Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and my Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And it is that time of the year,
Speaker 1: the time when I cover the big tech news stories
Speaker 1: from the previous twelve months and talk about some of
Speaker 1: the most important developments in the tech industry over the
Speaker 1: course of the year. So we're looking back on and
Speaker 1: some of the big stories. I am not going month
Speaker 1: by month. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I will look
Speaker 1: over a year and go through it chronologically. Instead, I
Speaker 1: decided to kind of group things thematically. So this first section,
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on some of the biggest news
Speaker 1: stories um especially around the big, big companies that we
Speaker 1: are all familiar you're with, And I can't think of
Speaker 1: any place more appropriate to start than how Facebook's eighteen unfolded.
Speaker 1: It was a particularly tumultuous year for Facebook, and then
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that twenty nineteen is not going
Speaker 1: to be a whole lot easier. Anyway. I've covered a
Speaker 1: lot of the stories about this in episodes of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff over but I want to sum up some of
Speaker 1: the things that the company has experienced over these last
Speaker 1: twelve months, because they've been pretty spectacular. In March, the
Speaker 1: Guardian and The New York Times published pieces that exposed
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and that was the scandal in
Speaker 1: which it was revealed a political marketing and consulting firm,
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica, based in the UK, had apparently taken advantage
Speaker 1: of a design flaw that had existed in Facebook several
Speaker 1: years ago. Is way back in when this design flaw,
Speaker 1: or this this policy, it wasn't even a design flaw
Speaker 1: so much as it was just sort of a lack
Speaker 1: of accountability was in place back then. If you were
Speaker 1: creating apps for Facebook, you could build into your app
Speaker 1: a point where the person installing the app would essentially
Speaker 1: give permission for you to view all sorts of information
Speaker 1: not just about the person who was installing the app,
Speaker 1: but possibly access to all of their friends. So think
Speaker 1: of it like if you befriend someone on Facebook and
Speaker 1: they're friends with somebody else, but you were not friends
Speaker 1: with that third person. You might be able to follow
Speaker 1: the links back and take a look at that third
Speaker 1: person's profile and if they haven't said it to private.
Speaker 1: If they have public information, you can find out a
Speaker 1: lot about this stranger, this person you only uh, you
Speaker 1: don't know that one. You just happen to have a
Speaker 1: common friend. Well, the app in question, which was called
Speaker 1: you know, a Digital Life app that what it was
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, and Cambridge Analytica was able to
Speaker 1: harvest data from this app. They leveraged it. It's actually
Speaker 1: called This is Your Digital Life. That was the name
Speaker 1: of the app, and it was a survey. And not
Speaker 1: only that, but it was a survey where you could
Speaker 1: be paid for filling up the survey, so people had
Speaker 1: an incentive to participate in it, and it generated this
Speaker 1: enormous amount of data that originally Facebook assumed was going
Speaker 1: to be around fifty million people or so that would
Speaker 1: be affected. As it turned out it would be more
Speaker 1: than eighty seven million people would They would revise this
Speaker 1: estimation later on, And so that was a pretty ugly scandal,
Speaker 1: mostly about user privacy and security and also a little
Speaker 1: bit about election interference, although really it was privacy and
Speaker 1: security over everything else at that point. The reports prompted
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission in the United States to open
Speaker 1: an investigation into Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg would eventually appear in
Speaker 1: front of Congress a couple of times to answer quest
Speaker 1: gens about this scandal, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: came out of those hearings was the possibility that perhaps
Speaker 1: social platforms like Facebook should fall under some sort of
Speaker 1: official regulation policy, that the government should be able to
Speaker 1: regulate these sort of things. Also, while this story exploded
Speaker 1: in I should point out this was not the first
Speaker 1: time that journalists had discovered evidence of something hinky going on.
Speaker 1: There are articles way back in about it, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen that it really got traction. That was
Speaker 1: when a former Cambridge Analytica employee came forward and gave
Speaker 1: a lot more information about what was going on inside
Speaker 1: the company, and that's when it really blew the doors
Speaker 1: open coming into Facebook was already neck deep in scandal
Speaker 1: since before the election. The company has had to deal
Speaker 1: with fake accounts that were taking advantage of how Facebook
Speaker 1: works to to post propaganda masquerading is real news. They
Speaker 1: were they understood how Facebook's algorithm would favor certain types
Speaker 1: of content over others, largely through engagement. If you get
Speaker 1: a post that has a lot of likes, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of comments, a lot of people are sharing it.
Speaker 1: That post ends up showing up more frequently in various
Speaker 1: people's news feeds because Facebook's algorithm assumes, oh, this post
Speaker 1: must be important because a lot of people are active
Speaker 1: on it. Therefore, I'm going to show it to more
Speaker 1: people because I'm sure more people will be interested in it.
Speaker 1: This is from a very high level perspective. Well, knowing
Speaker 1: that that's how Facebook's algorithm works means that you could
Speaker 1: engineer content specifically to try and bring about the situation
Speaker 1: that leads to the sort of viral uh uh posts
Speaker 1: you know, shared across millions of different profiles. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, the goal was not just to get shared,
Speaker 1: but to try and influence the outcome of the election.
