Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and Happy New Year. I'm your host, executive producer Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I am in I Heart Radio Land, where I'm
Speaker 1: coming to you from twenty to talk about the past.
Speaker 1: You see, I recently did a pair of episodes about
Speaker 1: the big tech news stories of twenty nineteen. But now
Speaker 1: we're in and I thought it might be fun to
Speaker 1: look back at, you know, the big stuff that happened
Speaker 1: over the previous decade. And I guess we're gonna see
Speaker 1: how many episodes this takes up. Spoiler alert, it'll take
Speaker 1: up to I wrote these notes before I got the
Speaker 1: end of the second episode. I really just planned to
Speaker 1: give high level details on most of these stories. I'm
Speaker 1: not going into deep detail. Obviously. I spent two full
Speaker 1: episodes just talking about two thousand nineteen, so I clearly
Speaker 1: can't do the same for every single year. It would
Speaker 1: go through half of So we're just gonna take sort
Speaker 1: of a high level look at the big stories of
Speaker 1: those years. And also, spoiler alert, we're not going to
Speaker 1: cover twenty nineteen because I just did that. You'll hear
Speaker 1: me say that a couple of times during these episodes.
Speaker 1: I really want to nail that home, all right, So
Speaker 1: let's begin with two thousand nine. Now, for those of
Speaker 1: you who are curious, I had been with my previous employer,
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com for two years at that point.
Speaker 1: I had been hired in two thousand seven. I had
Speaker 1: actually been podcasting since June of two thousand eight, so
Speaker 1: two thousand nine would actually be my first full calendar
Speaker 1: year of being a podcast host. But this pair of episodes,
Speaker 1: these aren't really about me. I just thought it'd be
Speaker 1: fun to start off with that. Much more important than
Speaker 1: my career was the fact that the world was in
Speaker 1: a global recession, largely on about by some frankly dumb
Speaker 1: decisions made back in two thousand seven or so revolving
Speaker 1: around subprime mortgages. But that is beyond the scope of
Speaker 1: tech stuff. The effects went well beyond the real estate industry, however,
Speaker 1: and many industries were hit hard by this recession. Tech
Speaker 1: in particular was really struggling with this, and while there
Speaker 1: were signs of recovery on the horizon, it was still
Speaker 1: a pretty hefty recession covering the world for most of
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Now, the effect that was felt in
Speaker 1: the tech world was felt by both established companies and
Speaker 1: emerging ones. Several startups fizzled out for lack of funding.
Speaker 1: Because investors were starting to hold onto their money more tightly,
Speaker 1: they were less likely to invest because they were worried
Speaker 1: about the outcomes. Advertising also took a huge hit in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and since many web related businesses depend
Speaker 1: largely or sometimes entirely, upon a tizing dollars, they really
Speaker 1: felt that squeeze. Some companies were forced to layoff employees
Speaker 1: and cost cutting measures, tightening up their belts to get
Speaker 1: through the recession. Now, it wasn't all doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: Two thousand nine was the year that Microsoft launched Windows seven.
Speaker 1: That's hard for me to believe, but yeah, Windows seven
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand nine. That version was meant
Speaker 1: to be more streamlined and faster than the preceding version.
Speaker 1: The one that came before that one was Windows Vista. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, Vista had received some pretty mixed reviews, which
Speaker 1: is being kind at of the reviews were pretty negative,
Speaker 1: and the corporate world at large had stayed away from
Speaker 1: adopting Windows Vista, largely due to those criticisms. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the big big customers, you know, big corporate
Speaker 1: customers that would be using Microsoft, uh, you know, operating
Speaker 1: systems on their their computers for all their employees, they
Speaker 1: weren't signing on two Windows Vista, and so the company
Speaker 1: had to do something about it. Many people saw Windows
Speaker 1: seven as sort of a course correction from Microsoft, and
Speaker 1: you would think that that would mean that Microsoft would
Speaker 1: learn valuable lessons in this process and that it would
Speaker 1: be able to take advantage of that experience when they
Speaker 1: were ready to launch the next operating system version. But
Speaker 1: as we will eventually see, that's not exactly how things
Speaker 1: would shake out. Microsoft also struck a deal with Yahoo
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine that would see Microsoft's search technology
Speaker 1: bing power Yahoo searches and return Yahoo would sell ad
Speaker 1: services for Microsoft. Now, this arose after Microsoft had led
Speaker 1: a failed attempt and un welcome unsolicited attempt to acquire
Speaker 1: Yahoo outright that fell through, so instead the two struck
Speaker 1: this partnership. Meanwhile, over at Google, Google would release the
Speaker 1: Chrome operating system in two thousand nine, which meant Google
Speaker 1: was essentially acknowledging that it was going to go toe
Speaker 1: to toe with companies like Microsoft. Now, unlike bigger, bulk
Speaker 1: here operating systems like Mac OS or Windows, the Chrome
Speaker 1: version of an operating system is much more lean and streamlined.
