Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. Well, it's time for us to look
Speaker 1: back on some of the big tech stories that shaped
Speaker 1: the last twelve months. I always like to take some
Speaker 1: time at the end of a year to reflect back
Speaker 1: on what has happened, and this year, there was an
Speaker 1: awful lot of stuff going on. So we're just going
Speaker 1: to look at some of the big stories and headlines
Speaker 1: in tech in twenty twenty four. This is by no
Speaker 1: means an exhaustive list, and of course some of these
Speaker 1: stories continue to play out. Some of them are arguably
Speaker 1: not as big as ones that I left out of
Speaker 1: this list, But these were ones that I thought were
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because I feel like they're a commentary,
Speaker 1: no just on where we are in tech, but where
Speaker 1: we're going. But that's enough jibber jabber. We got a
Speaker 1: lot to get through. Let's get started, and where else
Speaker 1: to begin but to talk about AI. No one was
Speaker 1: surprised that artificial intelligence dominated the news cycle in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Everyone said it was going to happen, because
Speaker 1: it was clear that that's how it was going to
Speaker 1: turn out, and it did. The gears were already turning
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. In fact, in late twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: that's when AI really started to capture the public's attention.
Speaker 1: Generative AI in particular has received a ton of focus.
Speaker 1: Though this is a good time to remind all of
Speaker 1: y'all that generative AI is just one subset of artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence disciplines. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that,
Speaker 1: seeing as how much of our attention goes to generative AI.
Speaker 1: But there are lots of other types of AI. But
Speaker 1: one company that's always at the forefront of these conversation
Speaker 1: is open Ai. That's the company that's perhaps best known
Speaker 1: for chat GPT. Open ai began as a non profit
Speaker 1: organization a few years ago, and it was dedicated to
Speaker 1: the responsible and safe development and deployment of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: with kind of an open approach. Thus the name like
Speaker 1: this idea that they were going to share their findings
Speaker 1: and research and knowledge with others in order to ensure
Speaker 1: that the AI that the company developed would ultimately be
Speaker 1: put to beneficial use with the lowest risk of harm,
Speaker 1: but that nonprofit would spawn a for profit arm because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, AI is crazy expensive. Yo. I mean,
Speaker 1: R and D costs a lot, but just running the
Speaker 1: stuff you've already developed also costs a huge amount. And
Speaker 1: I've talked in the past about how AI applications typically
Speaker 1: require enormous amounts of compute power, and that stuff isn't free.
Speaker 1: In fact, in September of this year, New York Times
Speaker 1: reporters Mike Isaac and Aaron Griffith wrote a piece about
Speaker 1: how much money open ai was making versus how much
Speaker 1: it was spending, and the numbers are jaw dropping. The
Speaker 1: article is titled open ai is growing fast and burning
Speaker 1: through piles of money, and it published on September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. In that piece, the authors revealed that
Speaker 1: open AI's revenue reached three hundred million dollars in August
Speaker 1: of this past year. Now that's a lot of cash,
Speaker 1: and the company overall expected a three point seven billion
Speaker 1: dollars in sales by the end of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Now that's even more cash if I'm doing my math right.
Speaker 1: Let's see three point seven billion versus three hundred Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. However, this same company was on track
Speaker 1: to lose five billion dollars in operating costs. Even with
Speaker 1: all that in consideration, that's how expensive it is to
Speaker 1: run a cutting edge AI company. Some of that money,
Speaker 1: of course, went to normal overhead operations that any regular
Speaker 1: business would encounter, you know, stuff like salaries and office
Speaker 1: space and that kind of stuff. But the bulk of
Speaker 1: it presumably went to running operations and R and D work. Now.
Speaker 1: I say presumably, because, as Isaac and Griffith point out
Speaker 1: in that article, there were quote several large expenses not
Speaker 1: fully explained in the documents end quote. The cash churn
Speaker 1: prompted several pieces that were speculating that without a truly
Speaker 1: massive influx of cash from investors, open Ai could spend
Speaker 1: itself out of business. But then, like literally, the next week,
Speaker 1: headlines announced that open ai had brokeered a six point
Speaker 1: six billion dollar round of new investments. Covering the spread
Speaker 1: if you will. This would put the valuation of open
Speaker 1: Ai at around one hundred and fifty seven billion dollars,
Speaker 1: and the company predicted it would hit one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue by twenty twenty nine. Which might be
Speaker 1: the case, and investors might be eager enough to see
Speaker 1: that happen in order to, you know, like, they'll continue
Speaker 1: pouring truckloads of cash into the company at a rate
Speaker 1: that just outpaces open AI's spending habits in order to
Speaker 1: actually get to that destination. I always get nervous about
Speaker 1: stories like these because it's hard to believe that this
Speaker 1: is all sustainable. But I guess if folks are determined enough,
Speaker 1: then if they have access to enough resources, anything is possible. Now,
Speaker 1: Earlier this month, I talked about another story involving open Ai,
Speaker 1: one that has raised many concerns. Open Ai has signed
Speaker 1: a deal with the defense tech company and a Rill,
Speaker 1: which is a total keen reference. That company was founded
Speaker 1: by the creator of the Oculus VR headset, Palmer Lucky. Now, again,
Speaker 1: the original pitch for open ai is that it was
Speaker 1: meant to be an organization dedicated to the safe and
Speaker 1: responsible development of AI. So this announcement has caused a
Speaker 1: lot of concern with people in the AI space, including
Speaker 1: people who were formerly part of open ai itself. So specifically,
Speaker 1: these two companies are working to improve US military technology
Speaker 1: in order to defend against unpiloted aerial attacks. So you
Speaker 1: can think of it as all right, they're working to
Speaker 1: create systems that can identify target and bring down unmanned drones. Now,
Speaker 1: considering that the end of this year has also brought
Speaker 1: with it reports of mysterious drones flying over places like
Speaker 1: New Jersey and Pennsylvania and other areas, you could argue
Speaker 1: that there's a growing need for this kind of technology.
