Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So for those of you who celebrate, I
Speaker 1: hope you had a merry Christmas. And for all those
Speaker 1: who do not, I hope you had a wonderful December
Speaker 1: of the twenty fifth. And I thought it'd be fun
Speaker 1: to do a sort of retrospective episode that cheekily I
Speaker 1: call the Twelve Days of Tech Christmas. But really it's
Speaker 1: about twelve days in twenty twenty three where important tech
Speaker 1: stuff happened, stuff that is in the tech field, not
Speaker 1: tech stuff as in the name of this show. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm very sad to say these are not necessarily jolly
Speaker 1: days as a whole. The dates in this episode reference
Speaker 1: important events in tech, and many of those important events
Speaker 1: are also sad or troubling ones. But hey, I guess
Speaker 1: we all celebrate the holidays in our own way. Let's
Speaker 1: start off with Thursday, January fifth, twenty twenty three. That
Speaker 1: was the day that Amazon confirmed it would be laying
Speaker 1: off more than eighteen thousand staff, primarily from the Amazon
Speaker 1: Stores department, and the People, Experience and Technology divisions. The
Speaker 1: company cited economic uncertainty as the reason for the layoffs,
Speaker 1: a phrase that we would see repeated over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years as folks debate whether or not the
Speaker 1: word recession is applicable. Since recession has some specific qualifications
Speaker 1: to it, we typically settle on economic uncertainty. The reason
Speaker 1: I included here is not just because my heart goes
Speaker 1: out to all the folks who were affected directly or
Speaker 1: indirectly by those layoffs, but also because it was one
Speaker 1: of the earliest examples this year of companies making some
Speaker 1: pretty significant cutbacks. A big part of the problem was
Speaker 1: that tech c companies went on a hiring spree during
Speaker 1: the pandemic days, but once things began to calm down,
Speaker 1: suddenly these companies found themselves with a workforce that arguably
Speaker 1: was larger than what it needed to be. And while
Speaker 1: a lot of companies had already held significant layoff rounds
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, this year things amped up considerably,
Speaker 1: so in addition to Amazon, a lot of other companies
Speaker 1: like Meta, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Qualcom, and many more held
Speaker 1: rounds of layoffs this year. Here's hoping next year is
Speaker 1: much more stable. Moving on Tuesday, February seventh, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: this was the day Microsoft announced new versions of its
Speaker 1: web browser Edge and its search engine BING and these
Speaker 1: new versions would benefit from the power of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: specifically chat GPT. Microsoft had previously committed to a ten
Speaker 1: billion dollar investment deal into open AI. That's the company
Speaker 1: that makes check GPT, so you can look at this
Speaker 1: as the first of many AI implementations in Microsoft products.
Speaker 1: The integration into search met that being could provide answers
Speaker 1: to questions and thus remove the necessity to click through
Speaker 1: to search results. That's something that has a lot of
Speaker 1: companies upset. It's a lot of work to put together
Speaker 1: an informative website, at least it's a lot of work
Speaker 1: to make a good one, and to have a tool
Speaker 1: essentially crimp the relevant information from your site and then
Speaker 1: serve it up to someone who might have actually visited
Speaker 1: your page directly. Otherwise that's not a comforting thought for
Speaker 1: content dependent sites. It's a very scary thought actually, And
Speaker 1: on top of giving content sites the willies, this move
Speaker 1: has poured gas on the fire that was already lit.
Speaker 1: Among other companies that were looking into getting into AI.
Speaker 1: Suddenly there was a very real world example of how
Speaker 1: everyone else was falling behind Microsoft. Next up. Friday, March tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, the day federal regulators shut down Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank AKASVB. This marked the second largest bank failure
Speaker 1: in US history. The largest happened in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: And the reason that it's important to tech anyway is
Speaker 1: that Silicon Valley Bank was a critical component to the
Speaker 1: tech sector. It serviced countless tech startups, and the circumstances
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three played a big part in why
Speaker 1: the bank ultimately failed. Startups usually aren't profitable, sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't even have a way of generating revenue, and tech
Speaker 1: companies can actually remain unprofitable for a really long time
Speaker 1: see also the history of Twitter. But it still costs
Speaker 1: money to operate, and that money has to come from somewhere.