Speaker 1: It moves most of the computational processes to the cloud
Speaker 1: rather than on the device that the OS is installed upon,
Speaker 1: so it's really only useful if you have a persistent
Speaker 1: Internet connection. Google was responding to a trend that was
Speaker 1: still in the process of emerging back in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: and that trend was that users were starting to rely
Speaker 1: more on connected services and less on native programs running
Speaker 1: on their own hardware. So, in other words, instead of
Speaker 1: having a word processing program on your machine, you would
Speaker 1: log into a web service where you would use a
Speaker 1: web based word processing program. Now that being said, if
Speaker 1: you look at the market share for operating systems on
Speaker 1: dusk top and laptop computers and compare them against each other,
Speaker 1: you will see that today Windows is still the overall
Speaker 1: king by a landslide. Then in second place distant second
Speaker 1: place is Apple's operating system, and then Chrome barely even
Speaker 1: registers on the charts. So while Google did recognize a
Speaker 1: growing trend in the way we access services that more
Speaker 1: and more people are using mobile devices, for example, that
Speaker 1: has not actually translated over that much into the laptop
Speaker 1: and desktop world. People seem to still want to have
Speaker 1: a more beefy device for those particular form factors. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, some leaks revealed that Google was preparing
Speaker 1: its own branded phone. Android phones were already on the
Speaker 1: market in two thousand nine, and the iPhone had really
Speaker 1: kicked off the smartphone era back in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: but Google was content at first just to create the
Speaker 1: operating system and some apps and then would allow other
Speaker 1: manufacturers to put that operating system on their phones. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, the company started handing out Nexus
Speaker 1: one branded smartphones to Google employees, and it would take
Speaker 1: a little while longer before these would become available for
Speaker 1: the general public to purchase, but it did show that
Speaker 1: Google was actually interested in getting into the hardware game
Speaker 1: as well. Also in two thousand nine, Eric Schmidt, who
Speaker 1: was Google's CEO at that time, resigned from the board
Speaker 1: of directors over at Apple, and this was over concerned
Speaker 1: that there might be a conflict of interest issue that
Speaker 1: was growing there because now Google was getting into the
Speaker 1: smartphone business, so he stepped down. Another Apple related event,
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand nine centered on the health
Speaker 1: of co founder Steve Jobs. Now, Jobs had been in
Speaker 1: treatment for pancreatic cancer in the past, and then he
Speaker 1: took a medical leave of absence from Apple in January
Speaker 1: two thou nine. The stated reason was that Jobs was
Speaker 1: dealing with quote unquote a hormonal imbalance, but it later
Speaker 1: came to light in June of two thousand nine that
Speaker 1: he had actually received a liver transplant. The belated revelation
Speaker 1: did not please investors, who felt that they were owed
Speaker 1: more transparency regarding Jobs as health since his iconic leadership
Speaker 1: was so intrinsically linked to Apple's performance. The incident also
Speaker 1: prompted people to wonder what Apple would be like without
Speaker 1: Jobs as CEO, and it would become a question that
Speaker 1: we'd sadly get answers to only a couple of years later.
Speaker 1: Now it's easy to forget that. Back into thousand nine,
Speaker 1: the only cell phone carrier in the United States that
Speaker 1: could hold the iPhone, the only one that supported the
Speaker 1: iPhone was a T and T. Apple had signed an
Speaker 1: exclusivity agreement with a T and T that lasted a
Speaker 1: couple of years. That exclusivity would be used against both
Speaker 1: Apple and A T and T as people reported dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: with A T and T S three G coverage, and
Speaker 1: competing cell phone carriers would claim that their own networks
Speaker 1: were far more robust and reliable for fast connections, though
Speaker 1: you would obviously have to use a different phone from
Speaker 1: the iPhone because they couldn't support it. They couldn't carry
Speaker 1: the iPhone at that point. Intel lost some fights in
Speaker 1: court rooms around the world in two thousand nine, as
Speaker 1: various agencies charged that the company was engaging in anti
Speaker 1: competitive practices and using its dominant position in the market
Speaker 1: as a way to squash competition. The EU Commission find
Speaker 1: Intel more than a billion that's billion with a b
Speaker 1: euro truly princely some Intel also settled an antitrust lawsuit
Speaker 1: brought against it by a m D for another one
Speaker 1: point to five billion dollars. And here's some other things
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand nine. Bitcoin launched in early
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and the digital cryptocurrency would introduce concepts
Speaker 1: like blockchain to the tech world at large as a result,
Speaker 1: and then over the years we would see the value
Speaker 1: of a bitcoin go all over the place, going into
Speaker 1: the stratosphere and diving deep and then going back up
Speaker 1: again in a very crazy way. And to this day,
Speaker 1: I think it remains more of a commodity than a currency.
