Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: start our yearly look back on the previous twelve months.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about some of the big tech news
Speaker 1: stories of and there were a lot of them. So
Speaker 1: I'm dividing this up into two episodes. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at January through May. And I know that's not
Speaker 1: fully half a year, but some of these stories are
Speaker 1: really heavily front loaded. So instead of just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: the story began in say, February, and then in September
Speaker 1: this happened, and then in December this happened. For for
Speaker 1: big stories, I'm doing it all at the front. So
Speaker 1: the second half is a little more sparse. I don't
Speaker 1: go back and recover stories I had already talked about. Also,
Speaker 1: let's get out there was kind of crappy for lots
Speaker 1: of reasons, and I'm going to talk about some of them,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can't get it around it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you just gotta accept it and move on, I guess.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start in January with what set the
Speaker 1: tone for the rest of the year. I am, of
Speaker 1: course talking about c e S. And this is where
Speaker 1: my producer Dylan gets to feel a sense of dread
Speaker 1: creep into his very bones, because he will be going
Speaker 1: to c e S ten along with several of us
Speaker 1: here at How Stuff Works. So Dylan, I'm sorry, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to hear this man he's he's just grinning
Speaker 1: at me, but but his eyes are dead, all right.
Speaker 1: So it was my eighth time attending c e S
Speaker 1: and it was a bit different. Three other people from
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works went with me, and I got to
Speaker 1: see ce S through their eyes, and they were excited
Speaker 1: and impressed by something that I had really begun to
Speaker 1: feel like it was old and stale and and therefore
Speaker 1: it was something to dread. It was actually a little
Speaker 1: fun to see it through the eyes of people who
Speaker 1: had never been there and then just kind of slowly
Speaker 1: shake your head and just say, these children, but what
Speaker 1: was going on there? While VR was a big hit
Speaker 1: at c e S and at that time, the Oculus,
Speaker 1: the HTC Vibe, and the PlayStation VR had yet to
Speaker 1: make their debut, everyone was anticipating that the year was
Speaker 1: going to be the year for virtual reality, but more
Speaker 1: on that a little bit later. We also saw a
Speaker 1: lot of drones, including ones that have ultra high definition
Speaker 1: camera systems, and that blew my mind because just a
Speaker 1: few years ago, buying just an ultra high definition camera
Speaker 1: would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty dollars, and
Speaker 1: now today, for less than a grand, you can buy
Speaker 1: a remote controlled drone that flies through the air and
Speaker 1: has a u h D camera on it, which is
Speaker 1: crazy to me. It also really shows how electronics can
Speaker 1: can drop dramatically in cost. Also, drones can drop dramatically
Speaker 1: from the air when I have the controls in my hands.
Speaker 1: That's a different story. Over in the auto world, it
Speaker 1: was all about AI and connected cars. Nearly every auto
Speaker 1: maker at CS had something to show off in those arenas,
Speaker 1: and uh I was at CS covering a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: including Toyota's press event. Full disclosure, Toyota is the sponsor
Speaker 1: of the show I host called Forward Thinking, and their
Speaker 1: big announcement revolved around the company's billion dollar investment into
Speaker 1: research and development of AI, and I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear a lot more about that in seventeen, so stay
Speaker 1: tuned to Forward Thinking to find out more about that
Speaker 1: in the near future. Over at Intel, the emphasis was
Speaker 1: on small processors that can track various points of data
Speaker 1: and other products. So Intel makes the chips that go
Speaker 1: into other things, and they they explored this with a
Speaker 1: lot of different applications. One was a an electronic bracelet
Speaker 1: you would wear that would allow you to interact with
Speaker 1: giant display and control elements on the display by waving
Speaker 1: your hand around. Another was a mountain bike, and the
Speaker 1: processors had things like accelerometers and and gyroscopes that could
Speaker 1: track movement and orientation and give real time feedback to
Speaker 1: another device. So you could have a smartphone open with
Speaker 1: the appropriate app and get real time information about the
Speaker 1: forces that were being uh felt by a rider on
Speaker 1: one of these bicycles, and uh so you do like
Speaker 1: a crazy you know, flip or or some other trick
Speaker 1: on these bikes and you would get the real time
Speaker 1: data feedback, which was kind of neat to actually see
Speaker 1: this working in real time. One item over at Intel
Speaker 1: was the Segue Advanced Personal Robot, which was a project
Speaker 1: that was formed from a partnership between Segue, Intel and
Speaker 1: a company called shoo Me, and it's part Segue device
Speaker 1: you know, like the personalized mobile devices and part Butler,
Speaker 1: so you could write it around kind of like a hoverboard.
Speaker 1: I know those are terrible names for those things because
Speaker 1: they don't hover, but you know what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: those electronic scooters that are kind of like skateboards in
Speaker 1: a way. Uh. They were all really popular for a
Speaker 1: while until they started catching fire. But anyway, this one
Speaker 1: was like a hoverboard, but you could also attach a
Speaker 1: screen to it, and the screen would have like a
Speaker 1: little simple face and turn it into an assistant robot.
Speaker 1: It's really cute. It could respond to commands and talk
Speaker 1: to you, and it was adorable. Didn't get a chance
Speaker 1: to write on it, though. Actually I think I'd feel
Speaker 1: a little conflicted stepping on something that was that adorable
Speaker 1: and then commanding it to take me places. Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't know how. I probably have a complicated relationship with
Speaker 1: that kind of technology. Another thing that our team in
Speaker 1: particular was interested in was a new Super eight camera
Speaker 1: from Kodak. In fact, two of the guys who went
Speaker 1: with me are from the video team, and both of them,
Speaker 1: as soon as they saw it, thought we have to
Speaker 1: shoot a video about this thing because it reminded us
Speaker 1: all of our childhood and how we got into film
Speaker 1: when we were kids, and it shoots both on film
Speaker 1: and digital form formats, which is really neat. Also, this
Speaker 1: gave me the opportunity to eat some crow because my
Speaker 1: friend i As and I had done an episode of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff where we talked about obsolete technology, and one
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about was eight millimeter film.
Speaker 1: And there I was at c e S looking at
Speaker 1: a brand new super eight camera. So that was awkward
Speaker 1: but super cool. I really liked the design of it.
Speaker 1: It definitely had that retro look and yet included a
Speaker 1: lot of modern conveniences that you would find in digital
Speaker 1: cameras these days. So it was neat. Uh. But that's
Speaker 1: enough about ce S. There was tons of other stuff
Speaker 1: going on. Those were the things we were specifically looking at,
Speaker 1: but we also saw a lot of focus on wearables,
Speaker 1: on health tech, on mental health tech, a lot of
Speaker 1: technology meant to help you try and relax or relieve
Speaker 1: stress or anxiety. Lots of stuff in that realm. I'm
Speaker 1: betting we're gonna see a lot more of that this
Speaker 1: coming year. But January seen also saw some rough news
Speaker 1: for Twitter, which would pretty much follow throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the year for that company, top executives began to
Speaker 1: jump ship and Twitter stock price struggled throughout twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: and rallied briefly when there was talk of Twitter looking
Speaker 1: for a buyer, but then no one stepped forward to
Speaker 1: buy it, and the stock price began to struggle again.