Speaker 1: So Facebook was already dealing with that, and that story
Speaker 1: continued to unfold throughout. Less scandalous, but still an important
Speaker 1: story is how Facebook would change its algorithms so that
Speaker 1: Facebook pages, that is, the pages that are run by
Speaker 1: like organizations, businesses, personalities, not not someone's personal page but
Speaker 1: a page representing something are getting less engagement. Now, this
Speaker 1: is Facebook's attempt to make the experience of using Facebook
Speaker 1: more centered around your family and friends that you're seeing
Speaker 1: more of their posts and fewer posts from businesses and
Speaker 1: organizations that are trying to connect with a community or
Speaker 1: a group of customers or whatever. So you can understand
Speaker 1: where Facebook's coming from. However, for any business that was
Speaker 1: at least partly dependent upon Facebook to create a connection
Speaker 1: with customers or a community, it became a huge problem.
Speaker 1: Suddenly their engagement starts to drop down, their businesses start
Speaker 1: to lose momentum, and they're scrambling to find an alternative.
Speaker 1: Now you could say this is yet another point of
Speaker 1: evidence that strengthens that argument of don't put all your
Speaker 1: eggs in one basket. In other words, if you are
Speaker 1: a business, don't count on someone else's platform to be
Speaker 1: your platform for success, whether that happens to be Facebook
Speaker 1: or YouTube or anything else. You should build a presence
Speaker 1: that is independent of those so that when these other
Speaker 1: platforms change, you are not thrown into the lurch as
Speaker 1: a result because you put it all in on that one.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, Facebook was still taking money
Speaker 1: from businesses to promote pages even when the impressions were
Speaker 1: on the decline, so that was a problem. Then there
Speaker 1: are the properties that Facebook owns, and the story is
Speaker 1: going around with oos like WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the messaging
Speaker 1: service that Facebook purchased way back in It was a
Speaker 1: big story then because of how much money Facebook paid
Speaker 1: for it, and people in the United States are not
Speaker 1: terribly familiar with WhatsApp. There are people in the US
Speaker 1: who use it, some of you out there may be
Speaker 1: using it, and you might be US citizens, particularly people
Speaker 1: who travel internationally, they tend to use it, but really
Speaker 1: it's much more popular outside the US than it is
Speaker 1: in the US. Anyway, in news broke out that people
Speaker 1: in Brazil were using WhatsApp to spread misinformation and polarized
Speaker 1: messaging in the lead up to a contentious election in Brazil,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty familiar. I mean, essentially the same thing
Speaker 1: was happening in the United States two years previously with
Speaker 1: Facebook in general and Twitter and several other social platforms.
Speaker 1: So that was another terrible story that's still unfolding as
Speaker 1: we record this podcast. Then there's also the story about
Speaker 1: Instagram and its founders, and Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and
Speaker 1: Mike Kreeger both resigned from Facebook. The reasons were not
Speaker 1: spelled out plainly, why they decided to leave, but the
Speaker 1: general consensus is that they were becoming exasperated by the
Speaker 1: way Facebook was interfering with how Instagram was running, and
Speaker 1: they were taking features that Instagram was developing specifically for
Speaker 1: Instagram and then using those to incorporate them into Facebook
Speaker 1: or Facebook Messenger. Now. On Facebook first acquired Instagram, the
Speaker 1: thought was that they were not going to interfere at all.
Speaker 1: They were going to allow Instagram to continue to operate independently,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like that didn't happen. So the founders
Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to get out. And a lot
Speaker 1: more happened with Facebook, but those were the really big
Speaker 1: points I wanted to touch on, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to make this just an episode about what Facebook went
Speaker 1: through in twenty team, so I'm going to move on
Speaker 1: to some other stories. Um. There were other companies that
Speaker 1: also had to weather controversy. In Twitter had its share
Speaker 1: and continues to from troll accounts, fake accounts, bought accounts.
Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey would attend a congressional hearing about whether regulation
Speaker 1: and moderation of online content was something that needed more attention.
Speaker 1: Topics ranged from the fake accounts to Russian interference in
Speaker 1: US political events, and whether or not Twitter was suppressing
Speaker 1: conservative voices online. Dorsey would also come under scrutiny in
Speaker 1: December for personal reasons. He went to Myanmar and he
Speaker 1: tweeted about it, and he called it a beautiful country. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at the same time, there is a global uh campaign.
Speaker 1: United Nations is focusing on Myanmar because it's military is
Speaker 1: carrying out a campaign of genocide against a minority Muslim
Speaker 1: population within the country. So there's Dorsey saying Myanmar, it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful country. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is
Speaker 1: looking at Myanmar and these atrocities that are taking place,
Speaker 1: and so people said, at best, Dorsey's tweets were tone deaf.