Speaker 1: It's still hard for me to imagine spending Bitcoin like
Speaker 1: a like a regular currency. In two thousand nine, eBay
Speaker 1: would sell off most of its steak in Skype did
Speaker 1: so at a substantial loss. A couple of years after that,
Speaker 1: Microsoft would acquire Skype for an astronomical eight point five
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Also in two thousand nine, Palm, You guys
Speaker 1: remember Palm. That's the company that dominated in the personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant or a p d A industry for a
Speaker 1: really long time. Well, in two thousand nine, it launched
Speaker 1: the Palm pre. It was meant to be the smartphone
Speaker 1: that would return Palm to prominence after it started to
Speaker 1: lag behind competitors like Apple and Google. Although many tech
Speaker 1: reviewers gave the pretty pretty positive reviews, they kind of
Speaker 1: liked it, sales just didn't follow. They were just lackluster,
Speaker 1: and the following year, HP would purchase Palm. In a
Speaker 1: year after that, HP announced it was discontinuing production of
Speaker 1: Palm devices. I could save that for the following years
Speaker 1: I could have, you know, said all right, well, now
Speaker 1: we're in two thousand etcetera, etcetera, But I figured it
Speaker 1: made more sense to just kind of wrap it all
Speaker 1: up in this one little spot. Oh and uh. Two
Speaker 1: thousand nine was also the founding year for Maker Bought,
Speaker 1: the three D printer company that brought additive manufacturing to
Speaker 1: the hobbyists and consumer market. And also a little company
Speaker 1: called Uber launched in two thousand nine. More on that
Speaker 1: little company later, particularly in the next episode. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's move on to that year. Microsoft introduced the
Speaker 1: Connect peripheral for the Xbox three six cons Soul and
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know, the Connect has cameras,
Speaker 1: including an infrared camera that can detect user movements and
Speaker 1: gestures as inputs for games and other applications. It can
Speaker 1: also use image recognition software so that it can authorize
Speaker 1: a profile on a specific console, so that if you
Speaker 1: stand in front of the Connect, it knows that you're
Speaker 1: the one playing it, whereas if your roommate stands in
Speaker 1: front of Connect, it goes to your roommates profile on
Speaker 1: that same machine, et cetera. You can also pick up
Speaker 1: voice commands through a microphone and to the hacker community,
Speaker 1: the connect represented an interesting opportunity to leverage some cool
Speaker 1: technology for us is far beyond a video game peripheral,
Speaker 1: such as in robotic vision or three D scanning. Microsoft
Speaker 1: would flip flop between being supportive towards these endeavors and
Speaker 1: then locking down the connect to try and prevent unauthorized use,
Speaker 1: and going back and forth between those two. While the
Speaker 1: changing stance would irritate the hacking community, it didn't stop
Speaker 1: people from finding new ways to take advantage of the technology. However,
Speaker 1: as far as what the connect was actually intended to do,
Speaker 1: it was largely a failure. Gamers cited a lack of
Speaker 1: good games with compelling implementations of connect controls as a
Speaker 1: reason for the peripheral's ultimate failure in the gaming space.
Speaker 1: Oh and Sony would also debut its own motion control system,
Speaker 1: the move now over. In Iran, computer scientists discovered a
Speaker 1: type of malicious code called stucks net that had been
Speaker 1: causing equipment failures in nuclear processing plants. The code would
Speaker 1: ultimately cause centrifuges to operate at the wrong speed, damaging
Speaker 1: the centrifuges to the point that they would no longer operate.
Speaker 1: The implication is that the malware came from a state
Speaker 1: sponsored source as a means of cyber warfare, It was
Speaker 1: targeting Iran's nuclear infrastructure specifically. While no official acknowledgement has
Speaker 1: ever urged as to which country or countries were behind
Speaker 1: the development of Stuck's net, speculation generally points to Israel
Speaker 1: and the United States as having developed it together. One
Speaker 1: big consumer product that launched in was the iPad, which
Speaker 1: I infamously predicted would be a failure. Before the iPad,
Speaker 1: tablet computers had seen limited success, most of which was
Speaker 1: limited to niche markets like the medical industry. No one
Speaker 1: had made a tablet computer that succeeded in the general
Speaker 1: consumer market. But Apple had already started to rack up
Speaker 1: a history of creating markets where previously there were none,
Speaker 1: And in January Steve Jobs announced the iPad, and at
Speaker 1: the time we all snickered at the name, and then
Speaker 1: the company was set on a path to yet another
Speaker 1: home run success. Not only did the iPad selve very well,
Speaker 1: it also inspired numerous other companies to produce their own
Speaker 1: tablet computers, and it would take a couple of years
Speaker 1: before anyone made a tablet that could really go toe
Speaker 1: to toe with Apple's design in the market, but it
Speaker 1: would eventually happen. Apple's iPhone four was in the spotlight
Speaker 1: in Actually, it was in the spotlight a little earlier
Speaker 1: than the company had anticipated, because an Apple employee accidentally
Speaker 1: left behind a prototype iPhone four in a bar in California.
Speaker 1: Someone swooped it up and quickly realized that despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it was disguised as an iPhone three g S,
Speaker 1: it was in fact an iPhone four Gizmoto then coughed
Speaker 1: up several thousand dollars to get hold of the thing.
Speaker 1: The whole affair was a pretty nasty mess, complete with
Speaker 1: police actions and threatened lawsuits. When the iPhone four did
Speaker 1: come out, it got some pretty harsh reviews. Consumer reports
Speaker 1: stated that the antenna in the iPhone four was a
Speaker 1: bit wonky and that the phone's reception wasn't always so
Speaker 1: hot as a result. Apple disputed this review, then said,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe the problem is that you're just
Speaker 1: holding it wrong. Yeah, this was the old holding it
Speaker 1: wrong argument, saying people should just not hold the lower
Speaker 1: left corner of the phone when they're making calls, because
Speaker 1: that seemed to be what was blocking all the signals.
Speaker 1: There are also reports that said that people inside Apple
Speaker 1: had been warning that the placement of the antenna was
Speaker 1: going to cause problems, but that Steve Jobs ultimately overruled
Speaker 1: them because that design is what allowed the phone to
Speaker 1: look the way it did. Now. Facebook would become the
Speaker 1: world's most visited site in twenty ten, surpassing Google for
Speaker 1: the first time in its history. At that point, Facebook
Speaker 1: boasted almost half a billion users, which by today's standards,
Speaker 1: almost seems quaint. The company also became the focus of
Speaker 1: an Aron Sorkin film titled The Social Network And I
Speaker 1: can't believe that movie came out all the way back
Speaker 1: in in my head that movie is like three year
Speaker 1: is old, but no, it came out. Oh and has
Speaker 1: also when Magic Leap, the augmented reality headset company, came
Speaker 1: into being, the company wouldn't have a commercial headset available
Speaker 1: until two thousand nineteen with the Magic Leap one, which
Speaker 1: retails for about The company was promising big, big things
Speaker 1: and all the the demos and the the vision videos
Speaker 1: that you saw were amazing, And um, I hear that
Speaker 1: the response is a little more lackluster to the actual product,
Speaker 1: But I haven't had my hands on it, nor have
Speaker 1: I had it on my head, so I can't speak
Speaker 1: from experience. All right, We've got more to talk about,
Speaker 1: starting with in just a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We're picking up with two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the biggest stories that year
Speaker 1: was the death of Apple co founder Steve Jobs. Now.
