Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Up from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Uff. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and joining me once again is Joe McCormick. Joe, How's
Speaker 1: how's your two thousand fourteen? It's been spectacular and the
Speaker 1: best part of it has been sitting in this room
Speaker 1: with you talking about tech stories from It's It's that
Speaker 1: and then getting your new dogs right. That's that has
Speaker 1: been pretty good. No, actually, I don't care about you
Speaker 1: at all. That's fair. Okay, So last episode we got
Speaker 1: through July two thome we're ready to pick up in
Speaker 1: August and finish out the rest of the year. A
Speaker 1: lot of stuff happened in two thousand and fourteen, and
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the earlier podcast, I recommend
Speaker 1: you go back check that out. That's where we talk
Speaker 1: about some pretty big stories, and some of them are
Speaker 1: going to end up informing a few of the stories
Speaker 1: in the second half of the year, because that's the
Speaker 1: way that time works. Anyway. August two, here's the one.
Speaker 1: I I almost didn't want to include this because I
Speaker 1: hate bringing attention to it. However, uh in August, that's
Speaker 1: when the actor Adam Baldwin created the hashtag gamer gate,
Speaker 1: and that was I had no idea gamer gate had
Speaker 1: anything to do with Adam Baldwin. Gamer Gate the name
Speaker 1: has everything to do with Adam Baldwin. Adam Baldwin, from
Speaker 1: Firefly Yes, and from Chuck Yes. He created the hashtag.
Speaker 1: So this was in response to a growing brew haha
Speaker 1: in video game and video game journalism. And ostensibly it
Speaker 1: was about ethics and video game journalism. But effectively what
Speaker 1: it never really heard about that part. I just heard
Speaker 1: references to that part. Effectively, the most of it was
Speaker 1: about um attacking email, video game journalists, video game developers,
Speaker 1: anyone actually really and ultimately it was beyond female. It
Speaker 1: was essentially largely anyone who was not white and male,
Speaker 1: although not not exclusively. There were some people and still
Speaker 1: are some people involved in in the gamer gate side
Speaker 1: of things. The people speaking out who are not who
Speaker 1: don't fit that demographic, but that's the vast majority of
Speaker 1: that demographic. And whether or not there are ethics issues
Speaker 1: in video game journalism, putting that aside, the tactics being
Speaker 1: used by many in that movement to attack that they're
Speaker 1: perceived opponents were pretty rotten, like publishing people's address online
Speaker 1: so that they can be harassed, threatening them and their families,
Speaker 1: exactly to the point where people were seeking protection from
Speaker 1: law enforcement, getting the FBI involved. Um So, here's here's
Speaker 1: my take on this is that if you feel there
Speaker 1: are legitimate issues in the ethics in video game production
Speaker 1: and video game uh journalism, video game coverage, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, there are ways you can express that
Speaker 1: that are constructive that don't involve threatening someone or putting
Speaker 1: someone at risk, And those are the methods I think
Speaker 1: people should take. And that you know, this is just
Speaker 1: pulling the whole argument aside. There's some who would say
Speaker 1: there's no argument there to be made at all, that
Speaker 1: the whole thing is just a straw man for the
Speaker 1: purposes of being able to attack anyone that they see
Speaker 1: as being uh not them right and uh of their
Speaker 1: privilege in the community. Right. I know there are some
Speaker 1: people out there who feel like they have a legitimate point,
Speaker 1: and that's fine if you're able to to uh to
Speaker 1: express that in a way that isn't harmful to other folks,
Speaker 1: because the other folks aren't trying to harm you. It's
Speaker 1: crazy how this got out of control so fast, and
Speaker 1: it really showed a dark, sinister underbelly of misogyny, of racism,
Speaker 1: of homophobia, and a lot of communities. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: saying everyone who spoke out falls into one of those categories,
Speaker 1: but enough of them were doing things that certainly fall
Speaker 1: into that category to make it a real concern. And
Speaker 1: so I almost didn't cover this because it is a
Speaker 1: controversial topic. I know, I've got a lot of listeners
Speaker 1: who care very deeply about video games, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: I think you should feel deeply about the things you're
Speaker 1: you're really interested and passionate about, but there are ways
Speaker 1: to express that constructively and ways to be a jerk.
Speaker 1: A jerk, yeah, And I would hope that people who
Speaker 1: like to listen to the show would take the constructive route,
Speaker 1: you know. And and if you you know, if you
Speaker 1: have legitimate beef, that's fine, but dude, don't. But what
Speaker 1: if you have legitimate chicken? Uh, then I will come
Speaker 1: over to your house and have dinner because I eat
Speaker 1: chicken but not beef. Alright. So also, well, well let's
Speaker 1: hear all about your holy positions. Yeah, let's not have
Speaker 1: chicken Gate. August two, on with gamer Gates, straight out
Speaker 1: of the gates, and to be fair, to be fair,
Speaker 1: the issues of gamer gate had been going on throughout
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. It's just that's when it got
Speaker 1: the name, right. I mean, my sort of basic perspective
Speaker 1: is I've seen it back and forth about issues of
Speaker 1: of how, especially how women are treated in commentary on
Speaker 1: video games and in video games and themselves and in
Speaker 1: the industry that creates them. I've seen this going on
Speaker 1: for years, and just suddenly it seemed to be, I
Speaker 1: don't know, attached to this hashtag and I and I
Speaker 1: wasn't understanding exactly why this particular hashtag, gamer gate was
Speaker 1: now the name for this ongoing struggle I've been seeing
Speaker 1: for years. Well, the the initial event that happened ended
Speaker 1: up being treated as if it were a conspiracy that
Speaker 1: was there was other companies were attempting to cover up.
Speaker 1: Thus the gate the idea of being like it's like
Speaker 1: water Gate. It's this conspiracy that's going on behind gamer's backs,
Speaker 1: where there's collusion between video game journalists and video game
Speaker 1: creators where for a and some form of exchange games
Speaker 1: will get positive coverage that kind of thing. And whether
Speaker 1: or not that's true, it doesn't justify the incredibly evil
Speaker 1: tactics that were being used to punish quote unquote people
Speaker 1: who were supposedly perpetrating these events. Um, this this, this
Speaker 1: is the this is the issue we'll see. The Internet
Speaker 1: is strange world we live in. The Internet is great
Speaker 1: because it democratizes a lot of things that otherwise people
Speaker 1: would not have access to, like content creation. Now, as
Speaker 1: a regular Joe, not not you, Joe, but a regular person,
Speaker 1: not that you're not a regular person. Let me start
Speaker 1: over as someone who is just an average human being.