Speaker 1: His response was that he needed to learn more about Myanmar,
Speaker 1: probably before posting about it. Meanwhile, Evan Williams, who is
Speaker 1: a co founder of Twitter, was quietly selling off a
Speaker 1: lot of his ownership of Twitter throughout the second half
Speaker 1: of ten and it would amount to nearly half of
Speaker 1: his ownership steak. So essentially, you know, he has all
Speaker 1: these different shares in Twitter, he sells off almost half
Speaker 1: of them by the second half of which has led
Speaker 1: to some speculation that perhaps Twitter has officially passed its peak,
Speaker 1: and it's now on the decline, and eventually it will
Speaker 1: head towards obsolescence. That's one interpretation. Another is just that
Speaker 1: he might want to versify his portfolio, so you could
Speaker 1: say financial coverage is even more vague than tech coverage
Speaker 1: HAZA for that. Then there's Google, and that company has
Speaker 1: also had its own share of issues to deal with
Speaker 1: throughout It too came under scrutiny and the various congressional hearings.
Speaker 1: Google was invited to participate, but declined to send anyone
Speaker 1: to meet with Congress, while Facebook and Twitter would send
Speaker 1: their top brass to d C. In December, Google CEO
Speaker 1: Sundar Picha, I did meet with Congress, and this was
Speaker 1: to talk about political bias and search results. If you
Speaker 1: followed those hearings, you might have been rolling your eyes
Speaker 1: pretty hard because it got a little silly. Representatives of
Speaker 1: Congress were asking if Google was shaping the public perception
Speaker 1: of various topics through search results. In other words, they
Speaker 1: were maybe guiding search results in order to send a
Speaker 1: specific message to people when they started searching for things.
Speaker 1: Um So, for example, they showed that if you searched
Speaker 1: the word idiot, and you did an image search, it
Speaker 1: would bring up pictures of Donald Trump, and they said,
Speaker 1: is this your commentary? Are you calling the President of
Speaker 1: the United States an idiot? Now? PA's response was said
Speaker 1: that these search results were a reflection of the public discourse.
Speaker 1: This is reflecting what's going on in the world. It's
Speaker 1: giving people what they're asking for. It is not an
Speaker 1: attempt to guide the discourse, but rather, here's what people
Speaker 1: are saying. So it's not that a person is an idiot,
Speaker 1: it's that people are writing about someone they call that
Speaker 1: person an idiot. Then that's what's going to come up
Speaker 1: in search results, not that Google says that person is
Speaker 1: an idiot. And the hearing really punctuated what we really
Speaker 1: already knew. That's the most politicians are totally ignorant of
Speaker 1: how the Internet in general works and how search in
Speaker 1: particular works. We did get some punctuation about this where
Speaker 1: at one point a representative said, if you search the
Speaker 1: news items for a specific person and you get a
Speaker 1: bunch of negative stories, it's because that person has done
Speaker 1: things that have been reported on in a negative way.
Speaker 1: But if you went out and did lots of wonderful
Speaker 1: things that got lots of positive coverage, then the news
Speaker 1: stories that would pop up would reflect that it's not
Speaker 1: that Google is shaping this message, but rather the people
Speaker 1: themselves are shaping it, and that if you want to
Speaker 1: have less bad news written about you, don't go out
Speaker 1: and do bad things. Seems like a pretty solid idea, assuming,
Speaker 1: of course, that the search engine results are accurate and
Speaker 1: they're fair and unbiased, and that they're not, say, censoring
Speaker 1: any articles or stories that would otherwise be positive. This
Speaker 1: applies to politicians of all political points of view. By
Speaker 1: the way, I don't mean to say that one political
Speaker 1: party is guilty of being terrible, terrible, terrible people and
Speaker 1: the other ones a bunch of saints. I don't believe
Speaker 1: that for a second. There are people who have great
Speaker 1: scruples and they they adhere to their own code of ethics,
Speaker 1: they are not hypocrites, and they should have really great
Speaker 1: stories written about them and and their their efforts, whether
Speaker 1: they happen to be conservative or liberal. And then there
Speaker 1: are others, both on the conservative and the liberal side,
Speaker 1: who do dumb things and are hypocrites, and they were
Speaker 1: gonna have bad stories written about them, and they should.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what Google was saying is that
Speaker 1: don't shoot the messenger. We're just giving you what exists.
Speaker 1: We're not making it, we're just serving it up. Another
Speaker 1: scandal that Google had to handle in two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: Didn't mean for that. The rhyme was Project Maven, and
Speaker 1: I talked about that earlier this year in an their episode.
Speaker 1: So this was a project with the Pentagon, still is
Speaker 1: a project. It's still undergoing over and between Google and
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, but to create algorithms that can improve computer
Speaker 1: vision processes, which ultimately could be used to identify and
Speaker 1: target individuals. If it were used in a weaponized form,
Speaker 1: the military could choose to go down that path. Now.
Speaker 1: Google insisted that when it signed on to do Project Maven,
Speaker 1: this was in the understanding that it was a non
Speaker 1: weaponized program. They were helping with computer vision, but it
Speaker 1: was not meant to be used in any kind of
Speaker 1: weaponized way. But people said that's pretty naive because there's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping anyone from adapting those protocols and using them
Speaker 1: in something like a personalized missile that specifically is looking
Speaker 1: for a particular individual and honing in on that person um,
Speaker 1: whether directly or through satellite coordination or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: Google eventually was as mount was facing so much pressure
Speaker 1: both from outside the company and within the company itself.
