Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff for one of the last times.
Speaker 1: In My name is Chris Poulette, and I am an
Speaker 1: editor at how stuff work dot Com. Sitting across from me,
Speaker 1: as always, or at least throughout this year, is senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna do it. Yeah, We're going to
Speaker 1: do an episode about the year of eleven in technology
Speaker 1: news and kind of to give a roundup of some
Speaker 1: of the big stories that happened some of them. Some
Speaker 1: of the stories may not be that huge, but I
Speaker 1: think are fairly impactful. Um and and also I want
Speaker 1: to point out we're recording this in early December, which
Speaker 1: means that isn't over yet, So when we get to December,
Speaker 1: things is gonna get crazy. Uh Yeah. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, uh, I think the idea behind this episode
Speaker 1: was stemmed from our annual predictions and predictions recaps because
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff we didn't we didn't even
Speaker 1: come close to predicting because some of it was pretty
Speaker 1: darn huge um and other things we didn't get on
Speaker 1: the nose. But you'll find that those sort of ended
Speaker 1: up in January and February because those are the things
Speaker 1: we were talking about in December, and those are the
Speaker 1: easy predictions to me. Yeah, it's yeah, the further out
Speaker 1: you go, the harder it is to predict accurately. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's no shock there right right, Yeah, none of
Speaker 1: us are, you know, Prometheus or anything. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: start with January of eleven. So my January started off
Speaker 1: with my annual trek out to the deserts of Las
Speaker 1: Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show or or the
Speaker 1: the show formerly known as the Consumer Electronic Show that
Speaker 1: is so popular now that they think everybody can know
Speaker 1: what ce S means. Yeah, so it's just c officially.
Speaker 1: They asked us to call it there and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: I went all over the place and got to have
Speaker 1: a good time hanging out with folks like the Molly
Speaker 1: Wood and Brian Tom from c NE net, Tom Mari
Speaker 1: and Leo Laport from uh This Weekend Tech, and um
Speaker 1: Nicolee who was at c NET and is now at
Speaker 1: This Weekend Tech. Uh so yeah, so yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of the folks out there, Iz Actar, who at the
Speaker 1: time was not working for This Week in Tech, but
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks months later joined This Weekend Tech,
Speaker 1: so yeah, a lot of the tech journalists and everything.
Speaker 1: We just kind of hung out and chatted and everything
Speaker 1: that made it That made it a very enjoyable event
Speaker 1: for me. Um And on top of that, I got
Speaker 1: to see a lot of really cool technology unveiled. Now,
Speaker 1: some of that we still haven't seen truly rollout in
Speaker 1: in wide uh draw distribution today. So for instance, three
Speaker 1: D television again three D television for the last three
Speaker 1: years that c S has been a big thing, but
Speaker 1: we still haven't really seen that breakthrough. In the consumer market.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of tablets, lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of tablets, mostly Android tablets, not all of them.
Speaker 1: Saw the playbook that's the es Blackberries, which it had
Speaker 1: been unveiled at the end of but but January was
Speaker 1: the first time I got to get my hands on one,
Speaker 1: uh and that one sort of underwhelmed in the market,
Speaker 1: I think you could say, Uh, the BlackBerry still has
Speaker 1: said that they are committed to supporting the playbook form
Speaker 1: factor and they can they plan to continue producing playbooks,
Speaker 1: So they're not backing down yet, at least publicly. They're
Speaker 1: not backing down. No idea what's going on behind the
Speaker 1: scenes over BlackBerry over at RIM. But that's almost always
Speaker 1: the case, right uh. But we also saw things like
Speaker 1: about the role of Zoom, and even saw that Lenovo tablet,
Speaker 1: the one that that I liked so much from the
Speaker 1: previous year, where it was it looks like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: U one where it looks like a notebook computer and
Speaker 1: then you pop the screen outside out of the case
Speaker 1: and it becomes a tablet, so it would actually have
Speaker 1: two operating systems. Now, originally it had Windows I think
Speaker 1: it was Windows seven and um Lenox, and then the
Speaker 1: one they had at CS was Windows seven and Android.
Speaker 1: But again they kept on holding off on that. We
Speaker 1: still haven't seen that in the United States. I think
Speaker 1: they launched a product in China, but not in the US. Also,
Speaker 1: in our internet connected televisions were everywhere and other appliances
Speaker 1: as well. Because this was the idea of the whole
Speaker 1: tech ecosystem where your entire home is wired up and
Speaker 1: uses the same sort of operating system so that you
Speaker 1: have this seamless experience just maneuvering around your home, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of a neat idea, but something that
Speaker 1: we've now. I remember the old cartoons that had like
Speaker 1: the Home of the future. Y, Yeah, it's very much that.
Speaker 1: That's what that is, except with fewer arms coming out
Speaker 1: of the walls and dressing you and things. Weren't as
Speaker 1: many of those, which for my part, I protest I
Speaker 1: want more of those, like accordion arms coming out and
Speaker 1: taking your hat off your head as you walk in
Speaker 1: the door and storing it in a closet somewhere and
Speaker 1: then Rosie comes up and goes and it has to go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh so, yeah, that was c e S back
Speaker 1: in January. There were some other kind of cool things
Speaker 1: on display, um, but in general that was those were
Speaker 1: the things that we're making the news. There was also
Speaker 1: the Nintendo brought down the three d S and showed
Speaker 1: it and sort of closed door meetings and a couple
Speaker 1: of on screen interviews, but they didn't have like a
Speaker 1: space on the floor where they were showing it off.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the three DS was making some news because
Speaker 1: it hadn't come out yet. Yea. And in Google news,
Speaker 1: Um boy, you know, it's funny looking back at some
Speaker 1: of the stuff, it seems like it didn't even happen
Speaker 1: in when when Eric Schmidt decided to leave the company, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well leave a CEO role. Yes, he stepped down as
Speaker 1: CEO of Google and Larry Page took over. And Larry
Speaker 1: Page is one of the co founders of Google brand,
Speaker 1: so he is now the CEO of Google. That happened
Speaker 1: in January. Um and look how badly that turned out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even remember what happened when Google.
Speaker 1: Now they seem to do it, seems to be doing
Speaker 1: all right. Our next story is part of one of
Speaker 1: the more tragic tales of eleven and and it begins
Speaker 1: really in January. That was when Steve Jobs announced that
Speaker 1: he was well. He didn't evenally announced, he announced to
Speaker 1: the Apple in place he was taking a medical leave
Speaker 1: of absence. And this would be the last time that
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was actively the the CEO of Apple, although
Speaker 1: he did appear at certain Apple events in eleven and
Speaker 1: of course, uh you know it was was still very
Speaker 1: much involved in the day to day business dealings, to
Speaker 1: the point where people now even now feel like for
Speaker 1: the next few years, there will still be Steve Job's
Speaker 1: hand in the in the everyday business dealings because he
Speaker 1: had a roadmap from the company and and you know,
Speaker 1: it's I'm wondering if Steve Jobs this idea of medical
Speaker 1: leave was the same as most people's idea of going
Speaker 1: to work every day, because really, from everything I could hear,
Speaker 1: it sounded to me like he was as involved with
Speaker 1: the process at Apple as any CEO of any other
Speaker 1: major company would be on a normal basis. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: So at any rate, that was that was when the
Speaker 1: rumor mill popped up again about his health and knowing
Speaker 1: that was a medical leave of absence. And of course
Speaker 1: that story is goes throughout the year and and we'll
Speaker 1: touch back on it again in a little while. But
Speaker 1: then Verizon, this was one of my predictions for announced
Speaker 1: that was getting the iPhone. However, unlike my prediction, they
Speaker 1: were getting it in But we didn't know how how
Speaker 1: long the A T and T contract was. That that
Speaker 1: had not been disclosed. There was a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought it was five years, five year exclusive contract between
Speaker 1: A T and T and Apple for the United States.
Speaker 1: We should also add, we know we have a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners throughout the world, and Apple does appear on
Speaker 1: other carriers, but in the US it was exclusive a
Speaker 1: T and T prior to Yeah, that's sorry, no go ahead.