Speaker 1: So it's been pretty rough. We don't know what Twitter's
Speaker 1: long term prospects are at this point. It's crazy because
Speaker 1: it's still a huge platform that a lot of people
Speaker 1: use and a lot of people depend upon it in
Speaker 1: order to maintain their brand. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's still not really a revenue generator, so it may
Speaker 1: be that it's living on borrowed time. We'll see. Also
Speaker 1: in January, Uber, which is always a controversial company, saw
Speaker 1: resistance in several markets as it tried to expand services
Speaker 1: into various countries. For example, in France, cab drivers began
Speaker 1: to set fire to tires in protest. So yeah, Uber
Speaker 1: definitely has seen a lot of resistance, particularly among cab
Speaker 1: driving unions and companies in various regions where it's tried
Speaker 1: to move in. And uh, I mean, it's it's the
Speaker 1: sign of progress. You could argue it may not be
Speaker 1: progress for the cab drivers, but for consumers who want
Speaker 1: to have that choice. UH, it frequently is viewed as
Speaker 1: progress and an early example of a problem that would
Speaker 1: pop up throughout the year. Hackers managed to take down
Speaker 1: power plants in the Ukraine through malware. That particular threat
Speaker 1: was relatively easy to thwart. It wasn't something that was catastrophic,
Speaker 1: but it certainly got people's attention. The idea that malware
Speaker 1: could affect critical infrastructure. I mean, it's something we've known about,
Speaker 1: but to see it actually happened was pretty sobering. Also
Speaker 1: in January, Time Warner suffered one of the earliest security
Speaker 1: breaches of UH. You might remember I think I called
Speaker 1: the Year of security breaches. Well seen gave it a
Speaker 1: run for the money. According to a Reuter's report, up
Speaker 1: to three twenty thousand Time Warner customers had their email
Speaker 1: passwords stolen in an attack. Lenovo in January officially ditched
Speaker 1: the Motorola name. Lenovo had acquired Motorola Mobile from Google.
Speaker 1: It kept the brand name motto for high end phones,
Speaker 1: along with that bat wing m logo that Motorola made famous,
Speaker 1: but Motorola as a mobile brand is a no more.
Speaker 1: Early rumors in January stated that the next iPhone would
Speaker 1: not have a headphone jack, and as we learned later
Speaker 1: on the year, those turned out to be absolutely true.
Speaker 1: But I'll talk about the iPhone more in the next episode,
Speaker 1: since that did not debut until late Nielsen put out
Speaker 1: it's twenty fifteen year in report on digital music, and
Speaker 1: it showed that sales of digital music were down, but
Speaker 1: streaming service subscriptions were way up, and more people were
Speaker 1: using streaming services to access music than ever before. This
Speaker 1: would continue to be a big story in twos and
Speaker 1: on January, Oh man, I'm gonna have to do this
Speaker 1: so many times. In this episode January tenth, David Bowie
Speaker 1: passed away. So you might wonder why I talk about
Speaker 1: David Bowie when I'm talking about technology. Well, he his
Speaker 1: influence in popular music is tangential to technology, but he
Speaker 1: was also heavily influenced by and subsequently became an influencer
Speaker 1: of science fiction, which in turn has a very close
Speaker 1: relationship with technology. So seeing the news about him passing
Speaker 1: away so shortly after his final album came out was
Speaker 1: really sobering and would become one of many stories of
Speaker 1: beloved figures in pop culture as well as technology who
Speaker 1: we lost in So let's move on to February, which,
Speaker 1: at least, if nothing else, has the benefit of being
Speaker 1: the shortest month in the tech world. Was a buzz
Speaker 1: in February about startups competing to bring Elon Musk's hyper
Speaker 1: loop proposal, which he first unveiled back in a Reality Now.
Speaker 1: One of those companies was called hyper Loop Technologies and
Speaker 1: later hyper Loop One, and that became ground zero for
Speaker 1: serious drama among its co founders. One of those co founders,
Speaker 1: formerly named Kevin Brogan now known as Brogan Bam Brogan
Speaker 1: and no, that's not a joke, would be forced out
Speaker 1: of the company. He was essentially ousted from the company
Speaker 1: he co founded, and he would later on sue that company.
Speaker 1: The company would then counter sue Brogan bam Brogan, saying
Speaker 1: that he was passing off untruths that he was slandering
Speaker 1: the company. Uh. For one thing, Bam Brogan said that
Speaker 1: another executive at the company had at one point attempted
Speaker 1: to intimidate him by laying a noose on his desk.
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound like a very healthy corporate culture if true. Uh.
Speaker 1: Eventually those lawsuits were settled out of court. So look
Speaker 1: forward to a future tech Stuff episode where I'm going
Speaker 1: to look at that whole story in much greater detail
Speaker 1: in the future. I think it's too crazy not to.
Speaker 1: It's something that I really want to explore. Also in February,
Speaker 1: Nature dot Com ran an article stating that the semiconductor
Speaker 1: industry would formally announce it would no longer strive to
Speaker 1: keep up with Moore's Law. Now. I know most of
Speaker 1: you know this, but just in case some of you
Speaker 1: aren't unfamiliar, Moore's Laws really about an observation that a
Speaker 1: man named Gordon Moore made. He's a co founder of Intel.
Speaker 1: He made it several decades ago about the tendency for
Speaker 1: the number of discrete components on a semiconductor chip to
Speaker 1: double every two years or so. And by discrete components,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about transistors. Now. The important thing to
Speaker 1: remember about this, as always, is that this was more
Speaker 1: or less observation about the financial viability of adding more
Speaker 1: transistors to a semiconductor. It wasn't that there was some
Speaker 1: magical law dictating this, but rather that the economy of
Speaker 1: scale and the improvement in UH in manufacturing technologies would
Speaker 1: allow for this to happen, and that there would be
Speaker 1: a demand for more powerful semiconductors and microprocessors um and
Speaker 1: as a result, uh, well not as a result. But
Speaker 1: it turns out this has been a true observation and
Speaker 1: a lot of companies have been striving to keep it
Speaker 1: true over the years, and we've sort of fudged with
Speaker 1: the definition a bit. Looking at it more as every
Speaker 1: two years microprocessors essentially double in processing power, maybe not
Speaker 1: necessarily in components or transistors, but in the ability to
Speaker 1: actually process information. According to this report, however, the semiconductor
Speaker 1: industry is essentially ready to give up on that, saying
Speaker 1: it is no longer feasible to try and keep Moore's
Speaker 1: law active. And this is because of two different things.