Speaker 1: I can go and make a YouTube series. All I
Speaker 1: need is a camera and an Internet connection, so I
Speaker 1: can send that. Right before, if you wanted to produce stuff,
Speaker 1: you needed lots of infrastructure behind you to do it. Well,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, Uh, unfortunately goes with your ability
Speaker 1: to impact the lives of other people. You can do
Speaker 1: it in a positive way, which is fantastic, or you
Speaker 1: can do it in a very negative creative Twitter account
Speaker 1: and threaten somebody's safety and tell them you're going to
Speaker 1: come to their house and kill them. This is stuff
Speaker 1: that you know, if if you were to just set
Speaker 1: the clock back twenty years, then you'd be sent talking
Speaker 1: about sending stuff through the mail, like threatening letters in
Speaker 1: the mail. Most people, I think would say this is
Speaker 1: evidence of someone who is has got some serious issues
Speaker 1: that need to be addressed. But today it happens online
Speaker 1: and you have entire communities dedicated to finding new ways
Speaker 1: to do it, which is disturbing. So anyway, let's move on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously we could do a full episode on that entire issue.
Speaker 1: I haven't because it's so complex, but moving forward something
Speaker 1: that's simple, putting the gaming into perspective. The Rosetta probe
Speaker 1: reached the comment that it would eventually land on much easier.
Speaker 1: This was, of course, the culmination of a ten year journey,
Speaker 1: which was preceded by ten years of planning to send
Speaker 1: a probe out to eventually rendezvous and then land on
Speaker 1: a commet to help us learn more about the composition
Speaker 1: and behavior of comments, So it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Of course, it wouldn't land on the comment to a
Speaker 1: little bit later in the year, but this is when
Speaker 1: it actually reached the comment, so that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: There was also in August a kerfuffle between Uber and Lift,
Speaker 1: which are too competing car service companies. There part of
Speaker 1: that shared economy. Although most people I think would say
Speaker 1: that it's more like a taxi service than a shared
Speaker 1: ride service, but at any rate. Um the kerfuffle was
Speaker 1: that each company claimed that employees of the other company
Speaker 1: have been requesting and then canceling rides for drivers of
Speaker 1: the other service. So Uber was calling up lift rides
Speaker 1: and then canceling them and to disrupt their service. Can
Speaker 1: you come pick me up twenty miles out of town? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Verge also ran a story about Uber's slog program,
Speaker 1: which was supposedly designed to have Uber drivers call for
Speaker 1: a lift ride and then attempt to recruit lift drivers
Speaker 1: over to Uber. There's a script to follow like, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you ever hear about Uber? What about Uber? I
Speaker 1: hear Uber pays more than lift that kind of thing
Speaker 1: that would you ever think about driving for Uber? And
Speaker 1: if they said yes, then you would get their informations
Speaker 1: that someone at Uber could try and actually directly recruit them. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's the new tell marketing. Yeah, the back seat Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this was this was one of those things that
Speaker 1: that again really gave Uber kind of a black eye
Speaker 1: for two thousand and fourteen. I was also August was
Speaker 1: also the month that Steve Bomber retired from the board
Speaker 1: of Microsoft. No. Yeah, he had to concentrate on his
Speaker 1: sports team that he had purchased. Um, the Cleveland Developers. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was the Cleveland Developers. Wasn't the Clippers or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It was the Cleveland Developers. Amazon bought Twitch
Speaker 1: in August or just under a billion dollars nine d
Speaker 1: seventy million bucks. Twitch is the video streaming service that
Speaker 1: allows people to stream footage of video games as they
Speaker 1: play them. I've used this. I used this when I
Speaker 1: did a charity marathon where I was playing Minecraft for
Speaker 1: twenty five hours and I live streamed the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were periods. You talked one time about how Twitch
Speaker 1: played Pokemon where they had all pressing buttons at the
Speaker 1: same time. Yeah. Yeah. The way it worked was that
Speaker 1: the the the text messages sent into the chat would
Speaker 1: be um interpreted as video game commands for this game
Speaker 1: of Pokemon, and so the game of Pokemon would behave
Speaker 1: in a very bizarre way because there was lag between
Speaker 1: when you would put in a command and when it
Speaker 1: would be able to process it. So something that would
Speaker 1: have made sense at the moment that you put in
Speaker 1: the command wouldn't make sense by the time it finally
Speaker 1: got processed and an entire mythology grew up around the
Speaker 1: behavior of that particular Pokemon game, with like certain things
Speaker 1: given incredible significance, Like every time a particular item was
Speaker 1: opened up in the inventory because of the sequence of commands,
Speaker 1: they can considered it consulting the oracle, giving it this
Speaker 1: important uh state status in the game, which was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: Oh that was just user created too, which just shows
Speaker 1: if you create anything sort of platform on the Internet,
Speaker 1: folks will be happy to to build a mythology around it. Um.
Speaker 1: At least to a point. There has to be some
Speaker 1: sort of hook to get people there. Also, in August,
Speaker 1: Google announced that it would launch literally a delivery drone
Speaker 1: service similar to the one that Amazon announced back in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. Um, I've seen some predictions saying that
Speaker 1: by the end of two thousand and fifteen we will
Speaker 1: have delivery drones. I think that's being a little optimistic. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I think the the f a A Is
Speaker 1: probably gonna have some things to say about that. UM,
Speaker 1: we'll see. But it's mean, would it really be cost
Speaker 1: effective by then? I mean, I guess if people are
Speaker 1: willing to pay enough charge Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it also depends on you know, obviously which uh, which
Speaker 1: cities have distribution centers there, right, like if there's if
Speaker 1: if your item is already sitting in a warehouse in
Speaker 1: the city you're in, then it may make more sense
Speaker 1: to just go ahead and have an entire robotic line
Speaker 1: robots delivering the package to the pickup line. Another robot,
Speaker 1: the drone, picks it up and carries it out to
Speaker 1: deliver it never has to be seen by human hands
Speaker 1: and human hands human eyes. If human hands are seeing it,
Speaker 1: then things have really changed. But at any rate, they'll
Speaker 1: be like that guy in Pans labyrinthon the Thin Man
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. Paleman was pale man in that movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: September we finally got into another month. Apple unveils the
Speaker 1: iPhone six and the iPhone six plus, which was the
Speaker 1: first phone in the fablet category. You can almost fit
Speaker 1: in your living room, Yeah, exactly. Um I didn't mention
Speaker 1: the the breujaha that happened when a couple of people
Speaker 1: said that their iPhone six plus bent, you know, like
Speaker 1: they there and actually had like the metal itself was
Speaker 1: bending at certain point and denting in and there are
Speaker 1: all these jokes about hipsters in Brooklyn with tight genes
Speaker 1: that were ruining their phones just by putting them in
Speaker 1: their pockets. That yeah, yeah, that there. It would introduce
Speaker 1: a curve that was not intended to be there. The
Speaker 1: story would unfold that it really wasn't happening as frequently
Speaker 1: as one would think based upon the number of stories
Speaker 1: that were coming out um and Apple denied that it
Speaker 1: was a design flaw. Apple also announced the Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: which their first attempt to enter the wearable market. You
Speaker 1: don't count the iPod nano that would clip on to
Speaker 1: like your shirt or something, but that won't be available
Speaker 1: till two fifteen, So it was announced but not made available.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about Apple, Okay. They also unveiled Apple Pay,
Speaker 1: which is their NFC enabled payment system. Also, well not
Speaker 1: just NFC enabled payment system, but that's a large part
Speaker 1: of it. The idea being that you could go to
Speaker 1: a point of sale and use your phone or your
Speaker 1: smart watch. Once you got it to pay for something,
Speaker 1: you would have an electronic wallet that would allow you
Speaker 1: to transfer funds and and buy stuff supposedly completely secure.