Speaker 1: Google employees started to sign petition saying that the company
Speaker 1: should extract itself from this deal. They said, well, we
Speaker 1: can't extract ourselves, but we will not renew this contract
Speaker 1: when it comes up in two thousand nineteen. So the
Speaker 1: contract will expire next year and Google executives have said
Speaker 1: they are not going to pursue a renewal. There was
Speaker 1: also a lot of disturbing allegations about sexual harassment and discrimination.
Speaker 1: This was true throughout all of tech, but it was
Speaker 1: particularly highlighted over at Google. So in February there was
Speaker 1: a Google programmer named Loretta Lee who filed claims against Google,
Speaker 1: and our allegations were numerous. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that Loretta Lee said had happened at Google that are very,
Speaker 1: very upsetting. It's it's a terrible account that no one
Speaker 1: should be subjected to. And at the time, Google had
Speaker 1: a policy of mandatory arbitration within the company. This is
Speaker 1: something that a lot of tech companies were putting in place.
Speaker 1: That meant that all of the conflict had to be
Speaker 1: handled within the company. This would prevent employees from being
Speaker 1: able to take the matter to the courts. It had
Speaker 1: to be handled inside of Google, and employees would sign
Speaker 1: agreements essentially when they would get employed with Google that
Speaker 1: said they were agreeing to this, they would give up
Speaker 1: the right to sue in court. They would have to
Speaker 1: go through this mandatory arbitration process, which could limit the
Speaker 1: amount of money a victim could get if they were
Speaker 1: proven to be telling the truth. And not only that,
Speaker 1: but there was this perception that if the company was
Speaker 1: handling it, they were more likely to just kind of
Speaker 1: smooth things over as best they could and ignore that
Speaker 1: it was happening. They wouldn't if someone who was being
Speaker 1: accused was also thought of as being a high performer,
Speaker 1: then it would largely go ignored. Which is a terrible thing. Right.
Speaker 1: If if there's somebody who's who's sexually harassing people in
Speaker 1: a company, whether it's a man or it's a woman,
Speaker 1: whether the people they are harassing our men or women,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, that should not be tolerated. And
Speaker 1: the problem was that using this mandatory arbitraction approach, if
Speaker 1: executives said, well, yeah, I mean it shouldn't be tolerated. However,
Speaker 1: one Ever, since they've been in charge, that department has
Speaker 1: been performing at an incredible level. Then there seemed to
Speaker 1: be this at least perceived habit of not paying the
Speaker 1: appropriate amount of attention and care to those those cases.
Speaker 1: So Google employees began to protest this. There was a walkout.
Speaker 1: All the women employees at Google, or a large majority
Speaker 1: of them agreed to walk out in protest of this
Speaker 1: policy and just the general way that Google is handling
Speaker 1: these sexual harassment cases. Uh. Several men also stood with
Speaker 1: the women in solidarity and saying that they supported this,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Google has reversed that policy. There is no
Speaker 1: longer mandatory arbitration. Arbitration is optional, but employees are allowed
Speaker 1: to pursue these cases in court. It is not retroactive,
Speaker 1: so any case that's in arbitration remains there for now.
Speaker 1: But this, this is just another example of a systemic
Speaker 1: problem not just of Google, but in the tech industry
Speaker 1: that is slowly changing as more scrutiny is applied to
Speaker 1: these companies and and the the culture is changing to
Speaker 1: say that this is not appropriate and not acceptable. That
Speaker 1: is changing, uh, but it is a slow process. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a system that's been generations in the making. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that was the other big story of Google. Now I've
Speaker 1: got all those big scandals out of the way. Hopefully
Speaker 1: that means that we're going to be able to move
Speaker 1: on to happier stories. Spoiler alert, not all of them
Speaker 1: are happy. But before I get into those, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. In two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: I also did an episode about the General Data Protection
Speaker 1: Regulation Rules or g d p R those took effect
Speaker 1: in These are rules that apply to online companies that
Speaker 1: serve people within the European Union. Whether the company is
Speaker 1: located in the EU or not doesn't matter. It matters
Speaker 1: if the people using the company's services or products are
Speaker 1: in the EU, and the rules are meant to protect
Speaker 1: data and privacy. They call for responsible, transparent, and easily
Speaker 1: understandable policies from these online companies, whether it's a store
Speaker 1: or social media platform, whatever it may be. Now, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of rules, and I did a full
Speaker 1: episode on this, so I'm not going to go over them.
Speaker 1: But the important thing to remember is that the companies
Speaker 1: that are working in the EU, whether they're located there
Speaker 1: or not have to adhere to these rules or they
Speaker 1: can face penalties. And the scope of the penalties depend
Speaker 1: upon the severity of the violation, but it can be
Speaker 1: up to twenty million euros or four of all the
Speaker 1: total sales of a company from the year before, whichever
Speaker 1: amount is greater. So there's some serious penalties there. So
Speaker 1: companies are paying attention. In fact, some companies have even
Speaker 1: temporarily at least closed up shop, you know, turned off
Speaker 1: those European Union facing websites at least until they can
Speaker 1: and they can, you know, conform to the regulations. And
Speaker 1: now here's some big business news elements of tech in
Speaker 1: twenty team. First, A T and T initially got approval
Speaker 1: for its eighty five billion dollar acquisition deal for Time Warner.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk a little bit more about that
Speaker 1: in some upcoming episodes of Tech Stuff that I've already
Speaker 1: recorded but have not aired. But as I record this episode,
Speaker 1: that approval is actually under appeal and another court is
Speaker 1: considering whether or not to allow the process to continue.