Speaker 1: One of the factors that is a problem when you're
Speaker 1: talking about sustaining More's law is that the smaller the
Speaker 1: components get, the more they're affected by quantum mechanics. One
Speaker 1: of the aspects of quantum mechanics is something called electron tunneling,
Speaker 1: and you can really think of it in this way.
Speaker 1: Electrons have a probability to exist in any given location
Speaker 1: around uh, kind of like a cloud. Think of it like,
Speaker 1: you can't really dictate exactly where the electron is going
Speaker 1: to be. It's gonna be within a cloud, and there's
Speaker 1: a probability for it to be anywhere inside that cloud.
Speaker 1: If that cloud were to overlap a gate like a
Speaker 1: transistor gate, then that means there is a probability, however small,
Speaker 1: that the electron could be on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the gate that it's supposed to be on. And if
Speaker 1: there is a probability, that means sometimes it happens that way.
Speaker 1: So when you make these components smaller and smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: it becomes more challenging to figure out the materials you
Speaker 1: need and the architecture you need to prevent electron tunneling
Speaker 1: from becoming a big problem, because if you can't control
Speaker 1: the flow of electrons, you can't really have logic gates.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're gonna have errors passed through and then you
Speaker 1: just keep having mistakes pop up and your programs won't run.
Speaker 1: The other issue is that the more components you cram
Speaker 1: onto a chip, the more heat it generates, and in general,
Speaker 1: heat and electronics don't work so well together, so trying
Speaker 1: to manage heat becomes a bigger and bigger challenge. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it looks like we're getting towards the end of Moore's
Speaker 1: law using conventional semiconductor chips. That doesn't mean we won't
Speaker 1: come up with some alternative, but it may mean that
Speaker 1: we'll see progress slow in the short term as we
Speaker 1: start to explore other ways of increasing that processing power. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest stories of in tech began in February.
Speaker 1: That's when the FBI and Apple got into a real
Speaker 1: tiff with one another. In February, a court case made
Speaker 1: headlines when the FBI pursued an order against Apple to
Speaker 1: force the company to deactivate a feature on the iPhone
Speaker 1: five C, and the key point was the FBI wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to deactivate the feature that would erase
Speaker 1: and an encryption key after ten failed password attempts. In
Speaker 1: other words, you lock your iPhone, use a password to
Speaker 1: unlock it. If someone else gets hold of your phone
Speaker 1: and tries brute force attacks to unlock your phone after
Speaker 1: ten failed attempts, the key that would decrypt all the
Speaker 1: information on your phone would delete itself, and then you
Speaker 1: would have an even harder time being able to decrypt
Speaker 1: that information like you could you might be able to
Speaker 1: finally get access to it, but it would all be gibberish,
Speaker 1: and then you would have to go through the process
Speaker 1: of trying to decrypt the information. Now, the phone in
Speaker 1: question belonged to a couple that committed the December two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen attack in San Bernardino, California, which resulted
Speaker 1: in fourteen deaths and twenty two serious injuries. So there
Speaker 1: was a very emotional case and very politically charged, and
Speaker 1: it also brought up serious questions about security, privacy and
Speaker 1: the boundaries of law. Apple resisted the FBI's requests, and
Speaker 1: later in March, the FBI claimed it had found another
Speaker 1: way to reach the security without Apple's participation. The Washington
Speaker 1: Post would later report in April that professional hackers had
Speaker 1: sold a zero day exploit to the FBI in order
Speaker 1: to unlock the phone. But for that month and a
Speaker 1: half in February and and March, everyone chimed in on
Speaker 1: the case, including representatives from Google and Microsoft and Bill
Speaker 1: Gates himself. Now, some of them felt the FBI's request
Speaker 1: constitute a back door into a secure system, which is
Speaker 1: a terrible idea. It's always a terrible idea because if
Speaker 1: you create a backdoor into a secure system, you've created
Speaker 1: a potential vulnerability that others can exploit. Other people, however,
Speaker 1: felt that the FBI's request was specific for one particular
Speaker 1: phone and that nothing more would come of it, and
Speaker 1: so therefore it would have made more sense for Apple
Speaker 1: to acquiesce to the FBI's demands. Uh. But it ended
Speaker 1: up being a moot point because the FBI eventually was
Speaker 1: able to access the phone without Apple's participation. Also in February,
Speaker 1: HTC would open up pre orders for the Vibe headset.
Speaker 1: It's a virtual reality headset and had the goal of
Speaker 1: shipping headsets out starting April one, and the headsets cost seven,
Speaker 1: which does not include the beefy computer you would need
Speaker 1: to run the software the HTC Vibe uses at a
Speaker 1: decent clip. But the Vibe is pretty cool and he
Speaker 1: uses external sensors called lighthouses to provide additional tracking and
Speaker 1: orientation station data, which means you can actually move around
Speaker 1: inside a physical space while the the things you see
Speaker 1: and here would be within a virtual space. And that's
Speaker 1: pretty neat. I actually like it a lot. I got
Speaker 1: to try it out not too long ago, and I
Speaker 1: really like the htc vive experience in UH In February,
Speaker 1: Joshua Browder would launch a bot that can contest parking
Speaker 1: tickets in the United Kingdom. So Browner has created a
Speaker 1: few algorithms that work really well within structured environments, things
Speaker 1: where you have a limited number of choices and there
Speaker 1: are you know, different pathways. You can almost think of
Speaker 1: it as choose your own adventure, and online forms like
Speaker 1: the ones you would use to contest a parking ticket
Speaker 1: in the UK fit that bill. So the AI can
Speaker 1: actually argue on behalf of the person ticketed, and they
Speaker 1: actually has a decent chance of success for contesting tickets
Speaker 1: assuming that you have a valid case. So essentially, people
Speaker 1: who would receive a parking ticket that they felt was
Speaker 1: unfair could go through use this AI. The AI would
Speaker 1: fill out all of the paperwork necessary based on a
Speaker 1: few questions that would ask the person to fill in
Speaker 1: a little bit of information and then it would take
Speaker 1: care of all the forms, send the forms to the
Speaker 1: appropriate office, and often that was enough to get the
Speaker 1: ticket thrown out. So pretty cool use of AI, and
Speaker 1: it shows that if you have a very structured system,
Speaker 1: AI can navigate it pretty well. The more unstructured the
Speaker 1: system is the more challenging it is for AI to
Speaker 1: be able to complete a task successfully. But something like
Speaker 1: a government bureaucracy is, by its very nature very a structured,
Speaker 1: so it turned out to be a good use for
Speaker 1: AI around that time. In February, consumer advocacy groups, advertisers,
Speaker 1: and content companies began to butt heads over online advertising
Speaker 1: and ad blockers, and since then we've seen cases of
Speaker 1: advocacy groups arguing that anti ad blocking strategies amount to
Speaker 1: an invasion of privacy, meaning that if a web browser
Speaker 1: or a website rather is telling you, hey, I see
Speaker 1: that you're using ad blocking software, then the advocacy groups
Speaker 1: argue that's an invasion of privacy on the part of
Speaker 1: the person browsing that web page. Uh. Content creators, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, say well, we have to make money
Speaker 1: or else we can't create content. If we don't make money,
Speaker 1: then we can't afford to pay people to make the content,
Speaker 1: we can't afford to pay people to host the content,
Speaker 1: and the content goes away. So it's a complicated issue,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of people who have valid
Speaker 1: points on both sides. Um and a lot of people
Speaker 1: are making very emotional arguments in order to try and
Speaker 1: support their side of it um. But as for my
Speaker 1: own personal opinion, it's complicated. I work in a in
Speaker 1: an industry where I want to make a living, which
Speaker 1: means I want to have revenue coming in so that
Speaker 1: I can, you know, get get paid. So on certain levels,
Speaker 1: I definitely think online advertising is necessary. I think there
Speaker 1: are good ways and bad ways to implement it, and
Speaker 1: I've seen plenty of bad ways, and I much prefer
Speaker 1: the non intrusive good ways. But it is a complicated landscape.