Speaker 1: Jobs was a true icon in technology. He was known
Speaker 1: to be demanding, sometimes to excess. He had high expectations,
Speaker 1: and it was said little patients for those who failed
Speaker 1: to meet those high expectations. He had been ousted from
Speaker 1: his own company in the eighties, returned to take the
Speaker 1: company back in the late nineties, and oversaw its meteoric
Speaker 1: rise in consumer electronics with the release of products like
Speaker 1: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. He had stepped
Speaker 1: down as CEO earlier in two thousand eleven, passing away
Speaker 1: in October of that year. Many people in technology expressed
Speaker 1: their thoughts and feelings and reaction to Jobs as passing,
Speaker 1: including his Apple co founder Steve Wozniak, the then head
Speaker 1: of Pixar, John Lassender, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and even
Speaker 1: US President Barack Obama. The tech world at large wondered
Speaker 1: what would happen to Apple without jobs at the helm,
Speaker 1: he was so tightly associated with the company that many
Speaker 1: weren't sure if it would survive without him, and there
Speaker 1: are still people to this day who wonder how different
Speaker 1: the company would be if jobs had not passed away.
Speaker 1: While jobs is passing was a dark moment in tech
Speaker 1: for many. One bright spot in technology in eleven was
Speaker 1: how it played an important role as people in the
Speaker 1: Middle East use tech to help organize protests and revolutions
Speaker 1: against oppressive governments. This was a time called the Arab Spring.
Speaker 1: Technically it started right at the tail end of but
Speaker 1: many of the major events would follow in countries like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen,
Speaker 1: and Bahrain. Al saw enormous organizational efforts among the population
Speaker 1: in a move to force massive political and social change,
Speaker 1: and tools like social media platforms played an important part
Speaker 1: in those efforts. Over at Sony, the company found its
Speaker 1: PlayStation network service hacked by someone or a group of
Speaker 1: someone's who left a file titled anonymous on their servers.
Speaker 1: That file contained the message we our legion in it.
Speaker 1: The hackers were able to access email addresses and user
Speaker 1: birth dates, and potentially other information, including credit card information.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eleven, Google shut down one social
Speaker 1: media platform and launched another. The shuttered platform was Google Buzz,
Speaker 1: which was a failed experiment that had launched in but
Speaker 1: didn't get much traction. The new social media platform was
Speaker 1: Google Plus, which initially got a lot of buzz itself
Speaker 1: during its invitation only beta. Many folks in the tech space,
Speaker 1: including tech journalists like yours, truly got early access, but
Speaker 1: Google Plus wasn't really compelling enough to pull people over
Speaker 1: off of Facebook, and Facebook had such momentum that it
Speaker 1: wasn't going to give up the title for super heavyweight
Speaker 1: champ of the world as far as social media goes.
Speaker 1: Google would make some pretty radical decisions with Google Plus
Speaker 1: down the road, such as requiring YouTube accounts to be
Speaker 1: linked to a Google Plus account, and moreover, requiring YouTube
Speaker 1: users to use their real names as opposed to a
Speaker 1: screen name, which was a decision the company would walk
Speaker 1: back on later. The platform stuck around longer than Google
Speaker 1: Buzz did, but in April two thou nineteen, Google chose
Speaker 1: to shut it down as well. Also in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: Google made a bid to acquire Motorola for twelve and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars. It appeared as though Google was
Speaker 1: intent on making its own hardware in addition to supplying
Speaker 1: software to other original equipment manufacturers. Google would hold on
Speaker 1: to the company for only a few years before selling
Speaker 1: it in two thousand fourteen to Lenovo for two point
Speaker 1: nine one billion. Google held onto some of the R
Speaker 1: and D departments from Motorola and also held on to
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand patents, but otherwise parted with its
Speaker 1: prize possession. In September two thousand eleven, Amazon announced the
Speaker 1: launch of the Kindle Fire, a low cost tablet with
Speaker 1: a simple interface meant to take aim at a market
Speaker 1: that couldn't afford Apple's pricier iPad. Android tablets were plentiful
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: they weren't really making much headway. Amazon was able to
Speaker 1: launch a tablet tied into its other services and make
Speaker 1: it work, posing the first real competitor to the iPad
Speaker 1: at that point. Going back to Apple for a second.
Speaker 1: Two thousand eleven was when the world was introduced to
Speaker 1: a new digital entity. SIRIE. The Virtual Personal Assistant, was
Speaker 1: one of the first killer implementations. Many of the features
Speaker 1: could be found in other services, but none had encapsulated
Speaker 1: them the way Apple did, and Sirie was a big
Speaker 1: hit as people immediately tried to find different ways of
Speaker 1: making her or him say weird stuff. Adobe discontinued support
Speaker 1: for the development of the Flash plug in for mobile
Speaker 1: browsers that year as well. Flash was meant to help
Speaker 1: web developers create dynamic web page elements and players, but
Speaker 1: the creation of HTML five had largely superseded flashes useful us,
Speaker 1: plus the plug in created potential security vulnerabilities. A year earlier,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs had pretty much slammed Flash, stating that no
Speaker 1: Apple device would ever support it, So it didn't come
Speaker 1: as a big surprise that Adobe decided to say farewell
Speaker 1: to it. A. T and T had made a bid
Speaker 1: to acquire Tea Mobile in two thousand eleven, but gave
Speaker 1: up on that plan later in the year, and Snapchat
Speaker 1: also became a thing in two thousand eleven. Oh and
Speaker 1: Leo Apothica resigned from Hewitt Packard, being replaced by Meg
Speaker 1: Whitman in eleven. Now let's move on to two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: You know, the year when the world ended because the
Speaker 1: mayan calendar thing well. Early in two thousand twelve, the
Speaker 1: tech community in the United States largely united in opposition
Speaker 1: to two pieces of proposed legislation that we're going through
Speaker 1: the various houses of government in the US. One was
Speaker 1: the Stop Online Piracy Act otherwise known as SOAPA, and
Speaker 1: the other was the Protect I p Act or PIPPA.