Speaker 1: As one of the mystifying things about UH the United
Speaker 1: States UM and the iPhone is that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the other carriers have it, and T Mobile doesn't in
Speaker 1: the United States, but they do in Europe. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: but then a T T is trying to buy T Mobile.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that too. Uh. And then something that
Speaker 1: I thought we should touch on throughout this year, this
Speaker 1: is not a really a tech story truly, but tech
Speaker 1: plays a large part in what is going on. UM.
Speaker 1: I think in eleven we saw more stories about technology
Speaker 1: playing a role in various uprisings and disturbances and movements
Speaker 1: than we have any year prior to agree. And in
Speaker 1: in January, the Arabs Spring revolutions really start to kick
Speaker 1: off when the Tunisian president resigned. UM. That was the
Speaker 1: first major UH, major event within the Arabs Spring, although
Speaker 1: that technically began late in the resignation of the Tunisian
Speaker 1: president was the first major event of and UH, and
Speaker 1: social networking and mobile phones played a huge part in
Speaker 1: being and people being able to organize so that they
Speaker 1: could bring out social change. So that was a big
Speaker 1: story and that again is one of those that will
Speaker 1: continue throughout the year. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it really really hit in February with the resignation of
Speaker 1: the Egyptian president UM and yeah. I you know, people
Speaker 1: were talking, UH, there were there were groups on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I remember that making headlines here in the United States
Speaker 1: about how there are groups on Facebook where people were
Speaker 1: having discussions and coordinating activities UM and UH and the
Speaker 1: egypt And government kept trying to control the flow of
Speaker 1: information and the access to technology, and that was another
Speaker 1: example of how you know, that's that's like trying to
Speaker 1: hold back water that's flowing downhill. I mean it's you can,
Speaker 1: you can deflects things and you can slow things down,
Speaker 1: but ultimately people can get at that technology. It's just
Speaker 1: it's it's very robust and very fluid. I think that
Speaker 1: was one of the great stories, though, UH are under
Speaker 1: underlying questions for things like this, from which is UM
Speaker 1: related but not it's more of a worldwide question. Is
Speaker 1: the internet human right at this point? I mean, the
Speaker 1: the ability to communicate and the ability to share information freely,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the questions that I you know,
Speaker 1: I think is going to become more and more prominent
Speaker 1: now that so many people are using the Internet. But
Speaker 1: that's that's one of these things. I mean, it's is
Speaker 1: it okay for a government to censor this information or not? Um?
Speaker 1: And you know, as the years worn on and these
Speaker 1: events have happened, you hear that that question being discussed
Speaker 1: more openly. Um. Yeah. And then we had some media news. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got I mean, we'll just glance over these because
Speaker 1: it's just kind of interesting. A O. L bought Huffington's
Speaker 1: Post for million dollars and Arianna Huffington became the editor
Speaker 1: in chief. We've then saw some folks women Gadgets start
Speaker 1: to leave and Gadget several of them have gone on
Speaker 1: to form a new group, a new site called The Verge,
Speaker 1: and Gadget still exists as well. But yeah, we saw
Speaker 1: a shake up and media from that. We also saw
Speaker 1: in February the Motorola Zoom debut, which was the first
Speaker 1: Honeycomb Android tablet, Honeycomb being the Android builds specifically designed
Speaker 1: with tablets in mind. Now, of course, we're having ice
Speaker 1: Cream Sandwich coming out, which kind of combines the advances
Speaker 1: of honeycomb with the the technologies of the previous like
Speaker 1: gingerbread builds of Androids. So the two point builds of
Speaker 1: Android and the three point oh builds of Android are
Speaker 1: going to be combined for the four point oh builds
Speaker 1: starting with ice cream sandwich. Suddenly, I'm I'm hungry for
Speaker 1: for breakfast, cereal and frozen confectionery. What is so our
Speaker 1: next story is IBM s Watson one on Jeopardy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of a twofold thing because
Speaker 1: in in in an overarching sense for the entire year,
Speaker 1: IBM is celebrating its hundredth anniversary, which, as Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I covered in three episodes of tech stuff, Uh, kind
Speaker 1: of kind of not exactly right, IBM, doesn't. It all
Speaker 1: depends on where you're starting point is. Yeah, and IBM
Speaker 1: traces its starting point to a hundred years ago in
Speaker 1: in in nineteen eleven, although uh, it's roots really go
Speaker 1: deeper than that by you know, several decades actually, um,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of a showcasing. Uh. This would be uh,
Speaker 1: the massive um networked computer known as Watson, which took
Speaker 1: on two very able challenger human challengers, former Jeopardy champions. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would be Brad Rudder and Ken Jennings and UH
Speaker 1: and ibms was Watson showed off things like a natural
Speaker 1: language recognition and UH and and measuring the likelihood of
Speaker 1: one answer being correct versus another and which you could
Speaker 1: see if you watch the show. Yeah, they displayed that
Speaker 1: for all of us to see, so so you know,
Speaker 1: it was actually trying to make judgments on what was
Speaker 1: the most appropriate response based upon whatever the clue was
Speaker 1: and did quite well. So that was really exciting. We
Speaker 1: also saw in February that light Peak debut as Thunderbolt,
Speaker 1: And if you listen to our Predictions wrap up show,
Speaker 1: you heard that. That's, you know, the light Peak that
Speaker 1: has debut. The Thunderbolt technology isn't exactly what Intel was
Speaker 1: promising with light Peak, but that's supposedly still on its way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Moving on into March yees, something that had happened a
Speaker 1: lot earlier than I thought it would the debut of
Speaker 1: the iPad two. Yeah, that actually debuted while I was
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas for south By Southwest and my wife
Speaker 1: got in line at the special Apple store that opened
Speaker 1: up in downtown Austin and bought an iPad too. That
Speaker 1: was that was a pop up Apple store that was
Speaker 1: not an Apple store before, and it ceased to be
Speaker 1: an Apple store as soon as the event was over.
Speaker 1: So it's it's back to being whatever it was before
Speaker 1: or something else, I guess um. Also in March one
Speaker 1: of the one of another sad story, Paul Barron, who
Speaker 1: was the inventor of packet switching technology dies. Packet switching
Speaker 1: technology we've talked about a lot in this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes the Internet so robust
Speaker 1: and so UH useful, and it's where you the protocol
Speaker 1: split files up into little packets and send those packets
Speaker 1: across the network. And the packets don't all necessarily follow
Speaker 1: the same route from one machine to another. They may
Speaker 1: go several different routes. And this optimize a speed so
Speaker 1: that when you're transmitting large files across a network, UH,
Speaker 1: you can do so without having to worry about a
Speaker 1: certain pathway breaking down and then your file only only
Speaker 1: your file is loaded, because the pathway that that the
Speaker 1: information had been taking UH is no longer viable. It's
Speaker 1: also redundant. It's also redundant and has the ability to
Speaker 1: send multiple packets of the same information, so if one
Speaker 1: doesn't make it, another will get there, and UH, all
Speaker 1: of these chunks of data are reassembled on the other
Speaker 1: side to form UH the whole file, which is a
Speaker 1: very elegant way of dealing with a complex problem. You know,
Speaker 1: the the computers that join and leave the Internet on
Speaker 1: a moment by moment basis, files still get where they're
Speaker 1: supposed to go, and that all is invisible more or
Speaker 1: less to the user, which is which is really amazing,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very sad. We had a number of
Speaker 1: important tech passings this year, which we'll get to later
Speaker 1: in the episode. So in March we also first heard
Speaker 1: about a T and T s plan to purchase T
Speaker 1: Mobile USA for thirty nine billion dollars. Now this would
Speaker 1: a T and T was the second largest carrier in
Speaker 1: the United States, Verizon being the largest T Mobile USA
Speaker 1: behind Sprint, UM and and the struggling unit of the
Speaker 1: dominant Dewitsch a telecom. I mean T mobile worldwide is
Speaker 1: if I haven't done the research on it, but it
Speaker 1: was number one in the world for a while there
Speaker 1: and UM probably still is. But in the United States floundering,
Speaker 1: and they decided Twitch Telecom said, you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: kind of done with this, we want to get out
Speaker 1: a T and T agreed to buy it. As of
Speaker 1: this recording, that is still in limbo. The the federal
Speaker 1: government has several agencies reviewing the deal and it looks
Speaker 1: like it might be in jeopardy. But yeah, at least
Speaker 1: it's gonna have to alter dramatically from what it is
Speaker 1: right now before it can clear those hurdles, I think,
Speaker 1: but it may still go through. Actually, it'll be a
Speaker 1: fun thing to talk about in our predictions episode. We'll
Speaker 1: see if we get into some discussion in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this next story also we follow into our predictions episode.