Speaker 1: At the end of February, Microsoft began taking pre orders
Speaker 1: for the Hollow Lens, it's augmented reality headset. Now these
Speaker 1: were for developer editions of the headset, so they weren't
Speaker 1: meant to be a consumer product, which is a good
Speaker 1: thing because they cost three thousand dollars a pop, expensive
Speaker 1: for an augmented reality headset. But again it was more
Speaker 1: meant as a developer tool, not as something for the
Speaker 1: average consumer, and in fact, we may never see a
Speaker 1: consumer version of the Hollow Lens ever offered. It may
Speaker 1: be that the augmented reality applications that the Hollow Lens
Speaker 1: can support will end up finding their way into other products,
Speaker 1: but not specifically a consumer version of the hollow lens.
Speaker 1: That's a possibility. All Right, We've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk about with two thousand and sixteen, but before
Speaker 1: we jump into that, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Alright, we're back, and that means we're
Speaker 1: moving into March two thousand and sixteen. That's when south
Speaker 1: By Southwest happened and how Stuff Works was there. We
Speaker 1: ended up having several panels at south By Southwest. We
Speaker 1: hosted several events in a house that was rented by
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and it was a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting experience. We also got to see a lot of
Speaker 1: cool companies talk about really cutting edge ideas, particularly in
Speaker 1: areas like artificial intelligence and autonomous cars and lots of
Speaker 1: other uh tangential technological areas. Shortly after south By Southwest ended,
Speaker 1: the city of Austin made some demands of Uber and Left,
Speaker 1: specifically about background checks and some other issues that affect
Speaker 1: drivers now. Uber and Left weren't really keen on those demands,
Speaker 1: and as a result, there was kind of a stalemate
Speaker 1: between the companies and Austin, and eventually the company said
Speaker 1: all right, we're leaving and gave their drivers about forty
Speaker 1: eight hours notice before they left town. UH So, Uber
Speaker 1: and Lift, we're both left without support in the city
Speaker 1: of Austin, Texas. A lot of people say this was
Speaker 1: a move specifically to a pressure on the state of
Speaker 1: Texas as a whole to create a rules and regulations
Speaker 1: that that governed the entire state, rather than having to
Speaker 1: go through this and do it for city by city
Speaker 1: or region by region, which would be complicated for a
Speaker 1: company that spans multiple states to have to manage. UH.
Speaker 1: But it made a lot of people really upset. I
Speaker 1: listened to podcasts from folks who record out in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: and while they saw both sides of the issue, the
Speaker 1: personal impact on their lives was very apparent. Near the
Speaker 1: end of March, the Oculus Rift was released with a
Speaker 1: US price tag of six hundred dollars, which, again, like
Speaker 1: the HTC Vibe, doesn't include the beefy computer. You actually
Speaker 1: need to run the VR software at a level that's acceptable.
Speaker 1: A new VR system with headset is closer to about
Speaker 1: one thousand, nine hundred dollars as a as a starting point,
Speaker 1: So about PC with the six D dollar headset. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are those who argue you could get away with
Speaker 1: a less expensive PC. You don't necessarily need the cutting
Speaker 1: edge GPUs to run VR, but many people advocate for
Speaker 1: close to cutting edge technology so that you don't run
Speaker 1: into any choppiness or problems when it's rendering to the
Speaker 1: virtual reality headset. And Uh that high price and a
Speaker 1: limited game library would keep VR and kind of a
Speaker 1: niche market for most often. Same thing is true for
Speaker 1: HTC VIVE. I mean, these systems are expensive, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that the killer app has been created yet
Speaker 1: for virtual reality. Not something that's going to convince people
Speaker 1: that it is a must have piece of technology in
Speaker 1: their homes. Maybe we'll see that in Seen, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. In When He's Sixteen. Also in March,
Speaker 1: Ray Tomlinson, who is credited as the inventor of email
Speaker 1: passed Away. It was Tomlinson who decided that email addresses
Speaker 1: would consist of a person's name or handle, and then
Speaker 1: the name of the machine that they were using, and
Speaker 1: that the two would be separated from each other with
Speaker 1: the AT symbol. Tomlinson said it was the only preposition
Speaker 1: on the keyboard, so that's kind of interesting. In March,
Speaker 1: Deep Minds Alpha Go AI would end up going up
Speaker 1: against Go Champion player Human Go Champion player Lee C
Speaker 1: Doll in a series of five games, and the AI
Speaker 1: won four out of the five matches. So Go was
Speaker 1: one of those holdout games in which humans were still
Speaker 1: better than machines at least championship level. Humans were better
Speaker 1: than machines. But it's no Go, no Mo. Machines are
Speaker 1: beating us at everything, Dylan smirked, in case you could
Speaker 1: hear it. The FCC created new rules in March limiting
Speaker 1: the data Internet service providers can use for marketing purposes.
Speaker 1: The telecom companies objected to that ruling, of course, and
Speaker 1: said that that would limit their ability way beyond what
Speaker 1: other companies could do. So what they were saying the
Speaker 1: I s p s were saying, hey, brow web web services.
Speaker 1: Web sites like Google or Amazon can gather a lot
Speaker 1: of information about people through their behaviors, So why are
Speaker 1: we being punished when companies like Google and Amazon aren't
Speaker 1: being punished? And the f c C said, well, that's
Speaker 1: because we don't govern what companies like Google and Amazon do.