Speaker 1: Both pieces of legislation sought to combat intellectual property theft
Speaker 1: by limiting access to sites that were accused of housing
Speaker 1: stolen material, and the proposals went even further than that.
Speaker 1: They actually placed potential restrictions and finds on any companies
Speaker 1: that would advertise on such sites or search engines that
Speaker 1: would list such sites in their search results. So even
Speaker 1: referring to or supporting the sites in any way, even
Speaker 1: if if it was inadvertently, could get you fined. And
Speaker 1: the way web advertising works is you might not know
Speaker 1: where your ads are showing up. You might be working
Speaker 1: with a firm that's securing ad space for your brand
Speaker 1: on various sites. If one of those happened to be
Speaker 1: one of these that would get targeted by these these
Speaker 1: pieces of legislation, you could find yourself in hot water.
Speaker 1: So there was obviously a lot of resistance to these,
Speaker 1: so many major sites like Google protests of the proposals,
Speaker 1: calling them overreach and censorship and perhaps even impossible bole
Speaker 1: to implement, and ultimately neither proposal would be enacted into
Speaker 1: law and they both fizzled away. Mega Upload founder Kim
Speaker 1: dot Com formerly Kim Schmitz, was arrested in January two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve on charges of housing and distributing pirated material.
Speaker 1: His home in New Zealand was the site of a
Speaker 1: massive police raid, and since then he has fought efforts
Speaker 1: to extradite him to the United States for trial. The
Speaker 1: case has made its way through the New Zealand court
Speaker 1: system to the point where the next case will be
Speaker 1: heard before the New Zealand Supreme Court, if they choose
Speaker 1: to hear it. At that point, it will be decided
Speaker 1: whether or not he will be sent to the US
Speaker 1: for prosecution and trial. Right now, as it stands, the
Speaker 1: decision is he can be extradited, so unless the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court overturns that decision, he will ultimately have to face
Speaker 1: trial in the United States at some point, But the
Speaker 1: story is still unfolding today. Owen one super cool thing
Speaker 1: to happen in two thousand twelve was that researchers at
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider found evidence that the Higgs Boson particle,
Speaker 1: a theoretical particle that would explain why matter has mass,
Speaker 1: actually exists. It's not just theoretical. That was super awesome,
Speaker 1: And another super awesome text story of two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: involved NASA landing the Curiosity Rover on Mars using a capsule,
Speaker 1: lowering the rover to the surface of the planet using
Speaker 1: a sky grain. That's hard to call any single element
Speaker 1: of this operation the most impressive, because it's all amazing,
Speaker 1: But to me, what was super nifty was that the
Speaker 1: whole process had to happen through automation because the distance
Speaker 1: between Mars and Earth means that there's a delay of
Speaker 1: several minutes between when things are happening in one place
Speaker 1: and when we can know about them in the other place.
Speaker 1: It takes time for information to travel between the two points,
Speaker 1: so that would mean that by the time we learn
Speaker 1: about conditions on Mars, several minutes have already passed since
Speaker 1: that moment happened. There's no way for us to be
Speaker 1: able to control say a uh, you know, a drone
Speaker 1: or a rover or a capsule from Earth that's moving
Speaker 1: around Mars. The delay is too long, so it had
Speaker 1: to be automated. Everything happen to happen just right for
Speaker 1: this to work, and it did, and that is super cool.
Speaker 1: It was also the year that Felix Baumgartner did his
Speaker 1: spectacular space dive from a hot air balloon at the
Speaker 1: very edge of space. That was a pretty amazing moment too.
Speaker 1: I remember watching that with not a small amount of
Speaker 1: anxiety as he plummeted through the atmosphere. NASA also retired
Speaker 1: the space shuttles that year, and a space X capsule
Speaker 1: docked with the International Space Station for the first time.
Speaker 1: That was also the year that Blue Origin tested its
Speaker 1: reusable rockets for the first time, although not with a
Speaker 1: landing procedure that would wait a little bit longer. Plus,
Speaker 1: this was around the time when private companies were starting
Speaker 1: to seriously talk about mining asteroids. But let's let's get
Speaker 1: a little more terrestrial. So you remember how back in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, Microsoft was able to reverse some of
Speaker 1: the criticism directed toward it for the Vista operating system
Speaker 1: by releasing Windows seven, and how the company managed it
Speaker 1: to change course to help bring corporate customers back into
Speaker 1: the fold. With that launch, we'll get ready for another
Speaker 1: sharp turn because it's time to talk about Windows eight Baby.
Speaker 1: Windows eight was a big change from earlier versions of Windows.