Speaker 1: But critics worry that the same tech could be used
Speaker 1: to identify target and bring down normal aircraft, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind that's actually piloted by a human being in
Speaker 1: the cockpit, And that definitely does not sound like it's
Speaker 1: a safe or responsible application for artificial intelligence, especially when
Speaker 1: you consider that AI is far from perfect. It can
Speaker 1: make some mistakes. Now, there's a lot more we could
Speaker 1: say about open AI, but let's move on to some
Speaker 1: other companies that made headlines that involve artificial intelligence. Now,
Speaker 1: one of those was in Vidia, which is perhaps best
Speaker 1: known as a company that designs graphics processing units or GPUs.
Speaker 1: Those are the things that gamers and some cryptominers really
Speaker 1: want to get hold of. Well, it turns out that
Speaker 1: parallel processing, which is what GPUs really specialize in, also
Speaker 1: happens to be really great for at least some AI processes,
Speaker 1: and so Nvidia has embraced the AI industry really. In
Speaker 1: Vidia now identifies itself as an AI chip maker and
Speaker 1: has turned out lots of chip designs meant to handle
Speaker 1: large AI compute loads. This has more than doubled Nvidia's
Speaker 1: value from the end of twenty twenty three to the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty four, which is huge because at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty three, and Video was valued
Speaker 1: at one point two trillion dollars already. That was a
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty percent increase over what it had
Speaker 1: been in twenty twenty two. However, today, in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and Vidia's value is at more than three trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: In fact, it puts in Vidia in the top three
Speaker 1: most valuable publicly traded companies, and depending upon when you're
Speaker 1: looking at that list, it typically falls right behind Apple
Speaker 1: and right in front of Microsoft. That kind of depends
Speaker 1: on which day you look at that list, because these
Speaker 1: numbers do shift around a lot. But yeah, Nvidia had
Speaker 1: a pretty huge year in twenty twenty four. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, as I record this episode which is on
Speaker 1: December nineteenth when I'm recording it. Just to be transparent,
Speaker 1: Nvidia is currently recovering from an overall market dip that
Speaker 1: saw shares of Nvidia drop by around fourteen percent, And
Speaker 1: when you're valued in the trillions, any single percent represents
Speaker 1: a whole lot of money, so that that represents a
Speaker 1: considerable drop, But the estimates I've seen recently seem to
Speaker 1: say that it's a very temporary situation. One more AI
Speaker 1: related story that I would like to touch on, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that, of course there were countless other noteworthy
Speaker 1: AI stories the unfolded this past year is that twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four is the year where we started seeing companies
Speaker 1: incorporate processors meant to handle AI applications on the device level.
Speaker 1: So Open AI's business model largely focuses on companies and
Speaker 1: other customers using an Internet connection to tap into like
Speaker 1: massive server farms that have the awesome powers of AI processing.
Speaker 1: But another approach is to dedicate processors at the device
Speaker 1: level so that you can do AI implementations on your
Speaker 1: own computer, you know, or whatever other device. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: I did an episode about the Yoga laptop from Lenovo
Speaker 1: that's a copilot plus PC and Copilot is Microsoft's AI product,
Speaker 1: and the laptop I talked about features an NPU that's
Speaker 1: a neural processing unit. So just as a GPU is
Speaker 1: optimized to process graphics, and NPU is optimized to handle
Speaker 1: AI applications. Now, there are several benefits to having AI
Speaker 1: native on a device, and the big ones really are
Speaker 1: security and privacy. With cloud based AI computing, there's always
Speaker 1: a risk of data breaches. You don't have full control
Speaker 1: over your information because it's being handled by a third party.
Speaker 1: There's also a risk that the provider you use might
Speaker 1: train future AI models on your information, and if that
Speaker 1: data includes proprietary information or trade secrets or something like that,
Speaker 1: that represents a huge security risk. And I bring it
Speaker 1: up because we have seen examples of AI agents revealing
Speaker 1: stuff that they shouldn't, stuff that involved other users of
Speaker 1: the AI agents. Where let's say person one is using
Speaker 1: the AI agent too, I don't know, plan out their
Speaker 1: insurance and then person two, while asking questions, happens to
Speaker 1: start getting information about Person one and the situations they're
Speaker 1: in that are leading to them to seeking these solutions
Speaker 1: to their insurance problem. That's a terrible, terrible privacy problem
Speaker 1: and a security problem for companies particularly. You don't want
Speaker 1: your trade secrets to become industry wide knowledge, so moving
Speaker 1: AI applications to the device level somewhat mollifies those concerns. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, you still have to practice good security protocols.