Speaker 1: If it does continue, it's another consolidation of communications and
Speaker 1: entertainment companies. Not everyone thinks that's a great thing, but
Speaker 1: it could be a big benefit to both of those
Speaker 1: individual companies. We'll have to wait and see. By the
Speaker 1: time you hear this episode, all of that may have
Speaker 1: already been resolved. Disney got approval for its acquisition of
Speaker 1: twenty first Century Fox, both from the United States government
Speaker 1: and from shareholders, and the company had announced that intent
Speaker 1: way back in two thousand seventeen. The acquisition will be
Speaker 1: complete on January one, two thousand nineteen. T Mobile and
Speaker 1: Sprint are looking to merge into a single company that
Speaker 1: got announced in April, and if everything goes as they
Speaker 1: expect it to, the process will be complete by April
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. Not at the time I'm recording this.
Speaker 1: Analysts predict that regulators are probably going to allow this
Speaker 1: merger to go forward. They might require that the companies
Speaker 1: divest themselves of certain businesses in order to prevent the
Speaker 1: possibility of having a monopoly, but otherwise they think it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. And there are a ton of other
Speaker 1: stories that fall into this category. IBM announced it would
Speaker 1: sell off Lotus notes to an Indian firm called hc
Speaker 1: L for one point eight billion dollars. Of course, IBM
Speaker 1: had purchased Lotus for three point five billion dollars back
Speaker 1: in IBM also announced a thirty four billion dollar acquisition
Speaker 1: plan for red Hat, which is a software company that
Speaker 1: specializes in enterprise products. It's also the largest software acquisition ever.
Speaker 1: And this isn't an acquisition, but Dell Computers is currently
Speaker 1: scheduled to return to the stock market as a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company on December. I'm recording this on December twelve,
Speaker 1: so that's in the future for me. Also saw some
Speaker 1: game studios close up shop, so that's sad, not just
Speaker 1: for gamers, but obviously for the people who worked for
Speaker 1: those companies. So here's a list of some of the
Speaker 1: companies that closed up shop in tween in the video
Speaker 1: game industry. Boss Key, which was founded by a Cliff Blazinski.
Speaker 1: It was the producer of the game Lawbreakers. That One closed,
Speaker 1: Telltale Games That One hurt a lot. It's they're the
Speaker 1: creators of the Walking Dead series as well as the
Speaker 1: Wolf among us um. They've done a Game of Thrones game,
Speaker 1: They've done a Minecraft story based game, that done Borderland
Speaker 1: story based game. They shut down in September ten. It
Speaker 1: was an incredibly messy and ugly process. Employees were let
Speaker 1: go without severance or prior warning. Um it was largely
Speaker 1: viewed as being very poorly handled. Carbine Studios closed up
Speaker 1: as well. They produced only on game. It was a
Speaker 1: multi player game called wild Star UM. That one also
Speaker 1: shut down in September two eighteen. Also in September two
Speaker 1: thou eighteen, Man, that was a bad month. Capcom closed
Speaker 1: its Capcom Vancouver studio. That team oversaw the Dead Rising
Speaker 1: series of games, and war Gaming Seattle closed in May
Speaker 1: two th eighteen. They made Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander.
Speaker 1: Now that that's terrible news, but it's not to say
Speaker 1: that video games as a whole are in trouble. The
Speaker 1: industry has tripled in size over the last decade. Developing
Speaker 1: video games, particularly if you're talking about large prestige titles
Speaker 1: like Red Dead. Redemption to for example, costs millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: and it requires hundreds of people, maybe up to a
Speaker 1: thousand for some of these big games, and it also
Speaker 1: can include some really brutal work. Weeksen was also a
Speaker 1: year in which the world took a closer look at
Speaker 1: the working conditions that game developers experience, particular and crunch
Speaker 1: time while developing a title, and the industry is slowly
Speaker 1: changing in response to some really tough criticisms, things like
Speaker 1: there's gotta be a better work life balance, that people
Speaker 1: should not be expected to work a hundred hour weeks,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. We don't appear to have reached
Speaker 1: the tipping point quite yet, for the point where a
Speaker 1: triple A title game costs so much to make that
Speaker 1: you're never going to recover those costs and sales. We
Speaker 1: haven't reached that point, but it's getting pretty tight. Probably
Speaker 1: means that I wouldn't be surprised to see game prices
Speaker 1: start to climb again in the near future. We already
Speaker 1: see more expensive ones for like collectors, editions and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but I think it's going to get more
Speaker 1: expensive pretty soon. Super Smash Brothers Ultimate was the best
Speaker 1: selling game on Amazon in two thousand eighteen, followed by
Speaker 1: Super Mario Party and then Red Dead Redemption too for
Speaker 1: the PS four. Now, to be fair, these facts and figures,
Speaker 1: they take into account games by platform, not by title,
Speaker 1: because if you look at titles, you would say Red
Speaker 1: Dead Redemption two is in the lead across all platforms
Speaker 1: when you when you add them all up, that's when
Speaker 1: you only look at it um by platform that Super
Speaker 1: Smash Brothers Ultimate becomes the best selling game. There was
Speaker 1: no shortage of games that received critical acclaim in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: There were a ton of them, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the
Speaker 1: Tetris Effect, Forts Horizon for God of War. Lots of
Speaker 1: them were lauded for their art style, their gameplay, the
Speaker 1: stories win applicable um. Also, Fortnite's Battle Royal Mode became
Speaker 1: a huge hit in ten. A lot of people said
Speaker 1: it was essentially a copy, a complete lift of Player
Speaker 1: Unknowns Battle Grounds game style, although there are differences with Fortnite,
Speaker 1: but they said that you know the game is centially
Speaker 1: lifted the style from from Battlegrounds. To be fair, battle
Speaker 1: Grounds is not the first Battle Royal game that's ever
Speaker 1: come out either, But I see where they accusations come from.