Speaker 1: Is the idea being that meets the requirements of making
Speaker 1: sure your credit card information remains safe. I mean, there
Speaker 1: were so many stories about information being stolen that that
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Not obviously a very new idea.
Speaker 1: NFC technology has been around for a while. We've had
Speaker 1: Google Wallet for a couple of years. And in Europe,
Speaker 1: NFC technology is so commonplace that they're not even like,
Speaker 1: at least in the UK, they're not even launching Apple
Speaker 1: Pay out there because there's already embedded systems that pre
Speaker 1: exist that are popular. It was here in the United
Speaker 1: States where there was still a lot of confusion in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. No one had come out as a real leader.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of competing standards out there, and
Speaker 1: so that's when Apple kind of pounced. Chinese company Ali
Speaker 1: Baba held an i p o and it became the
Speaker 1: largest tech I p O ever that's an e commerce
Speaker 1: site in China. Uh, it was a big, big deal. Also, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: in September two fourteen agreed to buy mo Yang Mojang,
Speaker 1: the company that makes Minecraft. Always say it both ways
Speaker 1: because just in case. But for two point five billion
Speaker 1: dollars for a game that's been out for several years,
Speaker 1: for a company that hasn't produced anything remotely as successful
Speaker 1: as that one title. So some people were wondering if
Speaker 1: this was a smart move or not, because while Minecraft
Speaker 1: is undeniably a huge success, can you can you exist
Speaker 1: on a single title perpetually? Now, if you're Microsoft and
Speaker 1: you produce Microsoft Office, the answer might be yes, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what Microsoft does. Um, that's being unfair to Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Future versions of Minecraft will have Clippy. Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: that you're trying to build a house. Would you like
Speaker 1: some help with that? Uh? Also September two fourteen, you
Speaker 1: know what we haven't talked about for a little bit,
Speaker 1: Joe Hackers. Oh in the so now that we've split
Speaker 1: this podcast into our opening discussion from the last one
Speaker 1: is kind of lost. But in that I I was
Speaker 1: saying that I was sort of thinking often as the
Speaker 1: year of the hack, that it's the year that I
Speaker 1: think the average person start starts becoming aware that cybersecurity
Speaker 1: threats are real and they're going to affect them pretty
Speaker 1: frequently in the future. Well, especially when we see that
Speaker 1: it's affecting not just retail establishments or bitcoin exchanges, but
Speaker 1: other things as well. So we have two hacking stories
Speaker 1: at the end of September two thousand fourteen, one was
Speaker 1: that home Depot would investigate another massive hack against their systems,
Speaker 1: so similar to issues that had plagued target eBay, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And also that hackers would steal photos
Speaker 1: from Apple's online photos sharing service. And this was not
Speaker 1: a blanket attack. This wasn't like a rod net that
Speaker 1: was cast out to see what they could catch. It
Speaker 1: was obvious that they were targeting specific individuals, celebrities in particular,
Speaker 1: and trying to get hold of photos, usually photos that
Speaker 1: put people in compromising positions, nude photographs, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was sad. It was it was seeing people's privacy
Speaker 1: being violated and then seeing the justified arguments. And I
Speaker 1: used justified in the loosest means as possible, saying, well,
Speaker 1: they live their lives out in the public eye, so
Speaker 1: therefore they shouldn't have an expectation of privacy. My response
Speaker 1: to that argument, you just posted something on the Internet
Speaker 1: and it's public, you know, let us read your email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my yeah. My argument is is that is a jerk
Speaker 1: face argument to make. Don't make that argument, folks, that
Speaker 1: does any sense. No, it doesn't, it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: at all justifiable. It's terrible thing. But but also again
Speaker 1: displayed the need for security, and it also showed that
Speaker 1: this was not due to customer behavior. This wasn't like
Speaker 1: a customer issue where their problems lead to the UH
Speaker 1: to the breach. It was another issue behind the scenes
Speaker 1: that you know, the customer didn't have any any involvement with.
Speaker 1: And if your argument is like, well, they shouldn't put
Speaker 1: you know, those kind of photos up on a online service.
Speaker 1: If you have every expectation that your information is going
Speaker 1: to be safe, then it's really no one else's business
Speaker 1: what information you put up there. Right, as long as
Speaker 1: you're not violating any terms of service with whatever that
Speaker 1: service is, everything should be fine. Well, like we said
Speaker 1: in part one of this podcast, it's it's becoming clear
Speaker 1: more and more that you don't have to be somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't really understand how to use the internet in
Speaker 1: order to get everything messed up to have your information
Speaker 1: still and you don't have to create weak passwords or
Speaker 1: you know, do everything wrong. You can do everything right
Speaker 1: right and still have your information compromise. Yeah, so very frustrating,
Speaker 1: also eye opening, and it does mean that we have
Speaker 1: to take a more serious look at online security moving
Speaker 1: into October two thousand and fourteen. That's when Facebook Alternative
Speaker 1: l O opens up a bit. It had already been
Speaker 1: active for a while, so it had had a kind
Speaker 1: of an alpha slash beta sort of test with just
Speaker 1: a few people. But they opened up a bit allowing
Speaker 1: more people to join what was previously a very small community.
Speaker 1: So people were getting email invites. You could actually apply,
Speaker 1: and I did, so I got an invite, I joined LLO,
Speaker 1: made a little account. It was meant to be um or.