Speaker 1: You also have to maintain control of your device so
Speaker 1: that someone else doesn't get physical access to it and
Speaker 1: then is able to see it. But that's true no
Speaker 1: matter what. But the fear of some other company profiting
Speaker 1: off of your information or potentially leaking your data to
Speaker 1: others is greatly reduced. At least, I expect we'll continue
Speaker 1: to see more on device implementations of AI, and I'm
Speaker 1: not the only one making that. Guess Gartner predicts that
Speaker 1: all aipcs rather will make up like forty three percent
Speaker 1: of all PC shipments by twenty twenty five, and you know,
Speaker 1: by my calendar, we're nearly there. So we'll have to
Speaker 1: see if that becomes truth. Now, before we go to break,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that Copilot is one of Microsoft's products.
Speaker 1: Microsoft was in the news a lot in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four for a lot of different reasons, but one story
Speaker 1: focused on a different feature found in some Copilot plus PCs,
Speaker 1: and that is Microsoft Recall. So the company announced this
Speaker 1: feature in June of twenty twenty four, and the reaction
Speaker 1: was rather critical. To put it gently, Recall takes screenshots
Speaker 1: of your activities on your PC. These screenshots are searchable,
Speaker 1: and it's intended to make it easier for users to
Speaker 1: look back on their past activities in order to find
Speaker 1: like files or data or whatever. You know, if you've
Speaker 1: ever said, gosh, what was that website I visited where
Speaker 1: I found that awesome recipe or something like that, and
Speaker 1: you didn't bookmarket or whatever, screenshots is one way that
Speaker 1: you might use to try and track that information down
Speaker 1: by searching the database that's on your machine. Now, some
Speaker 1: folks worried right away that recall would be sending screenshots
Speaker 1: back to Microsoft, which obviously would represent a huge threat
Speaker 1: to both privacy and security. So imagine being an executive
Speaker 1: at a big company and working on an internal report
Speaker 1: only to find out that your computer has been screenshotting
Speaker 1: everything and then sending it off to Microsoft servers. That
Speaker 1: would surely violate company policies at the very least, But
Speaker 1: Microsoft was quick to state that the screenshots would not
Speaker 1: be sent over the Internet to any other location. They
Speaker 1: would live squarely on the native device. However, this did
Speaker 1: not stop the criticism. Now, originally recall was apparently unencrypted,
Speaker 1: meaning it would store these screenshots essentially in plain text
Speaker 1: on the user's computer, So if someone gained access to
Speaker 1: your machine, even if it wasn't administrative access, they would
Speaker 1: be able to go back and look at all those screenshots,
Speaker 1: which potentially could include stuff like login information for various
Speaker 1: accounts and services. So again the concerns around privacy and
Speaker 1: safety were flaring up. Ultimately, these and other criticisms prompted
Speaker 1: Microsoft to delay recalls rollout and ended up turning it
Speaker 1: from a mandated feature to an opt in feature so
Speaker 1: you can actually elect to make use of this feature.
Speaker 1: So they also would go back and change it so
Speaker 1: that the screenshots are encrypted, so you should only be
Speaker 1: able to access these if you have administrative level like
Speaker 1: access to the machine. However, that also could mean that
Speaker 1: perhaps a company could have access to that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: right like, if you have an employer provided computer as
Speaker 1: part of your work, then presumably your employer or someone
Speaker 1: at the company you work for has that administrator level
Speaker 1: access to the machine, which means they can go back
Speaker 1: and look at all the screen shots, which could potentially
Speaker 1: become a monitoring issue if some bosses decide, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a great way for me to see if you know,
Speaker 1: Jonathan over there is actually doing his work, or if
Speaker 1: he's goofing off, you know, playing Galaga or something and
Speaker 1: on his company machine, which he should not do. So
Speaker 1: there are those concerns still, but again, since it's opt
Speaker 1: in unless your company forces you to activate it, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that big of an issue. Microsoft also
Speaker 1: enabled some security and privacy features that are meant to
Speaker 1: obscure stuff like your login credentials. You know, in theory,
Speaker 1: the screenshots will skip screens where you're filling in that
Speaker 1: kind of info, so that if someone were somehow to
Speaker 1: get access to your machine, even if they searched through
Speaker 1: for log in stuff, they wouldn't find it. However, some
Speaker 1: folks have found that this is not foolproof because sometimes,
Speaker 1: like if someone's filling out say a PDF, an interactive PDF,
Speaker 1: then they put login information on that. Well, Microsoft doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily detect that the PDF is related to logins, and
Speaker 1: so you might end up with screenshots that show in
Speaker 1: plain text. Well, once you decrypt the screenshot but show
Speaker 1: that log in credential. So there are still some concerns,
Speaker 1: but from one to understand, it's miles better than what
Speaker 1: the company initially announced when they rolled it out. The
Speaker 1: tool is now out for Windows eleven users. I have
Speaker 1: not seen any stats on how many people are actually
Speaker 1: using it. It'll be interesting to hear in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five if it becomes a more widely accepted feature. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.