Speaker 1: Microsoft was gambling on the rise of tablets and on
Speaker 1: touch screen interfaces, and the Windows eight UY was evidence
Speaker 1: of that gamble. Rather than a desktop of icons and
Speaker 1: a menu with a full list of programs on the device,
Speaker 1: the Windows eight Metro UI had apps on tie oles. Ideally,
Speaker 1: you would use a touch screen interface to swipe through
Speaker 1: the different options, selecting the one you wanted. You could
Speaker 1: opt to use a slightly more traditional UI if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, but it wasn't the default. Along with this
Speaker 1: operating system, Microsoft also launched the Surface tablet. Now that
Speaker 1: made sense. The tablet would be built to support the
Speaker 1: OS and show off all of its Metro features, and
Speaker 1: a lot of reviewers praised the Windows eight tablet when
Speaker 1: it came to this implementation. They cited the look and
Speaker 1: feel of the OS on the tablet was more robust
Speaker 1: than what Apple's iPad could could provide, so they said,
Speaker 1: in some ways, this is superior to Apple's iPad, But
Speaker 1: there was one small problem a lot of people hated
Speaker 1: the desktop version of Windows eight a lot, to the
Speaker 1: point where there were a lot of people and companies
Speaker 1: who treated eight the way they had treated Windows Vista,
Speaker 1: by not adopting it, then holding for another course correction.
Speaker 1: They would stick with Windows seven instead. Some places would
Speaker 1: stick with an even older version, Windows XP, which was
Speaker 1: not super smart, but you can kind of understand why
Speaker 1: they went with it. The departure from the traditional UI
Speaker 1: for desktop owners and the emphasis on touch screen interfaces
Speaker 1: didn't really go over so well. Now. As I said
Speaker 1: in an episode of tech Stuff last year, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people on laptops and desktops rarely, if ever,
Speaker 1: used touch screen displays with their devices. It just it's
Speaker 1: the kind of UY that makes more sense from a
Speaker 1: tablet or smartphone form factor, but tends to be awkward
Speaker 1: for other types of devices. Over at Yahoo, the company
Speaker 1: hired away Marissa Meyer from Google. Meyer would become the
Speaker 1: new CEO of Yahoo in an effort to shake things
Speaker 1: up and turn things around for the bloated, stumbling company.
Speaker 1: Many hoped she would be the source of energy that
Speaker 1: the company needed, but lots of factors played into her tenure,
Speaker 1: largely being viewed as a earlier Some but not all,
Speaker 1: of those factors were under her control. Initially, the company
Speaker 1: looked like it was on the right path, with climbing
Speaker 1: stock prices and a shake up and leadership, but decisions
Speaker 1: to do stuff like acquire Tumbler would prove to be wasteful,
Speaker 1: and later still, the company would be at the center
Speaker 1: of a truly massive data breach scandal, which I'll touch
Speaker 1: on when we get there. Oh and uh. Google also
Speaker 1: revealed its driver less car initiative in two thousand and twelve.
Speaker 1: The company had been secretly conducting tests for a while,
Speaker 1: but it became public in two thousand twelve. The initiative
Speaker 1: would eventually evolve into its own spinoff startup company called
Speaker 1: Weymo a few years later. Apple unveiled the iPhone five
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve and gave Google Maps the boot,
Speaker 1: favoring the company's own Apple Maps app instead. But the
Speaker 1: Apple version was a bit um lost in the weeds.
Speaker 1: I guess. Users found inaccuracies in some maps. Some maps
Speaker 1: seemed to be missing roads, or they had roads placed
Speaker 1: where no roads actually were, or they would be told
Speaker 1: to turn onto our river. The app initially had no
Speaker 1: transit direction service either. So it was a mess, and
Speaker 1: it had a lot of people telling jokes at Apple's expense.
Speaker 1: Because of this, users found the experience frustrating and counterproductive.
Speaker 1: It prompted a rare apology from Apple as CEO Tim
Speaker 1: Cook acknowledged the problems, and then a few heads rolled
Speaker 1: over at Apple h Q as a result. Now, I've
Speaker 1: got a little bit more to say about two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, but first let's take another quick break over
Speaker 1: at Facebook. The company was barreling towards its initial public offering,
Speaker 1: which would make the company a publicly traded entity for
Speaker 1: the first time, but the process did not go smoothly.
Speaker 1: There were multiple problems with the i p O launch,
Speaker 1: from too many shares that were issued to an overvalued
Speaker 1: stock price of thirty eight dollars per share. There were
Speaker 1: lots of shenanigans going on the day of launch, including
Speaker 1: charges that Morgan Stanley, the financial institution that was the
Speaker 1: underwriter for the I p O, had influenced stock shares
Speaker 1: in a way that was you know, kind of illegal
Speaker 1: or at the very least very much frowned upon. Facebook's
Speaker 1: stock price took a tumble as a result, singing below
Speaker 1: eighteen dollars per share, and giving the company a pretty
Speaker 1: sharp blow to the solar plexus as far as its
Speaker 1: valuation was concerned. The company has more than recovered in
Speaker 1: the years since, however, with stock prices now more than
Speaker 1: two hundred bucks per share. That same year, Facebook made
Speaker 1: one of its big acquisitions, purchasing the photo sharing app
Speaker 1: Instagram for about a billion dollars. However, the plummeting price
Speaker 1: of Facebook stocks would actual make that more like seven
Speaker 1: forty million dollars at the end. Heaven Systrom and Mike Krieger,
Speaker 1: the co founders of Instagram, would stay with Facebook until
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. After leaving, details would slowly spread as
Speaker 1: to why they had departed the company in the first place,
Speaker 1: and it was largely because, despite early promises not to
Speaker 1: do this, Facebook was frequently lifting features from Instagram to
Speaker 1: incorporate in other Facebook services, and would also interfere with
Speaker 1: Instagram's operations. So these days there are regulatory agencies that
Speaker 1: are looking to separate Instagram from Facebook, breaking up the
Speaker 1: company's at whatever happens, Well, I mean, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to wait. It just hasn't happened yet. But they're still
Speaker 1: ongoing conversations about breaking up Facebook. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit more when we get to WhatsApp. That's
Speaker 1: that's in the future. Spoiler alert. Nintendo launched the WU
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve. It was an update to the
Speaker 1: two thousand six console than into No We, and it
Speaker 1: featured a controller called the game Pad, which housed a
Speaker 1: tablet touch screen as part of the controller. The control
Speaker 1: scheme created new opportunities for gameplay mechanics, but the console
Speaker 1: itself was a disappointment in the market. One major problem
Speaker 1: was that there were very few titles that actually took
Speaker 1: advantage of the innovation, and it left gamers feeling like
Speaker 1: they had bought a console with features that no one
Speaker 1: was really taking advantage of. The WU would go on
Speaker 1: to be one of the bigger disappointments in Nintendo's console history.