Speaker 1: So there was kind of a there were a few
Speaker 1: companies that sort of seemed to have a comedy of
Speaker 1: errors all throughout eleven and one of those companies was HP,
Speaker 1: I mean, the dominant PC manufacturer. Yeah, So in March
Speaker 1: of Let's not jump ahead of ourselves, HP announced that
Speaker 1: it would start to ship all PCs with the ability
Speaker 1: to duel boot into either Windows or web Os. Yes,
Speaker 1: webOS being the operating system that was designed by Palm
Speaker 1: was designed by Palem, which HP acquired. Um, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we were all anticipating the Webbos tablet on slot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was gonna be the next it was gonna be
Speaker 1: It's gonna weigh in against Android and iPhone. It would
Speaker 1: be like the real competitor. Uh, you know, whereas the
Speaker 1: BlackBerry Playbook would really be more for enterprise users, So
Speaker 1: this would be like the consumer showdown. Well, at this point,
Speaker 1: HP had said that they were really dedicated to pushing
Speaker 1: that web Os platform and they were going to push
Speaker 1: it onto their PC business. And we'll get back into
Speaker 1: that in a couple of months in this podcast. Actually
Speaker 1: uh and then uh, we had a massive earthquake hit
Speaker 1: Japan in March that caused huge amounts of damage, including
Speaker 1: damage to nuclear power facility That brought a lot of
Speaker 1: concern into the picture about whether or not that facility
Speaker 1: was was breached and whether or not radio activity was
Speaker 1: leaking into the area. But beyond that, and that, I
Speaker 1: mean that's huge. Beyond that, we also had massive amounts
Speaker 1: of of loss of life, of injury. All of this
Speaker 1: in incredibly tragic on a tiny scale compared to that,
Speaker 1: I want to stress this uh nowhere near nowe near
Speaker 1: is important, but it did affect the tech world because
Speaker 1: a lot of manufacturing facilities are in Japan, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the the elements that go into our tech
Speaker 1: come out of Japan manufacturing it. So bits and pieces
Speaker 1: that together we are assembled into tech come out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically memory. Um, there are memory plants in that area,
Speaker 1: UM which were destroyed in the in the earthquake, and
Speaker 1: that directly affected um, the computer world for a while,
Speaker 1: even even you know, in a in a in a
Speaker 1: corporate way of course. Uh. You know, I don't think pete,
Speaker 1: I didn't really hear people complaining about that. I think
Speaker 1: the the event itself was tragic enough that yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it mostly probably pushed back plans to debut certain
Speaker 1: kinds of technology because the supply chain just wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Moving on, Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer nine, which got pretty
Speaker 1: good reviews when it came out, and Firefox four came
Speaker 1: out as well. Of course, Firefox four is not from Microsoft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the long anticipated Firefox four coming out from uh,
Speaker 1: from Mozilla. UM. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was waited.
Speaker 1: We have been waiting quite some time for the next
Speaker 1: bill of Firefox. I just got it on my computer
Speaker 1: yesterday because I've been using Chrome. I was just pointing
Speaker 1: out though you didn't get Firefox for yesterday. Um, I
Speaker 1: was just pointing out how long we had been waiting
Speaker 1: in the early part of two thousand eleven for the
Speaker 1: next level browser to come out, more than say, ten
Speaker 1: minutes or so. Um. Well, and then uh hint, we
Speaker 1: also saw the beginning of another well something what an
Speaker 1: event that was part of of an overall story that
Speaker 1: kind of stretched through most of the second half eleven. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there was a guy named George hots still is
Speaker 1: a guy named George hots Uh in fact who he
Speaker 1: was known as a hacker you like to heck hardware
Speaker 1: and uh. He had videos and things like jailbreaking iPhones
Speaker 1: and other devices. He decided to take on the PlayStation three,
Speaker 1: and he figured out a way to jail break the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three so you could run other all braking systems
Speaker 1: on it and you can do other stuff with your
Speaker 1: place station three. And Sony did not like this at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, part of the reason why, for the reason
Speaker 1: why Sonny, if he had done it on his own,
Speaker 1: Sonny would have probably not cared so much. It was
Speaker 1: that he showed people how to do it. He had
Speaker 1: information on his site showing people how they could also
Speaker 1: jail break their PlayStation threes and so Sony sued him.
Speaker 1: Uh and he at first he kind of did a
Speaker 1: little trip down to South America, supposedly just for spring break,
Speaker 1: but some people were suggesting that perhaps he was trying
Speaker 1: to flee the wrath of Sony. Uh. He did eventually
Speaker 1: come back and um, this kind of launched this whole
Speaker 1: um lawsuit about him altering the PlayStation three and uh,
Speaker 1: Sonny even got permission from a judge to uh to
Speaker 1: look at the IP addresses of anyone who had ever
Speaker 1: visited Hots's website in an attempt to try and discourage
Speaker 1: people from modifying their PlayStation threes. Now, Hots eventually would
Speaker 1: get out of hots water, and uh, we'll we'll touch
Speaker 1: on what happened to him in a little bit didn't.
Speaker 1: But also in March, we saw Amazon launched the Cloud
Speaker 1: Player and Cloud Drive products. Yes, that was one of
Speaker 1: your predictions for the year two, was that everything was
Speaker 1: gonna a cloudier. Yeah. Yeah. The thing was uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we had been talking for a long time
Speaker 1: about the possibility that Apple was going to come out
Speaker 1: with a streaming music service. The Google was looking at
Speaker 1: coming out with a streaming music service or some other
Speaker 1: kind of music service. So Amazon kind of rushed out
Speaker 1: the door before securing agreements um with a lot of
Speaker 1: the major music publishers, and I think at the time
Speaker 1: back in March, we started thinking that they were going
Speaker 1: to get sued by the music industry and that still
Speaker 1: really hasn't happened. Um, but it you know that it's
Speaker 1: a music locker where you upload your own files, so yeah,
Speaker 1: and has some limitations on it, like, uh has a
Speaker 1: five gigabyte limitation for the free account, right unless if
Speaker 1: you buy an album through Amazon that gets bumped up
Speaker 1: to twenty gigs. And also any music you buy through
Speaker 1: Amazon does not count against your locker cap. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: anything that you upload to that is it does count
Speaker 1: against it. And in case you're wondering, it all depends
Speaker 1: on what bet rate you encode your MP three's But
Speaker 1: but five gigs is about a thousand songs. Uh. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that launched, and um, that was that was the first
Speaker 1: big one of eleven, but a couple of others did
Speaker 1: launch as well. In April, we saw the first major
Speaker 1: security breach of the year that would not be the last,
Speaker 1: this is when my mailbox started filling up with uh,
Speaker 1: we we have a security issue. Yeah. Yeah. The Epsilon,
Speaker 1: which is a company that manages email lists for other companies.