Speaker 1: When we come back. More top tech stories of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. We're back so here. In the United States,
Speaker 1: several big tech companies have faced scrutiny from regulatory agencies
Speaker 1: such as the Federal Trade Commission or FTC this year. Microsoft,
Speaker 1: for example, has recently found itself the subject of an
Speaker 1: antitrust investigation, not for the first time, but in this
Speaker 1: case it's in businesses ranging from cloud computing to cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: Other members of the Big five tech companies, those being Apple, Amazon, Meta,
Speaker 1: and Google, have also felt the heat. As Christine Bartholomew
Speaker 1: of pro Market wrote, quote, anti trust enforcers filed new
Speaker 1: Section two claims against Amazon and Apple while continuing to
Speaker 1: prosecute older cases like the Federal Trade Commissions suit against
Speaker 1: Meta originally filed in twenty twenty end. Quote that section
Speaker 1: two that Bartholomew mentions refers to a section in a
Speaker 1: very old piece of legislation, namely the Sherman Act, which
Speaker 1: is an anti trust piece of legislation. But Google in
Speaker 1: particular could potentially face government mandates to spin off certain
Speaker 1: key business units or face massive consequences. So the US
Speaker 1: Department of Justice alleged that Google has engaged in anti
Speaker 1: competitive practices, one of which is the company's practice of
Speaker 1: paying other platforms so that Google Search remains the default
Speaker 1: search engine on those platforms. So Google spends billions of dollars,
Speaker 1: in fact, it spends billions of dollars paying Apple alone
Speaker 1: in order to be the default search engine of choice,
Speaker 1: and the DOJ has argued that Google is effectively suppressing
Speaker 1: competition this way. The case has made its way to court.
Speaker 1: A US district judge named Ahmit Meta ruled against Google,
Speaker 1: and that brings us up to what happens next. So
Speaker 1: the answer to that is that it's not going to
Speaker 1: unfold until later in twenty twenty five, and depending on
Speaker 1: how things go with the courts maybe even later than that.
Speaker 1: These things can stretch on for many years, as was
Speaker 1: indicated by Bartholomew. You know that FTC case that started
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. But the DOJ wants to make Google
Speaker 1: divest itself of several business units, including the Chrome browser,
Speaker 1: and to stop entering into those exclusionary agreements with companies
Speaker 1: like Apple and such. The recommendations go much further, and Google,
Speaker 1: understandably has protested them all. The company has argued that
Speaker 1: it didn't really do anything anti competitive in the first place,
Speaker 1: no matter what that judge thought. And anyway, if the
Speaker 1: DOJ gets its way, it's going to have a huge
Speaker 1: harmful effect on the tech sector, nay, the very world.
Speaker 1: It definitely gets a bit over dramatic. I think both
Speaker 1: sides get over dramatic to be fair. Now, a separate
Speaker 1: judge is going to have to decide which measures should
Speaker 1: actually be enforced against Google later in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: so the story is far from over. One thing that
Speaker 1: was a potential concern is that the change in administration
Speaker 1: could affect the outcome. So typically when we see a
Speaker 1: big shift in power dynamics here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we also see a lot of change in practices and policies. However,
Speaker 1: in this case, pressure against big tech is something that
Speaker 1: both sides of the aisle feel is necessary, although often
Speaker 1: for completely different reasons. But that pressure actually began under
Speaker 1: Trump's first presidential administration, so there's every reason to believe
Speaker 1: that the same will be true this go around. Now,
Speaker 1: while I expect the Trump administration to stick generally to
Speaker 1: big businesses are great and they should get away with
Speaker 1: whatever they want, I think big tech companies are a
Speaker 1: potential exception to that rule, though a lot of analysts
Speaker 1: say that they'll probably face lighter consequences. They won't be
Speaker 1: forced to divest themselves of business units. Perhaps under Trump's
Speaker 1: DOJ We'll have to see Something else in tech that
Speaker 1: is a looming question mark. Is the fate of TikTok
Speaker 1: in the United States. A huge story in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four was that the legislative branch of the US government
Speaker 1: passed a law that requires TikTok's parent company, Byte Dance,
Speaker 1: to divest itself of TikTok or else face a ban
Speaker 1: for the app throughout the entire United States. Now, byte
Speaker 1: Dance is a Chinese company, and the lawmakers share a
Speaker 1: concern that the app could serve as a way to
Speaker 1: siphon data from the United States and send it on
Speaker 1: over to China. Plus it could serve as a delivery
Speaker 1: platform for Chinese propaganda. Basically, these claims, even if they
Speaker 1: were to turn out to be one hundred percent true,
Speaker 1: are kind of moot as far as I'm concerned, because
Speaker 1: China can both collect data from other sources and deliver
Speaker 1: propaganda using other platforms without ever needing TikTok. So to me,
Speaker 1: this is kind of missing the forest for the trees
Speaker 1: sort of situation. But then TikTok is also an easier
Speaker 1: thing to wrap your head around as opposed to the
Speaker 1: whole US approach to data privacy and security, which I
Speaker 1: feel is severely out of touch. Now. President Biden signed
Speaker 1: that bill into law earlier this year, and byte Dance
Speaker 1: faces a deadline of January nineteenth to divest itself of
Speaker 1: TikTok or else TikTok gets the ban hammer now. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, President Trump at that time was all
Speaker 1: gung ho on banning TikTok, even sign an executive order
Speaker 1: ordering as much, but it got overturned. More recently, he's
Speaker 1: changed his tune for reasons that remain rather opaque, at
Speaker 1: least if you take his own statements at face value.
Speaker 1: I won't get into that, but people have been listening
Speaker 1: to the show for a wild No more about that story,
Speaker 1: But anyway, Trump doesn't come into office until January twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, So the deadlines of the day before that.
Speaker 1: Byte Dance and TikTok are hoping to extend that deadline
Speaker 1: so that Trump can weigh in on this and potentially
Speaker 1: reverse course before a ban is actually put in place.
Speaker 1: But that would require intervention from the US Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and right now that intervention is are from certain. It
Speaker 1: might happen, but it might not. So it could be
Speaker 1: that one day before Trump takes off as TikTok gets
Speaker 1: banned here in the United States. Now what happens after that?