Speaker 1: But the game became so popular that now there are
Speaker 1: organizations popping up that are supposed to help wean kids
Speaker 1: off of playing the darn thing. Not all games got
Speaker 1: universal acclaim, however. Fall Out seventy six, the online multiplayer
Speaker 1: game from the THEESDA and the Fallout series, was greeted
Speaker 1: with at best if you're being super generous A mixed response.
Speaker 1: I would actually say those more of a negative response.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was almost overwhelmingly negative. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of legitimate complaints leveled at that game. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of things I cannot just say no that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, No there. That game does have real problems. However,
Speaker 1: I still have fun when I log in now. I
Speaker 1: can't deny the game has major issues though I'm having
Speaker 1: fun because of the setting and the game world. But
Speaker 1: I definitely can completely understand the complaints people have about it.
Speaker 1: I can't deny them. There was another game called Sea
Speaker 1: if Thieves, still as a game called See If Thieves,
Speaker 1: another online game. They got a lot of early enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: It's a game where you play as a member of
Speaker 1: a crew on a pirate ship. You and some friends
Speaker 1: can join up and grab a ship and go out
Speaker 1: and plunder. But a lot of people felt that there
Speaker 1: was a lack of content that was very repetitive. After
Speaker 1: you've done a few missions, you pretty much have played
Speaker 1: the whole game. It's just doing it over and over again.
Speaker 1: The game did continue to add more stuff throughout the year,
Speaker 1: whether it was enough to satisfy the typical pirate remained
Speaker 1: a matter of individual preference. I got a little bit
Speaker 1: more to say about Before I get into that, Let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Back in January,
Speaker 1: we learned about vulnerabilities that are baked into modern micro processors.
Speaker 1: This is another huge story. It's an ongoing problem in
Speaker 1: tech now. Those vulnerabilities that were built in microprocessors weren't
Speaker 1: done so on purpose, and we call them meltdown and specter.
Speaker 1: I think did an episode about this. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the vulnerabilities allow a malicious application to spy on other applications.
Speaker 1: The way it does this is different depending upon the
Speaker 1: vulnerability it's exploiting, but generally speaking, it's this idea of
Speaker 1: a malicious program sapping information away, largely based on the
Speaker 1: information gathered by other programs. And this can be on
Speaker 1: a computer, it can be on a mobile device. All
Speaker 1: of these things are running microprocessors that have architecture that's
Speaker 1: vulnerable to this stuff. So conceptually, applications are supposed to
Speaker 1: be isolated from each other, supposed to be siloed and protected.
Speaker 1: That way, it would prevent people from doing this very thing.
Speaker 1: But these vulnerability would allow programmers to build apps that
Speaker 1: could get around this isolation and gather data from other apps,
Speaker 1: including stuff like passwords and even more critical information than that.
Speaker 1: In some cases. There are a lot of talks about
Speaker 1: patches that might address these vulnerabilities, but some analysts say
Speaker 1: that's not going to be enough. What really needs to
Speaker 1: happen is an entirely new microprocessor design, something that needs
Speaker 1: to happen for different microprocessors in order to address this vulnerability,
Speaker 1: which is pretty tough to do, might be necessary. However,
Speaker 1: Also in January, Tim Cook of Apple apologize for not
Speaker 1: being transparent about Apple's policy to throttle older model phones.
Speaker 1: In other words, they would run more slowly than they
Speaker 1: had before. Now. Supposedly this was to increase the use
Speaker 1: time per battery charge on older phones, the idea being
Speaker 1: that later versions of operating systems would put greater demands
Speaker 1: on a phone's battery, and so without throttling it, the
Speaker 1: older phones would just drain their batteries super fast. But
Speaker 1: some people said this feels more like it's a tactic
Speaker 1: to convince people to upgrade to a newer phone. Like
Speaker 1: my old phones running slow, I must need to get
Speaker 1: a new one, And the fact that Apple was not
Speaker 1: transparent about this. They weren't even admitting that they were
Speaker 1: doing it at first. That seems to lend credence to
Speaker 1: that second theory, the idea that they were doing this
Speaker 1: in an effort to try and up sell an upgraded phone.
Speaker 1: So that's an issue. Um. That was a pretty ugly
Speaker 1: story early on in the year, and I talked about
Speaker 1: this in my suite of episodes about autonomous cars recently.