Speaker 1: So like like if you if you join a program
Speaker 1: with a company, let's say it's a retailer, so just
Speaker 1: pick a rock store, a lot of loyalty cards. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: grocery store car right in, department store cards and drug
Speaker 1: store cards. So you let's say you've you've signed up
Speaker 1: for a grocery store card. Just make it simple. You've
Speaker 1: signed up, You've given your email address, and it's got
Speaker 1: your name and your address and all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff on file, so that you've got your cards, so
Speaker 1: you scan it and you get discounts and groceries. Epsilon
Speaker 1: was a company that managed all that data because a
Speaker 1: lot of these these businesses that we're using these sort
Speaker 1: of cards or email distribution lists or whatever they were
Speaker 1: using it for, they aren't experts in data management, so
Speaker 1: they outsourced that to a company that was an expert,
Speaker 1: and Epsilon was this company. Unfortunately for everybody, hackers were
Speaker 1: able to get access into epsilon system and we're able
Speaker 1: to steal millions and millions of customer data records. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I I counted that I had somewhere in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. I can't remember what it was. It's like
Speaker 1: eight or twelve somewhere in there. People emailing me and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, your loyalty card email got hacked. This
Speaker 1: wasn't a credit card information, more like personally identifiable marketing
Speaker 1: stuff like your name and email address, which is you know,
Speaker 1: plenty for people who want to sell out to spammers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you can even use it to do identity theft. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit trickier, but it's definitely one
Speaker 1: of those things that could play into identity theft. So
Speaker 1: this was a big story. Uh. And then carrying on
Speaker 1: the hacker stuff, hackers targeted Sony. Now, Uh, some part
Speaker 1: of that might have to do with the issue with
Speaker 1: George Hots and how Sony was coming down on Hots
Speaker 1: for modifying the PlayStation three others. There are other reasons
Speaker 1: why people were uh justifying their actions against Sony. Let's
Speaker 1: just say that that because whether or not those actions
Speaker 1: truly well, I don't believe those actions are justifiable at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's an illegal action. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't see any justification for it, but there were people
Speaker 1: who were trying to create some sort of justification for
Speaker 1: why the hackers were doing what they were doing. At anyway,
Speaker 1: they targeted Sony and they stole data from over seventy
Speaker 1: million user accounts of the PlayStation network and Sony Online Entertainment.
Speaker 1: So they hacked into the systems and stole all this data.
Speaker 1: And part of Sony's response was they brought the PlayStation
Speaker 1: network down so that they could fix the security vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: Adding to this was the concern that Sony waited to
Speaker 1: do that, yes, sat on the disclosure. They didn't disclose
Speaker 1: immediately that This was about a week later when Sony
Speaker 1: let people know what had happened. And by this time,
Speaker 1: by the way, yeah, and these were files that could
Speaker 1: have potentially included things like credit card information, So it
Speaker 1: was um uh, you know, it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: At the time, no one was really sure how deep
Speaker 1: this attack went and how much information they managed to
Speaker 1: get and how much of it was encrypted, because as
Speaker 1: it turned out, some of Sony's practices were not very
Speaker 1: um secure. They they stored some stuff in plain text,
Speaker 1: so it was unencrypted and if you just got access
Speaker 1: to it, you could read it. Yeah, they used the
Speaker 1: words may have a lot your your credit card information
Speaker 1: may have been compromised, but we don't think it has.
Speaker 1: You may have experienced the desire to strangle us UM
Speaker 1: so PlayStation network was down for about twenty three days.
Speaker 1: Uh Now, at that same time that same month, Anonymous,
Speaker 1: the online group that is, you know, doesn't really have
Speaker 1: a central leadership. It's kind of amorphous and difficult to define.
Speaker 1: Butonmous it wasn't he in the matrix morphous? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. Kung Fu. Anonymous had also attacked Sony with
Speaker 1: a distributed denial of service attack earlier in April, but
Speaker 1: eventually this didn't actually come out until I think late May.
Speaker 1: But Anonymous made in this official statement as as official
Speaker 1: as Anonymous can that the group was not behind the
Speaker 1: attack that compromised the seventy five million records, and so
Speaker 1: that that was not Anonymous as doing that was someone else.
Speaker 1: But at the same time they had also targeted Sony.
Speaker 1: So Sony was getting hit pretty hard in April, and
Speaker 1: so we're Sony customers because they suddenly could not access
Speaker 1: um the data that they you know, the different UH
Speaker 1: services that they were used to. Yeah, the next the
Speaker 1: next couple we're going to talk about happened in April.
Speaker 1: But it's funny because I think about these and sort
Speaker 1: of the the other stuff that leaked out as a
Speaker 1: result of that, Apple suing Samsung for patent infringement, and
Speaker 1: everybody at the time, everybody you know, quote quote unquote
Speaker 1: everybody complaining about how Apple was being ridiculous because they
Speaker 1: were suing for patent infringement for their technology, sort of
Speaker 1: ignoring that all these companies sue each other all the
Speaker 1: time and this is nothing new, but let's actually take
Speaker 1: out that, you know, Apple really didn't make headlines with
Speaker 1: this throughout the year because as a result of these
Speaker 1: these lawsuits, UH, Samsung started to see a lot of
Speaker 1: resistance in other countries. They're like, there are places throughout
Speaker 1: Europe that would not carry certain Samsung products because Apple
Speaker 1: head said that they were infringing on patents and they
Speaker 1: were they were essentially copies of Apple designs, and as
Speaker 1: a result, a lot of devices that Samsung creative were
Speaker 1: not available in Europe and also Australia until recently. Um
Speaker 1: As other recording of this podcast, I should say, but
Speaker 1: other manufacturers have gotten injunctions against Apple in some countries too,
Speaker 1: so but this this was kind of like the first,
Speaker 1: this particular. Yeah, the patent the patent wars have been
Speaker 1: going on for for years, but this was like the
Speaker 1: first starting off that that it's seemingly endless series of
Speaker 1: stories about patent wars, Like every week it was another
Speaker 1: story about someone suing someone else or something. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a fresh round and the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: happened once it became clear that Apple iPhones were tracking
Speaker 1: user information. Even if you didn't have a location service
Speaker 1: turned on, it had some information about where the user
Speaker 1: had been, and that raised a lot of red flags.
Speaker 1: And then of course it came out that yeah, other
Speaker 1: other devices do this as well. Uh and uh. In
Speaker 1: most cases, it looks like it really isn't to track you.
Speaker 1: It's to try and deliver the best experience that you
Speaker 1: can get for these location based services that you know,
Speaker 1: if it had to track down your location um each time,
Speaker 1: every time you launch something, it would slow things down
Speaker 1: and it would make the experience less enjoyable. So that
Speaker 1: and and adding to the fact that if you call
Speaker 1: an emergency service, let's say you need help from the
Speaker 1: police or or a paramedic. Um, they're able to find
Speaker 1: you that way too. So I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things that it made headlines and
Speaker 1: need to go well. I mean, there's good stuff and
Speaker 1: bad stuff about this. And now there's actually very recent
Speaker 1: story that I'm sure we'll touch on at least a
Speaker 1: little bit that um that kind of plays back into
Speaker 1: this on a much more disturbing level. But let's let's
Speaker 1: move on into May. So uh home May opened up
Speaker 1: with a lot of big news. We there was the
Speaker 1: big raid on Osama bin Laden's compound and uh in
Speaker 1: which Osama himself was was was killed, and it was
Speaker 1: live tweeted, yes by someone who heard a helicopter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't go on he didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 1: but he live tweeted the event. And that actually cut
Speaker 1: a lot of news stories. Was that, you know the
Speaker 1: fact that we are now in an era where major
Speaker 1: historical events are going to be like, we're gonna know
Speaker 1: more about them now because there's so much more access
Speaker 1: for the general the general citizen of the of the
Speaker 1: world to have access to technology and get messages out
Speaker 1: that it's hard to imagine any major world event happening
Speaker 1: without sort of a citizen journalism UH element going on,
Speaker 1: whether it was meant to pieces and journalism or not.
Speaker 1: In this case, it wasn't. It was just a guy
Speaker 1: in his house saying, what the heck is going on?