Speaker 1: So in the tech world, that money typically comes from
Speaker 1: investors who are hoping to make out like bandits. Once
Speaker 1: the startup they're investing in either goes profitable, goes public
Speaker 1: with an IPO, or perhaps if you're really lucky, it
Speaker 1: gets swallowed up by some larger company for a hefty
Speaker 1: acquisition fee. But this means that during times when economic
Speaker 1: factors are less conducive, such as when interest rates are high,
Speaker 1: investors are less generous with their money, and that means
Speaker 1: startups might have to dip into their accounts to cover costs,
Speaker 1: and that means making withdrawals, and if the bank they're
Speaker 1: withdrawing from doesn't have the cash to cover all the
Speaker 1: withdrawals of all its clients, you've got a problem. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, there's around on the bank, and then you
Speaker 1: get George Bailey standing on a desk and say, no, Tom,
Speaker 1: your money's not here. It's in Billy's app developer company,
Speaker 1: and Charles, your money is in Timmy's ride hailing startup
Speaker 1: and so forth. That was a really bad reference to
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful life, In case you didn't pick up
Speaker 1: on that anyway, SVB collapsed. I remember I was on
Speaker 1: my way to south By Southwest when this was happening,
Speaker 1: and I saw folks all around me in the airport
Speaker 1: who are also traveling to Austin, Texas try to remain
Speaker 1: calm while simultaneous wondering if they had just lost access
Speaker 1: to all their money. It was a wild experience. Now,
Speaker 1: in the end, the US Treasury Department reassured all the
Speaker 1: depositors that their money would be covered, and that was
Speaker 1: a pretty darn significant accomplishment in its own right. We
Speaker 1: move on to Tuesday, April eighteenth, twenty twenty two. That's
Speaker 1: when Reddit changed its API policy. So in tech and
Speaker 1: API is an application programming interface. So essentially, it's a
Speaker 1: tool that developers use to create new apps that tap
Speaker 1: into some other platform or applications capabilities. It's like using
Speaker 1: someone else's work to act as the foundation for your
Speaker 1: own work, and in an ideal situation, all parties benefit
Speaker 1: from this arrangement, but things were changing it. Reddit and
Speaker 1: AI is largely the reason why companies that are building
Speaker 1: out large language models need to train those models on
Speaker 1: massive data sets. One way that you can build a
Speaker 1: data set is to scrape data off a platform that
Speaker 1: has a ton of communication stored on it. Reddit is
Speaker 1: such a platform, and the training can give lms a
Speaker 1: chance to build models that structure messages in a way
Speaker 1: that's more human, or at least more human in Reddit terms,
Speaker 1: which depending on which subredit you're on, can get pretty spicy.
Speaker 1: So Reddit wanted to make changes in order to charge
Speaker 1: these AI companies more money to scrape data off their site.
Speaker 1: They're like, we're providing the data, we should be making
Speaker 1: money off this. It could be a huge revenue generator,
Speaker 1: but it had a lot of other consequences. While Reddit
Speaker 1: was still working on the changes in April, the announcement
Speaker 1: raised some alarms that got louder over the course of
Speaker 1: the spring. Reddit would charge developers money depending on the
Speaker 1: frequency at which their apps connected with Reddit. For popular apps,
Speaker 1: this would mean the developer could owe as much as
Speaker 1: a million dollars or more per month, a cost that
Speaker 1: no one could really afford, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: popular Reddit based apps had to shut down. This infuriated
Speaker 1: the Reddit community, and many subreddits went dark in response.
Speaker 1: T Some went further and conducted a form of online
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare against Reddit, which prompted Reddit to backtrack on
Speaker 1: some of its changes. But it all got very ugly
Speaker 1: and the fallout isn't over yet. Next up, Monday, June fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, Apple shows off the Vision Pro mixed
Speaker 1: reality headset. For years, rumors were buzzing about Apple and
Speaker 1: the company's efforts to develop augmented reality glasses. They were
Speaker 1: right up there with other legendary rumored projects like an
Speaker 1: Apple branded television set or maybe even an Apple car.