Speaker 1: It is meant to be a social network that doesn't
Speaker 1: use any advertising, that is supposed to just be pure
Speaker 1: social interaction with users without any uh fiddling about with
Speaker 1: the status updates or news update layout or money. Well
Speaker 1: right now, it was just it was getting investments, which
Speaker 1: some people pointed out, hey, if you can investment, that
Speaker 1: means that someone somewhere down the line believes that you're
Speaker 1: going to pay that investment back. So they can't perpetually
Speaker 1: exist on venture capital because they have to eventually be
Speaker 1: able to pay back investors. So that actually raised a
Speaker 1: lot of questions. People were saying, how are they going
Speaker 1: to make money? And it was a question that wasn't
Speaker 1: really um answered to anyone's satisfaction as far as I
Speaker 1: could tell. Moreover, after an initial flood of activity, l
Speaker 1: O kind of faded off because it wasn't doing anything,
Speaker 1: you know, truly innovative that Facebook or some other social
Speaker 1: platform wasn't already doing apart from the fact that it
Speaker 1: wasn't serving you up ads or messing with your news feed,
Speaker 1: but it it wasn't enough to pull people over. I
Speaker 1: checked back, because I had I was one of those
Speaker 1: folks who created an account, went there for a little while, stopped.
Speaker 1: I checked my account and pretty much no activity had
Speaker 1: happened within like the month that I had been offline.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's just because the people I know. It
Speaker 1: could be that there are pockets within that community that
Speaker 1: are very active, but most folks are like, hey, you
Speaker 1: remember when l O was the thing for two weeks.
Speaker 1: Facebook in October purchased What's App for nearly twenty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Joe, before we came in here, you said,
Speaker 1: what is What's App? You had not heard of it?
Speaker 1: You are not unusual in that fact, A lot of
Speaker 1: people in North America had not heard of What's App.
Speaker 1: It's a mobile messaging service that's very popular in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, not so much in the United States.
Speaker 1: So it's understandable why people would wonder why would you
Speaker 1: pay twenty two billion dollars for something like that? But
Speaker 1: the truth is it does. There are millions of people
Speaker 1: who use the service in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and Facebook views them as potential customers, so that is
Speaker 1: the reason. Also, yeah, I guess that's good enough. October
Speaker 1: that's when HB announced it would split up, separating its
Speaker 1: PC and printer business from its enterprise business. So the
Speaker 1: idea of being that by splitting up, they'll be able
Speaker 1: to make much more focused companies deliver upon those kind
Speaker 1: of promises. Surely, October had some more good hacks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kmart announced that store registers were hacked and then people's
Speaker 1: credit card information was stolen as a result, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just online attacks, it's store registers in this case. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: HBO finally announced that they were going to have a
Speaker 1: new service that would allow people to access HBO programming
Speaker 1: without a cable subscription, starting in two those fifteen. Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: I am so excited about this because I mean, I
Speaker 1: love some HBO shows, but I'm sorry you are not
Speaker 1: going to get me to subscribe to cable. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want all those channels. I'm not interested. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: the same way. I dropped cable years ago. And there
Speaker 1: have been lots of shows on HBO that I wish
Speaker 1: I could have watched, but I don't. I don't happy
Speaker 1: to pay to watch them. Sure, I just don't want
Speaker 1: to pay for all this other stuff I have no
Speaker 1: interest in whatsoever. Yeah, for the longest time, there was
Speaker 1: no way I could get it unless I went out
Speaker 1: and bought an entire seasons worth on DVD, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know which shows I might like and which
Speaker 1: ones I don't like, and I haven't watched them. And
Speaker 1: I I might catch an episode when I was out
Speaker 1: on a trip someplace, but it would be completely out
Speaker 1: of context, Like I, I can't tell if I like
Speaker 1: this or not because I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. It is interesting that HBO has become
Speaker 1: sort of a big name in high quality content, and
Speaker 1: not all of the content they've created what I argue
Speaker 1: is high quality, but much of it is. And like
Speaker 1: things like Game of Thrones is incredible or um uh,
Speaker 1: you know Sopranos that kind of thing six Ft Under
Speaker 1: the Wire. The Wire, in my opinion, maybe the best
Speaker 1: show that's ever been on TV. Yeah, okay, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: All the seasons, would you say that all the seasons
Speaker 1: hold up? Yeah, they're all great. Season two was a
Speaker 1: little but yeah, but that was by the Wire standards.
Speaker 1: But you also have like Carnival, which I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: It's it's very atmosphere, but you could tell there was
Speaker 1: gonna be some story issues early on. But but the
Speaker 1: cinematography in the atmosphere was phenomenal. It's just really like
Speaker 1: you were thinking, this might have needed a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a firmer hand at the beginning for this
Speaker 1: to to really work. But that's my own personal opinion.
Speaker 1: At any rate, I'm excited to see this come to fruition.
Speaker 1: We don't know all the details yet about how this
Speaker 1: will actually be put into practice, so we'll have to
Speaker 1: wait and see. Also in October tragic news, there was
Speaker 1: a malfunction during a test flight for the Virgin Galactic
Speaker 1: spaceship Too, which resulted in a crash in the California desert,
Speaker 1: which killed the co pilot, Michael Ellsbury. It was I
Speaker 1: was I was in California at the time, and I
Speaker 1: remember I was actually just having to pass a television
Speaker 1: when I saw the news and it was so upsetting,
Speaker 1: terrible story. Obviously, Uh, this was a big issue personally,
Speaker 1: it was a big issue as far as the private
Speaker 1: space industry go is. An's a reminder that this stuff
Speaker 1: is hard, you know, we we we start to downplay
Speaker 1: it when you hear about the different launch every other
Speaker 1: week or whatever. You start to think of it as commonplace.
Speaker 1: But this is rocket science. I mean, this is hard,
Speaker 1: hard stuff to get to work correctly. And the stakes
Speaker 1: are pretty high, so extremely high. I mean, their their
Speaker 1: life and death. So it's one of those things we
Speaker 1: need to keep in perspective. Not that it's not worth tackling,
Speaker 1: it's not worth doing. I fully believe it's worth tackling
Speaker 1: and worth doing. It's just we've got to remember that,
Speaker 1: you know, these are the these are the stakes that
Speaker 1: are involved, and we've got to keep working to get
Speaker 1: better at it um And so, yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: tragic tale to end out October. Moving on into November,
Speaker 1: we have some more security issues. In this case, not
Speaker 1: so much hacking into a system as creating malware to
Speaker 1: spread chaos and disorder where ever it might go. That
Speaker 1: was when multiple security labs in November revealed the existence
Speaker 1: of malware called Reagan r e g I N which
Speaker 1: affects Windows based computers. Now, most of the computers affected
Speaker 1: by this malware happened to be in Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: Mexico and Ireland. The main targets included telecom companies, small
Speaker 1: businesses and private individuals. And the people in the security
Speaker 1: industry have known about this malware for a while, but
Speaker 1: it was only in November. This is typical only in
Speaker 1: November when it was publicly revealed. But there are folks
Speaker 1: who said, yeah, we've known about this in some form
Speaker 1: or another for a few years, and suspicions right now
Speaker 1: kind of point to the n s A as the
Speaker 1: originator of the malware, that it was a way of
Speaker 1: infiltrating these systems to create means of surveillance. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been compared to Stuck's net, which was the that was
Speaker 1: the virus that in the infected UH computer is Iranian
Speaker 1: Iranian centrifuges. Yeah, so it made him spin at a
Speaker 1: at the incorrect speed and thus cause damage to the equipment.