Speaker 1: I got no clue. TikTok still maintains there's no feasible
Speaker 1: way to separate from its parent company, which I also
Speaker 1: find a little hard to believe, but it may be true.
Speaker 1: I am no expert in these matters. Okay, more big
Speaker 1: stories from twenty twenty four. So early in the year,
Speaker 1: the US Senate Judiciary Committee called leaders of several social
Speaker 1: media companies to testify about how social platforms have contributed
Speaker 1: to harming children. Folks like Mark Zuckerberg, who actually offered
Speaker 1: an apology, were compelled to listen to numerous cases brought
Speaker 1: before them by parents who had tragic stories to share
Speaker 1: about their kids. The overall response from the committee side
Speaker 1: was that none of the tech leaders actually acquitted themselves
Speaker 1: very well or appeared to make any concrete plans to
Speaker 1: actually address the underlying con concerns. There was also a
Speaker 1: lot of lawmakers questioning Section two thirty. That's a law,
Speaker 1: or rather it's part of a law that provides protection
Speaker 1: to online platforms. Essentially, Section two thirty says online platforms
Speaker 1: cannot be held legally liable for the stuff that their
Speaker 1: users post to those platforms. But even those protections do
Speaker 1: have limits. So, for example, if a platform becomes aware
Speaker 1: of illegal activity, it is supposed to take action. But
Speaker 1: the thing that drove me bonkers with this hearing was
Speaker 1: that some of these lawmakers seemed to behave like Section
Speaker 1: two thirty was written by the social media companies and
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was actually created by Congress as a
Speaker 1: way to protect companies in the Internet space from being
Speaker 1: squashed before they could even establish themselves, and to encourage
Speaker 1: investors to put money into that stuff. If an investor thinks, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to invest in that because I could
Speaker 1: be held legally responsible for something that someone else did
Speaker 1: that would have killed the early Internet. So that's why
Speaker 1: section two thirty exists. But let's then move on and
Speaker 1: dive into our Muskie segment, shall we. That means it's
Speaker 1: time to talk about Elon Musk. He continued to alienate
Speaker 1: some users of x formerly known as Twitter, and alternative
Speaker 1: platforms like Threads, Mastedon and Blue Sky benefited from Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's shenanigans because users began to bail and go to
Speaker 1: those alternatives. Blue Sky in particular, has had a heck
Speaker 1: of a year. The service emerged from beta and became
Speaker 1: available to the general public relatively early in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and it has experienced a couple of bursts of popularity,
Speaker 1: including a big one following the twenty twenty four elections
Speaker 1: here in the United States. So right now it boasts
Speaker 1: more than twenty five million users, which isn't bad at
Speaker 1: all for the first year in operation. More than eleven
Speaker 1: million of those joined following the US election, and you
Speaker 1: know that that's pretty impressive. It is still miles and
Speaker 1: miles behind X, which has an estimated six hundred million
Speaker 1: or so monthly users. So it's not like Blue Sky's
Speaker 1: poised to topple X. We're not. This is not even
Speaker 1: David versus Goliath. This is Goliath and David's very short
Speaker 1: friend Dwayne or something. Upon Trump's win in the election,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk would become part of the new administration. He
Speaker 1: will co chair a new Department of Government Efficiency akadge
Speaker 1: or I can't believe I'm saying this doge. That suggests
Speaker 1: to me that Musk may have had a hand in
Speaker 1: naming the organization, knowing his past with the doge coin
Speaker 1: and other memes. Considering the Musk is also in an
Speaker 1: ongoing battle regarding his compensation package at TESLA, I imagine
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot of Musk's fingerprints on
Speaker 1: government actions in the near future. Also, it's kind of
Speaker 1: wild that the guy who's put in place of authority
Speaker 1: over government spending is also the guy who happens to
Speaker 1: be the richest human in the world. It's just weird now,
Speaker 1: speaking of election stuff. As you are probably aware, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four was a year of unprecedented misinformation campaigns, some
Speaker 1: of which were fueled by generative AI, and it continues
Speaker 1: to be an issue. While elections in the United States
Speaker 1: are over for the time being, other elections are around
Speaker 1: the world. They're preparing for a flood of misinformation. A
Speaker 1: lot of the effort in misinformation campaigns appears to be
Speaker 1: coming out of Russia. Pewtin has long relied on Internet
Speaker 1: channels to help push pro Russian policies and leaders and
Speaker 1: other nations. Not all of those campaigns have been successful
Speaker 1: in their goals, but they've definitely been all over the place.
Speaker 1: So we expect that that's going to be a continuing
Speaker 1: trend moving into twenty twenty five. And we're going to
Speaker 1: take another quick break right now. When I get back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to wrap this up with some more tech
Speaker 1: headlines and stories from the past year. But first let's
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. All right, we're in the home stretch,
Speaker 1: though again I'm only touching on some of the stories
Speaker 1: that I thought were particularly interesting. I am leaving an
Speaker 1: awful lot of stuff untouched, so you know, don't get
Speaker 1: upset if your favorite tech story doesn't get a mention here,
Speaker 1: there's too much to go over. But one thing that
Speaker 1: remains untouched by yours truly is the Apple Vision Pro headset.