Speaker 1: They're overseen by the Federal Trade commission the f TC,
Speaker 1: but we oversee what you do. We're the f c C,
Speaker 1: so sorry. Sony would announce that the PlayStation VR would
Speaker 1: launch in October with the price tag of three dollars.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to also supplement that with the other
Speaker 1: materials needed to make a full system, you would need
Speaker 1: a ps camera and move controllers, which we mean you
Speaker 1: had to pay a little bit more. I think they
Speaker 1: had a bundle for five dollars for to move controllers,
Speaker 1: the camera, and the PSVR headset, and in addition to that,
Speaker 1: of course, you would also need a PlayStation four. However,
Speaker 1: have a lot of people saying that PlayStation was ahead
Speaker 1: of the game because even though the specs for the
Speaker 1: ps VR are not as powerful as those on the
Speaker 1: HTC Vibe or the Oculus Rift, lots of people already
Speaker 1: own a PlayStation four, and since that's all you need
Speaker 1: on the computing end to run the headset, it gave
Speaker 1: those consumers an advantage they didn't have to go out
Speaker 1: and buy a new gaming rig in order to run
Speaker 1: VR programs. But on the flip side, people argued while
Speaker 1: the experiences wouldn't be necessarily as uh as innovative or
Speaker 1: immersive as what you would see on Oculus or Vive.
Speaker 1: Turns out, everybody was kind of a a loser this
Speaker 1: year in Steen when it comes to VR, no one
Speaker 1: was able to really make great sales in including the
Speaker 1: ps VR, so it's been a rough year for virtual reality.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of the month, Oculus Rift headsets began
Speaker 1: to actually ship to consumers, but there were some manufacturing
Speaker 1: problems and some component shortages which meant a lot of
Speaker 1: people had to wait a really long time to get
Speaker 1: their promised gear. And more on that in a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories from Sten happened in March.
Speaker 1: That's when Microsoft launched a chat bought aimed Tay. Do
Speaker 1: you remember Tay, Dylan? You remember Tay, right, Dylan's nodding.
Speaker 1: Tay was not long for this world unfortunately. Uh. Tay
Speaker 1: was kind of kind of presented in the way of
Speaker 1: like a like a teenage female PERSONA and Ta could
Speaker 1: communicate on various social media platforms like Twitter and a
Speaker 1: couple of others. Within twenty four hours, Microsoft would take
Speaker 1: Tay offline because Tay or in a little cray cray.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem was that you could tell Tay
Speaker 1: to parrot what you said, so you can get Tay
Speaker 1: to repeat what you said, and Tay would end up
Speaker 1: adding little, little quirky elements to whatever you said. But
Speaker 1: that meant that they ended up making some really awful,
Speaker 1: awful statements, things that were racist or sexist or just
Speaker 1: playing ugly, and then Tay would eventually start to incorporate
Speaker 1: those into other responses is and became an incredibly absurd
Speaker 1: internet troll within twenty four hours, and Microsoft pulled the
Speaker 1: plug on Ta. There's a valuable lesson teaching us that
Speaker 1: people are terrible and you should never give them anything.
Speaker 1: Pebble would announce that it would lay off forty employees
Speaker 1: in March. That's a big deal for Pebble because that
Speaker 1: was about of its staff. And spoiler alert for December.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and tell you the Pebble story
Speaker 1: for so this is what I mean by front loading
Speaker 1: this episode. At the end of the year, Fitbit announced
Speaker 1: it would acquire Pebble's software assets, so Pebble owners were
Speaker 1: told that over time there'd be less and less support
Speaker 1: for their devices. If you had ordered a Pebble two
Speaker 1: or any other Pebble device after this, moment then they
Speaker 1: were Pebbles going to refund your money. Um you Otherwise
Speaker 1: if you if you had bought something before December seven,
Speaker 1: you could get a refund, but army after December seven
Speaker 1: you could get a refund, but not before. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rough time for Pebble. So Fitbit was acquiring Pebble because
Speaker 1: Pebbles company just couldn't support itself through sales anymore. Their
Speaker 1: sales were not strong enough for them to be a
Speaker 1: viable company. So uh. They were also having an issue
Speaker 1: trying to move smart watches, which was a crowded market
Speaker 1: in and it's not good when you have a crowded
Speaker 1: market and you pair that with consumer apathy. There's just
Speaker 1: not a lot of compelling reasons to go out and
Speaker 1: buy a smart watch. If you want one, you probably
Speaker 1: went out and bought one. But there's probably not a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons out there that would convince someone, oh,
Speaker 1: I need one of these if they didn't already want it.
Speaker 1: And I say this as someone who owns a Pebble,
Speaker 1: I I'm sad to see this news. On top of that,
Speaker 1: Fitbit has had a really rough year. They have consistently
Speaker 1: seen their stock price dropped throughout the year they had
Speaker 1: a high of around fifty dollars a share and now
Speaker 1: it's somewhere close to eight dollars a share. So it's
Speaker 1: been rough And in fact, some people argue that Fitbit
Speaker 1: acquiring Pebbles software assets is really the sign of two
Speaker 1: sinking ships lashing themselves together and then sinking slightly slower. Um.
Speaker 1: That's some of the more cynical people in the tech world.
Speaker 1: Others say, well, maybe this is the right fit. Maybe
Speaker 1: Fitbit using Pebble software can create really compelling wearables that
Speaker 1: are able to turn the prospects around and maybe make
Speaker 1: a compelling case for people who haven't bought a wearable
Speaker 1: device to go out and do so. But it was
Speaker 1: a really rough time for both companies. Uh, not a
Speaker 1: great year for either Fitbit or Pebble. Maybe twin seventeen
Speaker 1: will be different, although it's it's an odd world. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the CEO, the founder of Pebble will not be
Speaker 1: going with Pebble employees who are moving over to Fitbit.
Speaker 1: He will instead be going over to an incubator company
Speaker 1: to work on other startups. So um, rough end, especially
Speaker 1: for someone like me who really believed in the company
Speaker 1: and purchased a smart watch. I bought a Pebble shortly
Speaker 1: after the Kickstarter campaign had ended. I pre ordered one
Speaker 1: after seeing one in person at c ES a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and the company was kind enough to
Speaker 1: send me a red Kickstarter edition Pebble watch. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I guess that's a collector's item. Now. Moving into April,
Speaker 1: April first rolled around, and boy, oh boy, we saw
Speaker 1: lots of gags, pranks, jokes, and attempts at humor and
Speaker 1: people either loved it or they hated it. I know
Speaker 1: it's a lot of tech journalists despise April Fool's Day,
Speaker 1: largely because you can't really trust any news that gets
Speaker 1: published on April Fool's Day, and tech journalists hate that.