Speaker 1: UM yeah. So there are a lot of suspicions that
Speaker 1: this is in fact state sponsored software that was meant
Speaker 1: to be a you know, cyber warfare tool. So, um,
Speaker 1: we don't have all the details on that. That could
Speaker 1: end up all being incorrect, but that was where the
Speaker 1: suspicions were. Also in November, President Obama urged the FCC
Speaker 1: to reclassify broadband service as a regulated utility, which would
Speaker 1: actually give the FCC authority to enact the rules they
Speaker 1: had proposed earlier than the year. That sounds like Obamacare
Speaker 1: for the internet, thank you. Oh no, no, no, that
Speaker 1: is not my opinion. Uh, we revisit net neutrality again.
Speaker 1: It's been big this year. Yeah. And it matters, it does.
Speaker 1: It matters a lot. I mean it matters to people
Speaker 1: like like you and I Joe, because we make our
Speaker 1: living working on a website and on shows that are
Speaker 1: delivered over the internet. Right. What if somebody said, well,
Speaker 1: I make some content that competes with yours, and I'm
Speaker 1: best buddies with Comcast or with whatever other provider, or
Speaker 1: suddenly my content gets preferential treatment. What happens if some
Speaker 1: other individual who puts out a great show, but they're
Speaker 1: an individual goes up against our company, and our company
Speaker 1: might have the assets to be able to play ball
Speaker 1: and pay agociate with the content exactly with the service providers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it creates an unfair playing field. And so
Speaker 1: that's what is trying you know what what people like
Speaker 1: President Obama are trying to suggest we avoid by reclassifying
Speaker 1: internet service as a type of utility. I think one
Speaker 1: way to sell this to people who are you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know, net neutrality sounds kind of
Speaker 1: touchy feely, I don't believe in it. Just explain it
Speaker 1: to them like this. This is going to severely negatively
Speaker 1: impact your Internet using experience, no matter who you are.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't matter who you are, what services you use.
Speaker 1: This is almost definitely going to make your web experience worse.
Speaker 1: At least, something that you rely upon regularly is no
Speaker 1: longer going to work the way you are used to
Speaker 1: because it doesn't fit into that. Now a lot of
Speaker 1: people have pointed out that what this does is it
Speaker 1: creates different internets depending upon which provider you have, because
Speaker 1: the experience is different. So it maybe like you think, oh,
Speaker 1: Netflix is great because I happen to use Comcast and
Speaker 1: Netflix and Comcast have made some sort of crazy deal.
Speaker 1: But my friend has Time Warner and he thinks Netflix
Speaker 1: is the worst because he can never get a movie
Speaker 1: to load because Time Warner. Netflix never made a deal.
Speaker 1: You know. That's the sort of thing. And for for
Speaker 1: a company like Netflix, it's it's one thing because it's
Speaker 1: a big company and it has the money to be
Speaker 1: able to make these sort of deals. They don't. No
Speaker 1: one wants to do that. One of the providers do,
Speaker 1: but not not the content companies. Um, but it could
Speaker 1: do that. But for smaller sites that that may not
Speaker 1: have that option, it's it's a real problem. And so
Speaker 1: that's one of the big arguments against it really is
Speaker 1: just that this hurts business in the long run. It
Speaker 1: benefits a few really large companies at the expense of
Speaker 1: hundreds or maybe thousands, or maybe millions of smaller businesses
Speaker 1: and private individuals as well. So we'll still have to
Speaker 1: see how that develops, because obviously that's that's an ongoing story.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear of the company area not at all? Okay,
Speaker 1: So Areo was a company that their their business model
Speaker 1: was that you would subscribe to this service and the
Speaker 1: service would allow you to access content that was grabbed
Speaker 1: by one of their over the air antenna. So this
Speaker 1: was just for broadcast over the air content. It the
Speaker 1: same as if you went out and put a giant
Speaker 1: antenna on your house and you were just pulling information down,
Speaker 1: except instead of doing it yourself, you're renting time on
Speaker 1: someone else's antenna to get that content. And UH content
Speaker 1: creators hated this, like, think of it this way, you
Speaker 1: could get over the air content from a region that's
Speaker 1: not your own and watch things like sports games that
Speaker 1: might have blackouts for certain regions, but you could see
Speaker 1: it if you rented it on this because the antennas
Speaker 1: in the region that is allowed even if you are not,
Speaker 1: so there were. There was obviously huge resistance and so
Speaker 1: the companies took Area to UH Court. It all went
Speaker 1: completely up to the Supreme Court. It was eventually decided
Speaker 1: against Ario, and in November of two fourteen, Area went
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy after they had lost all hope of having
Speaker 1: their business model legit legitimized. So Areo is no more,
Speaker 1: which is a shame. It also shows kind of how
Speaker 1: weird our distribution world is. Right, It's it doesn't always
Speaker 1: seem to make a whole lot of sense, especially like
Speaker 1: Ario's argument was, Look, this is content that's free. If
Speaker 1: you have an antenna, you can freely access it. There's
Speaker 1: no subscription for this. This is broadcast. It's not cable.
Speaker 1: This is these are air waves that go out and
Speaker 1: anyone with an antenna I can pick them up and
Speaker 1: there's no descrambling or anything. Um. But because of this
Speaker 1: other these other issues, you know, they were they were
Speaker 1: being told like, well, essentially, what you're doing is rebroadcasting
Speaker 1: something that doesn't belong to you. So it was kind
Speaker 1: of ugly. Um. There was another ugly story. Uber senior
Speaker 1: vice president Emil Michael said he would like to unveil
Speaker 1: details about the private lives of journalists who write critical
Speaker 1: pieces about Uber, which followed us an incredible, a bad
Speaker 1: PR move. It's odious, is it not. Yeah. This also
Speaker 1: followed an ad campaign Uber had put out advertising quote
Speaker 1: hot chick unquote drivers. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who deleted their Uber app after this event. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of people who asked me to cover Uber
Speaker 1: and to specifically cover some of the missteps and and
Speaker 1: weird decisions that have been made over the course of
Speaker 1: this year. In particular. Uh, yeah, this is that's definitely
Speaker 1: got some criticism, and then you had the response to
Speaker 1: the criticism, which gained more criticism. His response, he believed
Speaker 1: at the time, was going to be off the record,
Speaker 1: and it clearly was not. Uh. This is also November
Speaker 1: was when hackers calling themselves the Guardians of Peace, although
Speaker 1: that was after the fact, targeted Sony and stole internal
Speaker 1: documents as well as screener copies of several films from Sony,
Speaker 1: which were then leaked to torning sites. And there were
Speaker 1: suspicions laid or that the hacker group might be tied
Speaker 1: to North Korea, although that wasn't really the initial response.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, this is still up for debate.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we still don't know for sure whether
Speaker 1: it was North Korea or not. No, in fact, North
Speaker 1: Korea denies that it had any involvement in this. In fact, okay,
Speaker 1: we might as well do this whole story right now,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't make sense to unveil it later on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cover Sony right now. It just started November.