Speaker 1: So that was kind of interesting. Also, in May, speaking
Speaker 1: of what the heck is going on, Microsoft announced that
Speaker 1: it was going to buy Skype, which was I think
Speaker 1: it's eight point five billion dollars for Skype. Um. That
Speaker 1: was a big deal. In fact, I got a lot
Speaker 1: of people worried that Skype was going to change dramatically
Speaker 1: and that all the the stuff they had been relying
Speaker 1: upon with Skype was going to go away because Microsoft
Speaker 1: was going to change stuff. So far, we haven't seen that. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of other people said yeah. A lot of
Speaker 1: other people said no, what you're more likely to see
Speaker 1: is Skype get worked into things like UH tablets and
Speaker 1: also Xbox. That you would see a lot of of
Speaker 1: that functionality UH incorporated into other Microsoft products. Not necessarily
Speaker 1: the Microsoft would get in the business of of fiddling
Speaker 1: around with Skype. Yeah. Speaking of other big companies, Google
Speaker 1: came out with the chromos. Yeah, they officially launched it.
Speaker 1: Now there had been a developer build for a while,
Speaker 1: but then we were talking about it about how it
Speaker 1: was going to be the netbook operating system of choice.
Speaker 1: Then netbooks kind of disappeared. Yeah, they don't really exist anymore,
Speaker 1: uh not, not not like they did back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and two thousand ten. Yeah. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: people asking us if we had early released chromebooks. No, No,
Speaker 1: I wish we did. I haven't actually seen one in
Speaker 1: the while. I wanted to play with with one, but
Speaker 1: I never got a chance to. They also unveiled Google Wallet,
Speaker 1: which was their UM, their near field communications payment service.
Speaker 1: Use your phone to uh hold your credit card information,
Speaker 1: tap it to pay. Yeah, so this was the software
Speaker 1: side of that, not the hardware side, because there isn't
Speaker 1: really much of a hardware side. Still a chip, yeah
Speaker 1: you can get there's like a couple of phones to
Speaker 1: support it, but even the new phones that Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I got this year don't support. Now the that's in
Speaker 1: the United States. We should point out in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world that technology has been available for a
Speaker 1: few years, like in Japan, available for quite some time.
Speaker 1: But here it's a big market and it's just now
Speaker 1: coming here. So also in May the Experience play debut.
Speaker 1: That was the PlayStation phone. It's not called it's a
Speaker 1: phone that is able to play PlayStation one games. It's
Speaker 1: a PlayStation phone. All right, don't take don't take away
Speaker 1: my award from that last show. Also our friend George
Speaker 1: Hots Uh, he gets hired by a little company called Facebook.
Speaker 1: You know whatever whatever happened to them, uh, just still around.
Speaker 1: Um and the Winklevoss twins speaking of Facebook, and these
Speaker 1: are the the twins from Harvard who who alleged that
Speaker 1: they had hired Zuckerberg to work on a project for them.
Speaker 1: And then zuckerbrook Berg took some of the uh stuff
Speaker 1: that the Winklevoss Twins had suggested and incorporated into his
Speaker 1: own project called the Facebook. Yeah, that would be Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Facebook and an alleged founder, Yes, alleged
Speaker 1: founder in this particular, he was definitely the founder of Facebook,
Speaker 1: whether or not, whether or not all the information he
Speaker 1: came up with. And you know, we did a whole
Speaker 1: podcast about this, this whole scandal, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to pretend to know what happened, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: the winkle of us Twins had had taken a case
Speaker 1: against Facebook. They received a settlement, and then they decided
Speaker 1: that apparently that the settlement wasn't enough and they wanted
Speaker 1: to go for more, so they took the case all
Speaker 1: the way to the Supreme Court. That ultimately would not
Speaker 1: work out for them, but they haven't given up. No um,
Speaker 1: And I don't know why he worded it this way,
Speaker 1: because now I'm hungry for bananas. But LinkedIn, the the
Speaker 1: business networking site, decided to file for an Internet International
Speaker 1: Uh oh, that was great. Initial public offering a stock
Speaker 1: on I p O and it went, Yeah, the bananas,
Speaker 1: it went bananas. Yeah. No. LinkedIn stock prices sward when
Speaker 1: it first went public. Groupons did as well. Groupon also
Speaker 1: went public in the the coupon service that that basically
Speaker 1: clues you in that there's some cool deal going off today.
Speaker 1: You should pick that up. So both LinkedIn and groupon
Speaker 1: went public and both did incredibly well upon debut, and
Speaker 1: both have sense um leveled off and actually declined quite
Speaker 1: a bit. But yeah, that was that was a big splash. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then in May we see the emergence of a
Speaker 1: group called Lull's sec which was similar to the group Anonymous,
Speaker 1: but but not a splinter group of Anonymous really, although
Speaker 1: I think there was some association between the two groups beforehand.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like lull SEC was a specific arm of Anonymous.
Speaker 1: But this was a group of folks who said that
Speaker 1: they wanted to use their hacker skills to UH to
Speaker 1: really target UM certain sites. And those sites might be
Speaker 1: government based, might be just an organization or a company, UH,
Speaker 1: and that they had their own agenda and they were
Speaker 1: following that and they were very prankish and mischievous, but
Speaker 1: also very destructive. UH. They would deface sites, they would
Speaker 1: bring sites down UM and that would cause a whole
Speaker 1: mess of problems throughout the summer of YEP YEP, and
Speaker 1: in its preparations for opening its first headquarters on Mars Apple,
Speaker 1: UH in June. In June decided to UH announce its
Speaker 1: UH Spaceship campus. That's not really a real spaceship, but
Speaker 1: people it's futuristic looking and people call it that. And Cupertino,
Speaker 1: I would love to visit this place once it's complete,
Speaker 1: because it it sounds really cool. Yeah. Jobs himself was
Speaker 1: the one who sort of unveiled this, and he was
Speaker 1: talking to the officials in Cupertino to make sure to
Speaker 1: get clearance to build this facility because it's gonna be
Speaker 1: enormous and crazy and high tech and apples Apples epcot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might even take off and be able to beam
Speaker 1: people up. I don't know for sure. If it does,
Speaker 1: it will do so expensively. We also saw E three
Speaker 1: in in June, and that's when Nintendo unveiled the we
Speaker 1: U console, the next generation we console, the first next
Speaker 1: generation console from the Big Three. Yes, uh to what
Speaker 1: debuted at E three, Although I'm sure that the PlayStation
Speaker 1: and Xbox fans will probably say that this is actually
Speaker 1: the catchup and this is this is a current generation
Speaker 1: on the next generation. Yeah, it all depends on how
Speaker 1: you wear it all that, but anyway, this is the
Speaker 1: one that has the controller with the the touchscreen interface
Speaker 1: embedded in the controller itself. Originally it was going to
Speaker 1: be a system that would only support one controller, which
Speaker 1: kind of drove some people nuts, and now it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's going to support up to two. So you
Speaker 1: still won't be having groups of people playing all at
Speaker 1: the same time, but you might have a face off
Speaker 1: between you and a friend. It did seem a little
Speaker 1: odd to me. That would only support the one controller
Speaker 1: when that the original specs anyway, that seemed a little strange,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, big news. Also in June, one of
Speaker 1: the things that you had predicted that news Corps would do, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: a specific thing you might say, specific Media purchased my
Speaker 1: Space or what was left of it for a fraction,
Speaker 1: a small, small fraction of what eighty million dollars that
Speaker 1: News Corps paid thirty five million, which is again a
Speaker 1: big markdown, a big markdown, and a reasonably sized lottery.
Speaker 1: Jack Pott. Yeah, and Justin Timberlake was rumored to be
Speaker 1: one of the investors in this behind he was bringing
Speaker 1: he was bringing my Space back, but it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: so uh. And also, I mean, my Space for the
Speaker 1: longest time was really looked at as one of those
Speaker 1: social networks where bands could have a pretty good presence
Speaker 1: because it really supported that sort of um that sort approach.