Speaker 1: While we might still be waiting on those, Apple finally
Speaker 1: revealed an AR headset at the twenty twenty three WWDC
Speaker 1: or Worldwide Developer Conference. Now, this headset is not the
Speaker 1: stylish pair of eyeglasses that folks were hoping for. It's
Speaker 1: a form factor that Apple reportedly chased, but they found
Speaker 1: it difficult to actually make it work. And let's be
Speaker 1: fair to Apple, it's really hard to cram all the
Speaker 1: components you need for a really compelling, good working pair
Speaker 1: of AR glasses into a form factor that's just an
Speaker 1: eyeglasses frame. Even if you want to go chunky with
Speaker 1: the frame, it's it would be really hard to do
Speaker 1: all of that. So Apple's device doesn't look like glasses.
Speaker 1: It looks more like a high tech pair of ski goggles.
Speaker 1: The technology reportedly will be controlled through various means, including
Speaker 1: hand gestures, voice commands, and using your eyes to command
Speaker 1: the goggles to do stuff. It also sets you back
Speaker 1: a small fortune. Apple said these sets will start at
Speaker 1: three thy four hundred and ninety nine dollars a set.
Speaker 1: They're not available just yet. We'll have to wait till
Speaker 1: next year to actually get our hands on them. I've
Speaker 1: read various reviews of people who got a chance to
Speaker 1: experience at firsthand, the people who are at WWDC. They
Speaker 1: sound really nifty. I don't know if they sound nifty
Speaker 1: enough for people to PLoP down thirty five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: on them. But I also am not the kind of
Speaker 1: person who has an extra three five hundred bucks just
Speaker 1: laying around to try it out. So what do I know?
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we will wrap up our twelve days of
Speaker 1: Tech Christmas. We're back, and we're up to Sunday, July
Speaker 1: twenty third, twenty twenty three, and on that night Elon
Speaker 1: Musk declared the era of Twitter had come to an end,
Speaker 1: and from that point forward, Twitter would be known as X.
Speaker 1: Twitter had launched way back in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: It had adopted its bird logo, which was nicknamed Larry
Speaker 1: the Bird, back in twenty ten, but on this night
Speaker 1: in July, the letter X took over. Musk has long
Speaker 1: had an obsession with that letter. Back in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: he co founded x dot Com, one of the components
Speaker 1: that would eventually become PayPal, a company that ultimately forced
Speaker 1: Musk out of it when the other leaders in the
Speaker 1: group figured he was too troublesome to keep around, and
Speaker 1: Musk had wanted to build his own version of an
Speaker 1: everything app similar to we Chat in China. The rebranding
Speaker 1: extends to what we call stuff posted to X. Before,
Speaker 1: if you posted something to Twitter, you called it a tweet.
Speaker 1: Now we typically call them posts, although Musk himself initially
Speaker 1: suggested we call them x's, maybe we just still call
Speaker 1: them tweets because a lot of folks continue to reference
Speaker 1: ex as Twitter anyway despite the official change. As I
Speaker 1: say in another episode, this rebranding shook things up in
Speaker 1: the tech world. A lot of people question the wisdom
Speaker 1: of the decision. They argued that Twitter had stored a
Speaker 1: lot of value in its brand and logo, and that
Speaker 1: by tossing those things aside, Musk was really making things
Speaker 1: harder on himself. But here we are anyway. Next up. Tuesday,
Speaker 1: September twelfth, twenty twenty three. This marked the opening day
Speaker 1: for the massive antitrust lawsuit that the US government has
Speaker 1: brought against Google. So at the heart of the matter
Speaker 1: our accusations that Google, through various means, has worked to
Speaker 1: ensure that Google Search is the default search engine for
Speaker 1: various devices and platforms, that Google actively worked to discourage
Speaker 1: competition in the space, often by offering large payouts to companies,
Speaker 1: in an effort to secure Google Search as the default.
Speaker 1: It is the largest antitrust action brought against a tech
Speaker 1: company since the US government went after Microsoft a few
Speaker 1: decades ago. Now, back then, it was all due to
Speaker 1: how Microsoft positioned its web browser. At that time, the
Speaker 1: web browser was Internet Explorer and made it the default
Speaker 1: browser on Windows devices, and further, how Microsoft worked to
Speaker 1: integrate its operating system and its browser together, which critics
Speaker 1: argued was an attempt to make it impractical or even impossible,
Speaker 1: for someone to use some other form of browser. That
Speaker 1: case at one point led to a decision, a legal
Speaker 1: decision that would force Microsoft to break up into smaller companies,
Speaker 1: but later on a different judge overturned that initial ruling
Speaker 1: and Microsoft was allowed to remain. Microsoft. Could Google face
Speaker 1: similar pressure to break up into smaller companies, It's hard
Speaker 1: to say. For more than two decades, the US government
Speaker 1: has been largely hands off as companies like Google have
Speaker 1: gained greater influence in power. Maybe we're seeing a genuine
Speaker 1: swing in the other direction, but it's an ongoing story
Speaker 1: that will stretch into next year at the very least.