Speaker 1: I just don't have like more than three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just lying around waiting to be spent on an augmented
Speaker 1: reality headset from Apple that has limited utility in my
Speaker 1: day to day life. But the long rumored technology finally
Speaker 1: emerged early in twenty twenty four. Now, the Apple Vision
Speaker 1: Pro was a far cry from like the Blue Sky
Speaker 1: early concepts, because, rather than like a sleek pair of glasses,
Speaker 1: it was a headset that could project images of the
Speaker 1: user's eyes on the forward facing side of the visor,
Speaker 1: so everyone else could see that you were wearing a
Speaker 1: big visor, but you had gigantic digital eyes projected on
Speaker 1: the back of it, apparently staring at folks. It was
Speaker 1: something that I thought was super creepy. Now, the reviews
Speaker 1: I read about the device all said it was legitimately impressive,
Speaker 1: like it's well made and it does a really good job.
Speaker 1: But those reviews also indicated there were a limited number
Speaker 1: of use cases for the technology. Now, part of that
Speaker 1: is a chicken in the egg problem that frequently happens
Speaker 1: in tech, and it happens between hardware and software. So
Speaker 1: software developers have very little incentive to build stuff for
Speaker 1: a platform that doesn't have a large install base. But
Speaker 1: customers don't have a lot of incentive to adopt a
Speaker 1: brand new technology, particularly a really expensive one like the
Speaker 1: Vision Pro, if that technology doesn't also have useful library
Speaker 1: of applications. And so, while the Vision Pro had a
Speaker 1: brief moment in the spotlight, over the course of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four it became clear it just wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be the runaway hit that Apple was kind of hoping
Speaker 1: for in the past, so Apple rather quietly stopped mentioning it.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the company has ended production on
Speaker 1: the Vision Pro model, according to reports, and rumor has
Speaker 1: it that any plans for a second Pro unit have
Speaker 1: been scrapped. Again, that's a rumor. I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: official announcement from the company itself, but that seems to
Speaker 1: be the case now. That does not mean that Apple
Speaker 1: is totally out of the mixed reality game, and we
Speaker 1: may see a lower cost version with fewer features in
Speaker 1: the future. That was the plan at least for a while.
Speaker 1: Those rumors suggest that this newer version of the headset
Speaker 1: will be you know, wicked expensive, just not as wicked
Speaker 1: expensive as the Vision Pro. I saw one post on
Speaker 1: XR today I guess Mixed Reality Today that suggested the
Speaker 1: slim down model might go for something like one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred bucks, or about half of what the Vision
Speaker 1: Pro goes for. It's still awful pricey, and I'm still
Speaker 1: not convinced that the use case is there for most people.
Speaker 1: Like I think people who are curious about it might
Speaker 1: feel more tempted to get a fifteen hundred dollars headset
Speaker 1: than a three thousand dollars headset. But that's still a
Speaker 1: huge price tag for most people. And unless you're able
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that this technology is going to have a
Speaker 1: massive impact on how you get stuff done, I just
Speaker 1: don't see it really moving that far. Speaking about things
Speaker 1: not turning out the way you had hoped, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four was another year of layoffs in the tech industry.
Speaker 1: One source I read mentioned that between companies like Tesla, Intel, Cisco,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft, there were around one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: jobs cut. It has been a brutal couple of years
Speaker 1: in the tech sector. I think this is partly because
Speaker 1: of just overall economic issues. It's also partly because of
Speaker 1: how a lot of tech companies beefed up during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and now in the post pandemic years, they're having to
Speaker 1: look for ways to slim back down again. But here's
Speaker 1: hoping that twenty twenty five sees those trends change, because
Speaker 1: it's always rough seeing those those stories break. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about crypto, because ye gads, this was a
Speaker 1: huge year for crypto and it didn't start off that
Speaker 1: way really, But one thing that happened was Sam Bankman
Speaker 1: freed AKASBF found himself before a judge and sentenced to
Speaker 1: twenty five years in prison for his role in the
Speaker 1: FTX debacle. Now, in case you missed all that, FDx
Speaker 1: was a cryptocurrency exchange that apparently took customer money and
Speaker 1: used it to cover some bad investments made by a
Speaker 1: sister company called Alimator Research. Now it gets more complicated
Speaker 1: than that, but essentially SBF was arrested on charges of
Speaker 1: fraud among other things. He was found guilty and now
Speaker 1: in this year he was sentenced to prison. SBF then
Speaker 1: filed an appeal to his sentencing, arguing that the judge
Speaker 1: overseeing the case had a conflict of interest and was
Speaker 1: biased against him the very damn recording this the nineteenth
Speaker 1: of December twenty twenty four, a US court dismissed that appeal,
Speaker 1: finding SBF's claims invalid. That doesn't come as a surprise
Speaker 1: to me. There are allegations that SBF and or his
Speaker 1: legal team were allegedly, you know, engaging in witnessed tampering
Speaker 1: for example. That kind of stuff typically doesn't go over
Speaker 1: so well when matters come to a court of law.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like SBF's future will not be spent
Speaker 1: on a Caribbean island, but instead in a prison. Related
Speaker 1: to the FTX catastrophe is the failure of a bank
Speaker 1: called Silvergate Capital. So this technically happened in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: That's when we started to see a few banks fail
Speaker 1: that were connected to the crypto world. So one called
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley Bank failed, another one called Signature Bank failed,
Speaker 1: and Silvergate was the third. The owners at the time
Speaker 1: said that they were going to wind down operations. However,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until this passed September in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: that Silvergate Capital Corporation filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection.