Speaker 1: But since other networks have emerged, they've kind of taken
Speaker 1: a lot of that away. And plus my spaces interface
Speaker 1: just never it got so so ridiculous and people created
Speaker 1: such garish pages that it kind of got a terrible reputation,
Speaker 1: mostly based off the way that users were behaving. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the system itself that was the problem. It was
Speaker 1: that people were It was like, you know, you move
Speaker 1: into a nice neighborhood and then you suddenly put pink
Speaker 1: flamingos on your lawn and you never bring the Christmas
Speaker 1: decorations down. And I'm looking at Chris okay, anyway, for
Speaker 1: some of us, we do that Christmas decorations on my
Speaker 1: pink flamingos. Um. Yes. And then and then as as though,
Speaker 1: uh as though, uh, the acquisition of my Space, uh
Speaker 1: was didn't have my Space already any distant second position
Speaker 1: behind Facebook. Google attached an anchor to my Space thinking
Speaker 1: it and further with the announcement that they were uh
Speaker 1: coming out with Google Plus a private beta, um, which
Speaker 1: I got into on that first week. Yes, that was crazy.
Speaker 1: That normally never happens, um which I know that doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense that normally never happens anyway, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got into the Google Plus private beta and took a
Speaker 1: look and really liked the features that they had, and
Speaker 1: especially the circles where you could create different circles for
Speaker 1: different people and you could publish information to just one
Speaker 1: set of circles. And leave out the others, or you
Speaker 1: could follow one set one circle just to see what
Speaker 1: those people are up to and ignore everything else. All
Speaker 1: of those features were really cool and something that Facebook
Speaker 1: lacked at the time. Yes, um, and Facebook wasn't concerned
Speaker 1: about it at the time, but yeah, it got It
Speaker 1: was one of those things where because I think I
Speaker 1: think part of the there was a huge surge to
Speaker 1: try and get Google Plus invitations, Yes there was, they were.
Speaker 1: They were like the most sought after ticket in town.
Speaker 1: And I think mainly was because the whole exclusive of
Speaker 1: anything once. Once Google Plus opened up to the public
Speaker 1: a little later in the year, Uh, there was an
Speaker 1: initial run on the site and then it very very
Speaker 1: quickly tapered off. Yes, however when it when it did
Speaker 1: launch publicly, it really did sink MySpace even further down
Speaker 1: the list because it is now in I'm thinking pretty
Speaker 1: much still in second place Google Plus, so still distant
Speaker 1: behind Facebook. Of continuing our hacking stories, lull SEC retrieved
Speaker 1: customer information from Sony Pictures, so Sony is still under
Speaker 1: attack here. This is this is a separate attack from
Speaker 1: the PlayStation attacks that happened earlier in the year. But
Speaker 1: little Sec is able to retrieve customer information from Sony's
Speaker 1: pictures Sony Pictures, and also UH joins forces with Anonymous
Speaker 1: to create Operation Anti sec meaning anti Security. So the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of this was kind of to show how
Speaker 1: companies that had been boasting about their secure measures in place,
Speaker 1: you know, how much of that was was real versus
Speaker 1: being a paper tiger. So in a way, it was
Speaker 1: almost like a crusade to show how insecure some of
Speaker 1: your data was despite what what these companies were predicting,
Speaker 1: and you could argue whether or not that was a
Speaker 1: you know, a noble effort or you know, Ascribing motives
Speaker 1: at this point is really difficult, mostly because a lot
Speaker 1: of the methodologies these groups used tend to fall into
Speaker 1: sort of this prankish behavior, and so it's, you know,
Speaker 1: at one point you're like, well, I'm sure there's some
Speaker 1: motivations here that are somewhat noble in intention, but the
Speaker 1: execution is such that it's hard to really say it
Speaker 1: for sure. Anyway, they were dedicated to targeting governments, banks
Speaker 1: and revealing holes in security and defacing sites if the
Speaker 1: they felt that the companies were being negligent in their security,
Speaker 1: and presumably the purpose of this was to improve security
Speaker 1: across the Internet. Whether or not that actually happened as debatable, yes,
Speaker 1: But then there was you know, while they joined forces
Speaker 1: with anonymous uh luwle sec basically ticked off a lot
Speaker 1: of other groups. Yeah, teen Poison was one. There's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different hacker groups that what what the
Speaker 1: other hacker groups started to say about lull sec was.
Speaker 1: And they weren't necessarily judging what lull sex actions were.
Speaker 1: They were saying, like lull sex, little sex uh members
Speaker 1: were just script kiddies, Like all they were doing was
Speaker 1: downloading code from some hacker site and then and then
Speaker 1: doing a simple like sequel injection into a system to
Speaker 1: bring it down. But that they weren't themselves designing the
Speaker 1: tools that we're doing these things. And so these other
Speaker 1: hacker groups began to target lull sec, and we're specifically
Speaker 1: dedicated to trying to discover who the members of lull
Speaker 1: sec were and to give that information to the United
Speaker 1: States authorities because they were starting to take an interest
Speaker 1: in the little sec at this time. And then we
Speaker 1: had recorded an episode about the next topic earlier before
Speaker 1: this happened. Actually because we had a number of listeners
Speaker 1: who were interested in the virtual currency known as bitcoin,
Speaker 1: where the computer actually manufacturers the virtual money, and you
Speaker 1: can mine bitcoins and you can trade things in some
Speaker 1: circumstances for for bitcoins, and it was some people have
Speaker 1: made a lot of money. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: a digital currency, and the idea was that the idea
Speaker 1: was that the system was supposed to protect bitcoins from
Speaker 1: from hacking. It was supposed to be a very secure
Speaker 1: way to keep track of Like how do you keep
Speaker 1: track of digital currency if you've got a medium that
Speaker 1: allows infinite uh copying? Like if I can if I
Speaker 1: can take a piece of digital information and copy it
Speaker 1: an infinite number of times, doesn't that immediately devalue your currency?
Speaker 1: Because I've got one digital dollar? What if I copy
Speaker 1: that a million times and I have a million in
Speaker 1: digital dollars, my millionaire, Did I just devalue that currency? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: this was the system was designed to to support UH
Speaker 1: being able to track information about each individual bitcoin. So
Speaker 1: theoretically it was possible to know how manywhere on the
Speaker 1: market and how much the value was. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people did make some money on it and trading
Speaker 1: for actual currency. But then in June the market crash,
Speaker 1: the value of the bitcoin dropped to less than half
Speaker 1: of what it had been worth, and then it continued
Speaker 1: to suffer throughout the rest of the year. And I've
Speaker 1: even seen some reports recently that suggested that perhaps bitcoin
Speaker 1: was just a social experiment and was never really intended
Speaker 1: to be a true digital currency, which if that's true,
Speaker 1: that raises some serious ethical questions, because you know, people
Speaker 1: sunk real money into this, this whole system. So if
Speaker 1: that's a social experiment, it's done by Dr Frankenstein. I
Speaker 1: have his light by the way and by and picked
Speaker 1: it up the other just between our podcasts. So we're
Speaker 1: halfway through the year. Let's get to July. Yeah, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: because we're forty six minutes into this podcast. We're gonna
Speaker 1: pick up this pace a little bit, how about that? Alright, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was one of my predictions for the year. Spotify
Speaker 1: debut in the United States, Ye, that was. That was
Speaker 1: a pretty popular debut on until they latched on and
Speaker 1: made a partnership with Facebook, which ticked off some people
Speaker 1: that you know, didn't want to have to have a
Speaker 1: Facebook account in order to listen to music. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Facebook had their awesome announcement, which ended up being Skype
Speaker 1: integration into Facebook Chat, which is useful but awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was debatable. Oh here's a sad story. NASA had
Speaker 1: its final Space Shuttle mission with the Atlantis flight, which
Speaker 1: thankfully took off and landed safely, but that marked the
Speaker 1: end of the Space Shuttle program. Netflix changed the rates
Speaker 1: on its plans. This is when Netflix ceased to be
Speaker 1: a darling in the eyes of many. This was the
Speaker 1: beginning of a long, awful year half year for Netflix
Speaker 1: because they announced the change in the pricing for their
Speaker 1: plans and that got a lot of members upset. And
Speaker 1: I think the purpose of this, In fact, I think
Speaker 1: all of the moves that Netflix has done, the purpose
Speaker 1: has really been to try and channel people towards the
Speaker 1: streaming only method because managing hard you know, hard copy
Speaker 1: media is a big deal. I mean, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and it takes a lot of infrastructure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the streaming costs are far less than their
Speaker 1: shipping costs, right, and and warehouse space and I mean personnel.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of money that has to
Speaker 1: go into keeping a physical infrastructure going as opposed to
Speaker 1: a digital infrastructure. Unfortunately they handled this one badly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and users kind of flipped out, and they would
Speaker 1: continue to flip out through the rest of the year
Speaker 1: for other reasons. We'll get into those two. Uh FBI
Speaker 1: rolled out a massive rate to start trying to catch
Speaker 1: people who belong to anonymous. So that was the government
Speaker 1: striking back at the hackers. And this war continues. UH
Speaker 1: and macOS ten Lion debut. Yes. Yes, And initially they
Speaker 1: made headlines for a couple of reasons. One relied mostly
Speaker 1: on digital distribution, although Apple did start making a physical
Speaker 1: copy available for people who didn't have the connection worthy
Speaker 1: of trying to download such a large operating system. Um.