Speaker 1: As for companies established in two thousand twelve, well, the
Speaker 1: one most of you would likely recognize by name is
Speaker 1: Oculus VR. The company aimed to bring virtual reality to
Speaker 1: the home consumer. More on that later too. All right,
Speaker 1: let's move on to two thousand thirteen, and yeah, um,
Speaker 1: this is definitely a two parter episode. So on the
Speaker 1: bright side, like I said, I'm going to skip all
Speaker 1: of two thousand nineteen at the end of the next
Speaker 1: one because I just did two episodes about that, so
Speaker 1: you know, you have that to look forward to. So
Speaker 1: it was two thousand thirteen when a man named Edward
Speaker 1: Snowden became a public figure as the former contractor for
Speaker 1: the n s A blew the whistle on how the
Speaker 1: National Security Agency had been conducting a truly massive data
Speaker 1: collection and espionage program on American citizens, largely centered on
Speaker 1: phone and computer data transmissions and potentially affecting millions of people.
Speaker 1: The n s A denied allegations of wrongdoing and said
Speaker 1: that it was operating within the bounds the law. But
Speaker 1: then the laws themselves allowed for such secrecy that this
Speaker 1: was not much of a comfort. Add to that the
Speaker 1: fact that while the agency might be founded on sound principles,
Speaker 1: people can still be jerk faces, and you've got a
Speaker 1: big problem there, right. There were stories of n s
Speaker 1: A employees who are taking advantage of this enormous amount
Speaker 1: of data surveillance and using it to look into personal
Speaker 1: matters of their own, like to spy on x's and
Speaker 1: things like that, nasty stuff. While the n s a story.
Speaker 1: Rays have largely died down since two thousand thirteen. Snowden
Speaker 1: continues to live in effective exile in Russia. There was
Speaker 1: an increase in cybersecurity attacks in two thousand thirteen. There
Speaker 1: were targets like Well the retail store target that found
Speaker 1: themselves the victims of hacker attacks. Now, I'd love to
Speaker 1: say that things have gotten better since then, but every
Speaker 1: year we've seen more stories about data breaches, not fewer stories.
Speaker 1: Some of these stories are brought on by hackers exploiting vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: and others are the result of dumb mistakes in which
Speaker 1: companies accidentally exposed treasure troves of personal information to the
Speaker 1: world at large. Two thousand thirteen saw Twitter hold its
Speaker 1: own initial public offering, and unlike Facebook's bungled i p O,
Speaker 1: the Twitter one went off britty darn well. The company
Speaker 1: had not yet proven to be profitable, but still managed
Speaker 1: to have a successful I p O and made a
Speaker 1: lot of early investors a lot of money. Now, we
Speaker 1: first heard about Elon Musk's proposed high speed rail system
Speaker 1: called hyperloop back in two thousand thirteen. The idea would
Speaker 1: have trains moving through tunnel systems in which most of
Speaker 1: the air would get pumped out and that would cut
Speaker 1: way down on wind resistance. The rails would connect cities
Speaker 1: like San Francisco and Los Angeles, providing an alternative to
Speaker 1: a drive that lasts several hours or a short but
Speaker 1: environmentally wasteful flight. We're still seeing various companies compete to
Speaker 1: bring some variation of Musk's vision to life, and it
Speaker 1: remains to be seen if any approach will prove feasible
Speaker 1: enough to tackle the incredible challenge associated with building out
Speaker 1: new high speed rail infrastructure. You might get all the
Speaker 1: technology to fall into place and show that it works
Speaker 1: and that it's safe and efficient, but you still have
Speaker 1: to build the darn stuff, and that's where I think
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot of issues moving forward. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Amazon founder and Uber billion their Jeff Bezos announced that
Speaker 1: Amazon had long term plans to introduce a delivery service
Speaker 1: in which drones would drop off packages. He also spent
Speaker 1: some of his considerable wealth to purchase the newspaper The
Speaker 1: Washington Post. We started seeing big changes in entertainment in
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen as Netflix launched its own studio
Speaker 1: to create original content. Now these days, that's a given,
Speaker 1: but back then it was a pretty big move. Suddenly
Speaker 1: a streaming service was actually getting into the business of
Speaker 1: making the stuff it was streaming, and it came out
Speaker 1: swinging with the series House of Cards, which earned the
Speaker 1: service some pretty positive reviews and fourteen Emmy nominations. It
Speaker 1: also opened up the opportunity for other services to get
Speaker 1: into the production game, leading to our current environment in
Speaker 1: which you need to subscribe to a half dozen different
Speaker 1: services to see all the various programming available. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the new cable age. No. And in the United States,
Speaker 1: we saw, you know, a very rough launch of a
Speaker 1: very important service in healthcare dot gov. This site was
Speaker 1: the first Internet only US national government service, and it
Speaker 1: had so many errors and problems at launch that it
Speaker 1: helped create a pretty negative overview of the U. S
Speaker 1: Government's Affordable Care Act in general. It did, however, start
Speaker 1: up a much needed conversation about how to reform the
Speaker 1: process by which the US government acquires and implements technology,
Speaker 1: because this was not the right way to do it.