Speaker 1: It's still going on now today as we record this
Speaker 1: is December, so the story is nowhere near resolved. Yet well,
Speaker 1: obviously they were in the process of releasing a film
Speaker 1: called The Interview Yes And a film in which two
Speaker 1: stupid characters, one of whom is a stupid celebrity host
Speaker 1: of a celebrity news program. This is This movie is
Speaker 1: a comedy by the Yes, Yes and This and his
Speaker 1: stupid producer are. They land an opportunity to an interview
Speaker 1: with Kim Jong june, the um, the leader of North Korea,
Speaker 1: who it is revealed to be a huge fan of
Speaker 1: the show, and are then contacted by I believe it's
Speaker 1: the CIA. Anyway, They're contacted by US government officials UH
Speaker 1: to try and assassinate Kim Jong un as part of
Speaker 1: their trip over there, and they're given the tools to
Speaker 1: do so. And so as the story is unfolded, Like
Speaker 1: I said, the initial attack didn't really have as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, any indications of the motivation behind
Speaker 1: the attack. It was, Uh. They stole a lot of information.
Speaker 1: They shut down Sony Pictures systems. People came in and
Speaker 1: their screens went black and they were unable to do
Speaker 1: any work. This was the week of Thanksgiving, so a
Speaker 1: lot of people said, well, it's a holiday week anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll just take the holiday, and then they came back
Speaker 1: and there were still problems and said, this might be
Speaker 1: worse than I thought. I found out that a ton
Speaker 1: of information was stolen, including internal communications at Sony that
Speaker 1: caused lots of embarrassment for the company, a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: They revealed things like payment disparities between male and female
Speaker 1: employees at various levels of executive management. That also was
Speaker 1: really embarrassing for Sony UM. And then later there was
Speaker 1: a threat that that was kind of leveled at any
Speaker 1: theater that would show the interview. From what I read,
Speaker 1: it was a very vague threat that they just sort
Speaker 1: of promised violent reprisal. Yeah, they essentially compared it to
Speaker 1: nine eleven, which I mean, if you want to if
Speaker 1: you want to hit a a a nerve in in
Speaker 1: the American psyche, that's a very powerful one obviously, for
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons. So, uh, first you had theaters
Speaker 1: canceling the interview that they weren't going to run it,
Speaker 1: law the major chains that they wouldn't. Then of course
Speaker 1: Sony itself said that actually we're not going to release
Speaker 1: the film in any format. It's not gonna be on
Speaker 1: DVD or Blu ray, or anything like that or online
Speaker 1: on demand. And then you had a couple of UM
Speaker 1: theaters offer to show Team America in its place, which
Speaker 1: makes fun of Kim Jong Ill, Kim Jong UN's father
Speaker 1: deceased father. And then Paramount said, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Alamo Draft House was going to do this and then
Speaker 1: was told by Paramount that they couldn't do it, so
Speaker 1: they pulled that movie too, do that UM. President Obama
Speaker 1: essentially kind of said that Sony made the wrong choice
Speaker 1: to pull the movie. UH. Today, the day we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast, there has been a story about North Korea
Speaker 1: Internet UM services being disrupted in some fashion. I read
Speaker 1: about it on the Verge. It was an article just
Speaker 1: today where UH in today is December. Apparently, over the
Speaker 1: past twenty four hours, North Korean users have been experiencing
Speaker 1: severe Internet connectivity problems. Keeping in mind that the people
Speaker 1: allowed to have even access the Internet in North Korea,
Speaker 1: it's pretty limited, right, But some people have speculated on
Speaker 1: the internet. Well, you know, President Obama just said that
Speaker 1: there would be a sort of like appropriate UH response,
Speaker 1: sort of proportionate. I think those are where it's proportional response, UH.
Speaker 1: And so the question is well as the United States
Speaker 1: striking back against North Korea. That we don't even know
Speaker 1: for sure that North Korea is behind the initial attack
Speaker 1: on Sony, and subsequently we don't know that the United
Speaker 1: States is behind what's happening today. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Everybody's everybody's got a theory. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that. That guy from Office Space
Speaker 1: would be making a ment off his jump to conclusions
Speaker 1: Matt today. Um, yeah, there's there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: we don't know, and yet people are to dry conclusions
Speaker 1: based on that. Uh. For example, there have been a
Speaker 1: lot of sites that have suggested that apart from some
Speaker 1: some circumstantial evidence, it doesn't really there's nothing that's there's
Speaker 1: no smoking gun that North Korea was in fact behind
Speaker 1: the original attack, and North Korea representatives say we weren't responsible.
Speaker 1: In fact, we will offer to have a joint investigation
Speaker 1: into this, which the United States declined because one, we
Speaker 1: don't know if they're being since here, and that it's
Speaker 1: North Korea is an enigma right to us. It is
Speaker 1: a it is a country that a lot of US
Speaker 1: are very much ignorant of because it is secretive it's cloistered.
Speaker 1: It is got a very peculiar culture from the perspective
Speaker 1: of the United States. So this is a really weird
Speaker 1: mystery that's unraveling slowly at the end of two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: It does again portray the the the the year of
Speaker 1: the hack. Yeah, it's another great example, and in fact
Speaker 1: it's not the only one that happened. In November two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, there was a group of hackers, although
Speaker 1: some people don't call them hackers, called the Lizard Squad,
Speaker 1: that brought down Xbox Live with d d o S attacks,
Speaker 1: which is distributed denial of service attacks. Um. The reason
Speaker 1: why simpler approach, Yeah, it's it's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to know what you're doing in order to
Speaker 1: get the software you need, but that that's a pretty
Speaker 1: low bar. Uh. There's software out there that you can
Speaker 1: get that you can use to help launch a d
Speaker 1: d o S attack against a target, and if the
Speaker 1: target is vulnerable to such things, then you can really
Speaker 1: slow down or perhaps even crash that system. And that
Speaker 1: seems to be what happened a couple of times at
Speaker 1: the end of November two fourteen with Xbox Live. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then There was also at the end of November
Speaker 1: a bill that would have limited essay surveillance tactics that
Speaker 1: fail in the the U. S. Senate, although it had already
Speaker 1: been approved in the House of Representatives and had executive backing.