Speaker 1: Also because it was less expensive for a massive operating system. However,
Speaker 1: in the long run, UH people haven't been adopting it
Speaker 1: nearly as as much as Apple and a lot of
Speaker 1: other people I think thought they would. UM. I think
Speaker 1: there are several reasons for that, probably the not the
Speaker 1: least of which is there's a lot of software that's
Speaker 1: not compatible. They took out some of the compatibility because
Speaker 1: this is the first, uh well not the first, but
Speaker 1: it's sixty four bit only and it's until only snow
Speaker 1: Leopard was as well, but it took the compatibility with
Speaker 1: the U power PC version versions of the software out
Speaker 1: for for this version of the operating system, and UH,
Speaker 1: I think that has damaged that somewhat. Um August Big
Speaker 1: News Google said yeah, we'd like to buy Motorola Mobility yep.
Speaker 1: So they did yep. So that was that was huge,
Speaker 1: and that also raised questions of was Motorola Mobility going
Speaker 1: to become the exclusive Android handset developer. That of course
Speaker 1: has not panned out so far. Also in August, Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs officially resigned as the Apple CEO and recommended Tim Cook,
Speaker 1: the Chief operating Officer, as his replacement, and the Board
Speaker 1: of Directors agreed. UH. Jobs did stay on as the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Board of Directors UH in August, although sadly,
Speaker 1: of course, that story changes a little bit and just
Speaker 1: a couple of months too. UM. At this point, the
Speaker 1: HP debacle hits another interesting moment. So remember back in
Speaker 1: March they said they were going to produce PCs that
Speaker 1: could dual Boot and Windows and webbos. Well, in August
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, We're not going to develop
Speaker 1: webo s anymore, and we're actually going to get out
Speaker 1: of the PC business too. Yeah. See this is July
Speaker 1: and August or when the car, the tech car start
Speaker 1: squirreling all over the road and and at some points
Speaker 1: leaves the road entirely. Yeah. Usually August is a really
Speaker 1: slow month in tech news, and it was crazy this
Speaker 1: year was Steve Jobs resigning and Google, the Google Motorola
Speaker 1: thing and HP thing. I mean, it was just it
Speaker 1: felt like it was just gonna continue and things got
Speaker 1: crazy the all over the place. In Libya, Gaddafi was overthrown,
Speaker 1: the Arab spring was continuing there. And also in August,
Speaker 1: that's when we saw the London riots where the people
Speaker 1: who were who were actually rioting, we're using smartphones, particularly
Speaker 1: Blackberries and black gray Messenger to kind of coordinate attacks.
Speaker 1: And they were also using things like Facebook and Twitter, um,
Speaker 1: and they were concentrating on rating businesses and that that
Speaker 1: went on for almost a week. Um. It was pretty
Speaker 1: scary stuff happening over in London. Moving on into September,
Speaker 1: ihone prototype, Yeah, this was I remember. I remember the
Speaker 1: day this happened, or the day after it happened. I
Speaker 1: was in New York at the time, and a friend
Speaker 1: of mine said, visiting a buddy and he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: did you hear about the the guy who stole that stole?
Speaker 1: You know, a guy had an iPhone prototype stolen in
Speaker 1: a bar. I'm like yeah, then then it happened like
Speaker 1: a year ago. Heays, no, no, it happened again. I'm
Speaker 1: like what And sure enough, uh, prototype for the iPhone
Speaker 1: for S was stolen out of from an employee at
Speaker 1: a bar. So apparently we learned a couple of things. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you are an Apple employee, you might need to
Speaker 1: curb your drinking. Uh. And also, if you are a
Speaker 1: tech reporter, you might need to start hanging out the
Speaker 1: bars over in San Francisco. Um. And then we also
Speaker 1: that was the same month where Netflix took another step
Speaker 1: to completely alienate itself from all users. Okay, we're really sorry,
Speaker 1: but what we're gonna do instead is split ourselves into
Speaker 1: two companies. Instead of making two different plans or whatever,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna come become two different companies. They'll be Netflix,
Speaker 1: which does digital distribution, and they'll be Quickster, which does
Speaker 1: DVD only distribution. That will solve the problem, right, because
Speaker 1: now you'll just have to have an account at both
Speaker 1: of these companies in order to have the same service
Speaker 1: you could have through one company before. That's improvement, right. Actually,
Speaker 1: most people I think we're complaining about the name quick
Speaker 1: stir well. I think a lot of people were also
Speaker 1: just they did not like the idea of having to
Speaker 1: maintain two separate accounts for something that they originally just
Speaker 1: had one. But again, Netflix was trying to find a
Speaker 1: way to offload the physical media and concentrate on digital distribution,
Speaker 1: and they just did it in kind of a ham
Speaker 1: fisted way. Uh. Then Google got hungry. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: zagatt or zag it. Yes, I was hoping you would
Speaker 1: know the pronunciation. I've heard it both ways. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: the the famous restaurant guide um writer and publisher. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they gobbled them right up and found it a tasty,
Speaker 1: tasty treat um. Which is kind of different for Google because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is an opportunity for them to publish content,
Speaker 1: which is not ben google strong suit in the past,
Speaker 1: and in fact has raised questions from other other apps
Speaker 1: and companies like Yelp, saying like are you are you
Speaker 1: just going to push us out of the picture entirely
Speaker 1: and just put your content front and center. In fact,
Speaker 1: Google's had quite a few antitrust hearings throughout the year
Speaker 1: that relate to that, to like how it ranks pages
Speaker 1: and whether or not it specifically tries to de emphasize
Speaker 1: competitor pages. Of course, you know, this is really Yahoo's
Speaker 1: strong suit. They're the ones in content and you know
Speaker 1: they've got a grip on it because they're a massive
Speaker 1: company that's well, that has a firm sense of direction
Speaker 1: and great leadership. Well, you know, that was also the
Speaker 1: month that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was asked to hit
Speaker 1: the pavement. Yeah, and she was not quiet about it either. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of those work I hear, one of
Speaker 1: those big events that ended up causing quite a stir.
Speaker 1: Another one was HP gave the boot to its CEO
Speaker 1: Leo And I don't even know is it a Potiker
Speaker 1: appo taker. I thought it was Apothecar. It might be
Speaker 1: Apothecar anyway, Yeah, Leo, he gets the boot and Meg
Speaker 1: Whitman becomes the interim CEO for HP, and that's CEO
Speaker 1: of eBay. Yeah, this political candidate, this guy really crazy
Speaker 1: because this is where we started hearing the conflicting reports
Speaker 1: about is HP really not going to support webo s anymore?