Speaker 1: And the fact that the US is entering into an
Speaker 1: election year and a change in administration could mean a
Speaker 1: drastic change in how we handle these sorts of cases.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't bet anything one way or the other at
Speaker 1: this point. Next up, Friday, October thirteenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Friday the thirteenth, that's also the day that Microsoft closed
Speaker 1: the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It took nearly two years
Speaker 1: to do it. I think twenty months total. Microsoft first
Speaker 1: announced the intent to acquire Activision Blizzard in January of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. The deal reached the value of nearly
Speaker 1: sixty nine billion with a B dollars. Initially, the plan
Speaker 1: was to close the deal by July of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: But these massive deals, you know, they take a really
Speaker 1: long time to work out all the details. This one
Speaker 1: took longer than was planned, largely due to regulatory resistance
Speaker 1: all around the world. A lot of regulators raise concerned
Speaker 1: that Microsoft would be consolidating the video game space to
Speaker 1: a point that hurt competition. Sony representatives actively consulted with regulators,
Speaker 1: worried that Microsoft would lock popular video game titles like
Speaker 1: the Call of Duty series under an exclusivity agreement and
Speaker 1: thus deny other platforms the chance to carry those games.
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Activision repeatedly made promises to multiple parties that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do that, at least not for another ten
Speaker 1: years or so, but the deal seemed like it was
Speaker 1: up in the air for most of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Even today, the US Federal Trade Commission is a bit
Speaker 1: dodgy on the whole thing. But I'll talk about this
Speaker 1: more in another episode, so let's just keep it moving along. Thursday,
Speaker 1: no November twenty twenty three, the first of a lot
Speaker 1: of November stories. Sam Bangman Freed aka SBF was found
Speaker 1: guilty of seven charges ranging from fraud to conspiracy. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with SBF, he was co founder
Speaker 1: of two important cryptocurrency companies. The first, Alimeda Research, was
Speaker 1: a trading firm. Essentially, it allowed customers to invest in
Speaker 1: various crypto related things. The second and more infamous of
Speaker 1: the two companies was FTX and Actual Cryptocurrency Exchange. In
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty two, FTX began to fall apart as
Speaker 1: folks discovered that the leaders of the company had secretly
Speaker 1: been funneling customer funds stored in FTX to cover costs
Speaker 1: over at Alameda Research, without telling anyone or asking permission
Speaker 1: to do so. The revelations led to the collapse of
Speaker 1: both companies, the arrest of much of the leadership of
Speaker 1: those companies, and various investigations into what was going on
Speaker 1: in crypto in general. We're still failing the consequences of
Speaker 1: this disaster today, and SBF is now facing sent after
Speaker 1: being convicted. In fact, as I write this, the latest
Speaker 1: news is that SPF's lawyers had requested a delay in
Speaker 1: the sentencing and the judge has denied the request. He
Speaker 1: is due to be sentenced on March twenty eighth next year. Monday,
Speaker 1: November sixth, twenty twenty three. We work files for bankruptcy
Speaker 1: talk about a fall from grace, all right. First off,
Speaker 1: we work I don't think technically belongs in the tech sector,
Speaker 1: except everyone treated it like it was a tech startup,
Speaker 1: largely because it did mimic a lot of tech startups,
Speaker 1: But really we Work is just about securing office space
Speaker 1: and then subleasing that space out to other entities. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's not a new business idea, and traditionally it's got
Speaker 1: a pretty low profit margin that really feels the squeeze
Speaker 1: during uncertain times, whether it's economic uncertainty or a pandemic
Speaker 1: where no one leaves the house. But once upon a time,
Speaker 1: the we Work business had hit a valuation of fifty
Speaker 1: billion with a B dollars. This year, the company declared bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: I imagine someone standing up on one of those white
Speaker 1: tables shared office environment and pulling a Michael Scott and
Speaker 1: just yelling out, I declare bankruptcy. This doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: company's going away, by the way, it is going to
Speaker 1: restructure and in theory come back as a viable business.