Speaker 1: The filing included passages that accused regulators of interfering too
Speaker 1: much in the cryptocurrency realm, and that perhaps Silvergate would
Speaker 1: have been able to write itself if it weren't for
Speaker 1: I don't know, imperial entanglements. As Obi Wan Kenobi might say,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin itself had a heck of a year. So in
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty four, bitcoin was trading at around forty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per bitcoin. That's a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: that was already an impressive improvement over the previous January
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty three, when it was in the
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars range, but it was still pretty far
Speaker 1: off from its peak that it had hit previously in
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty when it was around sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per bitcoin. All of that was left behind
Speaker 1: the dust recently when the price of bitcoin skyrocketed to
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand dollars per bitcoin. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of that I attribute to the outcome of the
Speaker 1: US elections, As I believe the crypto community at large
Speaker 1: views President Trump is being much more friendly to the
Speaker 1: crypto industry. So will this mean that cryptocurrency has become
Speaker 1: a viable currency alternative or will they just remain more
Speaker 1: like investment assets. I would probably guess on the latter,
Speaker 1: but I'm no expert. It is wild to me that
Speaker 1: the pizza guy in Florida bought pizzas for ten thousand
Speaker 1: bitcoin way back in twenty ten, and those ten thousand
Speaker 1: bitcoin today are worth a billion dollars, So I sure
Speaker 1: hope that was a good pizza. Also, one other thing
Speaker 1: that happened with bitcoin is that the number of coins
Speaker 1: per block mind on the blockchain reduced by half this year. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a planned feature that's built into bitcoin. In short,
Speaker 1: there's a finite number of bitcoin that will ever be released,
Speaker 1: and once all of those are mined, no new bitcoin
Speaker 1: will ever emerge. The ones that are in circulation will
Speaker 1: be the only ones to ever exist. To control the
Speaker 1: supply of bitcoin going into circulation, the system actually has
Speaker 1: the number of bitcoins awarded per block of transactions every
Speaker 1: few years. It's like approximately every four years. So it
Speaker 1: used to be that if you were to mine a
Speaker 1: block on the blockchain, you would get six point two
Speaker 1: five bitcoin per block mind now it's down to three
Speaker 1: point one point two five, which could affect the incentives
Speaker 1: for mining bitcoin. However, now that bitcoin is worth more
Speaker 1: than one hundred thousand dollars per unit, that still means
Speaker 1: the value of mining a block on the blockchain is
Speaker 1: almost as much as it would have been back at
Speaker 1: bitcoin's previous height of around sixty thousand dollars. Cause, yeah,
Speaker 1: the number of bitcoins you get is cut in half,
Speaker 1: but the amount that it's worth has almost not quite,
Speaker 1: but almost doubled, So there's still a huge incentive for
Speaker 1: mining operations to pour tons of assets into mining bitcoin.
Speaker 1: That means consuming a lot of electricity, and I have
Speaker 1: quite a bit of anxiety over how the next US
Speaker 1: administration is going to handle matters like energy consumption and
Speaker 1: where we turn to in order to generate electricity. So
Speaker 1: I think crypto is going to be in a lot
Speaker 1: of conversations about stuff like climate change for the next
Speaker 1: several years, and I'm not looking forward to that. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's finish up with some stuff about space. That's typically
Speaker 1: how I like to end my news items. First up,
Speaker 1: we have the trials and tribulations of Boeing, So the
Speaker 1: aerospace company has long been associated with the space industry,
Speaker 1: but this year Boeing has had a really rough one.
Speaker 1: It actually started quite early because on January fifth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and Alaskan Airlines Boeing seven thirty seven Max
Speaker 1: aircraft experienced a terrifying failure. At sixteen thousand feet, a
Speaker 1: door plug, meaning a plug that takes the place of
Speaker 1: what otherwise would have been an emergency door, blew out
Speaker 1: of the airplane, which meant the cabin experienced rapid, uncontrolled decompression. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: everyone on board the aircraft survived the incident. There were
Speaker 1: only three people I think who reported minor injuries, so
Speaker 1: all of that is good. I mean, it was still
Speaker 1: an incredibly traumatic experience. I can't imagine what I would
Speaker 1: feel like if I had been on that flight. So
Speaker 1: an investigation showed that the door plug perhaps was reinstalled
Speaker 1: improperly and was missing some bolts meant to secure it
Speaker 1: in place. There's still a question of whether or not
Speaker 1: the bolts had been in place, or perhaps they were
Speaker 1: ripped out during the incident, but either way, it certainly
Speaker 1: seems like a big oversight. So the Federal Aviation Administration
Speaker 1: or FAA ordered all seven to three seven Max nine
Speaker 1: aircraft that had a similar door plug to be grounded
Speaker 1: until each one could undergo a thorough inspection. Boeing would
Speaker 1: end up paying various airlines a whole lot of money
Speaker 1: due to the fact that those airlines could not operate
Speaker 1: the aircraft they had purchased while the FAA was conducting
Speaker 1: this inspection process. But that wasn't the only headache Boeing
Speaker 1: encountered this year. Another relates to the long awaited spacecraft,
Speaker 1: the Boeing Starliner. The spacecraft's purpose is to serve as
Speaker 1: a cargo and crew transport for space missions that go
Speaker 1: into low Earth orbit, and the spacecraft itself is reusable.