Speaker 1: I think that if you can make a fun joke,
Speaker 1: it's great and it shows some lightheartedness. And no, not
Speaker 1: all the jokes are a big hit. Some of them
Speaker 1: are dorky or corny, and I think those are fine too. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of them are misjudged and those are more problematic,
Speaker 1: And in fact, we saw one of those in Google
Speaker 1: included a feature called Google's Send with in Gmail, and
Speaker 1: that ended up being backfiring in a big way. The
Speaker 1: send with button would send a message and include an
Speaker 1: animated gift of a minion from the Despicable Me franchise
Speaker 1: dropping a microphone. But some people were hitting send with
Speaker 1: without realizing that it wasn't truly a replacement for the
Speaker 1: send button, and so then you had folks sending messages
Speaker 1: that really did not need to have an animated character
Speaker 1: dropping a microphone attached to them. Imagine sending something of
Speaker 1: sensitive nature to somebody, or you're consoling a friend who
Speaker 1: is having a particularly rough time for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: having a mic drop moment probably was not the most
Speaker 1: appropriate of actions, and in fact, Google removed the feature
Speaker 1: and even wrote that they must have they accidentally pranked
Speaker 1: themselves in The HTC Vibe was released as promised in
Speaker 1: early April, and uh so it started to to make
Speaker 1: some sales and started to arrive at uh the homes
Speaker 1: of folks who preordered it. Meanwhile, the Oculus was still
Speaker 1: having issues with their their supply chain, so they were
Speaker 1: still very slowly trickling out to the folks who had
Speaker 1: ordered it. US Senators Richard Burr and Diane Feinstein drafted
Speaker 1: a bill that would force tech companies to build in
Speaker 1: systems allowing them to decrypt information on their own devices
Speaker 1: that allow for encryption. So, in other words, this would
Speaker 1: require smartphone companies that have encryption built into their phones
Speaker 1: to have a back door for law enforcement to decrypt
Speaker 1: a phone if necessary. Uh I mentioned earlier that backdoors
Speaker 1: are a terrible idea. I wanna double down on that
Speaker 1: right here. Back Doors are a terrible idea. You might
Speaker 1: as well not have encryption at all if you are
Speaker 1: building in back doors, because you've created a vulnerability. There's
Speaker 1: a bright, shiny target for every single hacker out there
Speaker 1: to exploit. And at that point, you don't need encryption
Speaker 1: because if you if you have a lock on your door,
Speaker 1: but you give everyone in the world a copy of
Speaker 1: the key, what's the point of the lock. So um,
Speaker 1: I understand that there is a political motivation to reducing
Speaker 1: the impact of encryption, but it's I think it's misplaced
Speaker 1: by may. This particular bill, this this version of that
Speaker 1: bill had fizzled out. It did not get passed into law,
Speaker 1: but in September burn Feinstein began crafting an updated version
Speaker 1: with a narrower scope and refined language that was a
Speaker 1: little sneaky in my opinion, Ultimately, it still requires companies
Speaker 1: to have what amounts to a backdoor to bypass encryption,
Speaker 1: and I still think that's completely misguided. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: such a huge story throughout that you can really think
Speaker 1: of that year as being the one in which lots
Speaker 1: of lawmakers were looking for ways to make encryption effectively
Speaker 1: illegal or at least unnecessary or irrelevant. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: something that we continue to see happen right now. All right,
Speaker 1: we've had another one of those dates, folks. On April one,
Speaker 1: that's when we lost Prince. So, like David Bowie, Prince
Speaker 1: was a huge influence in popular music. He was also
Speaker 1: he had a very complicated relationship with technology and the internet,
Speaker 1: in particular, in two thousand seven, he became the first
Speaker 1: artist to release an album exclusively online. However, he also
Speaker 1: was famous for battling lots of online platforms like YouTube
Speaker 1: and others, uh, specifically for sharing music what he felt
Speaker 1: was robbing him and robbing other artists of their livelihood.
Speaker 1: He didn't want users to have the ability to upload
Speaker 1: videos that featured music without an artist's permission, which is understandable,
Speaker 1: but it meant that he took very powerful movements like
Speaker 1: he made made it his mission to make sure his
Speaker 1: music was not easily available online. He fought it tooth
Speaker 1: and nail um. All that being said, the tech world
Speaker 1: very much mourned his passing once news broke out about it.
Speaker 1: Very complicated personally. Also, in declared the Internet to be dead,
Speaker 1: but I think that's largely misinterpreted. I don't think Prince
Speaker 1: was actually saying the Internet itself was a dead medium,
Speaker 1: but rather for artists who want to make a living
Speaker 1: using the Internet, as that means was not really a
Speaker 1: viable approach. I think that's really what he was intending
Speaker 1: by that statement. That's my own interpretation. However, in late April,
Speaker 1: we learned that Google was creating a startup incubator in
Speaker 1: house to help retain employees. Google had seen employees leave
Speaker 1: the company in order to pursue their own ideas and
Speaker 1: their create their own companies, sort of leaving with their
Speaker 1: own personal projects. You know. Google gives every employee, or
Speaker 1: at least used to, of their time to develop projects
Speaker 1: that aren't directly related to their normal work, and by
Speaker 1: creating the startup incubator, it was sort of an attempt
Speaker 1: to keep those folks in the Google family rather than
Speaker 1: encourage them to go out and strike out on their own,
Speaker 1: and thus Google is bereft of their talent. Uh. Also
Speaker 1: in April, music streaming service Title land and ex landed
Speaker 1: an exclusive deal would Beyonce to feature her album Lemonade
Speaker 1: for one weekend before became available on iTunes and Amazon.
Speaker 1: This was another big story throughout not Beyonce's Lemonade in particular,
Speaker 1: although that did make quite the stir when it came out,
Speaker 1: but rather the way that streaming music services were trying
Speaker 1: to differentiate themselves, largely through exclusive deals with artists. UH.
Speaker 1: These exclusive deals tend to last a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time and then the exclusivity ends. But Title is not
Speaker 1: the only one that did it. Apple Music has done
Speaker 1: it several times in sixteen, and we would see revenue
Speaker 1: from streaming services out performing revenue from digital downloads for
Speaker 1: the first time ever. So, in other words, more people
Speaker 1: are subscribing to music streaming services paying for a subscription
Speaker 1: to streaming music services than they are purchasing music online. UH.
Speaker 1: So iTunes is seeing much lower numbers for people buying music,
Speaker 1: but higher numbers for people using Apple Music and subscribing
Speaker 1: to that service. I also saw a really interesting article
Speaker 1: um that claimed at least that artists aren't really suffering
Speaker 1: because of this, that the numbers generated through streaming are
Speaker 1: pretty much the same as what they would be for
Speaker 1: digital sales of that same music. So even though there's
Speaker 1: some artists like Taylor Swift who have famously said that
Speaker 1: streaming is robbing artists of revenue and that it's a
Speaker 1: terrible thing, the numbers appear to not support that argument.
