like Minecraft to allow people to gather together and
Speaker 1: celebrate stuff like weddings or graduations, making the best out
Speaker 1: of a challenging situation. At the end of March, employees
Speaker 1: at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse staged a walkout. The
Speaker 1: protest was over how Amazon was handling, or rather failing
Speaker 1: to handle, the coronavirus crisis. There were several diagnosed cases
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen at that warehouse, and the employees had
Speaker 1: petitioned Amazon to shut down the warehouse in order to
Speaker 1: give the facility a deep cleaning. That was a move
Speaker 1: that Amazon resisted, and Amazon would fire one of the
Speaker 1: workers responsible for the waalk out a guy named Chris Smalls,
Speaker 1: although the company said it was because Smalls had come
Speaker 1: into work after he was told to stay home because
Speaker 1: he had been exposed to someone else who had COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: So the company was saying, this guy got exposed to
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, he could have been, uh contagious. He came
Speaker 1: into work anyway, that's why we fired him. Chris Small says,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I was fired because I helped organ
Speaker 1: nice this walkout. Uh, it's it's a sticky matter. And
Speaker 1: we'll wrap up this episode with a general observation and
Speaker 1: trend that would extend through Starting in March, we began
Speaker 1: to see a massive shift toward online platforms, both for entertainment,
Speaker 1: as movie theaters were closing their doors to using online
Speaker 1: platforms for online conferencing services, most notably Zoom. The Zoom
Speaker 1: explosion is hard to overstate. Heck, one of the ongoing
Speaker 1: jokes has been the various digital backgrounds that people have
Speaker 1: used in their Zoom meetings. And then there are the
Speaker 1: various accidents and indiscretions that have happened on camera as people,
Speaker 1: whether they were aware or not. We're broadcasting some questionable
Speaker 1: behaviors to other folks online. I am not going to
Speaker 1: dive into all that because yuck. But Zoom would play
Speaker 1: an important part as people would use it to conduct business,
Speaker 1: to have virtual visits with one another, and to do
Speaker 1: special events like live readings of famous scripts. And while
Speaker 1: it had been around for nearly a decade, Zoom really
Speaker 1: became a big deal in And meanwhile, some online platforms
Speaker 1: had to make adjustments on the fly to account for
Speaker 1: the limitations of the Internet. In March, YouTube reduced video
Speaker 1: quality in worldwide delivery of videos, and the reason was
Speaker 1: to decrease network loads and congestion. As more people watched
Speaker 1: content on YouTube and other services, networks were getting hit
Speaker 1: hard and so a lot of services were throttling stuff
Speaker 1: like resolution in order to compensate. Well, that gets us
Speaker 1: through March of and we've got a long way to
Speaker 1: go to get through the rest of it. But we've
Speaker 1: also covered some stories that unfolded throughout the year, so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go back and talk about those again
Speaker 1: in the next episode. So we'll see if we can
Speaker 1: get through the rest of twenty in one episode, or
Speaker 1: we might have to make this a three for I
Speaker 1: don't know yet, but if you guys have sugestions for
Speaker 1: topics that should cover in future episodes of text Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. You can reach out on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle to use is text stuff H s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.