Speaker 1: We Work has already been the subject of numerous podcasts
Speaker 1: and even an Apple TV series called We Crashed. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there will be even more media treatments on the
Speaker 1: whole story in the future. Friday, November seventeenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: Open AI's board of directors fires CEO Sam Altman now
Speaker 1: sometimes companies will make a big move on a Friday,
Speaker 1: like holding massive layoffs that kind of thing. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different reasons for this, but one
Speaker 1: big one is that it can marke an effort for
Speaker 1: the company to try and avoid a big old stink
Speaker 1: in the media because folks are switching to weekend mode.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that was why the board of directors for open ai,
Speaker 1: the company behind chat gpt to fire Sam Altman, the CEO,
Speaker 1: on a Friday over a zoom call of all things. Now,
Speaker 1: I've already talked about this on a recent episode, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the board of directors was concerned that Altman's
Speaker 1: leadership was contrary to the mission of open ai, which
Speaker 1: started off as a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence in a safe, measured way meant to benefit all
Speaker 1: of humanity. Altman, by contrast, was seen as an aggressive
Speaker 1: entrepreneur who was pushing products out into the market, perhaps
Speaker 1: a little too quickly, and launching a for profit version
Speaker 1: of open ai in order to secure funding for research
Speaker 1: and development. The decision was a bombshell, but it didn't
Speaker 1: exactly last long. Over the weekend, mounting pressure on the
Speaker 1: board of directors forced them to reconsider their decision, and
Speaker 1: by the following week things would look very different at
Speaker 1: open Ai. All but one of the border directors stepped
Speaker 1: down to be replaced by new board members. Altman returned
Speaker 1: to the head of the company, and mega investor Microsoft
Speaker 1: wagged a finger at open Ai and said, you better
Speaker 1: not pull that kind of stuff again. And twelfth and
Speaker 1: final two day November twenty first, twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 1: day that Chong Peng xau Akacz in his cryptocurrency exchange
Speaker 1: Binance entered guilty please with regard to massive anti money
Speaker 1: laundering cases brought against it by the United States Justice Department,
Speaker 1: essentially a year after the collapse of FTX, which CZ
Speaker 1: arguably contributed to. CZ had to face the music. The
Speaker 1: US Department of Justice alleged that Binance had served as
Speaker 1: a money laundering haven for criminals, that it also allowed
Speaker 1: parties to bypass official sanctions around the world, and that
Speaker 1: it served as an unlicensed means to transfer money, something
Speaker 1: that can come in awful handy if you're engaged in
Speaker 1: less than legal enterprises. As part of the plea, the
Speaker 1: organization agreed to pay more than four billion with a
Speaker 1: b dollars in fines. CZ himself will have to pay
Speaker 1: a personal fine of fifty million dollars. He's also agreed
Speaker 1: to step down as CEO. He could face jailed time
Speaker 1: up to eighteen months or longer if the prosecutors decided
Speaker 1: to go harder on him. The agreement also called for
Speaker 1: a government monitor to step in and oversee finance, and
Speaker 1: that CZ has not allowed any involvement in the company
Speaker 1: until three years after that monitor takes the gig. It
Speaker 1: was a tough blow to CZ, but compared to his
Speaker 1: rival SBF, you could say he got off easy. And
Speaker 1: that's it. Those were our twelve days of Tech Christmas,
Speaker 1: twelve important dates this past year where something in tech
Speaker 1: happened that really was notable. I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: look back. We're going to have a couple more look
Speaker 1: backs before we close out the year, and then, Heaven
Speaker 1: help us, we're going to look forward and try another
Speaker 1: kind of a predictions episode. I think we'll see. I'm
Speaker 1: nervous to do it because it's been so long and
Speaker 1: they are so hard to do, and it also means
Speaker 1: that ultimately I have to hold myself accountable and take
Speaker 1: a look back at the end of next year to
Speaker 1: see whether or not I was even remotely accurate. Really,
Speaker 1: I think what the tech Stuff predictions episodes show is
Speaker 1: that it really is impossible to predict the future. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, I hope you are all well and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.