Speaker 1: So we almost got a bill that would have placed
Speaker 1: some sort of limitations and checks on n s A surveillance,
Speaker 1: but at the last minute that did not happen. You know,
Speaker 1: after all of these hacks and security compromises and people
Speaker 1: being jerks on the Internet, I need something to inspire me. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about the next step in space exploration being a
Speaker 1: complete success or Bell's complete success as you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Orian? I'm talking about Orion, so Ryan.
Speaker 1: The Orian spacecraft was originally part of the Constellation program
Speaker 1: at NASA. Now, the Constellation program was eventually dissolved, but
Speaker 1: the Orion spacecraft was obviously maintained. It was going to
Speaker 1: continued to be developed and uh. In December of two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, NASA launched the Orion spacecraft in an
Speaker 1: unmanned test of the new capsule. It's designed to take
Speaker 1: astronauts below low Earth orbit. You know, when the last
Speaker 1: time anyone went beyond low Earth orbit was h I do.
Speaker 1: It was in nineteen seventy two, the last Apollo mission
Speaker 1: December nineteen seventy two, and Apollo seventeen went to the Moon.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard for people to imagine that and
Speaker 1: sit there and think about it for a second. It's
Speaker 1: been more than forty years since anybody went more than
Speaker 1: a few hundred miles from the surface of the Earth. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might think, well, what about all that time in between,
Speaker 1: but that was all spent in lower th orbit, which
Speaker 1: extends out quite a ways before you get to medium
Speaker 1: Earth orbit and then high Earth orbit. I'm still not
Speaker 1: positive about this, but I think that the highest altitude
Speaker 1: we ever achieved in the meantime was for the Hubble
Speaker 1: servicing missions, which is just a little bit farther out
Speaker 1: than the I S S. So, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a big deal. This is us going beyond that relatively
Speaker 1: nearby field of lower th orbit on so you have
Speaker 1: to couch everything in the term relative relatively because it's
Speaker 1: still quite a ways out there. But yeah, but this
Speaker 1: is this is the program that would eventually allow us
Speaker 1: to send astronauts to first a captured asteroid. Is yes, Oriyan, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has a crew capsule, yeah, that can hold up
Speaker 1: to four astronauts, so larger than the Apollo ones that
Speaker 1: could eventually land on an asteroid. And that was that
Speaker 1: would be important for a lot of different reasons. Largely
Speaker 1: it would be a testing grounds for other technologies for
Speaker 1: us to for the for the next step, which is
Speaker 1: to eventually send a crew to Mars, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: That's a huge deal. We've talked about that several times
Speaker 1: on our our sister podcast, Forward Thinking. So go to
Speaker 1: fw thinking dot com if you want to learn all
Speaker 1: about our quest to get to Mars, because we've covered
Speaker 1: it multiple times and had some great discussions about it,
Speaker 1: including how Mars is trying to kill you some of
Speaker 1: my favorites. Uh. Also in December, Microsoft begins to accept
Speaker 1: bitcoin in a semi convoluted way. I didn't understand this note,
Speaker 1: I didn't read anything about this, all right, So you
Speaker 1: can purchase stuff through Microsoft services with bitcoins, but instead
Speaker 1: of buying things directly with a bitcoin, like saying this
Speaker 1: thing is worth point zero zero seven bitcoins or something,
Speaker 1: you apply bitcoins to an account, it gets converted into
Speaker 1: a different currency and then you can purchase things. So
Speaker 1: there's a there's like a mid stop in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: Part of that is because the value of bitcoin fluctuates
Speaker 1: greatly and in just a short amount of time. There
Speaker 1: was one day when I was I was looking at
Speaker 1: it earlier this month, from nine am to noon, it
Speaker 1: fluctuated thirty dollars in value, from around three thirty bucks
Speaker 1: per bitcoin to three sixty And it was around the
Speaker 1: three mark when I when I actually looked. But it fluctuated.
Speaker 1: When it fluctuates that much, it's really difficult to price
Speaker 1: something it seems like that's not like a currency, that's
Speaker 1: like a stock share. That's what I've often called it.
Speaker 1: I've thought of it more as a property than as
Speaker 1: a currency. Um. Sometimes I get yelled at for doing that,
Speaker 1: but that's what I I really think of it. When
Speaker 1: you've got a fluctuating value that that's that big in scale,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's hard to call it a currency
Speaker 1: at any rate. That That's how Microsoft is accepting bitcoins now. Um.
Speaker 1: Also in December, Ralph Bayer, who invented the home video
Speaker 1: game consoles, Yeah at age I need to he built
Speaker 1: something called the brown box, which sounds attractive, don't it.
Speaker 1: This became the Magnavox Odyssey. Uh so this was a
Speaker 1: game that would end up being copied and turned into
Speaker 1: one of the most famous arcade games of all time. Whoa, yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Magnavox Odyssey was the first game call sold
Speaker 1: to hit the consumer market way back. Same year was
Speaker 1: the last time we went beyond lower thorbit in ninet
Speaker 1: so big year n went beyond lower thorbit for the
Speaker 1: last time, got home video game consoles for the first time.
Speaker 1: So there's a bright side to everything, I guess. At
Speaker 1: any rate, he's also known as the guy who invented
Speaker 1: the memory game Simon frustrating mess. I'll tell you what's
Speaker 1: frustrating the game Simon plays an important part in Paranormal
Speaker 1: Activity five, and that movie is awful. You are kidding, right,
Speaker 1: They made a five. Yeah, they're made. They're working on
Speaker 1: six now. They they turned out two in one year,
Speaker 1: I think. But at any rate, yeah, Paranormal Activity five.
Speaker 1: Simon ends up being the equivalent of a Wuiji board
Speaker 1: in that movie. Alright then, yeah, so at any rate, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna skip over the next little note that I
Speaker 1: have in my notes because it's going back to the
Speaker 1: Sony Hack, which we pretty much covered, I think, but
Speaker 1: we do need to talk about one last thing that
Speaker 1: kind of is a story that branches the entire two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen beyond hacking. If it weren't for the fact
Speaker 1: that the hacking storyline wasn't so pervasive in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: I would say that two thousand and fourteen was the
Speaker 1: year that the sharing economy really was put through the ringer. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the idea of services like Airbnb or Uber
Speaker 1: or lift, allowing people to kind of democratize these services.
Speaker 1: But as a lot of people have pointed out, these
Speaker 1: don't always come across as sharing so much as replacements
Speaker 1: for already existing industry, some of which are under lots
Speaker 1: of regulation. Right. I mean, I have been to some
Speaker 1: cities before where we could have gotten a hotel room
Speaker 1: but instead we got Airbnb, and that's that. Could have
Speaker 1: gotten a taxi but instead we got an Uber. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've used Uber and Uh, and I would think of
Speaker 1: it as more of a taxi service. I don't think
Speaker 1: of it as like something of the sharing economy. I
Speaker 1: think of it as a replacement for a taxi service.