Speaker 1: Is it really getting out of the PC business? And
Speaker 1: to be honest, I don't think there's been a firm
Speaker 1: answer out of the company since then. Well, it goes
Speaker 1: back and forth. Yeah, most our most recent news again
Speaker 1: in early December, is that they're not getting out of
Speaker 1: the PC even right, But I'm not even gonna We
Speaker 1: were going to find out about webOS and then they said, um,
Speaker 1: actually we'll get back to Yeah, so t is not
Speaker 1: over yet. So we don't know how this is always
Speaker 1: going to end. We just know that it's been a mess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where you when you look
Speaker 1: back on the year, you really start to see how
Speaker 1: messed up some of these companies were. I think is
Speaker 1: going to be even worse in a way. But we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in our Prediction show. Uh. Facebook and
Speaker 1: Spotify form their partnership in September. That was the thing
Speaker 1: that ended up taking off a lot of Spotify users
Speaker 1: and uh Amazon announced its new line of kindles, including
Speaker 1: the Kindle fire Tablet, which got people really excited. People
Speaker 1: were very fired up. Huh about the Kindles and the
Speaker 1: fire tablet. Well, yeah, that's because the fire tablet was
Speaker 1: you know, is a more affordable competition to the iPad,
Speaker 1: another similarly priced tablets, although it does has some severe
Speaker 1: limitations as well. You know, camera, no GPS, no cellular capability. No,
Speaker 1: but if you don't care, if you don't care, if
Speaker 1: you just want a tablet device, then it might be
Speaker 1: exactly what you want. You also didn't mention the smart
Speaker 1: lists and subscriptions that Facebook added, which bring it more
Speaker 1: in line with Google Plus. Yes, that's true. Facebook did
Speaker 1: make some moves to kind of being more like Google
Speaker 1: Plus and kind of take some of the wind out
Speaker 1: of Google's sales. Yeah, yeah, which is funny because Google
Speaker 1: now has Google Music, which also sort of com you know,
Speaker 1: puts them in competition with Apple for their big news
Speaker 1: in October. Yeah. Apple sort of started off October with
Speaker 1: some happy news. You know, i Cloud, the long anticipated
Speaker 1: cloud service launched, not streaming music, but you do have
Speaker 1: the iTunes Match service, which will you don't have to
Speaker 1: upload stuff like you do with the Amazon and Google services.
Speaker 1: Where you upload your music, it will say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we see that you have this, so we will make
Speaker 1: it available to you because we have it in our
Speaker 1: catalog for you know, a year, not not a terrible
Speaker 1: large price to pay. Also the iPhone for US which launched,
Speaker 1: but not an iPhone five. Yeah, the iPhone for Us.
Speaker 1: When it first came out, I think there was the
Speaker 1: kind of an underwhelming response, but that changed very quickly
Speaker 1: once it hits store shells. Which is pretty much true
Speaker 1: of every Apple product ever, is that an Apple product
Speaker 1: comes out and everyone says like, it's okay, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly at least since the first iPhone, like
Speaker 1: it's okay, but it's not exactly what I was hoping for.
Speaker 1: And then when it hits sore shells, I gotta have it.
Speaker 1: And then iOS five of course was released, and that's
Speaker 1: available for many things, and and added some functionality that
Speaker 1: wasn't there in some of the devices too, along with
Speaker 1: Siri um you know, which is has been pretty popular.
Speaker 1: And that's about the only really good news we had
Speaker 1: for October, because we had a lot of sad things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The House of Representatives introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act
Speaker 1: or SOPA, which we did a podcast on just recently,
Speaker 1: so I don't think we need to go over that again.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's it's some people suggest that it could
Speaker 1: quote unquote break the internet. Serious legal ramifications for for
Speaker 1: a lot of websites and a lot of users. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we have some really sad news of various
Speaker 1: various passings in the technology field. Of course, the one
Speaker 1: that probably got the most foot the most coverage was
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs passing away. He passed away the week after
Speaker 1: they introduced their iPhone Forest and the I Cloud and um.
Speaker 1: His passing left a huge hole in the tech industry,
Speaker 1: and there was the for the entire week following there
Speaker 1: was nothing but but coverage of his passing. But even
Speaker 1: it even sort of brought the the many many wars
Speaker 1: between the operating systems to a halt for about a
Speaker 1: week while everybody said, now you know, he really was
Speaker 1: kind of a visionary, and he was. He was unique.
Speaker 1: That also saw Dennis Ritchie pass away in October twenty eleven. Death.
Speaker 1: Ritchie was the guy created the C programming language. UM,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he was. His passing was a big deal
Speaker 1: for people who were into the whole programming side. Also
Speaker 1: John for many of the rest of us who never
Speaker 1: really knew who he was but relied on on on
Speaker 1: programs that are built on what he developed. Also John McCarthy,
Speaker 1: another programmer he passed away. He's the guy who coined
Speaker 1: the term artificial intelligence, and he invented the Lisp programming language.
Speaker 1: Lisp is a programming language that's used in a lot
Speaker 1: of AI. Uh techniques. I love a technology, So he was.
Speaker 1: He was one of the forefathers of the whole AI
Speaker 1: movement that we're still you know, developing even today. Moving
Speaker 1: on into November, that's when Google Music launched officially officially uh.
Speaker 1: And they even shed the beta title yep, and which
Speaker 1: was shocking, right, I mean Google's Google's keeping those beta
Speaker 1: shorter and shorter. They also discontinued or announced the the
Speaker 1: discontinuation of several products um, which they've been doing on
Speaker 1: and off throughout twenty eleven, things like Google Buzz and
Speaker 1: Google Waves, many of which are still somewhat supported right
Speaker 1: now but are going to go away soon. Yeah. Google
Speaker 1: Notebook is gone. Yeah. And then the Federal Trade Commission
Speaker 1: brought complaints against Facebook about user privacy and have put
Speaker 1: a a new restriction on them. They have to undergo
Speaker 1: a twenty year period of privacy audits. Yes, because they
Speaker 1: settled that. Part of the reason why is because it
Speaker 1: was announced, um, actually not announced, but heavily speculated again
Speaker 1: that Facebook would have an initial offering of stock again
Speaker 1: all of its own um, which people are projecting will
Speaker 1: be as of again this recording many many billions of
Speaker 1: dollars into Facebook's coffers um and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people were saying that the reason why Facebook was eager
Speaker 1: to get this off the off the radar is so
Speaker 1: that they can say, look, no, no, no problems here,
Speaker 1: go ahead and buy our stock. So, uh, we'll see
Speaker 1: if that actually happens. But yeah, and we're now over
Speaker 1: an hour. This is the longest podcast ever officially we
Speaker 1: have we have bypassed, we've gone beyond the Steve Jobs podcast,
Speaker 1: and we normally would continue into December, but it's just
Speaker 1: the beginning of December, so we don't know what's happened yet.
Speaker 1: So here's quickly a rundown on what has happened. Steve Balmer,
Speaker 1: Uh was picked up by the scruff of the neck
Speaker 1: by Bill Gates and set outside of Microsoft and told no, no, no,
Speaker 1: And so now Microsoft is looking for an interimc You
Speaker 1: know that happened? Okay, Um, what else happened in December?
Speaker 1: Santa got a Google Android phone and likes it, but
Speaker 1: doesn't like it as much as he would have an
Speaker 1: iPhone for us. Um Amazon acquired Yahoo. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when that happened. Tomorrow, Um, yeah, very well.
Speaker 1: Have Yahoo may very well get bought by the end
Speaker 1: of the year. You know what, Chris, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to hold off and we're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to make some predictions for and hopefully if those predictions
Speaker 1: also spill over into late eleven, the listeners will count them. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, sounds good to me. We're wrapping this up. Guys.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sticking with us for this epic podcast
Speaker 1: of epic epic nous. He was a lot busier in then.
Speaker 1: I think we anticipate Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a
Speaker 1: lot more happened in twenty eleven. And we, of course
Speaker 1: than not cover every single text story because if we had,
Speaker 1: it would have been five or six episodes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any questions, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics you would like us to cover in
Speaker 1: the future, let's no it's goes an email that addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook or Twitter that handle is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff h S. W and Chris and I will
Speaker 1: tall to do again really soon. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone
Speaker 1: app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to
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