Speaker 1: It's also a tad roomier than the SpaceX crew Dragon
Speaker 1: capsule or the old Apollo capsules. The rollout of the
Speaker 1: Starliner faced numerous delays. Originally, the hope was that it
Speaker 1: would enter into service by twenty seventeen, but that did
Speaker 1: not happen. The first successful test flight wouldn't happen until
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. That was an uncrewed test flight, and
Speaker 1: this was the year when Starliner finally would bring astronauts
Speaker 1: up to the space station. Unfortunately, the spacecraft would not
Speaker 1: bring those astronauts back down again because on the way
Speaker 1: to the space station, the Starliner experienced a partial thruster fail.
Speaker 1: Ye Now, NASA, the astronauts aboard both the ISS and
Speaker 1: the star Liner were collectively able to compensate for this,
Speaker 1: and the spacecraft did dock safely with the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: But after long consideration, NASA came to the determination that
Speaker 1: it would be too risky to have the two astronauts
Speaker 1: returned to Earth aboard the star Liner, and instead they
Speaker 1: would have to wait for another opportunity to come home.
Speaker 1: So what was supposed to be a short mission lasting
Speaker 1: like less than two weeks, has now stretched into one
Speaker 1: that's going to go all the way into twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: In fact, right now, NASA says that they can get
Speaker 1: back no earlier than March twenty twenty five, and it
Speaker 1: might be later than that. The incident, along with the
Speaker 1: revelations regarding how expensive the star Liner missions are compared
Speaker 1: to alternatives like SpaceX, have really created a great deal
Speaker 1: of criticism directed both at Boeing and at NASA. Boeing's
Speaker 1: been rather cagy about the whole thing. The company was
Speaker 1: supposed to hold a press conference upon the uncrewed Starliner's
Speaker 1: return to Earth this past September. The Boeing canceled that
Speaker 1: event at the very last minute and didn't offer a
Speaker 1: reason as to why they canceled it. Starliner's future in
Speaker 1: the American space program remains another one of those big
Speaker 1: question marks that we just don't know enough about yet. Theoretically,
Speaker 1: once Boeing demonstrates to NASA's satisfaction that the star Liner
Speaker 1: is spaceworthy, Boeing will then provide the star Liner for
Speaker 1: three space missions. That's what a contract has agreed upon.
Speaker 1: There's also an option for NASA to purchase additional missions,
Speaker 1: I think three more per that contract. But as some
Speaker 1: have pointed out, we're getting closer to the retirement date
Speaker 1: of the International Space Station. We're talking like twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: So by that time it may be that star Liner
Speaker 1: has nowhere to take anybody because all the low Earth
Speaker 1: orbit space stations we would go to will be gone,
Speaker 1: all the ones that the United States has an interest
Speaker 1: in it anyway. And finally, twenty twenty four was the
Speaker 1: swan song for the Ingenuity Helicopter, the little aircraft on
Speaker 1: Mars that flew far more times than was planned. The
Speaker 1: Ingenuity was an experiment, could we design an aircraft that
Speaker 1: could actually fly on Mars. So the atmosphere on Mars
Speaker 1: is considerably thinner than what we have here on Earth,
Speaker 1: which makes it hard to fly, but Mars's gravity is
Speaker 1: about a third of Earth's, so that helps a little bit.
Speaker 1: So the Ingenuity was a test to see if maybe
Speaker 1: we could create an aircraft that could further explore the
Speaker 1: Red planet and add to our scientific knowledge to that end.
Speaker 1: While Ingenuity carried some basic sensors, it wasn't fully kitted out.
Speaker 1: It was more of a proof of concept. The plan
Speaker 1: was for Ingenuity to go on five flights when it
Speaker 1: landed on Mars as part of the Perseverance Rover way
Speaker 1: back in February twenty twenty one. The aircraft had to
Speaker 1: fly autonomously because Mars is far enough away from Earth
Speaker 1: that it takes several minutes for radio waves to travel
Speaker 1: between the two, so you can't remote control it from Earth.
Speaker 1: Rather than just complete five flights, however, Ingenuity would ultimately
Speaker 1: take off seventy two times. These flights were relatively modest,
Speaker 1: with altitudes of around ten to sixteen feet in flight
Speaker 1: times light i to around a minute and a half,
Speaker 1: but by golly, Ingenuity outperformed all expectations until finally this year.
Speaker 1: One of Ingenuity's rotors broke off in January when it
Speaker 1: came in for a landing and there was a miscalculation.
Speaker 1: So apparently the Ingenuity made an error because it was
Speaker 1: passing over what NASA referred to as a largely featureless
Speaker 1: region and it just made a miscalculation of where the
Speaker 1: ground was. That this is something the agency said will
Speaker 1: not be a problem in the future when they have
Speaker 1: a better mapped system of Mars's surface. But considering that
Speaker 1: Ingenuity was only supposed to fly five times, it's still
Speaker 1: really impressive. While Ingenuity will go sailing no more, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, flying no more, it is still operating even
Speaker 1: as it's out of range radio communications leave perseverance. Ingenuity
Speaker 1: is serving as a stationary platform that's testing stuff like
Speaker 1: solar panel performance and battery operations. That's information that will
Speaker 1: be invaluable should we ever take the step of actually
Speaker 1: sending humans to Mars, or maybe even the grander dreams
Speaker 1: of perhaps establishing a semi permanent colony there. But that's
Speaker 1: putting the space cart before the space horse and that's it.
Speaker 1: Those are the top stories of twenty twenty four that
Speaker 1: I wanted to focus on, not saying that's all the
Speaker 1: top stories, just the ones I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this look back on some of the
Speaker 1: big events of twenty twenty four, and I look forward
Speaker 1: to chatting with you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.