Speaker 1: And and that's the that's the issue. Right, You've got
Speaker 1: these other industries like the taxi the taxi industry saying, look,
Speaker 1: we have to obey by this these regulations that have
Speaker 1: been put down on us. These guys don't have that.
Speaker 1: They are operating under a different set of rules, and
Speaker 1: it's not fair to us. And you know, you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: the taxi industry, that's not really fair because it's you
Speaker 1: might have multiple companies, but really it's the only game
Speaker 1: in town, right. They're all so closely related that you
Speaker 1: can't you can't really judge one against the other to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'll go with this one because it's a better deal
Speaker 1: for me or whatever. However, if you have a business
Speaker 1: move in that's essentially doing the same thing but doesn't
Speaker 1: have to obey the rules, that's not really fair either.
Speaker 1: So there's there's this ongoing discussion about one does it
Speaker 1: really does it really make sense to call it a
Speaker 1: sharing economy too? How do we regulate this? How does
Speaker 1: how do we make sure that they're obeying the rules
Speaker 1: the way we've said, these other companies have to obey
Speaker 1: the rules. So, um, if it hadn't been for all
Speaker 1: the hacks, I think that that's really what we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about the most today. But the hacks take president obviously.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're more spectacular, and they really do
Speaker 1: impact us. I mean everybody, not just the big companies
Speaker 1: that got targeted. Oh no, I mean when the companies
Speaker 1: were targeted, it was a lot of times consumers who
Speaker 1: were the real target that they were the the hackers
Speaker 1: were either trying to influence consumer behavior, public opinion, or
Speaker 1: we're trying to get consumer data in order to make
Speaker 1: use of that. Um. I mean, it's something that we're
Speaker 1: all facing. It's the the year of cyber insecurity, right right,
Speaker 1: So you know that kind of wraps up the year
Speaker 1: that I mean, that was a pair of episodes to
Speaker 1: really go into those big stories. Joe, is there anything
Speaker 1: else about two thousand and fourteen that you just feel that,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't didn't address that needs to be said.
Speaker 1: I would say something clever here, but there's nothing clever
Speaker 1: in my entire brain. Yeah, I'm I'm at that to
Speaker 1: be fair, Joe. We are at the end of this
Speaker 1: year and it has been a really tough, awesome, but
Speaker 1: tough year. So we're we're starting to feel it. We're
Speaker 1: slogging through the last few days of two thousand and fourteen.
Speaker 1: Why don't you talk us out, sir. I will. So
Speaker 1: here's one thing I would say that we have to
Speaker 1: look forward to in two thousand and fifteen. Uh, you
Speaker 1: guys may not be aware of this, but how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com, we are relocating our office. We're moving
Speaker 1: to a totally different part of town. We're still still
Speaker 1: going to be in Atlanta, but it's we're really excited
Speaker 1: about the new office space are our podcast studio is
Speaker 1: going to be a little more cozy, a little less
Speaker 1: exposed to the sirens of outside. Yeah, if you've heard
Speaker 1: any sirens today in this podcast, then Uh. We hope
Speaker 1: that because the new audio studios are going to be
Speaker 1: internal rooms, they're not going to share a wall with
Speaker 1: it the outside wall, that we won't have that problem anymore.
Speaker 1: So we're looking forward to that. We're looking forward to
Speaker 1: having two different video studios to shoot in, not just one.
Speaker 1: We're looking forward to being directly over a collection of
Speaker 1: amazing sounding restaurants. They're all going to be really close
Speaker 1: to us. So it's we're really excited. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, after we get through the first month
Speaker 1: or so, you're going to hear probably some enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: your various how stuff Works podcasts that you listen to
Speaker 1: that hasn't been there for a while, simply because we're
Speaker 1: all going to be excited about our new digs. So
Speaker 1: keep an ear out for that. And maybe at some
Speaker 1: point we'll do a neat little video tour of the office,
Speaker 1: kind of like the way Chuck did when we moved
Speaker 1: into the space where in Now. That would be fun.
Speaker 1: I think to do that once we've got it laid out,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna have an amazing table. We've heard so
Speaker 1: much about this table. We're going to have the question
Speaker 1: mark table. Oh yeah, question mark table. It's shaped like
Speaker 1: a question mark. Yeah. We'll have us all walking around
Speaker 1: asking why yeah, or or someone sitting at the top
Speaker 1: curve of the question mark called dr Evil style and
Speaker 1: laughing maniacally. That's somebody trying to sit across from him.
Speaker 1: But I called I called Dibbs. All right, Well, that
Speaker 1: wraps up this discussion. Guys. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for a future episodes of tech Stuff, please let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us an email the addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com. You can drop me a line on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: or Tumbler. The handle there is tech Stuff hs W. Joe,
Speaker 1: I didn't ask you in the last episode. Where can
Speaker 1: people find your stuff? Well, you can head over to
Speaker 1: fw thinking dot com where I am one of the
Speaker 1: co hosts of the podcast there along with Jonathan and
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum, and you can find the videos we do
Speaker 1: for Forward Thinking and the blog posts. And also I
Speaker 1: write for House to Works video So if you want
Speaker 1: to check out brain Stuff show dot com or are
Speaker 1: what the Stuff videos on our on the House to
Speaker 1: Works YouTube channel, I'm there as well. Awesome. And then
Speaker 1: occasionally you pop up another series like I remember seeing
Speaker 1: you on the Food Series as a oh yeah, sauce aficionado.
Speaker 1: You know, one time I ate the hottest pepper in
Speaker 1: the world and got some video of it and that
Speaker 1: was exciting. I showed up on YouTube. It was great.
Speaker 1: It was great. So thank you so much Joe for
Speaker 1: joining me. Hey, guys, I just need to add one
Speaker 1: little thing. At the end of this episode. I know
Speaker 1: some of you will be at ce S two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to invite you to swing by and
Speaker 1: say hello to me. I'll be at the Sharp Booth
Speaker 1: on Tuesday and Wednesday checking out the cool stuff they're
Speaker 1: unveiling this year. Now, I made a stuper secret pinky
Speaker 1: swear not to reveal the goodies will be showing, but
Speaker 1: let's just say jaws are going to drop. Sharp will
Speaker 1: be in the Central Hall Booth eleven O one eight,
Speaker 1: and I heard they'll also be giving away some exciting
Speaker 1: prizes from their new two thousand fifteen lineup. I look
Speaker 1: forward to seeing you guys there. To learn more about
Speaker 1: all of the exciting things Sharp is doing, follow the
Speaker 1: hashtag Sharp c E S. And remember, if you want
Speaker 1: to send me a message, just write me at text
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler to handle it.
Speaker 1: All three is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it has stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com