Speaker 1: But back in March two thousand eighteen, that were a
Speaker 1: pair of really bad accidents that brought the whole concept
Speaker 1: of autonomous cars back into the headlines. First, there was
Speaker 1: a self driving Uber vehicle that struck and killed a
Speaker 1: pedestrian in Arizona. That accident prompted Uber to curtail all
Speaker 1: autonomous car tests in their various cities, at least temporarily,
Speaker 1: and to completely withdraw from Arizona with their driverless program.
Speaker 1: But also in March, a Tesla Model X was put
Speaker 1: in autopilot mode and it crashed at a high speed
Speaker 1: with a concrete highway divider. The driver died in the accident.
Speaker 1: Tesla released information stating that the driver was not paying
Speaker 1: attention to the road despite the car providing multiple warnings,
Speaker 1: and this wasn't the first time that a Tesla autopilot
Speaker 1: accident that ended in a fatality had happened. But I
Speaker 1: do have to point out, to be fair to Tesla,
Speaker 1: that it's very clear that the autopilot is not meant
Speaker 1: to be a truly driverless type of technology. In fact,
Speaker 1: Tesla requires that drivers read and acknowledge or at least
Speaker 1: acknowledge a warning saying as much, and they're supposed to
Speaker 1: keep their hands on the wheel at all times and
Speaker 1: be paying attention attention to the road even when the
Speaker 1: are is in control. So there's at least some truth
Speaker 1: to Tesla saying that this is not really our fault
Speaker 1: because they're not following the actual policy. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue against that, although you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: this autonomous technology is obviously not advanced enough to avoid
Speaker 1: these kind of accidents, so that's very worrisome as well.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk got into all sorts of hot water in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. Man, that guy, what a year he had.
Speaker 1: For one thing, he tweeted out messages that said he
Speaker 1: intended to take Tesla private, and he was. He had
Speaker 1: secured funding and it was at a price of four
Speaker 1: dollars per share, which he apparently later said was a
Speaker 1: joke about um, you know and marijuana. Funny joke. Here's
Speaker 1: the problem. It's illegal to share misleading information to shareholders,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't clear that funding had been secured, so
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice said that's not cool. Then the
Speaker 1: SEC announced in September that it was going to sue
Speaker 1: Elon Musk over this matter, that he was sharing misleading information,
Speaker 1: that shareholders could see that and have the wrong idea
Speaker 1: about what was about to happen with their investment, and
Speaker 1: that that caused problems. And eventually that lawsuit was settled
Speaker 1: out of court. Elon Musk and Tesla agreed to pay
Speaker 1: a total of forty million dollars in fines. Musk would
Speaker 1: later say that he quote did not respect the SEC
Speaker 1: end quote. I think that was already apparent, but anyway.
Speaker 1: Musk also was the center of some other stories. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, he sat down for an interview with Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan for his show, and while on camera for that show,
Speaker 1: he took a puff off of some marijuana, and folks
Speaker 1: plumb done lost their minds about it. There were questions
Speaker 1: as to whether he might have violated his own company's
Speaker 1: cause duct policy. There were discussions about the public perception
Speaker 1: of marijuana use, which is admittedly complicated and weird, has
Speaker 1: a lot of historical taboo stuff tied to it. Personally,
Speaker 1: I find his marijuana use way less concerning than his
Speaker 1: disregard for the legality of spreading misinformation from a position
Speaker 1: of power. I think that's the thing I would worry
Speaker 1: about more. But I also say that, you know, because
Speaker 1: I think that has the greater capacity to have greater harm. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I also say this as someone who's a total square.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna catch me smoking marijuana because I'm boring.
Speaker 1: I have no interest in it. But I also don't
Speaker 1: see it as being as big a deal as this
Speaker 1: other issue that tweeting out about the taking Tesla private.
Speaker 1: I think that one causes the greater harm. He also
Speaker 1: insulted a British cave diver who is helping rescue some
Speaker 1: young boys who are trapped in a flooded cave. You
Speaker 1: might remember that story from and Uh. He indicated a
Speaker 1: couple of times during the year that he was working
Speaker 1: such long hours and getting so little sleep that he
Speaker 1: was starting to make pretty bad goofs, you know, like
Speaker 1: consulting someone who is risking his own life to try
Speaker 1: and save other people. For example. I also did an
Speaker 1: episode about tunneling machines and must Boring Company and how
Speaker 1: that was in the news as he was trying to
Speaker 1: work out plans to create underground tunnels for a new
Speaker 1: method of urban transportation. UM planning on building it out
Speaker 1: under Los Angeles, for example, but he's hit some obstacles
Speaker 1: and the tunneling machines can't just dig through these. This
Speaker 1: is obstacles, like government saying we got to work out
Speaker 1: some very important details. You have to secure a lot
Speaker 1: of permissions before you can dig under any cities. And
Speaker 1: so now while the technological side might be solved, there's
Speaker 1: the red tape to get through. And that red tape
Speaker 1: has good purpose. I don't mean to dismiss it. And
Speaker 1: the Google Io event in the spring of Google's CEO
Speaker 1: showed off a new application called dup Lex, which is
Speaker 1: an AI assistant that can actually make phone calls on
Speaker 1: behalf of the user, and it can make arrangements like
Speaker 1: reserving a car or a hotel room, and it sounds
Speaker 1: eerily human. It even incorporates stuff like ums and us
Speaker 1: in the speech, and it left some folks wondering, at
Speaker 1: what point will we be unable to tell if we're
Speaker 1: talking to a robot and not a human. News flash,
Speaker 1: We're already there, at least for some limited applications. In October,
Speaker 1: we found out that a vulnerability in Google Plus meant
Speaker 1: that developers were able to get access to users private data,
Speaker 1: and that the vulnerability had likely been present for maybe
Speaker 1: as long as three years. Google found out about this
Speaker 1: vulnerability in March, but they kept it quiet until October,
Speaker 1: and that made critics concerned about the lack of transparency.