Speaker 1: It was pretty rotten. Also, in Microsoft unveiled the Xbox one,
Speaker 1: the successor to the Xbox three sixty. The initial launch
Speaker 1: event didn't go super smoothly, with a general backlash directed
Speaker 1: at Microsoft over the fact that the Xbox one was
Speaker 1: meant to have a persistent Internet connection, a requirement that
Speaker 1: the company would subsequently drop before launch day. Meanwhile, Sony
Speaker 1: announced and later launched the PlayStation four, and while Microsoft
Speaker 1: had done pretty well against Sony with the Xbox three sixty,
Speaker 1: helped in large part by the fact that they had
Speaker 1: a year's head start on the PS three, the PS
Speaker 1: four would outperform Microsoft's console in the sales department by
Speaker 1: a long shot. Also at Microsoft, in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: we saw a change in leadership. Steve Balmber announced he
Speaker 1: would retire as CEO. Bomber had led the company since
Speaker 1: Bill Gates had stepped down as CEO way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and He would actually stay on with Microsoft
Speaker 1: until two thousand and fourteen so that they could establish
Speaker 1: a new CEO, so this was just him announcing his retirement. Oilver.
Speaker 1: At Google, the company killed off it's RSS aggregator service
Speaker 1: called Google Reader. I don't know how many of you
Speaker 1: remember that. It was really important to me. I loved it,
Speaker 1: but it left a lot of dedicaid users like myself upset. However,
Speaker 1: other services like Feedley would sweep in to keep RSS
Speaker 1: clients relevant. I still use them myself to keep up
Speaker 1: with the latest news in various areas, you know, like tech.
Speaker 1: We also saw the Pebble debut in two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: The Kickstarter project was one of the most successful in history,
Speaker 1: and it was also an early example of wearable technology.
Speaker 1: For a while, like wearables were going to be the
Speaker 1: next step beyond smartphones as far as computing is concerned,
Speaker 1: we had already seen a major move from traditional computers
Speaker 1: to mobile devices by two thousand thirteen. But while numerous
Speaker 1: companies have produced various smart watches and activity trackers and
Speaker 1: other wearable types of tech, only a few, like Fitbit,
Speaker 1: saw any real adoption success, and Pebble's own early victory
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough to sustain the company over the long term.
Speaker 1: It would eventually get acquired by Fitbit a couple of
Speaker 1: years later and largely dismantled. Two thousand thirteen was also
Speaker 1: when the gamer Gate nastiness got started. It began as
Speaker 1: a backlash against a game developer named Zoe Quinn, but
Speaker 1: it escalated rapidly beyond that. Now ostensibly it was about
Speaker 1: game development and ethics and game journalism. But how it
Speaker 1: really played out was as a series of campaigns of
Speaker 1: harassment aimed at a number of people in and connected
Speaker 1: to the games industry, most of them women. There was
Speaker 1: no official leadership of this so called movement, but the
Speaker 1: coordination of attacks was pretty sophisticated, making extensive use of
Speaker 1: online communities like Reddit and four Chan. And you don't
Speaker 1: even need that many people to have an effective, uh
Speaker 1: campaign of harassment for it to really get to people.
Speaker 1: And we saw that happen a lot with gamer Gate.
Speaker 1: It was truly awful stuff. In two thousand thirteen, one
Speaker 1: company launched that would end up dominating the news cycle
Speaker 1: a few years later down the road for all the
Speaker 1: wrong reasons. That company was Cambridge Analytics come, a political
Speaker 1: consulting firm that was based in the United Kingdom but
Speaker 1: would operate around the world. Now. I did episodes about
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica and the scandal around it and how that
Speaker 1: company operated, including how a good deal of its data
Speaker 1: on people came from an unethical Facebook survey app that
Speaker 1: collected information on users without their consent. The whole story
Speaker 1: gets super complicated and super ugly, not just in the
Speaker 1: United States, but around the world. The company would eventually
Speaker 1: go bankrupt in two thousand eighteen, but many related consulting firms,
Speaker 1: some operated by people who worked at Cambridge Analytica, are
Speaker 1: still very much an operation to this day. The Cambridge
Speaker 1: Analytica scandal is part of what brought Facebook under intense
Speaker 1: scrutiny a few years later, and also created suspicion around
Speaker 1: the possibility of even holding fair elections in general. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a big story and one that had incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful consequences. Now, in our next episode, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a look at some of the big stories that unfolded
Speaker 1: from two thousand fourteen to two thousand and eighteen. And
Speaker 1: if you want to hear about two thousand nineteen, like
Speaker 1: I said, just go back a couple of episodes before
Speaker 1: this one, because I pretty much covered all of that already.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you guys have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics I should cover on tech stuff, reach out to
Speaker 1: me on social networks. The place you can do that
Speaker 1: with it would be like Facebook or or Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for both of those is tech stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: Just tag me in that and I'll see it, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again about the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen really Soon. Tex Stuff is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.