Speaker 1: They they seem to say, it's it's the same amount
Speaker 1: of money. It's a different delivery system, but artists, or
Speaker 1: at least music labels should be making the same amount. Now,
Speaker 1: if an artist is making less because of their agreement
Speaker 1: with their music label, that's a different issue. That's not
Speaker 1: so much the delivery system that's allows the contract towards
Speaker 1: the Into April, the Supreme Court approved a change to
Speaker 1: the federal rule of criminal procedure, and it would allow
Speaker 1: the FBI to get permission to search computers and drives remotely.
Speaker 1: In other words, it gave the FBI greater authority to
Speaker 1: hack into machines. And the logic behind this decision was
Speaker 1: that a suspect might be within one jurisdiction, but because
Speaker 1: of the nature of the Internet. The suspect might be
Speaker 1: using machines that are in totally different jurisdictions or entirely
Speaker 1: different countries in some cases, and it would be impossible
Speaker 1: for some law enforcement to get access to those machines
Speaker 1: because they're outside of the jurisdiction. So the only alternative
Speaker 1: is to hack into the service and look for evidence
Speaker 1: that way. But the a c l U and companies
Speaker 1: like Google argued against it, saying it amounts to unreasonable
Speaker 1: search and seizure because it affects not only a suspect,
Speaker 1: but also innocent people as well, or or not the
Speaker 1: suspect could be innocent. It affects people not related to
Speaker 1: the to the the investigation. And uh so this is
Speaker 1: a complicated matter that I'm sure we will see pop
Speaker 1: up again in all Right, we're getting close to the end.
Speaker 1: We have one more month to get through. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of information in it. But before I jump into May,
Speaker 1: let's take another break to thank our sponsor. All Right,
Speaker 1: home stretch. May. On May seven, a man named Joshua
Speaker 1: Brown died in a car accident. He was driving a
Speaker 1: Tesla Models and reportedly the autopilot driver assist system was
Speaker 1: engaged and also reportedly he was traveling at nine miles
Speaker 1: over the speed limit for the highway he was on.
Speaker 1: The car he was in collided with the side of
Speaker 1: a tractor trailer. Now, initial reports suggested the autopilot system
Speaker 1: was unable to distinguish the trailer from the bright sky
Speaker 1: that was present that day, and the car failed to
Speaker 1: break as it should have because it didn't recognize that
Speaker 1: there was an obstacle in the way. The radar and
Speaker 1: the cameras didn't pick anything up. Other accidents, including another
Speaker 1: fatal one, would follow later in the year that involved
Speaker 1: or allegedly involved Tesla autopilot being in play. Now, Tesla's
Speaker 1: autopilot feature is meant to be a driver augmented experience,
Speaker 1: a driver assist feature, not a replacement for drivers, and
Speaker 1: to enable it, drivers have to acknowledge they understand this.
Speaker 1: They read a warning message saying as much. But this
Speaker 1: was a rough rough year for Tesla because of that.
Speaker 1: Later in May, a University of Michigan survey revealed that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people don't really want a driverless
Speaker 1: car or want to ride in a driverless car that
Speaker 1: doesn't have at least some sort of manual override system.
Speaker 1: Many said they were afraid to be in a self
Speaker 1: driving car at all, said they'd rather have control themselves,
Speaker 1: manual control and and no self driving car elements included. Now, personally,
Speaker 1: I hate the idea of having manual override controls in
Speaker 1: an autonomous car. And I've said this before because it
Speaker 1: amounts to the same thing as someone saying in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat and reaching over and grabbing your steering wheel
Speaker 1: or stomping on your foot to hit the accelerator or
Speaker 1: the break. Uh, it's not safe. It's much more safe
Speaker 1: to have a fully autonomous car, assuming that the system
Speaker 1: has been designed properly. Obviously, you make a really crappy
Speaker 1: autonomous car, then it's not safe. But if you're following
Speaker 1: the best practices, it's much more safe to give troll
Speaker 1: to the vehicle and not struggle with it. But I
Speaker 1: also say that as someone who doesn't drive, so perhaps
Speaker 1: I'm heavily biased. In fact, I am heavily biased. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no no perhaps about it. Another big story in
Speaker 1: May um a crazy story, was that there was an
Speaker 1: Australian businessman named Craig Wright who came forward and claimed
Speaker 1: he was Satoshi Nakamoto a k a. The creator of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and well, the media essentially said, say, what can you
Speaker 1: prove it? And Craig Wright said, boy, how do I
Speaker 1: can prove it? Here's some cryptography for you. And then
Speaker 1: the cryptography community said this is really lousy. And then
Speaker 1: eventually Craig Wright removed the posts he had that quote
Speaker 1: unquote contained the proof of his identity. A London Review
Speaker 1: of Books investigation concluded that Right was making a baseless
Speaker 1: claim and went so far as to suggest perhaps the
Speaker 1: motivation for claiming to be Nakamoto was that he was
Speaker 1: trying to make money through selling patents related to bitcoin
Speaker 1: in order to cover other debts that he had amassed
Speaker 1: through various business ventures. Uh. It was not a pretty
Speaker 1: story at all, but kind of crazy. Also in May,
Speaker 1: Oculus announced that it had it was going to create
Speaker 1: a limited number of Oculus Rift headsets for sale at
Speaker 1: brick and mortar Best Buy stores. They were gonna make
Speaker 1: just a limited number available for physical purchase at these stores,
Speaker 1: and that drove some preorder customers absolutely bonkers because they
Speaker 1: still had not received their sets that they had pre ordered.
Speaker 1: Oculus solution to this problem was to say, hey, if
Speaker 1: you go and buy it at the best Buy, we
Speaker 1: will preserve the preorder perks that come along with the
Speaker 1: preorder set, so you'll you'll still get the perks that
Speaker 1: you should have, but you can go and get your
Speaker 1: set this way rather than wait for it. That did
Speaker 1: not go over very well. Uh. I think describing the
Speaker 1: Oculus Riffs launch as rocky or problematic is probably being generous.
Speaker 1: It did not. It did not go very smoothly. Um,
Speaker 1: and not all of that was necessarily Oculus's fault, but
Speaker 1: it did not reflect well in the company when these
Speaker 1: sort of things happened. Also in May, Radiohead fans began
Speaker 1: to scratch their heads because the band was doing some
Speaker 1: odd stuff. The entire Twitter and Facebook history of the
Speaker 1: band got deleted and their web page was replaced with
Speaker 1: a blank white page. Now all of that ended up
Speaker 1: being part of a campaign to promote a new album,
Speaker 1: but at the time people were wondering exactly what was up. Also,
Speaker 1: a ten year old kid in Finland earned ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars because he found a flaw in Instagram's app, and
Speaker 1: that flaw would allow him to delete any comments left
Speaker 1: on Instagram. He alerted Facebook. He said, hey, I found
Speaker 1: this this flaw, you need to fix it, and Facebook
Speaker 1: said thanks and then paid him ten grand for the discovery.