Speaker 1: So Google announced it was going to shut down Google
Speaker 1: Plus in August nineteen. That's when a little end and
Speaker 1: then in December of another vulnerability was to scovered similar
Speaker 1: to that, exposing the data of fifty million or so people.
Speaker 1: So Google has now moved the sunset date for Google
Speaker 1: Plus to April nineteen. And I remember when that platform launched.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird to see it from from birth
Speaker 1: to death. Magic Leap, the augmented reality company that had
Speaker 1: been operating in secrecy for a couple of years but
Speaker 1: was really driving up anticipation about augmented reality. Finally showed
Speaker 1: off a headset. It's called the Magic Leap one. This
Speaker 1: is a developer kit. It's not met for the average consumer,
Speaker 1: but for people who are going to make applications for it.
Speaker 1: It costs two thousand two so definitely not priced in
Speaker 1: the realm of consumer technology. They look like some high
Speaker 1: tech goggles, and some of the reviews I've seen say
Speaker 1: it is really impressive, but it still falls short of
Speaker 1: the expectations that were created by Magic Leap itself, as
Speaker 1: well as the media coverage around it that led up
Speaker 1: to the release. But still it's pretty encouraging as far
Speaker 1: as advances in a argo. Switching over to cryptocurrency for
Speaker 1: a second, Bitcoin's value went into decline throughout seventeen. The
Speaker 1: currency had hit a value of nearly twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per bitcoin at princely some By early January that had
Speaker 1: dropped to just shy of fifteen thousand dollars per bitcoin.
Speaker 1: By the time you hear this, they will be very different.
Speaker 1: Right now, as I record this episode, the value is
Speaker 1: down to three thousand, four hundred dollars or so per bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So the question is is it going to continue to
Speaker 1: dip down or is it toward the bottom of its
Speaker 1: trough and now it's going to go through another upswing.
Speaker 1: And I guess I'll have to make a prediction in
Speaker 1: our Predictions episode for twenty nineteen about that for much
Speaker 1: of cities in North America waited anxiously to find out
Speaker 1: where Amazon was going to put its second headquarters. And
Speaker 1: it announced that it was going to choose such a
Speaker 1: location in late seen and opened up the opportunity for
Speaker 1: various cities in metropolitan areas to send in a proposal.
Speaker 1: And then, after months of speculation, Amazon announced that it
Speaker 1: was going to select an area in northern Virginia very
Speaker 1: close to Washington, d C. And a section of Queens
Speaker 1: in New York City, splitting the second headquarters into two locations,
Speaker 1: which coincidentally happened to be in places where Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: already owns homes. I'm equally convinced the whole thing was
Speaker 1: a sincere attempt to find suitable locations for Amazon's headquarters,
Speaker 1: and not just an enormous manipulative attempt to get the
Speaker 1: sweetest deals at two locations that the company had already
Speaker 1: decided upon before making the announcement. But then you guys
Speaker 1: heard me talk about that in the previous episodes, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to drop it finally in a story that
Speaker 1: is extremely close to home. I Heart Media, the company
Speaker 1: that was once known as Clear Channel, acquired Stuff Media, LLC,
Speaker 1: the company I work for. The acquisition was complete by
Speaker 1: eight fall, and as I record this, I Heart Media
Speaker 1: is preparing to emerge from bankruptcy and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of rumors flying around about what might happen next,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea what it might be now
Speaker 1: and have an inside line to any of that. I
Speaker 1: am excited to find out what happens in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and that wraps up this retrospective look at There are
Speaker 1: tons of stories that didn't cover. Obviously, a lot happened
Speaker 1: in I'm pretty sure that eighteen was four times longer
Speaker 1: than any year that came before it. I think somewhere
Speaker 1: we added extra months in there because it felt like
Speaker 1: it lasted an eternity. I have no idea what twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen has in store that I'm going to make some guesses. Anyway.
Speaker 1: You'll have to hear about that in my Predictions episode.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. In our next episode, I
Speaker 1: will go over how my predictions for this past year went.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, I did pretty well that you'll hear more
Speaker 1: about that in the next one. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, send me an email. The address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. I have
Speaker 1: the handle tech stuff hs W. Go to tech stuff
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. That's our website where you can learn
Speaker 1: more about the show, and you also have a link
Speaker 1: to our merchandise store. Remember every purchase you make there
Speaker 1: goes to help our show, and we greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.