Speaker 1: So good for that kid, Ice creams on him. IBM
Speaker 1: opened up it's quantum computing platform to researchers in May
Speaker 1: of twenty sixteen, saying that if you want to run
Speaker 1: quantum computing experiments on our equipment, you can. You can
Speaker 1: use the online portal and do that. They just had
Speaker 1: to request an invite to create experiments to run on
Speaker 1: quantum logic gates, which is pretty cool. We still don't
Speaker 1: know what the full potential for quantum computing is. We
Speaker 1: know that it could absolutely transform cryptography and encryption and
Speaker 1: and related fields, but beyond that, it's uh. There's still
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about what quantum computing will be
Speaker 1: great for. The Wall Street Journal would publish an article
Speaker 1: that said LIFT and GM had entered a partnership to
Speaker 1: start testing autonomous Chevy Bolt cars as a cab service,
Speaker 1: aiming for a a soft launch in and Google published
Speaker 1: a blog post explaining that researchers had been feeding romance
Speaker 1: novels along with other materials, to artificial intelligence to help
Speaker 1: its ability to understand conversational language. And lots of bodices
Speaker 1: began ripping all over the place in AI Land. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: it makes sense when you really look into it. First
Speaker 1: of all, it wasn't just romance novels, but that's how
Speaker 1: it was widely reported because it was the the most
Speaker 1: amusing part of the story. The real way to think
Speaker 1: about this is that we humans tend to have lots
Speaker 1: of different ways to say the same thing. Like you
Speaker 1: can use different turns of phrase or figures of speech
Speaker 1: in order to express the same idea a hundred different ways,
Speaker 1: and this is difficult for computers to parse. So by
Speaker 1: feeding romance novels, which are largely formulaic, to AI, it
Speaker 1: kind of shows that there are lots of different ways
Speaker 1: to say basically the same thing. If most romance novels
Speaker 1: follow a particular formula, but they each contain their own
Speaker 1: specific language, as created by the author, then you know
Speaker 1: their own way of expressing these same basic ideas. It's
Speaker 1: a good way to teach computers, Hey, there's all these
Speaker 1: different ways to get across the same basic notion. So
Speaker 1: it made sense if you looked at it from a
Speaker 1: little further back than just saying, hey, they're reading a
Speaker 1: lot of Harlequin romance books. And around that same time,
Speaker 1: a former Facebook employee made big waves out in the
Speaker 1: tech world by saying that Facebook as a rule was
Speaker 1: suppressing conservative news stories from the Trending news section on Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is partly curated by Facebook employees. Now. Facebook denied
Speaker 1: the allegations, saying the company worked very hard to avoid
Speaker 1: bias or prioritization of any news or philosophy over any other.
Speaker 1: But that definitely made headlines for quite some time in
Speaker 1: in May sixteen. Also in that time, Amazon Video Direct
Speaker 1: launched and that allows professional content creators to use Amazon
Speaker 1: as a video platform, and one of the launch partners
Speaker 1: was a scrappy little company called how Stuff Works. So
Speaker 1: if you go to Amazon Video and you search for
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works, you'll find videos that have me and
Speaker 1: my co workers in them. Kind of neat. You should
Speaker 1: do that thing. If you have Amazon Video, you go
Speaker 1: check it out. I'm on brain stuff. Instagram updated its
Speaker 1: logo and people went nuts and ridiculed it, and now
Speaker 1: I bet you can't even remember what the old logo
Speaker 1: looked like. So there. Disney would close down its video
Speaker 1: game division in May, including the Disney Infinity line of games.
Speaker 1: And collectibles. The company decided instead that it would license
Speaker 1: intellectual property out to other video game developers and then
Speaker 1: they would just avoid building stuff in house Mouse House. Now,
Speaker 1: towards the end of May, Google would have its big
Speaker 1: event and start announcing stuff like crazy, including the Google
Speaker 1: Home device. Google Home is Google's take on a smart
Speaker 1: speaker with a personal digital audio assistant similar to Amazon's Echo,
Speaker 1: and the company also introduced a messaging service called l O,
Speaker 1: a l l O that incorporates the personal digit assistant
Speaker 1: the audio assistant, just like Google Home does. So you
Speaker 1: could have a text message with somebody else, a real,
Speaker 1: live human being, and Aloe could help. Let's say that
Speaker 1: you start having a discussion with someone about a place
Speaker 1: you want to go and eat. Aloe might end up
Speaker 1: pulling up open table so that you can make a reservation.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. It's a little creepy, can feel
Speaker 1: a little invasive, maybe if you aren't really in the
Speaker 1: mind to have a digital assistant kind of button and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I see you're talking about this thing. Let me help
Speaker 1: you out with that. But fortunately, this is a dedicated app.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's built into all of Google services,
Speaker 1: so you can just not download it and use it
Speaker 1: if you'd rather avoid that sort of stuff. Google would
Speaker 1: also show off day Dream. It's a it's a virtual
Speaker 1: reality platform, so that makes that VR crowded space even
Speaker 1: more crowded. And Google debuted Magenta, which is an AI
Speaker 1: program that explores deep learning to create art in a
Speaker 1: real trippy way. Pretty cool and weird. Um not something
Speaker 1: I would typically associate with engineers. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: a the Pittsburgh Tribune confirmed that Uber had begun testing
Speaker 1: autonomous cars in Pittsburgh. Now, in those cases, you still
Speaker 1: had someone writing in the driver's seat. They weren't completely
Speaker 1: without a driver, but the driver. The driver was meant
Speaker 1: to be passive unless absolutely necessary. And Uber has made
Speaker 1: no secret that it intends to adopt autonomous car technology
Speaker 1: as soon as that technology is mature and legal. And
Speaker 1: that's tough because if you're a company and your employees
Speaker 1: are largely drivers, and you're telling them, hey, your job
Speaker 1: is limited, You've you've got a limited time span. Eventually
Speaker 1: we're gonna replace you with a robot. It's got to
Speaker 1: hurt employee morale, I would think. And that is it
Speaker 1: for the first half of a little less than first half,
Speaker 1: So join me next week for the exciting conclusion to
Speaker 1: when I look at these stories from June through as
Speaker 1: much of December as we are through by the time
Speaker 1: I record it, and we'll talk about more interesting stories, triumphs,
Speaker 1: tragedies and everything in between. If you guys have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, or if there's a story that
Speaker 1: I skipped over that you think I really should have
Speaker 1: talked about, write me let me know. The email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter,
Speaker 1: or the handle at both of those is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W. And I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com. Eight